Thursday, January 22, 2009

Quest for Justice

Please note that I am Neutral to the Israel - Palestine conflict since both sides have done both right and wrong. My personal belief is that Israel and Palestine can coexist peacefully if the entire Arab world agrees to let Israel live in peace and disarm the terror groups while at the same time Israel gives legitimacy to the Palestine State.

I know it is not simple and am not naive to believe that it will happen soon enough but what people want is a way forward....and a positive way forward.

This article was forwarded to me in the last week and i have just posted it here so so that people can gain some sort of a perspective into the views of Jews like Judith Stone and a debate can happen over the same. After all democracy does not mean just fighting with someone if everyone in your country wants to fight. It also means that the brave leaders should stand up and educate the people about the various paths that can be followed and ends that await them. Only then should they be allowed to take a call....

LONDON - 11 January 2009

Jewish editor sacked for publishing article.

This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, a American-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it ........... and was fired the next day!!

Quest for justice
By: Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine . It was the right thing to do.

I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I've visited the memorials in Washington , DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.

"Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never again to us alone." My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Meir even assured us that there " is no Palestinian problem ".

We know now this picture wasn't as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims. In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere seven per cent of the population and owned three per cent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment's notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a leveled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what's left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: "Public Parking".

I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn't lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel , I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these 'temporary' camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), "The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler's youth."

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe . Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves...politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves...The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country...".

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God. We must recognise that Israel 's existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl's 'The Jewish State' the father of Zionism said: "We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient." I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, "If I were a Palestinian, I'd also join a terror group." I'd go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I'd hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d's restitution of the holy land to it's rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn't come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, "But what were we to do?" Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people. here.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Father's love towards his Daughters....

"I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realised that my own life wouldn't count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours."

- Barack Obama to his daughters Sasha and Malia for expressing regret for not spending enough time with them in the last 2 years.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Old & The New

Classy Photograph of two wheelers representing the old and the new of India.....A Lambretta & an Apache (
They both look shiny though!!)

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Disorder in Court

Extremely funny forward sent across!!

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Are you shittin' me? Your Honor, I think I need adifferent attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Guess.
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that?
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
________________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
_____________________________________________
--- And the best for last: ---
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS : No.
ATTORNEY : Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS : No.
ATTORNEY : Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY : So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS : No.
ATTORNEY : How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY : I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire...It Rocks!!

It has to be about a Love Story....It just has to be!!

In one of the finest films made this year...shucks...till date...at least on Indian Soil, the love remains the undercurrent for everything. And why not?...if you take out the romance between the lead protagonists Jamal Malik and Latika, you lose the soul.

In an utterly impalusible movie, it still makes you wonder just a little bit...can this really happen, and this is the biggest tribute to the director since everything else is absolutely real. Both sides of India with its pukish slums, brothels, pimps, beggars one one hand and the glitzy call centres, Reality shows, Hiranandani and Mercedes Cars on the other are very 'in your face' real!!

The story is just an elongation of the Movie Name: Slumdog Millioniare in Hindi Slang - Basti/ Jhopad/ 'gandagi' ka Kutta who becomes a crorepati. A dog from the slums who is one the verge of becoming a millioniare and then just before the last question is asked all hell breaks loose. Since the guy is a slumdog, he should not know the answer to questions which even rich people do not know but he does....the situations that he has been in his life till date which makes him know the answer is what forms the crux of the story.

The Q&A moves between the good and the bad but keeping in kind that it has been made for international, particularly British audiences, it makes sense. What makes the Q&A session brillaint is Anil Kapoor, who in a short but career defining role is as slimy and stinking as the pot of shit in which the protagonist falls.

The situations are very real and what makes them more so are the young actors and their interaction. Watch the scene in which the blind child tells Jamal that bearded baldy on a $100 note is Benjamin Franklin. The subtlety of being blind is brought forward so well that its spellbinding. Or take the scene of a vey young Jamal dancing infront of his beloved Latika. The children keep the movie really alive. Infact they are so good that they overshadow the main cast members Dev Patel, Frieda Pinto and also Irrfan who are also quite impressive in their meaty roles.

This movie at some levels reminded me of 'City of God'. There are actually a lot of similarities in their subtext if you observe carefully though they are quite different in their overall positioning.

Finally the 3 things that make the movie so great are, The music of AR Rahman - this guy is a genious and mark my words, one day they are going to call him the greatest musician ever. Some of the tracks are exceptional and without words they convey so much meaning. Then there is the Direction of Danny Boyle - Hats off sir for making a movie in India which is better than what our bollywood has been dishing out for the last 50 years. Some of the scenes are extremely gritty without ever being distasteful. They are just 'Real'. And finally what makes this film truly memorable is INDIA - yes, it presents a myriad of colours and sequences and events our country that have become part of our life. It is what defines India today....sometimes to the extent that we have started ignoring some of these grusome facts about ourselves. If in some way - and i think it will - this movie awakens us to the darker underbelly of India and lets some reality seep into our consiousness, it will deserve the Oscar that is awaiting it right now!!!