Last Purim we received for Mishloach Manot a bottle of liquor that was not quite to our taste. It sat in the closet for the entire year. So when Purim came around this year, we thought that it would be the perfect thing to regift to someone else – after all, someone might like it, and we were not going to drink it.

So we put in in with one of the Mishloach Manot that we were delivering (we tried to pick people who we thought might like it). Brought it to their door (in the pouring rain). The husband answered the door. Took the mishloach manot from us, and then felt like he had to give us one back in return.

When he came back, he gave us a pre-packed Mishloach Manot (which were almost certainly brought by someone else and regifted to us) as well as the very same bottle of liquor that we just gave to him.

We are pretty sure that he entered his kitchen, put our Mishloach Manot + liquor down, went to a different table, picked out something that was just brought to him and went to bring it back to us. On the way out of the kitchen, he then passed the bottle of liquor that we brought him, and thought that it would be nice to give it as well, all the while not remembering that we had just given it to him (I don’t think that he did it on purpose).

We were both pretty shocked when he handed it back to us, but managed to keep a straight face and not say anything about it. So now the bottle of liquor is back in the closet, in wait of next Purim when hopefully we will be able to give it away without receiving it immediately back in return.

There is a good article by Danny Ayalon in the Wall Street Journal called “Israel’s Right in the ‘Disputed’ Territories“:

The recent statements by the European Union’s new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel’s rights to what are generally called the “occupied territories” but what really are “disputed territories.”

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered “occupied” in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years

It lays out very clearly the history of the West Bank, and why the term “Occupied Territories” is inaccurate. Good reference material for a discussion on the matter (since most people just accept the fact that this term is correctly applied – the more something is repeated, the more credence it is given).

Today when they went to the makolet, Adina gave Moshe and Chananya a half shekel each to spend on a treat. Moshe (4.5 years old) is starting to understand the concept of money. Chananya (2.5 years old) doesn’t really get it at all yet, other than knowing of its existence. So upon being handed a half shekel coin, Chananya says “Ima, open it please”.

(If you don’t get the joke – which Chananya meant in all seriousness – then please recall the holiday that just ended, and the small chocolate coins that kids receive and eat in abundance during said holiday).

View Israel on Google Maps. Then look at the embedded version of the same page below.

View Larger Map

(Here is a screenshot in case the embedded version doesn’t work).

Something missing? If you don’t see it, try zooming in on the map, and comparing Israel with Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon or even Syria. Looks like Nike and Google have something in common (most probably because Nike uses the Google Maps API to get their maps).

Now, if you go to the Google Maps site, you can see roads in Israel (and get directions, etc – all of the regular Maps functions). So why would they disable it for the embedded/API version? My best guess (though it is hard to understand those who think this way): Google doesn’t want to risk “offending” users in countries that hate Israel by having any details of Israel show up on embedded maps that said users would use on their own websites. So they just removed all details of Israel from the embedded version. Problem solved. The Zionist Entity is now gone. Or something like that. (If you want to find an alternative map site in Israel, try Mapa).

See Jonathan’s comment below and this thread on the Google forums for more info. Looks like it is a content licensing issue.

Just saw this article on Arutz 7:

The 6,493 households which made aliyah through NbN between 2002 and 2008 have yielded a whopping 989 million shekels, with the cost of absorbing them standing at only NIS 528 million, leaving the immigrants’ contribution at NIS 461 million so far.Visiting friends and family of NbN olim have also given their boost to the economy by supporting the national tourism industry to the tune of NIS 347 million.  Adding this to the tally, NbN olim are accountable for a total GNP contribution of NIS 808 million (over $212 million). Considering the passage of another year and the continued employment and success of North American olim, that number could be higher than NIS 1 billion (almost $262.5 million)

Wow. Go us. I had always suspected that olim (especially from North America, but also including the growing numbers from Britain and other countries) were making significant financial contributions to Israel – it is nice to see it quantified like this. And I don’t know if this survey took into account people like myself, who earn salaries from US companies and spend 100% of it in Israel (so we end up pumping tens of thousands of dollars directly into the Israeli economy every year). Expect these numbers to only go up as a proportion of Israel’s GNP as the years go by and God willing the numbers of olim grow higher and higher.

Posted via web from yaakov’s posterous

Dan Senor and Saul Singer report on how the Israeli economy has been thriving while the rest of the world has gone in the gutter:

In the article, they give most credit towards the IDF enlistment requirement for Israeli teenagers at the end of high school. Instead of going off to college, most Israelis go into the army where they are forced to grow up quickly Harvard, Yale and Princeton are made equivalent to the elite units in the IDF.

They do make some good points, though I think that there are some other factors that come into play here:

• Due to the pressure of living in Israel, most Israeli kids are already more mature than their diaspora counter-parts at the end of high school
• The society here is encouraging of the macho, risk-taking personality traits that startups demand
• Secular Israelis tend to idolize all things American and Western. Early technology adoption coupled with the above factors naturally lead to more innovation.
• One can't underplay the contributions of those who have made aliyah (immigration) in the past decade from the US, Europe and other English speaking countries. This includes many new tech leaders in Israeli society.

(I do find it ironic that reading this article in Israel, I cannot view the Hulu video that was included, since it is restricted to those in the US. Despite handicaps like this, somehow we still manage to be successful).

Posted via email from Yaakov’s posterous

I haven’t been so good with posting this year – Thank God, life has been busy and happy. Perhaps the coming year will bring some change.

In the meantime, feel free to check out a new Torah-related blog that I have started: Shteig Shtark. And have a healthy and successful new year.

I was just in the embassy in Tel Aviv today to register our new daughter, Gila (it is much nicer there than in Jerusalem, by the way). As instructed, I copied down the city and country of her birth onto the Report of Birth Abroad form. Since she was born in Shaarei Tzedek hospital, this means that she was born in Jerusalem, Israel. When we got called up to the window and I handed over the form, the very first thing that the nice lady behind the counter did was to some white-out tape, and use it to erase Israel as the country of Gila’s birth. This is because according to the US State Department, Jerusalem is not part of Israel. (Sigh)

Read this article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post – Israel’s Arab Cheerleaders (here is an excerpt):

As the Arabs line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to reports published last week in Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, President Barack Obama’s in-house post-Zionist, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, told an American Jewish leader that for Israel to receive the administration’s support for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it must not only say that it supports establishing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, it must begin expelling its citizens from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria to prove its good faith.

With just months separating Iran from either joining the nuclear club or from being barred entry to the clubhouse, the Obama administration’s apparent obsession with Judea and Samaria tells us that unlike Israel and the Arab world, its Middle East policies are based on a willful denial of reality.

The article goes on to detail how much worse the situation in the Middle East will be, and how much less of a chance of peace there will be in the event that Iran gets nuclear weapons (even in the best-case scenario where they don’t use them).

The whole time that Bush was in the White House, everyone called him something along the lines of “the best friend Israel has ever had”. At the time, I was a big skeptic. After all, there was Annapolis, the Road Map, and the broken promises (remember how he said in the beginning of his term that he would not try to force a peace agreement at the end of his term, as Clinton had attempted to do?) and the pressure exerted on Israel to do things that would be against its best interests. However, compared to Obama and co., Bush really does look, relatively speaking, like he had been Israel’s best friend.

The policies that Obama is pursuing right now in terms of isolating and withdrawing his support from Israel while reaching a friendly hand out to Iran (which in effect is giving them permission to build nuclear weapons – does anyone actually think that you can convince them to stop by appearing weak and just talking?), and at the same time trying to force Israel to compromise its own citizens and domestic security (surrender Yesha to Hamas) in exchange for his passive blessing to attempt an attack on Iran are downright dangerous to Israel’s existence. They are not the actions of a friend.

I live a few miles away from one of the biggest air force bases in the country, and on a daily basis I see attack helicopters and F-16 squadrons taking off and landing (and flying over my house – pretty cool stuff). I can’t wait for the day when I will, God willing, see a few dozen F-16’s coming back home from a successful attack on Iran. Despite the left-wing US foreign policy that Obama is trying to dictate to Israel, this is what Israel needs to do in order to protect it’s citizens.