Terror = profits for Hamas

Blood money, spilled from a Hamas car.

From the Shamrak Report by Steven Shamrack:

Terror is Profitable Business

Fatah spokesman Ahmad Assaf accused Hamas leaders of illegally diverting money collected for the children of Gaza . He said that international donors are right to be wary about wasting money on the reconstruction of Gaza : "The international players listen to the (Hamas) statements, and they have the right to ask: 'If we are on the verge of another war, why should we pay billions on the rebuilding of Gaza?'" [Betsy suggests that the rebuilding would provide jobs for unemployed Gazans, making the war an insane way to boost employment, with international donors becoming the new employers.]

Assaf went on to claim that during the latest Gaza war, "the Hamas leaders in Gaza received 700 million dollars. I take full responsibility for what I am saying. This figure is well documented, and we know the money sources."

"Hamas collected money from all over the world. Where is it? We have seen televised fundraisers by Hamas supporters and allies, in which hundreds of millions were collected. Can anybody tell me where the money went?" (He forgot to mention that Fatah is conducting the same scam - robbing the international community of billions of dollars!)

Bigots are Too Eager to help Enemy of Israel

International donors have pledged a sum of $5.4bn in aid to reconstruct the Gaza Strip amid warnings that the PA controlled territory remains a "tinderbox" following the summer war between Hamas and Israel . The pledged amount surpasses the $4bn which was asked. (They know well that vast portion of international aid, given to the fake Palestinians, ends up in the pockets of corrupt leaders of PA/PLO/Fattah/Hamas officials! The United States has provided more than 400 million, borrowed from China, in assistance to the PA over this last year. Money would be better spent to help sick, poor and homeless Americans or on fixing national infrastructure!)"

Don't tread on me

Don't tread on me, Hamas.

David beats Goliath and builds hilltop city--archeological find now open to public

David's city, built after victory over Goliath and the Philistines.

Nearby on the hill are many ancient, random carob and fig trees, with sweet fragrant fruit and crunchy pods, completely free for the picking.

This is a rich land, where the planters of these trees gave gifts to us across the centuries.


Fascinating article on the city's history and the dig.
in-a-palace-at-qeifaya-david-savored-his-victory-over-goliath/

R&D expenditures as a percent of GDP - Israel is unique

Somehow, despite everything, our social systems 

encourage people to contribute inventions for the world's benefit

I tell Moses: "Do your homework." 

Sderot social services - a well-guarded castle

A castle keep

The Sderot social services seems pretty much overbooked. I have called and visited and left messages saying we are in a situation here, I am getting too weak to do many daily things, and my business is hardly booming with all these booms overhead, etc....and there has been no response.

So today I went again and pounded on the locked door until they opened it. After that, a social worker explained that they keep their door locked and don't post their public hours on the door because otherwise "it would be chaos." In other words, they would be swamped with people coming and asking for money every day. She seemed to have a lot of experience in patiently telling people that the social workers do not dispense money. OK, she is correct, that is not really what social workers are supposed to do. But this is some barometer of the state of affairs among Sderot's people. Honestly I think we are better off than many of them.

However, one thing I hate is politicians making empty promises when TV cameras are rolling, and then the promises never materialize. So such promises were made during the war--yes, yes, we will help the people of the South around Gaza, we will support those who were displaced, and provide compensation to affected businesses...blah blah blah sounds so good and responsible of them when the cameras are rolling. So as I go about my various inquiries at government offices here, I make sure to ask whether or not they have any responsibility for accepting claims for compensation from the promised funds. They all say no. I think, then, that the politicians must have been imagining things. Meanwhile, the money that they imagined has not materialized here in any way. If I find I am wrong, I will try to report that here some day.

And I recall reading that the people in Gaza have gotten dispensations of $40 million. In cash. From their people in Qatar.

[update the next day]
So the social services did a sudden turnaround after I posted the post above, and their intake guy called me up and began the intake process. My main takeaway was a tough one--unless you are injured at work, it is very tough to get disability, crippling arthritis may not be enough. The easiest way to get all kinds of disability benefits is to convince the government that you are subject to mental illness. They volunteered this information. I think the incidence of PTSD among residents here is extremely high, so maybe it is expected that people will take such a path.

I credit them for their unexpected responsiveness, even though I don't much care for this policy.

The full intake will not happen for another several weeks. The lag between an inquiry and the opening of a new case is roughly two or three months.

School year starts

School boys clapping to greet Netanyahu, who came to school to encourage them.

Bibi among the children.

Video: Bibi visits Sderot schools at start of school year

So after a summer of uncertainty about whether children could even start school on September 1, or would have to start and go through the whole year under fire... we had a week of quiet, no rockets. We managed to get through the normal pre-school rush of organizing books, clothes, supplies, haircuts, all the while calming the slightly jittery nerves of a kid who is changing schools. The ordinary is like a miracle.

Everything has worked out fine, so far. It is not every day that the PM comes to school.  All the excitement! When things calm down tomorrow, the adjustment will begin.

Flip-flop

A flip-flop

In Sderot, we go through a little bit of crazy when under fire. Things get slightly out of whack, there is a snafu here and a snafu there. This is trivial compared to the rigors of actually getting hit, but it adds up to long-term stress and struggle just living in our own home. 

Kids have to have fun. That is part of growing up. And kids under fire seem to need more and more fun. So my kid Moses is watching Hogan's Heroes. A lot. He is glued to Hogan's Heroes. I also let him have a dog that he loves, Smoothie, who is like a living teddy bear and that is also a help under fire. Smoothie is a girl, so she has some puppies that are still in the house. The puppies love to chew on shoes and flip flops. You know this. Well, here's an example of how the fire adds up to a kind of craziness:

When I work, it is hot...we have no air conditioning, and this is the Middle East...I toss off my flip-flops under my desk, without thinking about it, and then the puppies find them and take them somewhere to chew on. Then the Code Red siren sounds, and I jump up from my desk and rush to the bomb shelter. But without the flip-flops, because there is no time to find them in the 15 seconds that we have before the first missiles fall -- sometimes it is really more like 5 or 10 seconds, honest. So I have to rush. So just earlier, we rushed, as usual, but when I ran through the next room that leads to the bomb shelter, what! glass under my bare feet. Moses, that dear boy, had dropped and broken a glass on the floor but was too glued to his escapist TV show to clean it up. Ouch. 

This is our own tiny example, but there have been many cases of serious injuries among people runnng to bomb shelters. They get heart attacks and die. They break their legs. They get run over by cars. Bomb shelters are not really the answer. No bombs and no missiles--that is the answer. If Hamas men have to die before they stop shooting off their deadly projectiles and lying about everything under the sun, then I say the only reasonable thing to do is to kill them. There is a corner of my heart that weeps for any killing, but in this case, for the first time in my life, I can say with complete conviction that killing them is 100% justified.

Damn! There goes $250,000 in two minutes.

Boom.

So about ten minutes ago we heard the usual "Tseva Adom" (code red) alarm loudspeaker and we rushed into our bomb shelter, like usual at least 20 times in the last few days.

This time, though, instead of the typical two overhead booms, I think we heard five, in two minutes.

BOOM!     BOOM!     BOOM!     BOOM!     BOOM!

I am most grateful that --I think--the booms had the sound of the Iron Dome when it shoots down incoming rockets. But each Iron Dome rocket costs, it is said, around $50,000. Do the math and that comes to a cool $250K in two minutes.

Soon we will hear on the news if I heard the booms correctly.

We are gaining keen hearing for the types of booms we can hear from the apartment. There is the worst boom of a rocket crashing into a street or house nearby. It sounds heavy and brutal. Then there is the overhead higher popping boom of the shoot-down from Iron Dome. Then, coming across the border from Gaza, I suppose you could classify two basic kinds of booms...the smaller ones hitting individual terror targets, and the huge ones that reverberate, sometimes rattling the windows here, as the bombs knock down buildings.

I cannot understand the minds of the islamist men who are so determined to bring explosive destruction on everyone who stands in their way. There is something so infantile about it.

"Sexy mama" spent rocket

Sexy in polka-dotted "skirt" - and look at those red lips!

Today, back in Sderot, I limped and shlepped around to government offices, getting ready to apply for unemployment, disability, food handouts, and emergency government business assistance for war-zone business owners. Whew! Now I have finally entered the netherworld of war-zone citizens who have come to the point of needing government support.

Really it is hard to get clients these days, and when I get them, my head is spinning from lack of sleep after nights of bombing that compounds the general stress I feel when sending my son out, for example, to synagogue, only to hear the code red sirens and hope he ran into some on-street bomb shelter fast enough. Moses is only 11. He is brave. But my work is very affected. Imagine trying to decipher Japanese legalese in that situation. Japanese lawyers are sure known for their predisposition to write each contract clause as a single sentence, sometimes running on for hundreds of words, and in need of a reverse sentence order when translated into English. So generally this is a losing proposition. Even my "law school" work is impeded by this situation. And knowing that many others are suffering does not help. Knowing that this is really nothing at all compared to the situations of the mothers in Gaza, that is just another heartbreak in a sense. I have to think about this some more, and whether I can still feel empathy for them, after they raised sons whose whole mission in life is to kill my sons.

Anyway, back to the sexy rocket picture. This is a decoration in the welfare office, next to the front door. I see it as defiance against those brutal islamists who would turn our women to mourners, and who would control their own women to the extreme, and who would effectively kill and maim their own children, and who would of course never allow polka-dots.

Life in Sderot

Edge of Sderot from the air

Those of you following my other blog, "Toyota Whistleblower's Journey," know that my son Moses and I escaped from Sderot at the start of the current war and have spent around seven weeks as  displaced people.

Finally, Moses and I came to recognize that we need and want to be in our own home, a small fourth-floor walkup apartment with a breeze and a view of the border with Gaza.

Now that we are back, we expect to go through the next phase of the war here, just when the army generals are advising the local people to leave the area. Many had already left and then returned to prepare for the new school year, but will leave again, especially after a rocket killed a 4 year old boy in a nearby kibbutz yesterday. We may end up in a war of attrition or we may find ourselves in the thick of fierce battles. Time will tell.

Whatever kind of war is pending, we may stick it out this time, partly on account that Moses can start the school year in a school building that is completely roofed over with thick cement, including the playground, and where the quality of study is quite good, and partly so I that can witness events and write about them.

AFAIK, there are no other English speakers living here who blog, so this will be an experimental effort at home-grown citizen journalism.

I welcome all civil comments.