Birthday

It's my birthday. As a present, the province of Ontario has banned smoking in all public buildings, effective today. Yay!

What a delight!

My wife and I have just returned from a wonderful movie night with my sister. On tap tonight was a movie called Nanny McPhee. What a delight it was! Great company and great movie. Can't beat that!

Confirmed

OK. I have traced the source of the story to my satisfaction and I'm ready to weigh in with my opinion. It seems that Israel recently averted an assassination attempt against Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas which had been planned by rival governing group Hamas. This is significant on several levels. First, it shows that Israel is comfortable dealing with Abbas, as opposed to anyone who might be appointed by Hamas to replace him. I think that labeling Abbas as a moderate would be premature. However, he does seem to be a realist.

Israel is happy to have someone without the baggage of Arafat to be its adversary in the negotiation process. While Abbas must clearly represent the interests of the Palestinians, he does not represent the fanatic terrorist element that Arafat had represented for so many decades. With Olmert continuing the Israeli status quo of offering land-for-peace, all parties should recognize that this might be the best possibility for peace that the region has seen in years.

In my opinion, the political landscape has changed over the past 30 years. There was a time when neighboring Arab nations waged war (with actual armies) trying to destroy Israel. When Israel won those wars and increased its landmass, displacing the Arab population, it was considered the spoils of war. Israel regained access to Jerusalem after 2000 years of exile, and created a buffer zone between itself and its hostile neighbours. Fast forward a generation, and there are now a lot of bitter Arabs who have lived their entire lives in squalour and exile. And though I firmly believe it is mainly the fault of the Arab countries for not improving the lot of their displaced comrades after losing these wars of annihilation, it has been much easier and more convenient to blame it all on Israel so as to fuel the fires of hate and revenge.

The military situation has also changed over the past 30 years. Rather than use armies and limit hostilities to soldiers, the Arabs (and to a lesser extent radical Israelis) have resorted to terrorism to fight a war of attrition against civilians. Despite all this, Israel has taken the lead in unilaterally offering more and more concessions to the Palestinians in an effort to achieve a lasting peace. When Yasser Arafat was marginalized by his own party and pinned down in his own "headquarters" for three years, is there anyone who believes he could not have been easily "taken out" by the Israeli army? And is there anyone who believes for a second that, had the situation been reversed, the Arabs would have spared the life of a Jewish leader who was surrounded by such superior forces? The fact that Arafat was allowed to survive shows that Israel is not a country that is trying to exterminate its Arab enemies.

Time and again, Israel has bent over backward to prove their desire for peaceful co-existence. Yet, when they actually react militarily to acts of terrorism and try to use pinpoint strikes to take out major terrorist leadership targets, they are lambasted in the press if, God forbid, a few innocent bystanders are killed or injured. I wish it were possible for terrorist leaders to be killed without collateral damage. But when the terrorist leaders are so scared of being killed that they hide among civilian population in the (normally accurate) belief that they will be safer from attack, that is just too much.

So now we have Abbas being saved from assassination by the Israelis. With this latest gesture of diplomacy, Israel has signalled yet again that it is ready and willing to deal with any reasonable representative of the Palestinian people. Hopefully, Abbas will be able to convince his poliitical enemies in Hamas that the way of peace is the best means of survival and prosperity for the Palestinian people. If he only follows the examples set by Egypt and Jordan, two countries who have signed peace treaties with Israel and have seen immense improvement in their citizens' prosperity, perhaps I will be able to see peaceful co-existence in the Middle East during my lifetime.

Confessional

Bloggers forgive me, for I have sinned. It has been more than a week since my last post, and there hasn't been much to write about. Sure, there was the Mother's Day trip to Hamilton & Niagara Falls to visit the kids, and sure there were lots of embarrassing photos taken (none of which will appear here), but other than that, not much has been happening.

I read an unattributed news piece in a low-circulation newspaper. I'd like to comment on the story, but first, I'd like to verify the authenticity of the story. If I can do that, look forward to one of my few political posts.

Hope everyone had a good Mother's Day.

Doctors and Lawyers beware

In the old days, people needed to beware of car theft and car-jacking. Luckily, the most affluent among us could rely on hi-tech anti-theft systems to protect their prized automobiles. Not any more.

Pretty much operational

While I wait for the world to discover my work site, I have been spending some time on the design and coding of my synagogue's website. I've registered the domain and taken it upon myself to act as the webmaster for the site. There is a page or two that aren't quite the way I'd like to see them, but things are progressing.

I think the biggest challenge will be creating a proper set of style sheets so that the site can be enjoyed by people using screen resolutions lower than 1280x1024 - my preferred resolution. I've had people complain that there's far too much horizontal scrolling required to read the content. I feel like telling people to upgrade their resolution, but I realize that's not something I'm likely to ask, or that they would be likely to do.