Things don’t look good.

Moe-hammed.

My wife and son took off this week for the States to visit relatives, sightsee, and shop. I stayed behind to photograph, look at the stars, and do a little sociology — old habits die hard. With the full moon out and higher humidity, taking out the telescope was not feasible, so decided to look for more urban sites to look at the moon.

Click on pix to see full size

These cliffs are along the road that by passes the inner city of Tiberias and stand just opposite to the famous Hot Springs of Tiberias. The Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, sits about 212 meters below sea level, and is surrounded by stunning cliffs and rock formations. These cliffs formed the drop of the shoreline when the waters were higher. At the base of these cliffs, the main water carrier for Israel brings water from the central aquifer in the Netofa Valley, by pumping stations to the Kinneret, which forms the National Reservoir. The pump station is illuminated by flood lights and for a year or so, I have wanted to take advantage of the unintended consequence of the Water Authority’s security—the giant flashbulbs for this shot.

Since we arrived in the Galilee, I have been somewhat puzzled about Tiberias, or Tiveria as we locals call it. Built by Herod to be his
lake-city resort (I guess like Lido), the town has remained small with a strong backwater feel. Except for its heyday in the second and third centuries when it was the seat of the Sanhedrin and the center of Talmudic scholarship in Israel, it has remained a quiet, sleepy town. There was a brief florescence when Salak-Al-HaDin defeated the Templars in what rivals Custer as the stupidest military blunder in history. But, then the great man departed for other more worthwhile locations fit for a conqueror. There is some fishing, some light industry, but mainly there is tourism. After the intifada and last summer’s Katyushas, tourism is picking up, people are out at night on the town’s main drag, and shopkeepers are smiling—sort of—more is better.

However, I have often felt there was something missing—something in the social matrix that I just could not get—some other component that seemed so familiar yet just beyond naming.

I first came to Tiveria in 2002, in the fall during the Sukkot break when I was studying in the Yeshiva University Rabbinic program in Jerusalem. It was hot and humid and the very first thought I had was Honolulu. Okay, maybe Bombay; but definitely Honolulu. There was the same tropical humidity that dripped from trees and covered stucco buildings. Yet, it had the same magical feeling of energy I felt in Honolulu as a merchant sailor/student or in Bombay on fellowship. In the words of Jack Aubrey—exotic ain’t in it. Lush with date palms and other exotic plants, it feel thick with growth.

Up at the Open Museum of Photography, Tel Chai, there is a wonderful exhibit of the photographs taken by tourists/pilgrims from Europe and the US from 1908 to 1922. There are no trees. Not one. Tiveria was just a small fishing village with churches, a mosque, a few synagogues and outside the city are the burial places of the greatest sages of the Talmud and Jewish history. Buried there also is Moses Maimonides, one of Judaism’s greatest scholars, who was also the court physician to Salak-Al-HaDin. Throughout this region when those photographers came, there were no lush palm groves or wheat fields or anything green. It was empty except for some swamps and lots of rocks. Perhaps that is why the Ottomans let a group of middle class idealists and poor refugees from Eastern Europe start a couple of collectives in the wasteland. What a joke, they must have jeered.

But they came and struggled against malaria, the heat, and the drought until Walter Clay Lowdermilk arrived in the late thirties to change everything. A passionate scholar of water resource management and land reclamation, he set up a series of programs to drain swamps, contour soil, irrigation processes, and pumping stations. It certainly inspired the British. The palms were the first consequence of his vision. With the palms came other plantings and the feeling of the tropics took off.

Today, the inner harbor of old Tiveria is alive with light, trees, and activity. Restaurants and hotels are brightly lit along walkways and
promenades dotted with shops and mystics. The connection with Honolulu is stronger if only because of the weather and the tourism. The Bombay overlay is simply because the air is less oceanic than Honolulu. But the moon shines brightly over the hotels and walkways.

So, I set off to photograph the night lights and look at the rich darkness of the Kinneret along the pier. Susan and I often go here for breakfast or lunch but are rarely here at night. At the end of the pier, there is a curious little club or restaurant and we have longed to know what happens on the other side of the screen door.

By night, with the spot lights on the ubiquitous palms, there is clearly some tropical nostalgia here. The music is blaring away and young men are entering and leaving—the bouncer is very big and adequate for the job but he does not appear to be annoyed by the young men. My first clue is that many of the young men are armed with automatic rifles. They are dressed in shorts and sandals with brightly colored tee shirts. All have short hair and clean faces.

Through the entrance and past the bar confirms by hypothesis. This is where the IDF crowd comes after hours. It is Honolulu.

The bar maids are gorgeous and the drinks flow. The guys are talking and many are shouting and dancing crazily to the rock concert volume. There are young women with their dates and couples chatting intently in the corner. In front of me sit a group of young men who are not dancing but look on wistfully—the older “lifers” seem pleased and fatherly of the lads having a good time—all are armed and off duty.

I take my pictures and get up to leave. There is no service and I am off elsewhere. As I leave the bar and am back on the pier, five young men come out of the bar and overtake me. They excitedly explain something to me they want me to understand in about four languages too fast to follow. When I explain I am not following and could they say it again in English, they look at each other with enlightenment and in a word, scream over their shoulder, “Belgi”. A very tall man with pure blond hair and deep blue eyes, pink
skin, and a smile that goes from Haifa to Bagdad, stoops down to get face to face.

“Sir”, he explains, “we have just finished our 2 years of service and are free; well, of course, there are the reserves, but we can go home now. We are so happy that we came here to dance and celebrate. Of course, we will be together each time we go to reserve duty; but, for now we are free. My friends wanted you to know they are good men and do not carouse and did not want you to think otherwise of them, which is why they came to say goodnight.”

The other guys are standing around smiling grinning ear to ear. I thank each of them for doing their jobs and making the sacrifice. I also tell them there is a bathroom around the corner and they vanish.

Belgi remains. “Why do you thank us? It is our duty and we have to go.”

“This is true but it makes the greatness of the gift all the more because you do it anyway with such zeal. You know, I came from a generation where this was not considered by many to be an honorable thing. The fact is that we do have choice.”

“I come from Belgium, and you know what kind of people we can be. I came to volunteer in the IDF and this is where I will live my life. I am so excited because now, the rest of it will begin.”

“Well, God Bless you and thank you again for your work.”

My son would have been so embarrassed. He knows what I will be like when he serves.

It won’t be long before this site is called, “iOne iHand iClapping.”

HT: American Digest.

… you need to do better than this.

On the same day the following two wire pieces appeared in The Tennessean:

1. “Princesses rule in the movies and at the office - Most workplaces have a narcissist or two who demand the royal treatment.”

Half of all offices and workplaces have them — people who feel entitled to special projects, entitled to their own timetable, entitled to almost everything anytime they want it. …

“You see Workplace Princesses in the C-Suite and on the factory floor,” said Canter, a San Francisco executive and career coach.

“The question becomes, ‘What’s in our culture that enables princesses to thrive?’ ” Canter said. “To me, the princess, whether male or female, is a narcissist. They think it’s all about me. It’s always how great am I, and what have you done for me lately.”

2. “Younger workers crave praise around the office.”

While tech-savvy, independent and well-educated, these young workers revel in, even crave, constant praise. …

“You used to think that no news was good news,” said Kent Crossland, director of information technology for PING, the Phoenix-based golf club maker. “Today, I guess no news is bad news. They need attention and feedback.” …

[The Y generation was] raised in an age of “active parenting” and are overindulged, overprotected and oversupervised.

That’s why some Generation Y members crave constant feedback into adulthood.

“One of the ways that this generation got narcissistic is that their parents praised them all the time,” said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University.

We are reaping the fruits of the self-esteem movement that began a generation ago. Low self esteem was blamed for all manner of disfunctions, from failing grades to juvenile criminality. If the kids just had a higher opinion of themselves, so we were told, then they’d be happier, better adjusted, as less likely to get into trouble.

It was all baloney, of course, but millions of moms and dads and educators bought into it. They heaped praise on children for the most trivial reasons: “Hey, Andrea, you’re doing a great job breathing!” Okay, I exaggerate (but only slightly). The result:

For decades schools have embraced the idea that … unless the classroom was cozy and thick with “warm fuzzies”-an educational watchword-students wouldn’t even try. That led to avariety of policies aimed at protecting children’s feelings. It also led to grade inflation, an emphasis on groupwork rather than individual effort, the elimination of valedictorians and even the dearth of spelling bees, critics say.

By the time in the late 1990s that even educators and psychologists realized that the self-esteem emperor had no clothes, it was too late to undo the damage done to millions of kids. And now we see the result.

… Kids born in the ’70s and ’80s are now coming of age. The colorful ribbons and shiny trophies they earned just for participating made them feel special. But now, in college and the workplace, observers are watching them crumble a bit at the first blush of criticism.

“I often get students in graduate school doing doctorates who made straight A’s all their lives, and the first time they get tough feedback, the kind you need to develop skills,” says Deborah Stipek, dean of education at Stanford University. “I have a box of Kleenex in my office because they haven’t dealt with it before.”

Andrea Sobel (same cite) is the “director of recruitment for an entertainment firm” who observes,

“One of the things the managers talked about is an incredible sense of entitlement for people who don’t deserve it,” she says. “They’ll come in right out of college and don’t understand why they’re not getting promoted in three months.”

[Neil] Howe [co-author of Milliennials Rising: The Next Great Generation] blames the attitude on society’s high expectations. “We’ve become a much more child-oriented society around milliennials,” he says. “Self-esteem for them meant you’re the focus of society’s attention.”

Dr. Michael Hurd puts the problem this way:

Self-esteem is crucially important, but it’s a byproduct of more fundamental factors-the core one being a deeply embedded sense of personal responsibility over one’s life. If you act in a personally responsible way and operate continuously on this premise, the sense of control and efficacy associated with self-esteem will largely follow. I have never once met a high self-esteemed individual without this core sense of personal responsibility. I don’t expect I ever will.

Dr. Hurd gets it close, but doesn’t quite earn the cigar. Self esteem is nothing more than what military leaders call morale. A military unit’s high morale does not come from its commander praising them, but from achieving a high level of skill and accomplishment. Praise may then follow, but every commander knows the folly of praising before achievment. It is not really “personal responsibility” that results in high self esteem, but accomplishing things meaningful and difficult. If that gains the respect of peers, so much the better. But first must come accomplishment, then and only then the recognition.

Here’s some countercultural advice: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ”

Update: Thomas Sowell:

… Today, almost everywhere you look, people seem to be putting their efforts into getting attention.

Wild hairdos, huge tattoos, pierced body parts, outlandish clothing, weird statements — all these have become substitutes for achievements. …

The problem is not just with people who want to get attention by the way they dress, act, talk, or show off in innumerable other ways. The more fundamental problem is that the society around them pays its attention to such superficial and often childish stuff.

As H.L. Mencken said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.”

Comments on

OHC contributor Daniel Jackson blogged earlier today from Israel that talk among his friends (and one presumes most all Israelis) is whether the unfinished business in southern Lebanon fvrom last summer’s Israel-Lebanon war will reignite this summer.

Whatever is coming this summer will not have the same misdirected response of last summer. For Iran, Hizbullah, and Syrian to assume that the next round will be like last summer is simply not realistic.

From his home in Galilee, Daniel has seen many rigorous military exercises conducted by the IDF over the last year. Now the World Tribune reports that Israel is bracing for July war with up to five enemies,

Israel is preparing for an imminent war with Iran, Syria and/or their non-state clients.

Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007.

On Sunday, Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet that the Jewish state faces five adversaries in what could result in an imminent confrontation. Yadlin cited Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and Al Qaida.

“Each of these adversaries is capable of sparking a war in the summer,” Yadlin was quoted as saying. …

Already, military intelligence has assessed that Hamas acquired more than 50 missiles with a range of 22 kilometers. Officials said this would allow Palestinian missile strikes on any part of Ashkelon, the largest city in southeastern Israel and which contains strategic sites.

Daniel wrote, “I think Iran will not like the response.”

Matters in the region were not helped when Mohammad al Habash, member of the Syrian parliament, recently appeared on Al Jazeera.

Al Habash said Syria was “actively preparing for war with Israel, which he said he expected to break out this summer.” This month Israel’s military engaged in war games in preparation for a Syrian attack.

“Israel seeks peace with Syria,” Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said. But he cautioned “miscalculations that could cause the security situation to worsen”.

Israeli intelligence officials’ warning of the rising probability of war are not new. They have known that since the end of the southern Lebanon conflict that Syria has spent enormous sums on modern armaments and has moved army units closer to its border with Israel.

Udi’s vineyard

I posted yesterday about the opinion my good friend, Udi, had about Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest pronouncements, and I mentioned I went with Udi to his newly-planted vineyard. The new vineyard is situated on the north slope of Har Turan, a small mountain ridge to the north of Nazareth that acts as a southern boundary between the upper and lower Galilee. Image faces north to the mountain ridge that begins the ecological transition between the Upper Galilee and Southern Lebanon. The village beyond the fields in the near foreground is Mitzpe Netofa where Udi and I live. Udi is standing in his new vineyard and explaining to me how he had to cut and clear the old orchard, bring in the water to irrigate the vines, and begin the unending process of weed control. To the right, over the ridge is Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee. Last summer, during the war, I watched the nightly light show from the exploding katyushas while looking at the stars.

There is a wonderful piece on OpinionJounal.com, “The Winds of War,” by Joshua Muravchik well worth reading.

What I find compelling about his piece is that there truly is a strong sense of purpose and resolve among the Galileans and the Golanians. Whatever is coming this summer will not have the same misdirected response of last summer. For Iran, Hizbullah, and Syrian to assume that the next round will be like last summer is simply not realistic. Israel is a very small place and the regular drills with the air force and the army are conducted in the open. Here in the north, there have been some very impressive air shows as well as immediate response drills by ground forces. Several weeks ago, the night sky was suddenly filled with the roar and flame of low flying jets scrambling from three directions towards the Golan pulling up over the Heights and turning back over the Upper Galilee to the Sea and back to their bases. Late last week, when three katyushas landed in the northern city of Kiryat Shemona, check points and patriots were deployed. Sunday, six UN personnel were killed in Lebanon, and the IAF were out with low flybys over my caravan in the early morning bouncing me out of bed.

It is important for all to understand that while the leadership mangled, it is the mid-level officer out here who is hardened and ready to go. Implied by Muravchik’s piece is the steady advance of the Iranian thrust and parry-feeling out where is the point that the resistance will crumble like last summer or with the sailors. I think Iran will not like the response.

A couple of days ago, Don Sensing posted here about former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s endorsement of forceful intervention in the West Bank by Jordan. I have some commentary about that.

On Thursday, I drove out to the Golan with my friend Udi to watch the summer solstice sunset, watch the stars, and have a sandwich or two in the ruins of the Gilgal Refiam, an ancient circle of stones with reputed astronomical alignments. I am the resident astronomer in our village and Udi and I often spend clear nights looking at planets and talking politics.

First thing out of Udi’s mouth when we started our hour drive to the Golan was, “What is Netanyahu thinking? Cannot we do better than these two bums-Barak and Netanyahu? We need fresh faces, let me tell you.”

When I first came to first came to the Galilee, Udi was one of the first people to greet me-in fact, he greeted me like a long lost brother to everyone’s astonishment. Right away he began my tutorial into regional politics, land, and the economics of farming. Udi, the son of Yemeni immigrants graduated with a master’s degree in ecnomics and worked for many years in the Golan as a municipal manager as well as farmed. His wife, Hadas, the daughter of Bronx immigrants graduated with her third degree, a doctorate in what she calls bugs and mould, worked with him in the agricultural service helping farmers battle all that ails and attacks green growing things. They moved from the Golan to the Galilee after some 18 years because they wanted to minimize their involvement with collective farming conflicts and be independent farmers. They specialized in fruit trees and speciality vegetables (such as pepper seeds for other farmers to grow), and when the market turned sour, they had to look for other options. Over several glasses of his outstanding basement dry red wine, I suggested he grow grapes and make table wine.

Udi is a man of action. Last July, he came to get me on his all terrain vehicle and sped me up the slopes of Mount Turan just behind the village in which we live. He showed me with pride the new vineyard he just planted. First, he had to cut down the old orchard that was no longer profitable. He said it was old and Hadas had nothing to save the trees from whatever was eating them. He obtained the vines, planted them, and arranged with the local agricultural official about water and other technicalities while he tried his 6 dunam project.

To everyone’s surprise, the vines took off and now Udi is wrestling with trestles and wires and spraying and weeds. He has a few years to go on before his vineyard can be used for wine making, but he is hopeful.

So, when I called Udi to see if he was free to watch the stars in the Golan, he jumped at the chance to go and came down the mountain from his vineyard to shower, change, make the sandwiches, and make coffee.

During the hour drive to the Golan, he downloaded the recent political outrage and discussed the Labor elections and the behind the deal deals that earned Barak the Israeli Arab vote in exchange for utility hook-ups to illegal buildings in the Arab villages. During the five hours we were watching the stars, we talked about life in the Golan and listened to the hyenas laughing about us, mad, he said, because we had occupied their ruins.

But on the road home, he finally got down to what bothers him the most.

“Look, Daniel, Hadas and I have spent our entire lives working the Land. We are like farmers around the world-we are barely holding on. But, here, we and those like us who have come from all over the world to farm here not because we want to farm. This is not land-it’s The Land. The whole idea of Land For Peace was suppposed to show our neighbors that we were giving up something precious to us-something of sacred value-The Land that Hashem charged us to guard, nuture, and make flourish. But look what has happened during the last 40 years. While Hadas and I, and our fellow farmers, have worked and put everything into our farming, look what the Palestinians have done with their money and all of the money given to them from all around the world. What have they done with this money? They have invested billions in bullets and bombs! We work the same land but we put the same amount of money into irrigation and soil development as well as the economic development of agricultural products. What products do they grow-olives! Nu? And what happens to the price of olive oil when everyone’s olive orchards produce their fruit on the same day?

“What bothers me is that no one out there seems to be holding these politicians in the West Bank or Gaza or even in the Knesset to accounts. No one is saying to them change how your invest in your part of The Land or you get no more.

“Now comes Netanyahu and what does the Prince have to say? Let the Jordanians handle the situation. Has he taken leave of his mind? You know, Bibi’s his own worst enemy. He is very smart until he opens his mouth. He could be the next PM. But, with him, he always opens his mouth.”

— this post linked to OOTB’s Traffic Jam.

I wrote on June 14 of the possibility that Jordan and/or Egypt might intervene in, respectively, the West Bank or Gaza because of the Hamas coup in Gaza. Egypt is plenty concerned because Hamas is a ideological child of the radical, Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, members of which assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Jordan is keeping a close eye on the possibility that Hamas may move to seize power in the West Bank.

Now former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu has openly called for Jordanian intervention:

(IsraelNN.com) Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu has expanded on his general call for Egyptian and Jordanian intervention in the PA, and says Jordan should send over its PLO brigade.

Speaking with Israeli reporters in Washington on Thursday, the former Prime Minister said that Fatah chief Abu Mazen cannot be expected to maintain law and order in Judea and Samaria on his own. He said that Jordan should dispatch its Palestinian force, known as the Badr Brigade. “The Badr Brigade, which is Jordanian-Palestinian, can create law and order,” Netanyahu said.

This idea was less than warmly received even by Bibi’s political allies.

Moshe Feiglin, chairman of the Likud Party’s Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction, responded, “It is very sad that Netanyahu is reviving, via the back door, the Oslo illusion that Palestinian terrorists should protect the State of Israel against other Palestinian terrorists.” …

“The members of the Badr Brigade have been there for many years,” [MK Silvan] Shalom said, “and they are not the ones to bring order, chase after Palestinians, confiscate weapons and arrest them. Expecting Palestinians to do the job against Palestinians is silly.”

I have to wonder whether Bibi really thinks that, too, but is hoping that the Arabs of the West Bank and Jordan will have to spend their time and resources fighting each other rather than Israel.

KnoxViews carries a user review of the Garmin Nuvi 650 GPS, a fairly high-end unit for driving.

I use the Mio c310x GPS. The Mio went on sale a few months ago for $199, about $150 off the list. So I pounced.

As I researched GPS units before buying, I concluded two things:

First, the main difference between high-cost units and lower-cost units is mainly features other than the mapping and driving usefulness. That is, lower-cost units have basically the same mapping and driving usefulness as high-cost units. The extra money buys other stuff such as enhanced MP3 playing, bluetooth integration with cell phones, more points of interest, picture viewers, mpeg viewers, traffic updating, etc. But the basic maps are the same. More expensive units also often feature text-to-speech (TTS) so that the GPS tells you,”Turn left on Maple Street in 100 yards,” rather than, “Turn left in 100 yards.”

TTS was a feature I wanted, but none of the units within my budget offered it. My Mio doesn’t have it. However, I’ve found I’ve never wished I had it. The directions without it are still so precise that I’ve never gone wrong without TTS. Moreover, the Mio - and I’m sure any other non-TTS units - displays the name of the next street at the top of the screen. Yes, you have to take your eyes off the road to read it, but I place the MIO atop the dash, anyway, so it’s minor.

One review I read of a TTS unit pointed out that the street names are, well, synthesized, so unusual names can get mangled to the point of incomprehensibility. The reviewer said that street names derived from American Indian words especially stumped the TTS, but other unusual names did, too.

Second, brand does matter. The Garmin reviewer says that Garmins are probably the best and I agree, based on my own research. But Garmins are also the priciest - often by quite a lot. It’s seems true that with GPS units, “you get what you pay for.” I was pretty leery of the Mio because it was relatively cheap, but extensive research persuaded me that almost alone among low-cost units it was a good buy. I’ve never been disappointed.

Generally, units made by audio companies (Pioneer, JVC, Sony) didn’t fare well in user reviews. Those companies’ units were heavy on things like picture viewing and MP3 playing, but their mapping and drivability features were lacking, sometimes badly so, according to the reviews I read.

Power management is also something to consider. Most units are rechargeable and come with a in-car power adapter. My Mio has that and a USB adapter that recharges it quicker than the car adapter. Because all the maps are stored internally in the unit, the USB connection just recharges it. It will play MP3s loaded on an SD card, for which there is a port in the unit, but I have never done that. The unit has a headphone jack, which I suppose I could rig to play through my car’s audio system. I don’t see the need, though, since the unit’s own speaker is plenty loud for its spoken directions, even for my artillery ears. Back to power management, the Mio has a setting that reduces screen backlighting by about 90 percent after a few seconds. It returns to full lighting when the unit gives new directions. Very useful for extending battery life. Also, you can use the GPS connected to the in-car charger without exhausting the battery at all.

I recommend doing hearty research before buying, and don’t run out and buy the first thing that looks like a steal - vendors almost always charge a restock fee for returns that can be pretty hefty.

Another tip: the more POIs a unit has, the better. Before you ever use a GPS, POIs available might not seem important, but they are. I have also found that entering custom POIs is very handy.

Since the Golan Heights is back on the front burner, panorama of the Bashan area of the Golan gives some the ability to see what is at stake. This image was taken near the town of Yonatan from the site of an abandoned Syrian redoubt atop a hill next to the historical site of Gamla. We are looking East towards the Syrian border with Har Peres to the left of center. To the right is the ventilating pipe to one of the bunkers.

The Golan is now home to over 30,000 people. Reservoirs, orchards, and vineyards have been planted during the last 30 years. The the new town of Katsrin is home to some 13,000, most of whom are Russian immigrants from the 1990s. Katsrin is now the regional center with a college, museum, galleries, a winery cooperative, a new brewery.

The Bashan area has a bit of everything but mainly it has cows. Lots of cows. And where there are cows, one can find bulls. Although there are still minefields left by the Syrians, I do hike in the region where the cows and horses go but I exercise extreme caution around those very large critters that roar and stomp over territory. Generally, I find even the largest of bulls in the Bashan to be boisterous, pushy, but willing to return to generating large amounts of organic byproduct after making a threatening symbolic stand.

That’s sort of how the locals view the recent overtures of the Syrians towards peace here. The Galileans and Golanians think of the Syrians as a lot of bull roaring followed by organic byproduct production. No one here believes the Syrians want peace; no one here in Galilee, or in the Golan, believes anygovernment in Damascus would permit Jews to remain in the Golan under Syrian “democracy.”

What they believe is that Syria and Iran are preparing for war. The new head of the IDF, from the Golani Brigade, has been putting the IDF through their paces and all here agree that the level of preparedness is at new heights. While the Katyushas earlier in the week damaged a car and sent my friends at Tel Chai college running for the shelters, everyone was proud of the immediate and powerful response of the Men and Women in Green coming to high alert and then standing down when the all clear sounded. Life here is truly in theatre and not the RKO.

Since the days of the early second intifada, I have adopted a custom that truly embarrasses my 15-year-old son, Shmuel. Whenever I encounter men and women in green, the IDF uniform, I find a way to go over to them to thank them for doing their job. It is one of those rabbinic/chaplain things I have taken on as part of my calling and ordination. Here are young people who stand in the Shadow of the Most High, trading their youthful innocence to shoulder the sacred responsibility of defense. So, I go over to them, shake their hands and thank them for their work. After the initial nonplussed reaction, they return the shake with gratitude.

Last night, at the local gas station, run by a local Israeli Arab family from a nearby town, an IDF humvee pulled up and emptied out a full load of men in their late 20’s and mid 30’s. They were tired and dusty and headed inside for cokes and cold drinks. On the back of the humvee was a bumper sticker “How am I driving” with the required phone number. So, when I went in to pay for the gas, I found the driver buying the round of cokes, ice teas, and bottled water. I asked him if he spoke English, he nodded, and I thanked him. He blushed, hemmed and hawed, and then smiled. The manager behind the counter, the owner’s son, agreed with my assessment. “Of course”, he said, “they always deserve our thanks for doing their jobs.” His friend, leaning against the counter turned to me and asked, “But, why do you thank him? It’s his job.” I replied, “Because not everyone does thank the Men and Women in Green, do they? Not everyone wants to go and some of us are too old to go. So I thank him for going for me.” Everyone agreed that this was a good reason for thanking the soldier. As I left, I asked, “would you like me to call the number to tell them how well you drive?” They all laughed and the driver said that would not be necessary.

My son would have been embarrassed.