Mount Moses

Are you bored of Israel?

Shit, I'm bored of Israel. More significantly, my wallet was hemorrhaging cash... though I'm not sure why I expected something different from living in a country filled with Jews.

So I tried to leave for a cheaper country. Well, guess what? I'm back in Israel. Eilat, specifically.

Long story. But I did manage to snag a few days in the Sinai. I lounged on the beach, snorkeled at Dahab, smoked a ton of sheesha, was cheated sideways by the Egyptians within hours of my arrival, and met up with Kieran and his buddy Sarah Wickstrom from back home, long enough to climb Mt Sinai and swap two months' worth of backpack tales.

I've still got a load of pictures and stories from the Twice-Promised Land. But maybe you guys wouldn't mind a break from Israel. Here are some photos.

This is Alexandria Beach.

Coral reefs line the east coast of the Sinai peninsula, and the diving is world-class. And the stark, bleak red ridges of the Sinai's mountains form a stunning backdrop to the piercing blue sky and sea.

The inevitable result: beach resorts. There are dozens, with more going up every day: kitschy, desert-toned hotel blocks that look like social housing units neo-designed in the style of Ottoman palaces.

Alexandria Beach is one of the last stretches still unmarred by those tacky money-sucks. Just huts of rattan, dried reeds, and wood, with a large common pavilion framed by colorful embroideries, huge cushions, and swinging hammocks.

The beach was empty.

A few weeks ago, the fence between Gaza and Egypt was blown up by Hamas militants. Dozens, maybe hundreds, escaped into Egypt. Israel put out a warning to its citizens: Do not go holidaying in the Sinai. Since the Sinai's clientèle is 90% Israeli, the tourist trade dried up overnight.

Most Sinai Egyptians speak Hebrew. This isn't just due to the tourist trade; the Sinai was occupied by Israel from 1967 (they conquered the peninsula in the Six-Day War) till 1982, when it was returned to Egypt in a "Land for Peace" deal.

It was a bit of a mind-fuck, after two months in a Palestinian hostel, to wake up on Alexandria Beach and hear an Egyptian Arab address me: "Boker tov", or "Good morning"- in Hebrew.

I met up with Kieran and Sarah at Dahab. I'd spent the previous day snorkeling, though I obviously have no pictures of that. The snorkeling turned out poorly; I've run out of contacts, and snorkeling masks can't fit over glasses and maintain an airtight seal around the eyes. Salt water kept leaking in, and I gave up quickly.

And getting to Dahab... that's a whole 'nother story. Suffice it to say, when I was done screaming at all the Egyptians who tried (and succeeded) to cheat me, I was wishing that Israel had never given the Sinai back.

We made it to Mt Sinai. There was a monastery at its foot, called St. Katherine's, that contained the Burning Bush. You know, the bush that Moses talked to while it was on fire. That's the pathetic looking shrub in the photo.

We considered lighting it on fire to see if it would speak.

Mt Sinai. The Arabs call it Jebel Musa, or the mountain of Moses. There are two ways up. (1) There's a winding, gently sloping path that S-curves up the mountain, lined with refreshment stands set up by local Bedouin (broke-ass desert Arabs). (2) The aptly-named Steps of Repentance: thousands of steps built from appropriately-sized slabs of mountain rock going straight up, pieced together by a single monk back in the day. It took him... a while.

We took the first path. It meets up with the Steps of Repentance anyway, some 700 steps from the summit, and that was good enough for us.

This was about halfway up. And no, I didn't try any flying kicks.

Some Bedouin refreshment shops just below the summit. I love this picture; it looks like a "base camp" scene from an RPG or MMORPG. In this shop, you get mana potions, in this shop you repair your armor... fuck, I'm a nerd.

The church on top of Mt Sinai. I tried to imagine the voice of God thundering out of the heavens, calling to a cowering Moses in the midst of a swirling tempest- and failed. Not stoned enough.

Nice view, though.

If you peer really carefully, you'll see a minuscule string of buildings running through the crack of those two big ridges.

Some broke-ass Bedouin on the mountain top. We sat down and shared the white-robed towelhead's ciggy, which was actually a joint filled with some poor quality hash.

The Bedouin actually do sleep on the summit. There were blankets and mattresses laid out along the side of the church. This impressed us all; nights on a desert mountain can be... chilly.

Nothing says "Vancoverites were here" quite like an Inukshuk. We even found a Napoleon's-hat-shaped stone for the big guy.

And what would a day on Mt Sinai without reading from the Bible? Kieran read from Exodus the verses about the gift of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Calf. I read- with great relish- a passage from Ezekiel called "A Lament for Egypt"- basically, a prediction of the Lord laying waste to Egypt with fire and sword, ending with the Pulp Fictionesque words: "I will lay my vengeance upon them, and they will know that I am the Lord."

I was still sore about all those Egyptians cheating me. Was? I mean: am. I hate Egyptians. May all their sons be cripples, and all their daughters barren. May their lying tongues rot away and their greedy, grasping hands shrivel into lifeless claws. May a just God wreak upon them a righteous fury. May their bodies blanket the earth and reach to the sky.

This is Eilat. You can barely see it spread out on the rim of the sea, with the Israeli navy patrol boat out in the foreground.

Why am I here? Basically, the visa issued at the Israel-Egypt border does not allow you to cross the Suez canal. You are allowed only to travel within the Sinai. If you want to travel to Cairo, you need a special visa that can only be issued in Israel.

Of course, I only found out about this when I was already in the Sinai. So now, I'm back in Israel, waiting for the Egyptian consulate to open... on Sunday. And this was after a four-hour search at the border by overzealous Jewish teenagers pulling my bag apart and asking me questions about my family, my education, my time in Lebanon, my Palestinian head scarves, and my collection of books, which unfortunately contained a booklet about the Palestinian victims of Israeli torture.

My favorite part of the interrogation went like this:

Q: What do you want to do with your degree?

Sean: I don't know.

Q: How can you not know? You were in university for what...

Sean: Six years. Look, it's not a crime if I don't know what to do with my life.

Q: *quickly, and with glee* I didn't say it was a crime.

(This was one of those standard interrogation ploys, meant to fluster a questionee. The usual context would be a person saying: "Going to the West Bank is not a crime!" and by quickly retorting: "I didn't say it was a crime", the interrogator confuses the questionee into perhaps admitting that they have Palestinian sympathies.)

Sean: Well... My parents think it's a crime.

The interrogator stared, then burst out laughing. I think I was home-free after that.

I couldn't (and still don't) understand why the Egyptians at the border crossing aren't allowed to hand out the full visas. I've lost many brain cells trying to reason it out. In the end, whatever. Hakuna Matata. If there's anything I've learned from my travels, it's that (1) crossing borders, especially of self-important countries like Egypt and Israel, is always a red-tape obstacle course, and (2) there is something about the concept of "efficiency" that the Arab character finds utterly alien.

Thoughts from Jerusalem

There's some Jewish kosher law: Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk.

I'm not sure that I've reproduced this faithfully. But the general gist is: Do Not Mix Meat and Dairy.

There are a few other laws. Fish without scales are unkosher- so mussels, clams, etc. And pigs- "Riiight, some kind of wonderful, magical animal, Lisa,"- they're a big no-no.

No clam chowder? No grilled pork chops, no sizzling, greasy bacon, no Christmas ham? Would the Chinese restaurants have char siew? And what about fettucini alfredo with shrimp?

And most importantly: would McDonalds have quarter-pounders with cheese and bacon?

The answer is "No".

In addition, a Big Mac meal- minus cheese- costs about 11 bucks. We called it a "Jew Value Meal."

***


The Mandarin is a Chinese restaurant in West Jerusalem. It was started in 1958; supposedly the oldest in Israel. More importantly, it's non-kosher- so it serves up char siew, sweet & sour pork, and all that good gentile stuff.

The guy who runs it is named Billy. Born a Christian in Hong Kong, Billy immigrated to Israel at the age of 15 with his parents. He hinted that his parents did missionary work, and he's been here 30 years. As Billy took the order, the stereo played a tinny Mandarin version of the hymn "This is the Day that the Lord has made."

I couldn't resist bombarding Billy with questions. The variety of the Chinese diaspora has never ceased to boggle my mind. Here was a Honky who spoke the most butchered, helicoptering, sing-songy, fresh-off-the-boat, Tai Mai Shu, Chicky-flied-lice brand of English you'd expect from the waiters at Hon's in Richmond... and shouted at his Arab accountant in fluent Hebrew in between orders.

Billy is actually an Israeli citizen. More importantly, he has served in the IDF. I didn't press him on this, or on the details of being a Chinese Christian in a Jewish army. And at 45, his army days are over.

But let's logic out some dates.

It's 2008. 30 years ago was 1978; he would have been 15. If he was given citizenship and drafted at 18, it would have been 1981: the year before Israel first invaded Lebanon. I wondered if young Billy, who would have spoken a shaky Hebrew and felt no affiliation to the tribal Jewish jingoism of those days, was in a tank on the outskirts of Beirut, watching the tribes of Lebanon duke it out.

And he would have had a front row seat for the Occupation. He would certainly have seen action in the Second Intifada as a reservist. He might even have fought Hezbollah in Lebanon, in 2006.

More questions, more answers. The Chinese community of Israel is, according to him, about thirty. This seems unbelievable: there are so many foreign workers in Israel today. Billy replied that these were migrant workers; Chinese citizens are few and far between.

Are there Chinese Jews? Yes, he said, two kinds. Some are descended form a tiny, age old community that fled the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and made their way east into China. Over the centuries, they interbred with the locals, took Chinese names, and built synagogues in the shape of pagodas. Some tiny percentage survived, and came to Israel.

The second source was more recent. After the Holocaust, most Jews went to Israel and America. A tiny number went to China, took Chinese spouses, and had Chinese-looking Jewish kids.

And do you feel Chinese or Israeli?

Billy sighed, his answer confused. "Here, I am Israel," he said. (Not "I am Israeli", but "I am Israel.") "I have been here so many years, I feel Israel. I serve in army, I speak Hebrew. We no celebrate Chinese New Year. Here, is Jewish country, you no feel."

No oranges and new clothing and massive round table feasts? No red packets? He seemed amused at my dismay.

"But!" he continued. "Sometime I go China, Hong Kong. Then I feel. I feel Chinese again. But here, no feel."

So you do feel Chinese! Do you feel more Chinese, or more Israeli? I don't know why I was so intent on this. I think I was trying to answer something about myself, and on behalf of Kevin, and Gavin, and all my banana brethren back home.

Billy shrugged eloquently. "It is like you," he pointed at me suddenly. "Are you Chinese or America?" He thought I was from America. "You are Chinese on outside. Inside, you are America. Inside, I am Israel. But is difficult, because China, I also feel."

"If China fight America, who you fight for? See?" He seemed gleeful, as if he had sprung some kind of verbal trap. "If Israel fight China, I run to church and hide. I cannot fight. I cannot choose."

Meh. Part of me was satisfied by this stalling answer. Identity is any individual's greatest crisis, and the divided loyalties of the hyphenated identity, in my experience, defy articulation. I felt vindicated, somehow, that this Chinese-Israeli felt the same way.

And you feel welcome here?

He waved the question away. "I am Israel. In Jerusalem, is different, maybe. But in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, everywhere, people welcome you. You not Jewish... well, is still ok. You serve in army, you want to be Israel, they say, ok, come."

"But is also hard to be Christian," he went on, not realizing that this hint at exclusion contradicted the earlier claim of belonging. "Because is Jewish country." He wouldn't elaborate further.

All of this said much about Israeli attitudes toward migrants, though it revealed more questions than answers. Apparently, secular Israelis don't care. Being a Zionist is more important than being Jewish, though it was best to be both. Religious Jews are straight-up less welcoming. And the moral climate of a Jewish country can often ostracize non-Jews. Like Chinese Christians.

Above all, I found Billy's faith and his Christian connection to the Holy Land most interesting. In order to remain in Israel, he was willing to serve in the Occupation, and abide by a nationalist ideology of no resonance to his Chinese roots or his Christian beliefs. In order to live as a Christian, he was willing to die for Israel- a country that would always keep him, a non-Jew, at arm's length.

***


Kieran likes to joke that there are two kinds of Arabic music.

(1) Koranic recitations. An old cleric's thin, ululating voice droning verses from the Koran. There are whole radio freeks dedicated to this garbled garbage (especially withering at 8 on a hungover morning ), and the felafel & hummus joint down the road has its television permanently turned to the Islamic MTV: music videos of chanting, white-robed clerics superimposed over images of Mecca or crowds of men praying with their asses in the air and bouncing their foreheads off the ground.

(2) "Habibi" songs. "Habibi" means "my friend" in Arabic, though it also has intimate connotations... like "my dear", "my love", or "my comrade". Arabic pop music is built on a carbon-copy stream of simpering love ballads, each containing the word "Habibi" as its centerpiece- the way hip-hop uses "nigger".

Imagine the most irritating dying-swan ballad ever upchucked by a teenage pop princess. Combine this with a synthesized snake-charmer drumbeat, and the kind of affected, pseudo-coy, ululating Arabic mating call you imagine a virgin in a Turkish harem would belt out, hips gyrating, before being deflowered by the fat, mustachioed sultan.

"Dirka dirka Muhammad jihad habibiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...*bomp-ti-bomp-ti-bomp-bomp-bomp*"

The first time you hear this, you think: "Ah! How very rhythmic, how sensuous!" Somewhere around your 839th same-same-but-different tune, you start to fantasize about the Israeli army bursting in and filling the stereo with lead.

The best example of this is the Lebanese diva Fairouz. The Lonely Planet: "a voice of silk and flame." This is apt enough; listening to her is like being wrapped in a sheet and set on fire.

The fanciful, literary half of me that takes guidebooks at face-value and romanticizes ancient ruins wants to believe that Arabic ballads are sensuous and exotic- you know... the sultry, unveiled passion of the harem and the lingering serenity of the desert... that kind of fatuous nonsense.

The other half of me, that listens to Irish punk and makes vicious comments about my girl friends' dates, thinks that the first half is an idiot.

When I get back to Vancity, I am going to find my iPod, jam the headphones over my head, put Flogging Molly on repeat, punch something, and thank God for real music.

***


Israelis and Palestinians have absurd names.

Let's start with the Palestinians. I'm not just talking about the Muhammads, the Hassans, the Husseins, and the Alis. Or even the Osamas.

We were doing some film-work, interviewing the workers and patients of a psychology clinic for torture victims of Israeli jails. The psychologist's name was "Thawra"- which means "revolution". Her patient's name was "Falastin", or "Palestine". And back at our hostel (run by a man named Osama), the handyman repairing the lights was "Abu Jihad".

Just to be clear, Arab men, as a sign of respect, address each other with the title "Abu"- Father of- followed by the name of their eldest son. So Abu Jihad probably has a son named Holy War.

Mass movements throw up names like this. You recreate your identity by changing your name. Hippies: Liberty, Rainbow, Phoenix, Dharma; or Lennon, Dylan, Janis. Or blacks and their Back-to-Africa pseudo-Swahili: Ashanti and Shaniqua and Kwame and Kunta-Kinte-Himbohambe-Himbohambo. The Palestinians reshape their names and identities to reflect the Intifada.

And the Israelis. If you study the early days of Israel and Zionism, it's identical to the Palestinian struggle today- complete with the child-of-war names. Jews were changing their Yiddish ghetto names (Hershel Finkelsteinkosherburger?) to heroic Hebrew names, after biblical prophets and kings.

And so your bus driver's last name might be Dror (Freedom), or Ben-Tsyon (Son of Zion), or Ben-David. His first name might be Barak (lightning), or the name of some Old Testament warrior: Gideon or Samson.

I wonder if there's an Israel Ben-Israel out there. Can you imagine a Canadian named "Trudeau Son of the Yukon"? Or "Alberta Freedom"?

Nowadays, most Israelis, secure in their national identity, go for non-biblical, monosyllabic, unisex names: Tal, or Nir, or Gal. My favorite is "Mor". Think of the possibilities in the sack. "Give me MOR! I need MOR! Oh, MOR! MOR! MOR!"

Most Israeli names, however, are hideous and jarring, all guttural consonants and tonsil-jiggling. The girls' names are especially awful and always masculine sounding; they generally end with "T" or "R" because Hebrew feminine nouns tend to end with those letters.

Smadar. Ugh. Or Shachar, the "ch" being a guttural throat-hawk, like "ccchhhhhhhh". "Shachar" is especially tragic because it means "dawn", a lovely name in English.

The worst by far is "Orly", which to me is the quintessential fat chick's name. It sounds like a combination of "Porky", "Oily," and "Roly-poly", all of which have connotations of morbid obesity.

Lately, I've been signing my name onto visitors' books as "Yochanan Ben-Tsona".

It means Sean, Son of a Bitch.

Jewish-Jewish-Jewish

I was reading a book the other day about the Hasidim, or the ultra-orthodox Jews. Yeah, these guys. The Fiddler On the Roof clones with the twirly locks of temple-hair, the Gimli beards, and the 18th century overcoats, doing their best to ignore the intrusion of the 21st century.

"There's Jewish." An interviewed Hasidic woman declared. "Then there's Jewish-Jewish. We're Jewish-Jewish-Jewish."

The Hasids are beyond satire; already the brunt of a million cover stories and jokes- especially by the secular Israelis, who despise them with a passion usually reserved for Hezbollah and Hamas.

And they're everywhere in Jerusalem. The "segregated" buses, where women and men sit on opposite sides. Girls with a plain, unobtrusive prettiness, in shapeless skirts and shawls, who'll grow old before their time bearing children and making matzo. Men in bearskin hats and silk bathrobes hauling ass for the Western Wall on Shabbat- spindly legs pumping, faces pale and pinched from generations of breeding within a stagnant gene pool- with their plain, wig-wearing wives and cartoonish flocks of offspring in tow.

Most travelers I've met are ambivalent to the Hasids. If anything, they're an entertaining sideshow to the Jerusalemite carnival. The Hasids are the product of a way of life that evolved in the dirt-poor, Yiddish-speaking Jewish ghettos of eastern Europe in the 17th-19th centuries. In the absence of upward and outward mobility in their host nations, the ghetto Jews prized religious learning above all else.

Their lives have become so built around the Jewish Torah that they've seen no reason to update themselves for the modern world. If anything, they've recreated the 18th century Yiddish ghetto in Israel, so that they can go on studying Torah in exactly the same way they did back in the good ol' days, when they were being persecuted by Poles and massacred by Cossacks.

I couldn't even begin to tell you the bizarre tales I've heard of- and experiences I've had with- the Hasids. Travelers swap these stories with relish.

It's whispered that because truly observant Jews aren't allowed to do any work on the Sabbath, some Hasids get a non-Jew to follow them around the house just to open their doors.

And that some Hasidic couples, due to some bizarre biblical ruling, will not touch each other physically during sex- and fuck with the man's penis going through a hole in a sheet.

Hasidic women crop their hair short and wear wigs... although one of Judaism's great living sages recently declared wigs impure according to religious law.

My buddy Jeremy once had his loins blessed by a rabbi, who soaked his groin with water and called upon the Lord to strengthen his seed.

I've been chased down on the street by Hasidic men who hand me little cards printed with the Seven Laws of Noah, which as a gentile I am supposedly ordered by God to follow... even though, they add piously, and without an ounce of self-congratulation or reproach, I do not have the privilege of following the 613 Laws of Judaism.

More recently, I made the mistake of taking pictures in Mea Shearim, the Hasidic enclave in Jerusalem, during the Sabbath (No "work" on the Sabbath!). Worse, I was snapping photos of the synagogue. I was promptly chased out of the neighborhood by a crowd of snowball-throwing youngsters. And I hear that when it isn't snowing in Jerusalem, they use stones.

For secular Israelis, it goes beyond swapping tales about the Hasids' comically retrogressive lifestyle. Kibbutzniks, the Israelis who live and work in Israel's communal, quasi-socialist farms, particularly despise them. Why?

The ultra-orthodox don't serve in the Israeli army. Since those who attend yeshiva (religious schools) are exempt from the army, most Hasids hole themselves in yeshivas until 45, the age at which men become ineligible for the draft.

The Hasids say (tongue-not-in-cheek) that their prayers help persuade God to watch over Israel, and that if God turns His face and allows the Arabs to wipe the state off the map, the study of Torah is the only thing that will keep Jewish culture alive for another 2000 years.

There are exceptions. There's a battalion in the West Bank made completely out of Hasidic Jews. They get time off to pray and study the Torah, their food is koshered to some extreme degree, they have the side-curls hanging down under their combat helmets, and they have an excellent record of shit-kicking Palestinians. It's part of an attempt by the government to ease the ultra-orthodox into the armed forces, though the Hasid rabbis overwhelmingly oppose it.

More absurdly, most of the men don't work. They just study the Jewish scriptures, and commentaries on the scriptures, and commentaries on the commentaries. Every day, all day long (except for the Sabbath), until the age of 45. Until then, it falls to the Missus to cook, clean, raise the brood of Jewlings, and bring the bread home.

I've been begged countless times for donations to ultra-Orthodox charities, serving whole neighborhoods below the poverty line.

"There are many poor children in Israel, families living in poverty, and the government won't provide for them," said one beardo, with his jangling coin box.

You mean Hasidic children?

"Yes, our children. They need..."

Isn't that your job? And if it's not, it certainly ain't mine. Get a job, or have less children.

Weird politics too. Most of the Hasids are- as you might expect- Far Right wing. Like, "Death to the Arabs" right wing. "G-D gave Israel to Abraham" right wing. They pray for all the Arabs to die; they just want other Jews to do the fighting.

There's a bizarre minority, however, called the Naturei Karta, that wants the State of Israel to be destroyed. Apparently, by creating Israel before the return of the Messiah, the Zionists have made some kind of unholy fuck-up that true Jews should not be party to. And so Jews from the Naturei Karta and other sects participated in Ahmedinejad's recent Holocaust denial conference, and burn Israeli flags on Independence Day. One even served as Yasser Arafat's "Minister for Jewish Affairs".

To top it all off, the Hasids are increasing relative to the secular Israelis. "Be fruitful and multiply," says the Bible... and Hasids are very fruitful. Ten-kids-per-family-fruitful. Most secular Israelis have two or three.

So what do you do with a society-within-a-society that (1) leeches on social security nets, (2) without contributing to the economy, (3) has jingoistic foreign policy views based on a literal reading of the Bible, but (4) won't defend the country, and (5) are increasingly gaining the demographic power to dictate government policy?

It's easy for me to laugh at them, and at the secular Israeli's predicament, from my high gentile horse. But the State of Israel's raison d'etre is the protection of Jews. Israel exists so that- unlike the years before 1948- the Hasids can worship God their way without threats from Cossacks, Nazis and all those other peoples who got a little too antsy about "the Jew among you".

But what happens when those the state must protect are the ones endangering the state?

Shit! Missed a good one.

I skipped out on the weekly Friday Protest at Bil'in yesterday. Been there, done that. Right?

Wrong!

If only I'd known it was the 3rd year anniversary of the beginning of the protests and that between 1000-2500 people would be attending, instead of the usual 50-200...

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

Here is the link from the ISM, whose report on the event is cut-and-paste from Ha'aretz, easily the most reputable of Israel's newspapers.

20 activists wounded, one in the head.

Missed a good one. I'm so, so, so mad.

Death From Above

This is the Israeli Air Force (IAF) Museum. Did I say "museum"? I meant: "candy store". It's a huge tarmac filled with over a hundred mothballed warplanes, anti-aircraft batteries and missile-launchers, helicopters, and various forms of ordnance.

Oh, boys and their toys. I haven't had this much fun since I was a six-year-old in the Transformers aisle of Toys R' Us. I swear to God, there is no better way to entertain a guy than to set him loose in a field of war machines.

"As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young,
spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her
wings..."- Deuteronomy 32:11

The Bible is Israel's favorite source for jingoistic slogans. And it works.

The insignia of the IAF's squadrons. Hornets, dragons, and long-horned rams with wings, oh my.

A Boeing 707 converted into a theatre. Apparently, this was the plane used to transport Israeli troops to the rescue of the Israeli hostages at Entebbe. I was then treated to a short film about the IAF, complete with cheesy, over-synthesized Top Gun music, frizzy 80's haircuts, the usual repertoire of Danger Zone aerial acrobatics, and dull-voiced, recruitment-video narration.

The IAF is probably the most formidable air force in the world, and no amount of cynicism or try-hard humor can downplay its battle-record.

It has destroyed over 1200 enemy aircraft; over 600 in dogfights. And how many has it lost? 15 in dogfights. 15. That's a ratio of 41:1.

The video didn't say anything about aircraft lost outside of dogfights... say, to anti-aircraft fire... which means that this number is likely much higher than 15. Ssshhhhhhhh.

My favorite part of the video? "The Israeli Air Force's actions are consistent with the values of Judaism."

An interviewed pilot also declared: "Of course, we want the kill. But when the fight is over, and the kill is scored, I like to see the [enemy's parachute] canopy open. [Meaning: he ejected and survived.] I think a lot of guys feel the same way."

I think that the point of the video was to showcase (1) the might of the Israeli air force, and (2) the Israeli pilot as a chivalrous, compassionate warrior: one who fights without malice, and kills without losing his humanity.

In other words:

(1) We kill Arabs good.

(2) But we feel bad about it, so it's okay.

Humble beginnings. At the beginning of 1948, the Jews had a tiny, hodgepodge fleet of leisure planes, aircraft parts abandoned by the British, and rickety contraptions left over from the days of the Wright Brothers. They used all of them. The plane above was used on "bombing" missions, meaning: Jews would throw grenades and fire handguns while hanging out the open windows.

A sea-plane donated to the Jews in 1948 by a lawyer. Beggars can't be choosers.

Eventually, the Jews got their hands on real planes. They built them from leftover parts. They bought and begged them from any country that would sell them. They broke them down into parts and smuggled them with grain convoys into Israel. This is a Spitfire, of Battle of Britain fame.

I skipped over an assload of planes to get to the ones that Israel actually used to kill Arabs.This one did the job for two decades (1962-1982).

It's a Dassault Mirage IIICJ, a French warplane. It's not too well-known that for years, the Israelis almost exclusively used jets built by France.

This one scored 13 kills. 8 Syrians and 5 Egyptians, all Soviet-made MIGs of various make. The first in 1967 and the last in 1974.

Here's another 13-killer. If you're wondering about the writing, Israel began to sell off its Mirages to developing world militaries in the 80s. This one went to Argentina. Argentina later sold the old warhorse back to the IAF for $1.

The other member of the IAF's hall of fame: the American-made McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom, Uncle Sam's Cold War workhorse. Israeli Phantoms shot down over 100 enemy planes over the years.

This is a Kfir, one of Israel's attempts at a homegrown plane. They somehow never obtained the fame and scoresheet of the IAF's French and American imports.

In Singapore, I spent a few months, as a 13 year old, in the Air branch of the National Cadet Corps- Singapore's Hitler Youth. They gave us folders listing the specs of all of Singapore's warplanes, and made us memorize them under pain of death.

This busy, bulbous craft was the first I memorized, and I will remember it on my deathbed. It's an A4 Skyhawk- the Kris Draper of the warplane world. It'll fly escort, run ground support, recon, shoot up an SAM, and occasionally, chip in with a dogfight kill. I love you, A4 Skyhawk.

Probably the most modern craft on the field: the McDonnell Douglas F-15A Eagle.

Eagle's asshole.

The IAI Lavi, Israel's last, most spectacular failure at a homegrown product. Despite burning buckets of taxpayer shekels, developers were never able to make the Lavi perform comparably to foreign warplanes. After four years (1982-1986), the government pulled the plug.

The missile mount on the Lavi's wing tip.

The museum had a section dedicated to enemy aircraft: mostly MIGs, since Arab states were supplied by the Soviet Union. For the most part, Israel furnished this portion by buying MIG models used by Egypt and Syria from Soviet-supplied air forces outside the Mid East.

Two exceptions.

The plane above is a MIG-21- the AK-47 of the flying world. It was flown into Israel in 1966 by an Iraqi defector. (You might note that the plane's number is 007.) The Israelis picked it apart, and what it learned gave its pilots the edge on the Arab competition.

Ditto with this one, the MIG-23. In 1989, a Syrian defector flew it into northern Israel.

The remains of an Egyptian MIG.

We sure could use this beast up in the Yukon. The plaque in front of it reported that a chopper of this model once picked up an entire Egyptian radar station and flew away with it.

I have no idea what this thing is, but those missiles are self-explanatory. I had to take a photo of it because it looked like some stereotypical vehicle from Command and Conquer.

The "Gundish". Basically, it's four 23mm cannons mounted on an APC. Cheap, mobile, and surprisingly accurate, it was used by the Syrians to great effect... something like 30% of all Israeli aircraft it hit were shot down.

Some Egyptian donkeydick reassembled by the Israelis. Call me ignorant, but it seems like overkill when a missile is as long as the planes it's intended to shoot down.

This garbled piece of junk looks like it fell off a construction crane. Nonetheless, it's actually a sophistimacated radar detection system and missile launcher, all in one bizarre, alien package. Search and destroy!

I kid you not. An ugly, muddy corner of the Museum grounds housed a caged collection of peacocks, ostriches, hens, geese, and ducks. Above it, a plaque magnanimously declared that Jews must learn to share the skies with birds, even though: "The millions of migrating birds passing over Israel sometimes threaten the safety of our aircraft."

It was called "The Winged Safari".

I'm not sure what I found most funny about this absurd display. Perhaps it was the spectacle of squat, squawking poultry and lithe, striding ostriches bumbling around the same pathetic little dirt patch. Or the anthropocentricism it seemed so comically oblivious to. Or maybe, it seemed to me an appropriate statement about the future of the world, with nature caged behind barbed wire, surrounded by gawking tourists and machines of war.

Perhaps it was simply the delicious irony that the museum of the greatest air force in the world should contain an enclosure completely filled with flightless birds.


A couple of years ago, at a Holocaust memorial ceremony in Poland, Israel flew three fighter jets over Auschwitz. This was despite repeated requests by the Polish government for the Israelis not to do so.

The stated message: if these warplanes had been there 70 years ago, six million Jews would not have died. The real message: Fuck you, Poland. The majority of Jewish Holocaust victims were from Poland, whose citizens could not (some say "would not") lift a finger to prevent the slaughter. Israel inherited the grudge.

The Polish request was not unreasonable. Imagine Australian jets flying over Turkey to commemorate Gallipoli, or German planes over the graveyards of the Somme.

But the Israeli Occupation's last moral trump card is the Holocaust. Israel never misses the opportunity to remind the world that the survivors of Auschwitz should be allowed to do anything.