Did you ever hear any of the following in your house?

“It’s not my job, it’s his.”

“I cleaned the table last night.”

“I don’t have time to make my bed. I have to study for a test.”

Well, we certainly have, too many times, and after fourteen years of parenting it was getting a bit old. The same fights and arguments day after night after day.

It’s not that our kids were shirking their responsibilities per se. It’s just that we didn’t have an effective system to track, enforce and reward the desired behaviors. For any task, a parent would generally ask one of the kids on the spot.

In addition to opening the door to dissension, this approach created a general atmosphere of stress. Who’s going to get “picked” tonight, the kids would wonder (and so would their parents)? During dinner I could almost hear those brain cells calculating the latest cunning or creative excuse why someone else should wipe down the counters.

I take much of the blame myself. I’ve never been very good with discipline. Rather than sticking to my guns, when met with a determined teenager or a whining eight-year-old, I’ll opt for the easy way out.

“Sure, I’ll do the dishes,” I’ll mutter to myself. “Fine, I’ll sweep the floor.” After all, what’s a parent for if not to give his children a carefree unencumbered life?

My wife Jody, on the other hand, was of another mind entirely.

“They need to learn to do these things,” Jody said. “It will prepare them for life.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Had I been forced, er…allowed to actually do anything in the kitchen growing up, today I might know how to cook more than just mushroom omelets and French toast. Certainly getting a little more help around the house these days wouldn’t hurt either.

It was time to chart a new course in our household. And that’s what we did…literally, starting with “The Chart.”

Creating a “job chart” may be old hat for many parents. But for us, it was out-of-the-box thinking.

Jody and I started by writing down all of the things that need to get done in the house to keep it running smoothly. This activity can be quite shocking when you realize how much stuff we do every single day and every week. We counted 29 individual activities, not including repeating tasks like setting and clearing the table.

Next we plotted the tasks into three charts arranged by days of the week:

Daily Personal – these are the tasks that each child needs to do on his own – things like Make Bed, Pick up Clothes, Brush Teeth. Next to each task was a checkbox. Because everyone loves checking off an item from their To Do List, right?

Daily Rotation – these are tasks that the house needs and that can be “signed up” for by children and parents alike for different days in the week – Unload Dishwasher and Take Out Trash, for instance.

Weekly Rotation – finally, there were some tasks that only need to happen once a week, like Bake for Shabbat and Take Newspapers to Recycling Bin

The next step was to write out exactly what each job entails. It’s not fair to assume that the kids already know exactly how to do everything they’re being asked without some sort of training.

This was actually a tip I picked up from Michael Gerber’s popular “E-Myth” series of books and seminars. He says that one of the reasons many new businesses fail is that the entrepreneur who started the company – whether it’s a hi-tech software developer or a small family-run bakery – doesn’t create a “manual” for every job that the organization requires. Without this kind of formal documentation, if a key person leaves, everyone else sputters and lurches into crisis. No one, Gerber maintains, can be allowed to be irreplaceable.

All the more so for a family, I figured.

I spared no detail in my line-by-line job descriptions. Here, for example, is how we wash clothes in our house:

1. Check to make sure all clothes from kids’ rooms are in laundry hampers.
2. Remove two hampers from wooden frames and bring upstairs to laundry room.
3. Start cold water in washer on setting for “8 Minutes – Normal” and add liquid soap.
4. Bring up clothes in two hampers from parents room.
5. Sort out whites and wrinkle release clothes.
6. Put colors into washer.
7. In 45 minutes, check and put any clothes to be hung on line in dryer for 10-15 minutes.
8. Remove clothes and hang them and move remaining colors to dryer.
9. Set dryer for 60 minutes and press Start.
10. Switch washer setting to warm water and follow process above.
11. After water has dispersed liquid soap, add whites from both kids and parents.
12. Hang clothes as necessary and dry the rest.
13. After each load, move clothes to basket and bring down to living room. Return basket to laundry room.

Who: Abba
Duration: 4-5 hours
Frequency: Weekly
Day: Tuesdays

I will allow you to exhale one collective “oh my God,” but no cracks about yekkes or me being excessively anal, you hear?

When we had finished all our preparatory work, we printed out the job descriptions and charts and called a family meeting.

The kids are always a little suspicious about surprise family meetings (it’s like a pop quiz – nothing good can ever come out of it), so I set out immediately to reassure them. “We want to share with you a new system that will reduce stress in our house,” I began.

After a brief introduction, we whipped out the papers. Our youngest, Aviv, immediately took to the charts. He was ready to start checking things off before he’d even read them, bless his good natured little eight-year-old heart.

Twelve-year-old Merav proceeded to peruse each job description as if she were studying for a test. She also appeared to welcome the new structure.

Only fourteen-year-old Amir was savvy (or is that cynical) enough to realize what was coming next.

“And what happens if we don’t do our jobs?” he asked.

Jody and I had discussed this already. “There will be rewards and consequences.”

“I knew it!” Amir said and buried his head in his hands.

“If you don’t get your jobs done,” Jody continued, “you won’t be able to use your computer or GameBoy or watch TV the rest of that day. Nothing with a screen in it.”

“That’s not fair!” Amir blurted out, brimming with hormones and indignation.

“What’s so important that you have to be on your computer every day?” I asked. But it was Merav who responded.

“I have to check my email,” she said.

“But you’ve only had an email account for, what, less than two months,” I countered.

Aviv was still studying the chart. “How can we put away backpacks in the morning?” he asked, referring to a task on his Daily Personal chart. I explained that this was a task for when he gets home. He nodded approvingly and proceeded to check off the task.

There was some more back and forth, and not an insignificant amount of discussion about what the reward should be (a night out at the movies, dinner with pizza and ice cream?) Everyone signed up for daily and weekly jobs (whether begrudgingly or with gusto). The night ended without any fisticuffs, though not entirely on the optimistic note in which it had begun.

It’s too early to tell how this is going to work out over the long term. Research shows it takes about a month of consistently doing something to bring about a real change in behavior. But the initial results look promising.

The next morning, all three kids’ beds had been made and the breakfast bowls had been rinsed and put in the dishwasher. There was no argument that night over whose job it was to wipe down the counters. The day after the same. By day three we had to give a punishment to one child for leaving clothes lining around on the floor, but I did it with as much compassion as I could muster and received no lip in return.

Clearly we are heading into highly uncharted territory!

“Have you signed yet?” a breathless passerby demanded as my wife and I were taking a quiet stroll on Emek Refaim Street, the main drag of Jerusalem’s tony Germany Colony neighborhood, one evening last week.

“Signed what?” I asked, feeling perplexed by all the sudden urgency.

“The petition,” she replied. “Against construction in the neighborhood. There’s a rally down the street at the community center. It’s going until 9…you still have time.”

Our curiousity piqued, we pointed our walk in the direction of the rally. There we found assembled a crowd of about 500 who had gathered to listen to a variety of speakers, most of whom were railing against the “evil developers” who threatened the unique nature of this historic neighborhood.

The raison d’etre for the rally was a proposal to build a 14-story Four Seasons Hotel (including some 80 luxury apartments to be sold to overseas buyers) at the entrance to the neighborhood from the corner of Graetz Street to within meters of Liberty Bell Park, along with an additional 12-story hotel across the street.

The height of the structures is completely out of proportion to the rest of the neighborhood, the flyer explained, and will cut off the natural flow – and view – from the German Colony to the Old City. Joshua Levinson, one of the coordinators of the rally, said in an interview last week that the main hotel was a “Herodian monstrosity.” Another German Colony resident said she wanted to see the space closed to all commercial development and turned into a community space, “preserving as many trees and as much green as possible.”

The land was originally slated for a smaller seven-story hotel, but protests in the 1980s blocked its construction. It was officially approved in 2001, but the terrorism of the last several years scared off the tourists and put development on ice.

Now, with the throngs returning and hotel space once again at a premium, the ice apparently has melted.

If you had asked me my opinion about this kind of development when I was growing up, I would have told you unequivocally that all new construction was “bad.” In the Bay Area of the 1960s and 1970s, preservation of the status quo was politically correct and I was nothing if not a classic California liberal.

But the situation in Jerusalem is different and my feelings today are more complex. As the population continues to grow, the city needs to build; otherwise, young couples and families will have no choice but to move out to more affordable locales like Modi’in and Bet Shemesh, taking out with them the city’s future and inviting in economic stagnation. My politically correct upbringing also told me that encouraging suburban sprawl was equally a sin.

The major plan on the books for increasing housing in Jerusalem has been to build in the hills. A massive development project designed by internationally acclaimed architect Moshe Safdie calls for covering the outlying areas to the west of the city with some 20,000 housing units, access roads and nearly 500,000 square meters of industrial and commercial space.

The Safdie Plan, as its known and which is waiting for formal approval, has been opposed by environmentalists and several Knesset members (and is backed by a petition with more than 16,000 signatures) who say the damage to the ecology in the Judean Hills would be incalculable and that there is more than enough space in the city to house a swelling population.

But that means increasing density and, yes, height. In places like our very own German Colony. The hotels may be for tourists, but can 14 story apartment complexes be far behind?

Frankly, though, is this such a terrible thing? While it’s certainly true that the traffic and congestion have reduced the quality of life for residents who live near the epicenter of the action, the rapid development of the German Colony over the last few years have actually made the neighborhood a lot more lively with some truly excellent eateries and a real night life.

Other building projects in town are also encouraging. These include a major refurbishment of downtown, the light rail project, and relocating the Bezalel School of Art to a more central location to revitalize the city and bring art to the streets. All of which mean more density…but in these cases, certainly not a travesty.

Let’s be honest: were the “good old days” that much better? Would we really want to go back to a “simpler time” when it took four years to get a phone line, there was only one TV station (and it was in black and white) and customer service – despite whatever complaints I may have about it today – wasn’t even an entry in the Hebrew cultural dictionary?

Back then, your choice of where to eat in the German Colony was limited to a single café, the venerable Caffit. Ha’aretz newspaper now counts 42 fast and not so fast food establishments in the area today including what has to be one of the most elegant settings for a Big Mac in the world: a McDonald’s housed in a historic building faced with elegant Jerusalem Stone.

Looking for nightlife in 1986? Try Tel Aviv.

We also “get used to” things. The Transamerica Pyramid and the Golden Gate Bridge, two of the most striking visual images in San Francisco where I grew up, were both initially opposed as being hideously ugly and “out of proportion” too. In Jerusalem it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever get used to the monstrous Holyland apartment complex overlooking the Malcha Mall area…but we will. The same will be the case for the hotels at the entrance to the German Colony, I imagine.

So does that mean I support construction wherever and whenever in the city? Not at all. I think that the proposal from twenty years ago that called for a smaller hotel, more in keeping with the proportions of the neighborhood, would be a reasonable compromise.

Can we get there?

Well, that’s something else I learned growing up: you can’t turn the clock back, but you can move forward with dialogue and respect, integrating old and new with intelligence and creativity. It shouldn't be impossible to preserve the small town feel of the German Colony neighborhood while still giving tourists a luxurious place to bed down on their way to pick up some Asian stir-fry in a baguette or a cornflake-fried schnitzel sandwich with pesto and garlic sauce.

It won’t be easy, but I'm confident we can find common ground and foster tolerance and moderation in all things...yes, even development.

Now that would be something worth rallying about.

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This article was also published in the Jerusalem Post's In Jerusalem magazine. Here's the link.

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A lot of hotels in Florida offer services meeting standards of any paris hotel. That is the reason why candidates of travel jobs are still not on a decline. That and of course the various discount airline like Vietnam Airlines offering efficacy of american airline also has a lot to contribute.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, August 17, 2006. The link is here.

Ceasefire brings temporary calm as Israel, U.S. prepare for next conflict.


With a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah still holding, however tentatively, and Israelis returning to their homes in the north, the politicians and historians are already hard at work putting their spin on the war that was. Did Israel win? Did Hezbollah?

The Israeli public has already voted, though. According to a Globes-Smith poll earlier this week, 58 percent of Israelis think Israel achieved "only a small part" or "none of its goals" in the war. That's up considerably from just two weeks ago when only 16 percent thought similarly. And the results don't look much better for the ruling Kadima or Labor parties - some 60 percent of the two parties' supporters say they would defect and become floating voters were elections held tomorrow.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has already decided to set up a commission of inquiry into how the war was handled (which could presumably lead to his own downfall), and there have been calls for IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz to step down due to ethical improprieties - he apparently authorized a personal stock transaction three hours after hearing of the kidnap of the two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, the event that ostensibly sparked the entire war.

Beyond the post-conflict political wrangling, it's not hard to see why Israelis are disillusioned: a million residents across the north spent 32 days either in bomb shelters or in temporary lodgings in other parts of the country while over 4,000 missiles rained down, devastating the economy of one third of the nation.

And so now, Israelis are asking: At the end of the day, what have we got to show for our effort?

There is no provision or timetable in the ceasefire agreement to return the two kidnapped soldiers. Most countries have balked at sending troops to join a beefed up UNIFIL. And while the Lebanese Army is moving into the south of that country, a side agreement - in clear violation of the ceasefire - will allow Hezbollah to keep its arms as long as they're not "publicly displayed."

The bottom line: It looks depressingly like the region is rapidly heading back to square one.

That unflattering assessment, however, depends entirely on what was really going on in the last month of fighting. If the Israel-Hezbollah war is perceived as simply a regional conflict - an enhanced border skirmish, if you will - then Israel clearly came out on the sharp end of the stick. But if seen as an integral part of the global war against terrorism, then the past 32 days could, ironically, prove to be extremely valuable…for the next war.

The Next War?

Certainly, if you listen to Seymour Hersh, the controversial reporter for the New Yorker magazine who wrote that the attack on Hezbollah had been planned by Israel for some time, long before July 12 when the fighting began in earnest, and that the Bush Administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory operations. The U.S., Hersh claims, wanted to take out the Hezbollah threat prior to an American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installation, which some have speculated is scheduled for as early as this fall.

Israel's bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily-fortified underground missile and command and control complexes, moreover, was to have provided the U.S. with invaluable data on how similarly fortified installations in Iran would withstand U.S. bombing.

Both Israeli and U.S. spokespeople have strongly denied Hersh's claims. But it's hard to deny the global terror connection, especially after last week's uncovering by British authorities of a plot to blow up airliners traveling from the U.K. to North America.

Am I implying that there is a direct connection between the 21 men arrested in London who were working on a plan to smuggle liquid explosives onto planes in sports drink bottles, and the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon? Not exactly.

But the money comes from the same patron: Iran. And it underscores that what has been going on in Israel during the difficult days of July and August cannot be viewed as isolated events, but rather as part of the proverbial big picture. While I don't mean to denigrate the success or failures of the just-concluded operation, whether Israel wins or loses today is ultimately less important than whether the western powers prevail in the long term. Israel, clearly, is playing its role with great intention, whether that's overt or circumstantial.

And how is the west doing in the overall war against terror? Not too well, says Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post. In an article published over the weekend, Singer writes that a premature ceasefire that doesn't sufficiently degrade Hezbollah "will embolden Iran… Just as Hezbollah's survival will be widely seen as a defeat for Israel, it is also a defeat for the United States by Iran."

Singer goes on to quote historian Bernard Lewis who, in the Wall Street Journal last week, referred to an 11th-grade Iranian school textbook that cites the goals of jihad. In it, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni says that "either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In other words, all casualties - including those on the Iranian home front - are to be welcomed as this will bring about the ultimate triumph of good (Islam) over evil (everything else).

John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post, takes the issue one step further, questioning whether the West is up to confronting this kind of enemy.

"What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point," he asks, "where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?"

The same thought occurred to me as well as I read about 15-year-old girls from middle America being forced to pour out their hand lotion and toss their lipstick in the trash before boarding a plane last week. This kind of even-handed approach might be appropriate when dealing with a domestic matter or even a civil disobedience, but not with world war. And make no mistake: After London, Madrid, Bali, Istanbul and New York, we are in the midst of a world war, even if it hasn't yet been labeled as such. The West needs new tools and new approaches if it is to prevail.

Who Won?

Which leads us back to the original question. Who won in the war between Israel-Hezbollah? Militarily in the short term, Israel bested Hezbollah. The "state within a state" Hezbollah created is gone for now. Hezbollah has been pushed into a corner and much of the billions of dollars its backers in Tehran spent on fortified command centers now lies in ruins. Hezbollah may brag about success, but it has clearly been crippled.

In the mid- to long-term, will Hezbollah return to southern Lebanon? Undoubtedly. Will Israel get its kidnapped soldiers back? Unknown. Will missiles once again rain on the country's north? Unfortunately, probably.

But in the meantime, we now know a whole lot more about what Hezbollah had in store for Israel, what its technical capabilities were and, by proxy, what Iran has in store for the U.S., when and if it comes calling.

The London plot, in addition to bringing to public attention yet another way terrorists can attack civilian transportation, solidifies the need to not turn a blind eye to the key player in the what President Bush once mockingly called the "axis of evil."

The IDF and the western powers, we can only hope, are now aggressively using the data they've amassed to begin building new strategies and new tactics.

For the next war.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, August 13, 2006. The link is here.

Parenting is never easy...even more so when you're dealing with comforting your child during a missile attack.


It was supposed to be the highlight of camp: "Survivor Day." Inspired by the TV show of the same name, the campers arose at 5 a.m. and prepared for a full day of managing outdoors on their wits. There were a variety of water challenges planned - a critical concession given the 90-degree plus heat - ranging from jumping on and off rafts to wet and wild tug of wars.

Everything was going swimmingly, so to speak, until - in the middle of all the fun - four long-range Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon landed about a kilometer from where the campers were frolicking in the local water hole, giving Survivor Day an unexpected and entirely unwanted twist.

For the past 12 days, our 12-year-old daughter, Merav, has been having the time of her life at her first overnight camping experience. The setting was Kibbutz Shluchot just south of Bet Shean in the northern Jordan Valley. "Everyday there's something different," Merav told us one night by phone. "You never know what to expect."

The ever-changing activities included swimming, arts and crafts, badminton, inline skating, nature hikes, a "Color War," tiyulim to nearby attractions (such as the impressive Bet Shean archeological dig with its ancient Roman amphitheater), a stroll through the kibbutz carrot factory, more swimming, basketball, Shabbat "walks" with a camper of the opposite sex, and, did I say swimming yet?

The kibbutz, Merav said was beautiful; the campers all received their own bicycles and they rode everywhere, from their bunks to the synagogue and then to the dining hall. Even the meals were pretty tasty, high praise from my newly vegetarian daughter.

Disrupted Routine

Survivor Day was set in a man-made swimming hole about a 15-minute walk from the kibbutz itself. After its early start in the wee hours of the morning, the action-packed day wasn't scheduled to conclude until near sunset. Then, at approximately 11 a.m. Hezbollah fired five long-range, Khaibar-1 missiles from deep inside Lebanon.

Unlike the shorter range Katyushas, which fall on beleaguered closer-to-the-border communities like Kyriat Shemona, Karmiel and Safed, the long-range missiles can travel 100 km or more and pack a much more powerful warhead.

The Khaibars landed in the Mount Gilboa forests between Bet Shean and Afula. As soon as I heard the news (since the war started over a month ago, I have been obsessively monitoring the Internet, checking in no less than once every five minutes), I pulled out a map. Whereas the previous round of missiles fired into the Bet Shean area sailed mostly over the town and nearby Kibbutz Shluchot - setting off alarms, but touching ground a good deal away near the West Bank city of Jenin - this time, they were daringly close to a camp full of kids outdoors, who not coincidentally, were also miles from the nearest bomb shelter.

The phone soon rang. It was Merav. She was clearly in tears; I could feel her shoulders heaving up and down in the tremble of her voice. "They're canceling camp," she said. "We're coming home tonight. They said it's not safe here anymore."

I didn't know exactly how to respond. It's hard enough parenting a teenage daughter in ordinary times and Merav's emotions are already volatile; I never know if she's going to take a comment in stride or launch into a sequence of ceremonial door slamming.

Taking Stock

Should I try to comfort her, ask her how she was feeling and if she was scared? Or should I act all nonchalant and normal and say what a shame it was that camp was ending early, letting her initiate any heavy-duty discussion?

I looked for clues in Merav's words.

"And today was supposed to be the best day of camp, too," she said. I sensed less shaking now and more of a pout. That seemed to call for a laid-back direction.

"That's such a bummer," I said, picking my words carefully. "I know you were really looking forward to it."

"But I'm scared, Abba."

"You are?" I said, confused now by the rapid change of course. "Well, what was it like?"

"We heard this whistling sound, it was more like a 'whoosh,' then we thought we saw a light in the sky - I'm not sure - it was almost like a shooting star in the middle of the day - and then there were these big 'booms' and we saw all this smoke going up from the other side of the mountain. We had to duck under these picnic tables for, like 15 minutes, and we were all wet and it was muddy."

"That must have been awful," I intoned caringly. "No wonder you were scared!"

"And now you're going to have a big load of clothes to wash!" Merav barked, a sprig of sarcasm back in her voice.

My parenting instinct was being ping-ponged all over the table. I needed to pick a strategy: casual or concern. But Merav had decided for me.

"I have to go now," Merav interrupted my game of mental table tennis. "We need to pack. We're coming home tonight. Bye."

A few minutes later, Devorah, one of the camp co-directors, was on the line giving us pick up instructions for the bus.

"Did the home front command tell you to cancel camp?" I wondered out loud.

"No, but one of the missiles landed in Nir David," Devorah said, referring to the next village over, a scant two kilometers from Shluchot. "We don't need to wait until it lands in our own garden. We wanted to be prudent," she said.

And that's how it ended. The weeks-long debate chronicled in these posts about whether to send our child to camp closer to the front lines, whether it was irresponsible not to take her out when the first missiles landed; the whole discussion was now moot. Camp was closing.

Later that night, Merav was home. After a five-hour bus ride, she looked less frightened than exhausted as she made her way around the campers and their parents, handing out hugs like chocolates at a bar mitzvah boy's Torah reading.

We thanked Kenny, the other co-director, who joked that "usually at the annual camp convention, the big conversation is what to do on a rainy day. I think I can top that this year."

Which got me thinking: maybe we can make a little hay out of the hell we've been going through, too. I'm half thinking of calling up CBS and pitching them on an idea for an upcoming season of that veteran reality show "Survivor." Forget the Australian Outback, Thailand or Panama. Just send the next crop of contestants to camp at Kibbutz Shluchot and tell them to prepare for "Survivor Day."

That should be enough to test the mettle of even the most TV-hardened competitor. We'll provide the missiles, free of charge.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, August 10, 2006. The link is here.

Where are the miracles of Entebbe and the Six Day War in the current conflict with Hezbollah?


After 29 days of fighting, Israel is slowly winning the war against Hezbollah. There's still a lot of work to be done and the fighting is nowhere near over. Still, the overall outlook is surprisingly good. So why do Israelis feel so bad?

The destruction of Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed terror regime it has carved out of south Lebanon over the past six years hasn't proceeded the way anyone had expected. This war has been slow going to a fault.

After nearly a month of Hezbollah missiles, a million Israelis either displaced to points south or living in bomb shelters, and with no acceptable ceasefire looking to be finalized at any point soon, it's no wonder that many Israelis are beginning to question their government's handling of the war effort.

With our massive firepower and superior technology, why hasn't the Israel Defense Forces been able to secure a truly decisive win already, a growing clamor of voices is asking? How can it be that, despite Israel's occupation of nearly the entire former security zone (the area Israel held for 18 years from 1982-2000), more - not fewer -missiles are landing in the north? Why did the security cabinet feel it necessary to authorize an expanded ground operation on Wednesday to push up as far as the Litani River in an operation cabinet minister Eli Yishai said could last up to 30 days…and probably more?

And the question perhaps most prominent but rarely spoken: where are the miracles we've come to expect from the Israeli army?

Slow In Coming

Yes, miracles - that's the key to the despair that's taking over from the euphoria of during the initial weeks of the war. Israel demands miracles and it's just not seeing any in this protracted battle.

Where is the daring of a covert operation like the one in Entebbe that freed a hijacked plane of Israeli and Jewish hostages in 1976? Or a war against implacable odds and the combined armies of three Arab countries that ended miraculously in just six days, as in 1967? How about an unexpected and audacious attack on the very heart of the enemy, such as what Israel undertook when it shocked the world and removed the threat of Iraq's nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981?

And let's not forget the stunning turnaround that represented the War of Independence - an outcome so miraculous that not only was the fledgling Jewish state not destroyed as its enemies predicted, but it ended up with a geography far larger than what was granted it under the initial U.N.-sanctioned partition plan.

Where are those quick, unexpected and outrageous miracles this time? Israel and its supporters have been deprived of the one-two knockout punch that would have ended the misery in a matter of days or hours, not weeks, now going into months. The Israeli air force tried, but has been unable to take out -let alone find - Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah from whatever super-secret bunker he's squirreled away in today. Where is the massive display of Israeli airpower we all believe - but have not seen - that can vaporize every single missile launcher deployed against the Jewish state with a single dramatic flourish?

Why, Israelis are wondering, can't the Israeli army deliver this time?

It's not just Israelis who are looking for miracles. The Americans too have been disappointed. Hoping that Israel would "show those Iranians who's the boss" by quickly defeating its front line proxy army - the Hezbollah; Washington analysts are starting to question America's over-reliance on Israel, "the little strategic ally that couldn't" as Jerusalem Post Editor David Horowitz put it this week.

As if the U.S. was able to do any better in Iraq. But that's not point. We expect more from Israel. We expect nothing short of miracles.

Amotz Asa-El, also writing in the Post this week, says Israel has made a number of strategic errors to date, most importantly by lacking "swiftness and imagination. Massive aerial bombardments on mountainous guerrilla enclaves, followed by ground forces frontally approaching villages just beyond the border fence, could hardly have been more banal," Asa-El commented.

Why such seeming incompetence? Ironically, it's Israel's Jewish moral and ethical values that have gotten in the way of the miracles so desperately needed, the Post's Horowitz says. Israel needs either a much greater use of the airpower it surely has, or a larger ground offensive.

But "either of those avenues would necessarily involve death on a far larger scale than we have seen thus far," Horowitz wrote. "Pulverizing airpower would likely create Lebanese civilian casualties of a number that would dwarf the toll to date. Wider use of ground forces, on Hezbollah's home territory, would likely dwarf the IDF toll hitherto sustained in the close-quarters fighting."

And so the current conflict justifies "the degree and scale of airpower and ground troops to date," Horowitz concludes, "and no more." Israel has "not chosen different answers to its ethical dilemmas."

Winning Pace

And yet, the war is being won, despite the loss of 15 soldiers yesterday in the Lebanese villages of Marjaryon, Khjam and Kila.. Let's look at some facts:

· Over 10,000 Israeli troops are currently on the ground in Lebanon and Israel now has in its hands large swaths of former Hezbollah-controlled land.

· Hezbollah has been on the run, and rumors are that Nasrallah had fled to Syria and is conducting operations from there.

· The rocket launchers in Tyre that have plagued Haifa have mostly been taken out, as has the area near Sidon where a long range Khaibar-1 missile was fired at Hadera - the deepest point south a missile has penetrated Israel - last Friday night.

More tellingly, wherever Hezbollah and Israeli forces have fought, Hezbollah has been defeated. That's not been without IDF casualties, to be sure, and the toughest battlefields, including Maroun er Ras and Bint Jbail, are still claiming Israeli soldiers' lives nearly daily. But Hezbollah has lost its grip on the Israeli-Lebanese border and the fortified bunkers that it used to taunt - and eventually kidnap - Israeli soldiers now lay abandoned to Israeli military might.

Even Hezbollah's main weapon - its extensive missile supply - has not had doomsday effect many feared. Over 3,300 missiles have been fired to date but "only" 51 Israeli civilians have died. While I don't mean to sound cavalier - tearful newsreaders regularly announce the times and locations of each and every funeral during Israel Radio's calm but sadly mesmerizing top-of-the-hour briefs - from a geo-strategic point of view, at least, that's not a very good return on investment. Israel eventually managed to deal with the last "new" weapon introduced into the region - the suicide bomb; now it is learning how to live with and neutralize Hezbollah's missile threat as well.

The fighting is not over, and as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a decidedly Churchillian speech before the nation last week, there may still be more days of "pain and tears and blood" ahead, but Israel is surely - albeit very slowly - gaining the upper hand.

All this brings us back to miracles. Perhaps we have been looking for miracles in the wrong places. Instead of hoping for a miracle from beyond - a Moses-like defeat of Israel's enemies in the desert or the parting of the Red Sea - maybe we need to look within. It may sound like a cliché, but the steadfastness of the Israeli people is truly its own miracle.

For nearly a month, Israel has been battered but not defeated. The north is on the run, but it has not given up. Israelis may question whether the government is handling the war in the best way possible (can you imagine Israelis not kvetching about something), but support for the war effort remains high.

And the stories of families in the center of the country opening their homes to complete strangers, or donating money to buy toys and supplies for those still stuck in the bomb shelters of the north are heartwarming.

Friends of ours are hosting a family from Karmiel who have been camping in tents along the beach for weeks. Museums and attractions all over the country have been offering deep discounts to families from "confrontation line communities." Tel Aviv is taking in 3,000 residents of the north who've been hardest hit, housing them in a municipal convention center. There is a sense of unity and consensus that this country has not felt for many years.

This past week, a delegation of Jerusalem municipal authorities headed by Mayor Uri Lupolianski drove up in a convoy of vehicles to Kyriat Shemona to provide help (the picture above shows the delegation under a banner in Hebrew reading "From Jerusalem to the North with Love"). The luggage compartments were filled with sandwiches and soft drinks; a petting zoo was in tow, as was a mobile children's library and a van filled with wheelchairs donated by the Yad Sarah organization.

One of the 13 vehicles heading north was from the city's veterinary department. Headed by Jerusalem's chief vet, Dr. Zohar Dvorkin, they were bringing massive amounts of cat and dog food to soothe the thousands of abandoned pets who are now roaming the streets (officials estimate there are some 8,000 abandoned pets across the north).

"You came all the way from Jerusalem to Kyriat Shemona to feed the cats?" asked a man emerging from his shelter, at once incredulous and grateful.

A small gesture, but one that speaks volumes for why Israel is winning this war. "We embrace life while the enemy embraces death." Another cliché, but in a war where one might reasonably expect blood-curdling calls for revenge, those very Jewish ethical and moral concerns for life (even animals) are what will sustain the country at the end of the day.

And that, unquestionably, is the real miracle.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Sunday, August 6, 2006. The link is here.

Missile lands ten minutes from my daughter's camp.


Last week I wrote that my 12-year-old daughter, Merav, was scheduled to depart for two weeks of camp at Kibbutz Shluchot, just south of the town of Bet Shean in the northern Jordan Valley. In my post, I questioned whether it was irresponsible to send Merav that much closer to the front, despite the fact that nothing had happened at Bet Shean nor was anything expected to at the time. In the end, we decided to continue with our "normal life" and Merav climbed happily onto the camp bus that Friday morning.

Imagine, then, my concern last week, less than a week after camp had started, when I received a frantic call on my cell phone from the father of Merav's friend Shayna who was at the camp with her. "Did you hear?" the father asked breathlessly. "Sirens just went off in Bet Shean."

A minute later, the phone rang again. It was another parent who had just spoken with his daughter. "She said she heard a big boom," he said and asked if I had any more information. I didn't - there was nothing on any of the Internet sites I've been monitoring constantly since the conflict began.

After several tense minutes where I incessantly pushed the "refresh" button on my browser, a headline finally appeared: a long-range missile had penetrated into Israel the farthest of any to date, landing in Bet Shean proper, while another hit an open field somewhere between Bet Shean and the West Bank city of Jenin.

Bet Shean is 10 minutes north of Kibbutz Shluchot - a veritable gulf in this war of missiles. Still, that didn't particularly put my mind at ease, considering that at the very moment the missile was striking ground, my daughter Merav was not at the kibbutz at all. She had been come down with a nasty stomach ache that morning, and the camp nurse sent her to the closest HMO doctor…yes, where else, but in Bet Shean.

Now, I know the chance of the one missile Hezbollah has fired at Bet Shean actually hitting the exact spot where Merav was traveling at that moment was very low. But yesterday's strike in Kfar Giladi that killed a crowd of 10 people who were standing in a wide-open field shows that sometimes one's worst fears of being in the wrong place at the wrong time really do come true.

Until we located Merav, I was shaking.

After a very long 20 minutes, my wife, Jody, got a hold of Kenny, one of the camp directors, on his cell phone and he told us that Merav had just returned and was heading to the infirmary to take the pills the doctor had prescribed. We learned further that the camp had taken to the kibbutz bomb shelter for a drill that morning (Merav later told us she had done the real thing at the doctor's office, spending 15 minutes in the shelter there).

They were taking all precautions, Kenny reassured us, and were in touch with the home front command for any further instructions. We were not to worry.

The missile that landed near Merav is, fortunately, one of only a few long-range rockets Hezbollah has left. The IDF has been particularly effective at knocking out these weapons. It's the thousands of short-range missiles that pose a more constant threat to Israel's north. It was one of those that caused the deaths at Kfar Giladi.

At about the same time as the missile was landing on Bet Shean, I received an e-mail from an irate reader who took exception with my post on sending Merav to camp in the first place. In his particularly ill-tempered message, he called me a variety of names I will not stoop to print here, but his message was clear: Either I am "in denial" or am "unbelievably cavalier" he wrote. "You think sending your kid closer to the border war is OK, because that means you are not taking a defeatist attitude? That's a bunch of s--t if I ever heard it."

After the missile that landed near Bet Shean, I was momentarily inclined to agree with him, despite his foul language. But then my unpleasant correspondent continued on to shoot himself in the foot (not an easy task given that his pedestrian appendage was inserted firmly in mouth).

"Imagine if the U.S. was in a border skirmish with Mexican terrorists," he wrote, "and I decided to let my kid go to summer camp in San Diego or La Jolla, Calif., a stone's throw from the border? How stupid would I have to be to do that?"

Other than the fact that I have family living in both the aforementioned southern California cities who would be equally offended at his accusation, I have to ask: what would my tormentor do instead? If everyone took his approach, all terrorists would have to do is hit a few well-situated locations in the U.S. and, eventually, the entire population would wind up confined to a tiny corner of Wisconsin. Guess who'd win the global war on terror then?

We didn't send Merav to camp in order to fight. But we're not pulling her out either, despite our concerns and the Katyusha that landed too close for comfort. The big bully who wrote might call me cavalier. If so, then bring on the cavalry.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Thursday, August 3, 2006. The link is here.

Will the now "official" name of the war stick?

Last week, I suggested several possible names for the war in which Israel is currently embroiled with Hezbollah in the north. Those included the ironic "War of Disillusionment" and "The War When Reality Finally Sunk In" as well as the official working titles: "Operation Just Reward" and "Operation Change of Direction." Even before that, though, I raised the possibility in an earlier column that, were the war to be concluded by today (Aug. 3) - which happens to be the fast of Tisha B'Av according to the Jewish calendar - the significance would be too much to avoid in deciding the war's name.

Jewish scholars will already have taken notice that the war started at the beginning of the "three weeks" prior to Tisha B'Av (literally, the ninth day of the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar) on a date that is also a fast day known as the 17th of Tammuz (Tammuz is the month in the Hebrew calendar preceding Av).

The three weeks between the 17th of Tammuz and the ninth of Av have traditionally been a mourning period. Jewish weddings are not conducted; observant Jews eschew live music and entertainment, and avoid eating meat except on Shabbat.

The three weeks commemorate a whole host of disasters in Jewish history, including the Jewish people's defeat at the hands of the Babylonians (resulting in the destruction of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem) and Jerusalem's defeat 600 years later by the Romans (resulting in the destruction of Herod the Great's rebuilt Second Temple). Both these conquests, according to Jewish tradition, took place on the ninth of Av.

Other tragedies have subsequently been ascribed to Tisha B'Av - the date of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 during the Inquisition and even dates during the Nazi Holocaust.

If the war that began on the 17th of Tammuz and actually ended on the date of the ninth of Av, we would have no choice but to call it the "Three Weeks War." Even if it were to end a bit later, we might still have a bit of a "fudge factor" to play with.

Well, apparently, the folks in the naming wars department had the same idea. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz has announced that the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah will be recorded in history as Milhemet Bein Hameitzarim or literally, "The War Between the Straits."

Come again?

There aren't any straits in Lebanon the last time I checked, so this can't be a literal translation. And it's not.

The "three weeks," as English-speakers have come to know them, is referred to in Hebrew as Bein Hameitzarim. The expression comes from the scroll of Lamentations, which is traditionally read on Tisha B'Av evening. In its first chapter are the lines:

"She dwells among the nations. She finds no rest. All her persecutors overtook her between the straits."

These words, from the prophet Jeremiah, are attributed to the nation of Israel, which he bemoans has forsaken its God. The rest of the scroll spells out in great detail the misfortunes that will further befall Israel if it does not repent.

Lamentations, it seems, is not a happy scroll.

While Jeremiah's words hardly seem meant to embolden an Israel now fighting for its very existence, there may be more between the lines, if not the straits. Milchemet Bein Hameitzarim could refer to the gap (implied in the word "straits") between cultures - in this case between the West and fundamentalist Islam.

In this respect, the official name of the war reflects both its time period and a clash of cultures, a highly appropriate metaphor for a post 9-11 Middle East struggle that has been referred to as everything from a proxy war for the U.S. and Iran, to the last chance to stop the runaway train that is Jihad's battle with the West.

Will a ceasefire be declared by day's end? It's hard to say. After Sunday's tragedy in Qana, a previously supportive world opinion has turned tepid, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to be preparing a draft ceasefire agreement to be implemented as early as this weekend. At the same time, Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces planners are talking about the war requiring another two weeks and some 15,000 Israeli troops.

Still, whether the dates are exact or not, the irony will not be lost on either the war-namers or the Jewish people.

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, August 1, 2006. The link is here.

Will Qana tragedy be the turning point for the war?


If there were ever a need to provide further fuel for America's favorite diplomatic past-time, France-bashing, the French Foreign Minister served it up it in spades on Monday. Speaking during a trip to Lebanon, Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy declared, "In the region there is, of course, a country such as Iran - a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region."

Douste-Blazy's comments would be outrageous at any time, but coming a day after Israel's tragic targeting of an apartment block housing terrorists, missiles, rocket launchers…and - depending on conflicting reports - somewhere between 28 and 56 innocent civilians, including many children, who were killed in the blast, Douste-Blazy's words epitomize the double standard that has plagued Israel throughout all its battles, no less so in its current conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yes, the attack in Qana on Sunday was horrific. But sucking up to Iran isn't going to make Hezbollah stop hiding behind civilians, a tactic it has employed numerous times to turn the tide of world opinion as it did in Qana. Nor will the words of UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett who, referring to the deaths in Qana, said "it's absolutely dreadful, it's quite appalling."

Where were Ms. Beckett's words of shock and condemnation these past three weeks as Hezbollah has deliberately targeted Israel's cities, forcing over a million citizens into bomb shelters?

How did the apartment complex in Qana come to be targeted in the first place? After much scrambling, Israel released footage late Sunday night purporting to show a similar building being used as cover for the launching of dozens of Katyushas headed for Haifa, Afula and beyond (see image above of a Katyusha launcher).

The Israeli Air Force identified the building that collapsed as being a Hezbollah command center and said it had no idea there were civilians hiding in the bomb shelters. Israel says that it had warned residents to get out of town, dropping leaflets and making announcements by bullhorn.

In Gaza, Israel has taken this kind of advanced warning system to a new level: the army is now making telephone calls to the residents of a building about to be targeted for its use by terrorists in launching Qassam rockets against southern Israeli towns.

Did the Pesachov family near Safed get a phone call from Hezbollah before the Katyusha landed in the family's living room, killing a grandmother and her seven-year-old grandchild? Did Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah apologize to even a single Israeli the way all of Israel's top brass - from the Prime Minister on down - did immediately after the Qana incident?

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Sunday urged the U.N. to condemn the air strike in Qana but, remarkably, the Security Council couldn't figure out the language and, blocked by objections to strengthen the language from Qatar of all places, for once showed momentary restraint "only" expressing its "extreme shock and distress."

Israel announced on Monday a 48-hour quasi-ceasefire - the Air Force would halt proactive missions, although it pledged to provide cover for ground forces and take out "imminent threats." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hightailed it back to Washington after canceling a trip to Beirut, broadly telegraphing her intentions to get a full ceasefire in place by the weekend.

The Israeli army says it still needs 10-14 days to completely silence Hezbollah, but some generals on Monday were already hinting that all of Hezbollah's border bases within two kilometers of Israel could be cleared as early as Thursday. Another report optimistically claimed that Israel had taken out 2/3 of Hezbollah's long-range missile arsenal.

That won't stop the Katyushas, though, of which an estimated 9,000 still exist, but it could quell the clamoring and complaints within Israel that will erupt if the war is forced to be called off "too soon," providing the government and the army with at least some mild face saving.

Will Qana prove to be the turning point in the war with Hezbollah? It certainly was in 1996 when a stray Israeli shell aimed killed 102 civilians in nearly the same location, forcing the government of Shimon Peres to order an abrupt and early end to an Israeli counter-terror operation known as "Grapes of Wrath."

Ten years later, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are singing a different tune. Olmert and crew undoubtedly knew "their" Qana moment would come and were ready for it.

"Israel is continuing to fight," Olmert declared in an address to the nation on Monday night as the cabinet to expand the ground operation - something that had been turned down just days before in favor of more air power. "We will stop the war when the threat is removed, our captive soldiers return home in peace, and you are able to live in safety and security … we are determined to come out victorious in this battle."

"We are fighting against ruthless terrorists and we will not stop until they are pushed back from our border," Olmert added. "We have to finish the operation," Defense Minister Peretz declared. "The army will expand and deepen its actions against Hezbollah."v Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon also downplayed the ceasefire in the air. "It is not stopping the war. If it ends today it means a victory for Hezbollah... and for world terror, with far-reaching consequences. Therefore this war is not about to end, not today and not tomorrow," he said.

Israel may, ironically, receive help in its PR campaign from an unlikely source - an anti-Syrian Lebanese group, which is claiming that Hezbollah gunmen deliberately "placed a rocket launcher on the building's roof" in Qana, then brought "invalid children inside, in a bid to provoke an Israeli response." The Lebanese website Libanoscopie, which is associated with the Christian "March 14 Forces" group, says that Qana was picked because it is already a symbol for "massacring innocent civilians" and that Hezbollah's plot was meant to turn attention away from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's "Seven Points Plan" which calls for deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hezbollah.

It was Nachman Shai, though, who perhaps put it best. Writing on Monday, the former IDF spokesperson, who served in that capacity during the first Gulf War and who is currently the Director-General of the United Jewish Communities' Israel Office, addressed both the war and the public relations challenge.

"Israel must continue its military actions," Shai stressed. "I know this is a difficult decision, which some claim shows callousness and indifference. Nevertheless ... this kind of accident should not divert attention from the main challenge we face: a democratic, Western country which acts according to moral standards faces a fundamentalist terror organization that acts against and from within the civil population, intentionally and brutally. We must present and market these facts, repeatedly and persistently."

In a world where battles are fought both on and off the battlefield, carefully choosing one's words may be the best weapon Israel has against the international double standard.

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