This is one of those things I just don't understand

The lead story on JPost for at least a few hours today was about the American senior Klu Klux Klan member who, while on the run from the US Authorities, decided to hop on a plane and hide out in Israel.

Fact: The KKK is a hate group.
Fact: The KKK believes in protecting the rights of and future interests of white people.
Fact: The KKK has a record of using terror and intimidation against blacks, jews, and other minorities.

So what makes a KKK member who is on the US's 100 most wanted list decided to hide out among people he hates? I guess he couldn't hide out among blacks -- they would have outed him in about 20 seconds. Maybe he figured it was the last place that the authorities would look for him -- among one of the KKK's favorite target groups.

But here's the part that baffles me more. According to JPost he survived on odd jobs living like as an illegal migrant worker. Isn't this everything that the KKK is against? Or are they only against it in the US? Is it okay from them to go the countries of people they would sooner see dead and take illegal jobs there?

And the story only gets better. Once in Israel, he finds a Jewish girlfriend -- a commodity that is in abundance in Israel. She gets pregnant and then, upon finding out, he has an attack of conscience and he tells her about his sordid past. She, thank heavens, has the smarts to then turn him in to the authorities.

So, for me, there are many unanswered questions:

1) does he now like Jews? he is about to be the father of a Jewish child.
2) did he actually like the Jewish girl he got pregnant or was he just getting back at Jews in general?
3) if you really hate someone, how can you have sex with them? (sorry, that's a chick question)
4) if he hates Jews -- since all KKK seem to -- why didn't he hide out in the Palestinian Authority? KKK don't seem to have problems with other like-minded terrorist types. The PA would have been happy to have him. They have a common enemy. I bet they wouldn't have allowed him to be extradicted back to the US.
5) will the baby be a self-hating Jew? 50% of his gene pool suggests so.
6) is he going to want some sort of custody of his Jewish child?
7) what if his parents want to be actively involved in the baby's life?

So many questions. So few answers. So many pathetic human beings who don't deserve the decency that good people show them.

So much for my anti-Israel vacation

How does it always come back to the same thing? There's a problem somewhere in the world; anywhere in the world. Oh, it must be the Zionists. Somehow it is always the Zionists. I don't even know what a zionist is exactly but I have no doubt that I am one of them.

I have been sitting back for the past few days enjoying the hiatus offered to me by the civil unrest in Iran. You know Iran? It's the country that Obama has reached out to be friends with -- he's extended the olive branch of peace and goodwill because well, it is a democratic country, he says. That Obama, he really has his finger on the pulse of world politics.

While I have been following the Iran situation, I haven't followed it with the intensity I save for matters that concern Israel and the Jewish people. However, I can see by today's headlines that my vacation is over because according to the Iranian ayatollahs this civil unrest was caused by you know who ... correct ... The Dirty Zionists.

Until today I could have sworn that this upheaval in Iran was caused by the ayatollahs' manipulation of the supposedly-democratic national election results. I thought it had to do with the "sore" looser and his majority of Iranian followers insisting that the vote was rigged. I thought it was related to the fact that the pro-Western majority -- mostly younger people -- were fed up with living under an oppressive regime. Obviously I spend too much time thinking.

How did I go so wrong? How did I manage to overlook the obvious. It was the DZs.

What did the DZs do to cause all of this political upheaval? Didn't you know that we are behind the recent charges that the elections were rigged? Well, I guess we are all surprised. Apparently I am not reading the weekly DZ newsletter carefully enough.

Oh, and in case that isn't enough to blame on us today, why stop there? It has now been announced that the DZs are in cahoots with Pepsi -- which apparently is an acronym for Pay Every Penny to Support Israel. Yes, some very clever Muslim clerics in Egypt figured it out in their free time and then spread the word to their ignorant followers. Some people really do have too much free time on their hands.

I feel bad for Pepsi actually because I haven't had a Pepsi drink since 1978 when I learned that Pepsi forsook Israel in favour of the Arab world.

The Arabs had given the ultimatum to Pepsi and Coke that if they sold their products to Israel, they would be boycotted in the Arab countries. Pepsi chose the Arabs and I chose to never drink Pepsi products ever again. With almost no exceptions I have not had a Pepsi product in 31 years. And now, Pepsi -- after choosing sides very definitively all those years ago -- is being accused of Israeli bias. I always say that what goes around comes around, and I really believe that. But I don't always expect things to come around on a timely basis.

Oh, you can get a Pepsi in Israel now, but they will never be the presence that Coke is here. To me, Pepsi and Arabs are connected forever. Of course, the Arabs have conveniently forgotten all of this now. Friendship is a particularly temporary state for them.

So now I have to pack up my novel that I was reading for fun, and get back to paying attention. There really is no rest for the wicked ... which apparently means the Zionists.

Where are all the socks?

Yesterday, after my cleaning lady left, I was changing clothes from my skirt to a pair of cozy sweatpants. Obviously, if I was switching into sweatpants, I was going to need socks. When I got to my sock and underwear drawer, I found lots of underwear -- because my cleaning lady puts them there after the washing and folding is completed -- but there were no socks.

My cleaning lady wouldn't even attempt to put all the socks back in their respective owners' drawers because I don't think she would have the first clue as to where to start. Instead, all the re-paired, clean socks are placed in one laundry basket, and it is up to the respective sock owners to find their own socks.

The problem was that none of my socks were in the basket. I just bought three new pairs of sports socks that are distinctively different from any of the other socks in our family, but I still couldn't find a bloody pair of socks. Where do all the socks go?

According to my off-hand calculations, I have probably bought about 100 pairs of socks for members of this family during the past year. Yet, every morning I hear the same traumatized call: "Where are my socks?"

My husband, in a fit of frustration, went out and bought himself all new socks that had a little logo on them. He then proceeded to make everyone come and look at his new socks so that if, per chance, they ended up in someone else's sock drawer, they would be immediately returned to their rightful owner -- him. The first time he tried this approach it failed completely and within about two weeks he had no socks again.

Then, he went to Canada on business and bought himself what he considered to be totally unique sports socks (is there such a thing? I doubt it.) with a logo that absolutely no one is our family could possibly replicate without him. This time, things seem to be going better because I haven't heard a word from him about his missing socks in several weeks, maybe even months.

My daughter Yael's socks are easy to find. They are the smallest socks in the house and frankly, no one but Yael would be caught dead in such an array of colour on their feet. The rest of us are too cool -- or perhaps not very expressive.

Normally I would say that my socks are beyond thievery as well, but Zeve in particular, seems to like my socks, so if he stumbles across a pair he opts to keep them rather than return them. When I finally notice that he is wearing my socks, they are barely recognizable because after a few days on Zeve's feet no one in their right mind would take them back. Hence, Zeve has a nice collection of Calvin Klein tennis socks.

The other thing is that we have a gigantic heap of single socks. Where are their mates? I was actually thinking earlier today that I should put all the heaps of single socks in one place and force the kids to search for their mates. I bet we have fewer singles than we think.

In the meantime, I am on a daily countdown to Spring. Soon as it arrives, which should be soon, I will officially be past sock wearing until well into December of 2009. I just have to hang on a few more weeks, scraping together whatever clean and decent socks I can find. Preferably socks that are mine.

I hate to say I told you so

I am no expert on world affairs but I recently mentioned in a post on my other blog (www.thevidaloco.blogspot.com) that Canada is starting to feel like Germany in the early 1930s. Not that I know exactly what that felt like, but from what I have read, the descriptions seem eerily familiar. And now I feel totally vindicated because Irwin Cotler, previously the Justice Minister and Attorney General in the Canadian Parliament and a man with more human rights credentials than I have space to list, is saying the same thing. And he actually does know what he is talking about.

So here is the link to a transcript of a speech he recently delivered: /network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/21/irwin-cotler-the-global-reawakening-of-anti-sematism.aspx

Now I don't actually expect anyone to do anything. The people I know who are or were inclined to do something have already done it -- they left Canada. I don't want to sound like someone with great foresight vis-a-vis leaving Canada. As I have said many times in previous posts on my blogs, I came to Israel reluctantly. My husband is the one with all the foresight. Of course, his parents survived the Holocaust and he was hellbent on not ignoring the signs this time around.

I am not suggesting that there is another Hitler on the way. I really don't think there is. But I do believe that there are subtle but growing changes in the Canadian social environment. Irwin Cotler thinks so too.


Oh, here, I stumbled across another interesting piece -- this time from a Canadian Muslim Arab. See, I am trying to be balanced here. Read this: network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/20/tarek-fatah-stop-funding-fundamentalism.aspx

Do you think this is real? I need to know

Someone recently sent me an email with this link. Since I am a curious person I clicked on the link. Then I spent the next two minutes watching various groups of people pop popcorn with their cell phones. It freaked me a bit. But then I got suspicious because there is one video and it seems to show people from different parts of the world all trying the same experiment and getting the same results. How did someone really find people from different parts of the world to participate in his or her video? Seems like a lot of effort (and therefore, it seems to me like unlikely effort). So I am hoping that some of you will watch it and tell me what you think.

/www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/portable/video/x5odhh_pop-corn-telephone-portable-microon_news

Why aren't Israeli kids allergic to peanuts?

When I was a kid I don't remember anyone being allergic to peanut butter. Peanut butter and jam was a staple of my diet. But today, you just try to eat a PBJ sandwich in public in Canada or the U.S. Seriously, just try it (I will be on the sidelines filming what happens next when they drag you off to peanut jail.)

I don't want to dismiss peanut allergies; some of my children's friends have them. For those families, these allergies are very real.

Scientists agree that the number of children with peanut allergies has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. In the last five years alone the numbers have doubled. No one seems to know what that is. Maybe, some of them suggest, pregnant mothers are eating more peanuts and peanut butter than they did in the past. Ah ha! It's the mother's fault. Well, isn't that convenient?

I did some reading and I found out that all food and environmental allergies are on the rise in children. The theory is that since we live in a more hygienic world and we catch less childhood illnesses, our immune systems have time to catch more minutiae in our diets and the environment. Since our bodies no longer have to fight off nasty parasites everyday (because we are so darn clean and our bodies can no longer fight off disease), they have started to fight proteins which in their innate logic are bad.

Okay, so if that is true, why aren’t more Israeli kids allergic to peanut butter? I send my kids to school with peanut butter sandwiches at least once a week and no one has ever noticed.

Apparently the answer may have something to do with early peanut consumption being more common in Israel (the exact opposite of what my pediatrician recommended in Canada years ago). Bomba is the favorite food of toddlers in Israel. It is a puffed peanut butter flavored snack – looks just like a cheesie but it isn't.

Bomba is an institution in Israel; 69% of all Israeli babies are eating it by the age of nine-months. Frankly I don't like it – I think it is an oral abomination, but what do I know? Statistics indicate that I am squarely in the minority on this matter.

In case you are thinking that perhaps you should bring your peanut-allergic child to Israel and that would solve the problem. It won't. Allergies are geographically sensitive so your peanut-allergic child will probably end up allergic to sesame seeds here and you will just have a new set of worries.

Is the loss of one's dog comparable to the loss of a special person?

My feisty friend Emily died two days ago. I was surprised at how sad I was when I read the news from my close friend and old business partner in Toronto. Emily was her dog.

The first time I met Emily it would never have crossed my mind to consider her a friend. She was a very "enthusiastic" doberman who wanted you to know that you were on her turf and you better not forget it. The fact that I worked in "her" house did not simplify things. Well, not at first. I soon found out that she could be placated with tea biscuits and I was willing to oblige her food fetish as long as she let me live.

Over time my scent became familiar to her and she barked less. I didn't say that she stopped barking... that would have been totally out of character for her. But, as I mentioned above, she allowed me to live and she even let me pet her now and then.

I saw her last Spring after a six year absence. I was shocked by how much she had aged. I am no pet lover, but I was upset to see that she was so old and laid back. She just mozied around my friend's house and was all too happy to be petted for an hour. I never once feared for the safety of my hands.

I knew that the inevitable end was near. It was obvious although no one mentioned it. And for my friend's sake, I was dreading it.

Now it the inevitable has happened and there is a lot of sadness. My friend never had children. They weren't her thing. But her dog was her child and her friend. I think she treated Emily better than I treat my kids sometimes. Her loss is palatable.

Having recently experienced the loss of my father, I am struck by how sad my friend sounded in her email. My first thought was that you can't compare losing a parent to losing a dog. But now I am not so sure. Lassie swam across the English Channel or some large body of water like that to get back to her beloved family. With all due respect to my father, I don't think either he or I would have done that. We would have waited for the next available boat. obviously we weren't that committed!!! (OH, I am only joking.)

In twelfth grade one of my high school friends cat died. I had known that cat for years and I thought it was the nastiest cat that ever lived. Neighbourhood dogs partied for days after that cat died. There was a sense in the Hood that the Days of Terror were over. However, my friend was dispondent. I mean truly devastated for weeks and weeks. We, her friends, could not cajole her out of it with any of the usual cajoling fare.

In other words, who am I to judge someone else's relationships?

So, to Emily, I wish you a safe journey to the World To Come For Dogs. I hope that there are many places to run free and mark your place. I thank you again for not tearing me limb from limb even though you had many opportunities.