The next time you hear the word “apartheid” connected to the word “Israel,” remember this picture of a group of Israeli soldiers:

IDF soldiers bowing their heads during a moment of silence at the official Memorial Day ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday. (AP)

You noted the various skin colors of all of these Israeli soldiers, yes?

Why, you seem surprised. Perhaps, because you’ve heard that Israelis are evil colonialists, you thought that they are also privileged white people doing terrible things to brown people?

That’s because you didn’t know that Israel is a multi-racial country, because the Jews who have immigrated there from all over the world in the past 60 years (including about 700,000 *** Arab Jews from Muslim countries, who were kicked out of their homelands after the formation of the State of Israel), come in all shapes, colors, and sizes … just like all other human beings in the world. Only in this case, they are a people—a nation—linked by DNA and with a common ancient background.

Class dismissed.

———-

That is a conservative figure. Joseph Braude, whose family was among them and who wrote about this in TNR (I wrote about it here), cites 900,000 as the figure.

Alan Johnston—remember him? Well he’s still missing somewhere among the gangsters of Gaza. The BBC, his employer, shows remarkable retraint in its reporting today, some six weeks after Johnston’s abduction by Palestinians:

Two Palestinians in Gaza have launched a website calling for the release of missing BBC reporter Alan Johnston.

The website free-alan.com includes a brief biography of Mr Johnston and messages in Arabic and English calling on his captors to let him go
Alan Johnston, 44, has not been seen since he was seized at gunpoint on his way home in Gaza City on 12 March.

On Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on a visit to Athens, insisted that Mr Johnston was alive.

“I have said he is alive and we are making efforts to get him released,” Mr Abbas said after meeting Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis.

On Friday, the media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders called on Mr Abbas to do more to secure Mr Johnston’s release.

Commenters say the darnedest things! In this case, it’s a commenter on Ezra Klein’s blog, in response to a guest poster, who was trying to pinpoint why exactly the media is so awful [e.a.]:

It’s not news- it infotainment. Until you get this- [you] won’t have much penetration into the progressive understanding of modern media. Outside of practicing law, I occasionally write articles about the entertainment industry. This very subject- what is the nature of the television came up in a recent interview. The person who is fairly big in the industr said- the purpose of television, and the thing that everyone who criticizes don’t seem to get- “it’s to sell soap.” Whether a program is informative, whether it aids democracy and whether you think it helps us become better is irrelevant. If they could fill the space with a black screen inbetween the commercials, and still have a high rating- they would do it.

Posted by: akaison | Apr 22, 2007 3:06:03 PM

Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposes to tax cars coming into New York City, as has been done in London for a few years. Why, he is a veritable fountain of good ideas, as he’s the first to attest:

The mayor, who has become known for his proposals that affect residents’ lifestyles, including a ban on smoking and a ban on the use of trans fats in the city’s restaurants, at one point in the speech joked about how far his own proposals have gone in forcing people to change the way they live.

“Banning trans fats is not enough. We also have to ban all desserts and sweets,” he said, before quickly letting on to his audience that he was only joking.

That’s twice in two paragraphs that the NYT had to reassure its readers that Bloomberg was joking. Perhaps because we know he’s not joking. Around these parts they call Giuliani a fascist, but Bloomberg is carrying on in Giuliani’s know-it-all enforcer/nanny shoes. Who knows what scheme he’ll cook up next to make him look like a shining white knight and overlord of a model city: an exclusive, progressive paradise where people who care about such things—and everybody should!—can eat out at any restaurant without fear of clogging their arteries and where they needn’t fear catching cancer from those rude strangers who want to smoke in bars.

Harrumph. I’ve got another bone to pick with the NYT.

Read this sentence and tell me what’s wrong with it.

Mr. Bloomberg is a mayor who has in many ways practiced what he preached today, riding the subway to work almost everyday.

Incredibly, the very same grammatical error is made in the next sentence of the same story:

He also pointed out that the museum’s president, Ellen V. Futter, walks to her job everyday.

No, no, no, no, NO! That should read: … rides the subway to work every day. And: …walks to her job every day.

Everyday grammar is breached by the New York Times every day.