American Insurgent wrote:
I understand that some interpretations of Jewish religious law
prohibit using radios and TVs on Shabbat. During the first Gulf War in
1991, when Iraqi rockets were landing on Jerusalem, the rabbis found
that their followers were prohibited from listening to incoming strike
alerts on the radio, forcing them to spin American style to create
loopholes so that people could hear the alerts. One suggestion was to
operate the radio with a stick or your elbow.

There are other ways too. The most appropriate for this group was during
the war, the radio stations were broadcasting normally, but no audio.
Since the sabbath officialy starts about 45 minutes before sundown on
Friday and ends 15 minutes after sundown on Saturday, there was 25 hours
of "dead air".

I beleive that in the 1991 Gulf War, they set some sort of record.

One person posted a note on a mailing list asking for help tuning in
the station. I told them to tune until the noise stopped.


Don't feel bad, the Americans suck at it too. During the Cold War all
VOA had to do was read the news and present fluff cultural programs
and the Russians listened. Today, the problem isn't that Muslims don't
know about the West, but that they object to its culture on religious
grounds. That sort of attitude is very difficult to budge. The
Russians wanted to have the goodies of the West, the Muslims don't,
they'd rather live in tents if living in tents means keeping religious
purity. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has said so.

I understand. Occasionaly I listen to VOA broadcasts still. You are right,
they really would live in tents if they had to. Worse than that, in order
to keep them pure, their leaders will have them live in tents.


I haven't heard of Israeli chains opening in the US, unless it's in
heavily Jewish areas such as New York.

They are opening in Manhatten, L.A. and Toronto (I know, that's not
the U.S.). They don't identify themselves as Israeli.


I do know that American Jews
are making an effort to introduce Israeli goods to the US, especially
foodstuffs. I've had Man's lemon flavored sugar wafers, which are
wonderful. Elite chocolate is also good, although usually only
available widely at Pesach (Passover). I once saw an Israeli made
toolbox for sale.

Back when I lived in the U.S. (left in 1996) we bought Carmel brand tomatoes
from Israel at the local high end market. And I'm sure everyone reading this
has heard of Jaffa Oranges.

There are all sorts of Israeli products that are not obivous, for example
there is a large movie studio here which makes "Hollywood" movies,
and lots of computer software. If you are reading this on a Pentium computer
there is an 85% chance the processor was made here, and if it is a dual or
quad core, it was designed and made here.

Remember what the Palestinians did to the Church of the Nativity,
tearing up the medieval Bible and generally trashing the place? That
rattled American Christians so much that there's a real movement to
buy up holy relics and squirrel them away. Actor Mel Gibson is
reportedly building bombproof vaults in the American desert and
spending millions to buy relics.

I guess Mel is going to keep his mouth shut about it. After getting
drunk and blaming his problems on "the Jews", I'm sure he does not
want to offend anyone. Actually it's a good idea IMHO. Part of
the practice of Islam is to destroy relegious relics that are
not part of their relegion.

I was born in California, where the oldest building in the entire
state was built in 1790. Compared to that, 3000 year old buildings are
inconcievable. Even in places like Massachusetts, the oldest you'll
get is 1650 or so. Other than the gee whiz it's old factor, the main
reason to travel to Israel is faith. Where faith is concerned, proof
is beside the point.

Yes.

I've heard that Israel tends to use stone and concrete in construction
as opposed to the wood and cinderblock common in America. In fact,
that's the case in the whole Middle East. A few cities such as older
Eastern cities and San Francisco use red clay brick, but in New Jersey
it's wood for residential and cinderblock for commercial. In the 1960s
America invented the "tilt up" precast concrete panel building for
light industrial, but other than that concrete has gotten nowhere in
America, except for paving. The sort of concrete building used in the
Middle East would be illegal on the West Coast because it can't handle
earthquakes.

We have them here. Usually no more than the low 4's, but we have them.
The buildings are not made from wood because there is no wood. It's
mostly cinderblock, steel rebar and in Jerusalem faced with "Jerusalem
stone". A tourist once asked me if I knew where the quary it came from
was because "by now it must be one big hole". :-)


That's what I heard. The deal seems to have been quietly abandoned
after the war. Or maybe everybody was so concerned about the war that
they forgot all about the deal.

Could be. But I think what would really scare him was that the airport
is subject to random closures due to the union striking. The former
minister for defense (the one photographed surveying the troops
with the lens caps on his binoculars) used to be head of the
national labor union and whenever anyone threatened to remove him
from office, he'd arrange for a strike which closed the airport.

He was elected via the labor party and even they had enough, voting
him out of office.
That's not surprising. George W. Bush is beholden to his big corporate
donors, and will create any advantage he can for them. The massive use
of latent cluster bombs, daisy bombs, and various other bombs in
Lebanon that can sit idle until somebody steps on them, which Israel
got all the blame for, was I suspect driven by the US makers of the
bombs. I shudder to think of you guys being forced to fight with
M16's, which jam in the desert sand. The Uzi is so much better, but I
suspect that Israel gets US small arms dumped on it, with orders to
use it. The story about bad ammo just didn't get out, even on the
internet. The bomb story did (and Israel was blamed), as well as
various stories about shells filled with uranium being used in Iraq,
but I hadn't heard about the ammo.

You'd be surprised what gets sold. When I refered to ammo I was refering
to cluster bombs and depleted unranium tank/artillery shells, not
small arms ammo. The M-16's are not bad if you keep them clean.

That's how you can tell a real soldier from a "jobnick". The jobnicks
look good in their clean, well pressed uniforms and polished boots (although
many wear sneakers or sandals most of the time). They also have rifles
that look like they haven't been cleaned since they came off the production
line.

The real soldiers look sloppy, but you could eat off of their rifles,
they are cleaner than most people's dishes. :-)

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/