Like, duh! Aaargh!

You scored as Mary Read. You are very unconventional, you defy the rules as often as you can and like to take as many risks as possible. You will probably end up living happily under a bridge somewhere laughing at all the unsavory deeds you once instigated. </td> Mary Read 92% Sinbad 75% Captain Jack Sparrow 58% Dread Pirate Roberts 50% Black Beard 50% Will Turner 42% Captain Barbosa 33% Morgan Adams 33% Long John Silvers 33% Captain James T. Hook 33% What kind of Pirate are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Another two days gone by

By sheer (and good or bad, depending how you look at it) luck I got my off day on a Saturday.

I no longer listen to the news, when it's on I switch it off, when my parents ask e to translate I leave the room to read a book, when the radio has an "emergency announcement" I listen to silence.
Listening to the news reports things that I in some way already know since I'm in the think of things and have no need to know what is going on through civilian eyes (yes, I do feel I'm back in active service, the work is intese and never-fucking-ending). I also don't want to know how many missiles have hit Quiriyat Shmona, Zfat, Aker, Haifa or any other northern town, all that tells me, is that in some way, I failed to do my job properly and it just makes me feel guilty and when I feel guilty I wallow.
I don't have that privilege.
And seeing as I am not updated on current events I don't really know how many of our ground troupes have been injured, killed or God forbid kidnapped. I also don't know how many more Lebanese civilians we have injured and killed, how many more homes we have destroyed and how many more weapons Hezbollah supposedly has.
I just can't any more, I'm almost a week into this war and I feel as if it's been a month and for all we know we may go on for another month.
Seeing though that I read other people's blogs, specifically hagar_972 with whom I am serving I thank her for letting me know, through her blog how many, up to the time that she wrote it, the number of our dead.
Because we have to remember, not glorify (it's one of my most hated Israeli traditions, this glorification of dead soldiers, since in my opinion all it does is glorify war, which can never be a good thing).

Maybe I'll update some more later today, if not.
Peace.

Please, let this be over.

I end this post with the lyrics of the song I'm, currently listening to:
( For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield )

A small announcement

Dear RL and LJ friends,
Until this war is over I will probably my comments will be minimal to non-existent.
Please bare with me, reading about you and your wonderful lives are really helping me keep a level head so please, don't disappear on me.

Love you all.

Mel.

The Situation, Social Justice and the Human Condition

Being back in the army has strengthen my personal ideologies in such a way, that I believe we are need of a radical reform in almost every aspect of life; how and when that will come about I don't know, I'm still thinking about that and discussing it with people who don't really agree with me, so that I can learn the flaws and strengths in my arguments (the one benefit of serving again is meeting and working with men, religious among them, who take what you say seriously and are very engaging conversationalists).

More than ever am I a Feminist - I can see again why the Army is important and how integral it is to our national identity, and also how it imbues everyone with Nationalism, making it "us vs. them" which a more destructive ideology cannot be found. The Army also shows, in an extreme way, exactly how our country is constructed and how everyone is still arbitrarily categorized through gender and race, just as an example, where I am currently serving there is approx. the same amount of women as there are non-Ashkenazi men. Yeah, "White is right" my peachy, Ashkenazi ass!

More than ever am I a Humanist - the Israeli Defence Force... not really; in times of war we can't afford to be, we tell civilians about the bombings coming in, but they are held hostage by Hezbollah, who holds all of Lebanon hostage for Iranian influence. Not to mention that Syria is still aching to get their hands back in Lebanon, which they see as another piece of the Middle-Eastern Pie as far as they are concerned.
And through Hezbollah, we also get Hamas, which is sending it's citizens into Israel to kill themselves in order to murder Israelis.

These are not good people in the upper crust of those governments.

More than ever my government is one of the worst; where are our Representatives going on public broadcast telling the civilians that the war effort is going well? Where is our Prime Minister telling us that the army is doing the best job it can defending the home land? Where are the bittersweet lies people want to hear that their children on the front line are doing what is needed?
Where is the sympathy towards the 500,000 Lebanese refugees in southern Lebanon? Where is the UN to help the Lebanese government regain sovereignty over it's entire land? Where is the impartial media to tell both sides of what the fuck is going on?
This is the real world, and those things are lacking, much like an news about what's going on in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is still killing Palestinians and Gilad Shalit is still captured?

This war has also put on hold every other social issues in this country - just because we are at war does not mean we are not still living our lives, hundreds of senior citizens are being displaces, far too many children do not have the support Social Services is supposed to provide for them, still women are smuggled (even more easily now, since no one cares about anything other than bombing Lebanon and watching the news to see if their house was bombed) into Israel in the "white slavery" market economy.
Where police should be investigating rapes and murders they are guarding against "enemy incursions".
We have a Defense Minister for the war, a Foreign Minister for dealing with all the other people outside of Israel talking to us and a UN Ambassador who is actually doing some hard talking for Israel. I don't know what his politics are, but I have a feeling that once his tenure as Ambassador is over he'll be coming back and running for a pretty high government office, and since in Israel one very rarely votes for a party, but for the person heading the party their politics are not that important (sad, but true).

And so, not only is Israel condemned by the media, it is condemning itself into social disaster, It has to start;
#1 giving people information that actually helps and doesn't bombard them (bad pun, sorry) with how many missiles have injured, killed and destroyed in their neighborhood.
#2 Going on with life, yes there's war, but not everyone is fighting and Israel has to continue to be a government to the back lines who are still trying to live the semblance of a normal life.
#3 Treating humans beings as human beings; we are not only harming Hezbollah outposts and offices, we are hurting innocent people, those people are not "fucking Arabs"! They are humans trying to survive with guerrilla extremists using them as cannon fodder and a government too weak to actually help them.
I will not be dehumanized, by dehumanizing the Hezbollah, or by dehumanizing the innocent Lebanese men, women and children who have to live in those conditions.

Do I even want to get into what this war is doing to the Animals living in the North and is Southern Lebanon?
*sigh*

Once agian, a few lines from a song;
Woodstock by Joni Mitchell
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everytime there was a song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotguns in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
We are golden
And we have to get ourselves
Back to the garden