Tag Archives: Israel

environmental news, International news

How do you bring Dead Sea back to life?

dead-sea-sinkholes-1024x576

This story caught my eye, not because it surprised me, but because it portends potential tragedy for one of the world’s great treasures.

And I’ve had the high honor and pleasure of seeing it up close.

I refer to the Dead Sea, a small inland lake at the mouth of the Jordan River between Israel and Jordan.

I got to swim in the Dead Sea in May and June 2009. Take it from me: You haven’t lived until you’ve taken a dip in water that is 10 times saltier than the ocean, and which contains natural oil that prevents your skin from wrinkling up the way it does in normal salt or fresh water.

Public TV’s NOVA documentary series is going to look at the future of the Dead Sea, which according to the producers of the program isn’t looking too great … at the moment!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/dead-sea-dying/

According to NOVA: “The lake has a storied place in history. The biblical Sodom and Gomorrah reportedly overlooked its shores, while King David allegedly sought relaxation there in 1000 BCE. A few paces away, on the mountain top of Masada, Herod the Great built palaces, and in 73 CE, a thousand Jewish zealots chose death in their fortress over surrender to the Romans. Centuries later, Byzantine monks lived in monasteries overlooking its shores, and Crusaders built their castles.”

That was then. The future looks bleak.

The lake levels are receding. We were told that while we swam in the Israeli side of the water.

The culprits are dams, as NOVA reports: “But since the 1960s, the sea has had a more troubled history. That’s when Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel started building dams and diverting the rivers for drinking, irrigation, and industrial use, the same waters that have been feeding the Dead Sea for millennia.”

The lake has lost about 112 feet in depth; its volume has dropped about 30 percent.

What to do? It’s interesting to me, as NOVA points out, that a joint Israeli-Palestinian environmental group is seeking to call serious attention to the danger of continued depletion of the Dead Sea.

Does the world allow this treasure to disappear? Does it continue to stand by while its water evaporates?

Perish the thought. Perish even the hint of a thought that the world could allow such an international tragedy to occur.

john

OK, I’m biased. I’m one of those who has enjoyed the water. I’ve slathered myself in that mystery mud the Israelis and Jordanians tell you has restorative qualities. You smear it all over your body, let it dry and then wash it off with fresh water.

I can’t say it made me look younger, but I felt great just being able to say I did it.

Check out the story attached to this blog post. It provides tremendous detail about the ancient history associated with the Dead Sea and the myriad problems that threaten this holy body of water.

The Dead Sea must not die!

local news, Uncategorized

Accelerating the transition … just a bit

retirement_road

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

People essentially have two ways to move from their working lives to retirement.

They can jump into full retirement immediately, all at once. They walk away from the job, put their wristwatch into the drawer and never worry again about missing a deadline or an appointment.

Or, they can do it slowly.

My wife and I have chosen the latter approach to retirement.

We’ve decided to stay busy with part-time work. However, the time is approaching for us to make the transition fully into retirement.

So, we have decided to accelerate the pace of that transition … just a bit.

How is that acceleration taking place? I won’t go into too many details. Suffice to say, though, that we’re making more definitive travel plans. We also have begun some serious rehab on the yard, which — because we didn’t install an irrigation system when we had the house built in 1996 — suffered quite a bit during the drought of 2013-14.

We own a recreational vehicle that we enjoy taking on the road. Our plans involve more extensive travel in it across this fabulous continent of ours.

Just this week, for example, we penciled in a date next June to travel to the southeastern United States to visit some friends who are coming here from Israel. I met this lovely couple seven years ago while on a journey through the Holy Land; I stayed in their home in Lehavim, a city on the edge of the Judean Desert.

They’re coming to Atlanta to attend the 2017 Rotary International convention and plan to tour New Orleans and Nashville while they’re on this side of The Pond. We, too, are hoping to find them in either place and get caught up with them.

I’m going to stay busy with my part-time work. Two of the jobs involve the media. Eventually, I’ll have to part company with those jobs, which I enjoy beyond measure. They continue to challenge me and they keep me alert.

The time is fast approaching, though, to complete this transition.

We are looking forward with hope and with great joy at encountering what lies ahead.

Bring on the future!

national news, political news, religious news

Profiling Muslims a possibility … seriously?

don trump

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, thinks profiling Muslims is something that U.S. law enforcement should consider.

Yes, that’s right. The nation that proclaims itself to be the champion of religious freedom, where the government doesn’t care which faith you worship … or even whether you worship at all, should consider singling out Muslims, according to Trump.

But wait a second! Hasn’t Trump proposed banning Muslims from entering the United States? Who, then, is he suggesting we profile?

Oh, I get it. That would be Americans!

I’ll set aside the obvious — in my view — un-American aspect of such a proposal.

How does one identify a Muslim? Would it be the scarves that women often wear? Would it be the names of the individuals being profiled? How does law enforcement discern who deserves profiling and who doesn’t?

I ask these questions because Muslims come from all ethnic backgrounds. What about the red-headed and freckle-faced Irish man or woman who converts to Islam? Or the blue-eyed blond from Scandinavia?

Oh, and then you have, say, the Palestinian who happens to be Christian. I have a bit of experience with meeting someone of that ilk. In 2009, my wife and I toured Bethlehem on the West Bank. Our tour guide? A young Palestinian who proclaimed his love of Jesus Christ as “our Lord and Savior.”

Trump told CBS’s “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson this morning that we ought to follow the model set by Israel, which he said profiles Muslims.

I’ll just add one more bit of personal privilege here. Having traveled to Israel and endured the grilling by security officers at David Ben-Gurion International Airport, I can state without reservation that the Israelis profile everyone who leaves the country through the Tel Aviv airport.

Take my word for it, you haven’t lived until you’ve been interrogated by an Israeli airport security guard.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/donald-trump-muslims-profiling-224529

Trump told Dickerson he hates “the concept of profiling.”

Fine. So do I. So should all Americans.

International news

Hezbollah leader killed … good! Let there be more

BBt0udt

Mustafa Badreddine was a bad actor.

He’s now dead. Who killed this terrorist? Hezbollah, the terror organization he helped lead, thinks the Israelis are responsible for the bomb blast that killed Badreddine in Syria.

Israel isn’t commenting. Officials there usually stay mum about these incidents.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/top-hezbollah-commander-kille-in-syria/ar-BBt07l2?li=BBnb7Kz

If the Israelis indeed are responsible for the death of Hezbollah’s top military leader, my initial reaction is this: Good deal … now let’s go after the rest of them!

I am one who strongly backs Israel’s effort to defend itself against the terror threat the nation’s existence every day.

I’ve had the honor and the pleasure to travel throughout the country. It was seven years ago this week, in fact, that I ventured to Israel for a month with four dear friends as part of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange.

One of the places we visited was in Nahariyah, on the country’s northern border with Lebanon. We could see the fortified border — complete with barbed wire and watch towers — along the ridgeline where we toured. Just on the other side of that border is a nation where Hezbollah runs wild.

Just as Hamas has launched rockets into Israel from Gaza, Hezbollah has done the same from Lebanon and Syria. They send their missiles into neighborhoods, targeting civilians. The Israelis are forced into a constant state of alert against these terrorist organizations.

Do the Israelis make any apologies for the measures they take to eradicate terrorist leaders? Absolutely not … nor should they.

As Reuters reports: “Israel deems Hezbollah its most potent enemy and worries that it is becoming entrenched on its Syrian front and acquiring more advanced weaponry.”

It wouldn’t surprise any observer of this ongoing conflict to learn that Israeli agents detonated the bomb that killed Badreddine.

Will the Israelis own up to it? Probably not.

That’s all right with me.

 

International news, military news

Women play key role in defending Israel

female pilots

This picture showed up on my Facebook news feed today and it brings to mind something I witnessed six years ago during a four-week tour of Israel.

Yes, more women fly F-16s than drive cars in Saudi Arabia. I’m not going to thrash Saudi cultural norms. I am, though, going to remember one of the major takeaways from my tour of Israel.

It is that the country must rely on every single able individual — men and women — who are able to serve in the armed forces.

Israel has a mandatory conscription law. If memory serves, men must serve three years in the military; women are called up for two. And, yes indeed, women are ordered to perform dangerous duty in defense of their country, such as flying high-performance tactical jet aircraft; for that matter, so are American women.

I arrived in Israel in early May 2009 as part of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange team. One of the first sites we visited was a military museum in Be’er Sheva, a modern city on the edge of the Judean Desert.

It was at that museum where we were told that enemy jets can cross the width of Israel in less than five minutes. The individual who told us that was a young woman who was serving in the Israeli air force.

Later on our tour, I stayed in the home of a family in Karmiel. One of my hosts was a young woman, the daughter of the couple who owned the home, who had just gotten out of the Israeli military. She informed me of her country’s insistence that all young people don the uniform of their country. Israel does grant religious exemptions to Hasidic Jews — which I also learned is a source of some tension among less-observant Israelis.

But the women of that small but mighty country are asked to step up and to do their part. Who should doubt that the entire country is on notice to serve? It comprises slightly more than 8,000 square miles; it is home to around 7 million residents. It is surrounded by nations with which it has gone to war multiple times since Israel’s founding in 1948.

Israel has peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt. However, it holds the Golan Heights, which once belonged to Syria … and we all know what’s happening there.

It’s good to put some things in perspective as we consider the cost of war and whether we’re asking everyone to commit to its defense.

In Israel, such a commitment becomes essential for the embattled nation’s very survival.

International news, military news

Special forces to Syria? What’s next?

islamic-state-syria759

It’s been said many times that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is our enemy. So is the Islamic State, which also is Assad’s enemy. Thus, Assad becomes our “friend” because the United States and Syria oppose the Islamic State?

My head is spinning.

President Obama has just performed a major pivot on Syria. We’re sending about 50 special operations forces to Syria to assist the government in fighting ISIS. Does that mean we’re getting engaged in a ground war in Syria? The president says “no.” I’m not so sure.

We’re putting “boots on the ground” in a place that’s been involved in a bloody civil war for many years now.

I don’t like this change of direction.

The issue of who’s our friend in the Middle East is complicated enough as it is. By my reckoning — and I’m sure many others — we have one true ally in that region: Israel. Many other nations’ leaders say they’re with us in the fight against ISIS. By and large, they have been — at best — not totally reliable.

So now we’re going to reverse ourselves and commit a handful of ground troops to this terrible conflict. Are they going to be frontline forces? The Pentagon says no and that they won’t necessarily be thrust directly into harm’s way.

What will the nation’s reaction be when we get word of the first person killed in action?

And … for what? To assist a brutal dictator who our own president has said should be removed from power?

 

 

International news

Iran deal is ‘approved’ by Senate … sort of

obama and kerry

It’s quite clear that President Obama cannot call his “victory” in securing the Iran nuclear deal a “mandate.”

It is, instead, a technical victory. Senate Democrats gathered up enough votes to head off a Republican-sponsored resolution opposing the deal. Thus, the president won’t have to veto the resolution.

GOP senator say they’ll keep bringing the deal up for a vote. Good luck with that.

Deal gets approved

I’m glad the deal is headed for “ratification,” if you want to call it that.

I’ll fall back to this notion in defense of the deal.

Israel is Iran’s target were it to build a nuclear weapon. The deal prevents Iran from obtaining a nuke. The United States has pledged repeatedly since the founding of Israel in 1948 to stand behind our nation’s most dependable Middle East ally. The pledges have come from presidents of both parties.

Whatever intention Iran has to wipe Israel off the planet would be met with severe force by any president who comes along in the future, regardless of political party.

It is better to talk our enemies out of doing something foolish than it is to bomb them into oblivion.

And, yes, you trigger-happy foes of this deal: Diplomacy always has its place.

national news, political news

‘Boxcars’ no more acceptable than ‘ovens’

1 Comment

hillary

Admission time.

I’ve been goaded into saying something about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s remark concerning Donald Trump’s “immigration reform” idea, which is to round up 11 million or so undocumented immigrants and ship back to where they came from.

She said recently that Trump and other Republican candidates intend to ship immigrants back to their homeland in “boxcars.” The remark drew understandable rebuke from those on the right who said the Democratic presidential front runner is invoking images of the Holocaust with that kind of analogy.

Clinton’s campaign has denied any connection.

You decide.

The campaign flacks are mistaken if they do not believe many Americans understood the juxtaposition of “boxcars” and “Holocaust.”

These presidential candidates need to understand that gravity of making such highly offensive comparisons.

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, you’ll recall, criticized the Iran nuclear deal by declaring President Obama would march Israel to the “oven door” if the deal is approved by the Congress. That remark also drew expected — and deserved — criticism from those on the left.

A critic of this blog reminded me that I had been silent about Clinton’s nasty reference to boxcars. I took the criticism as a challenge to be as vigilant on both sides of the political divide about comments that deserve rebuke.

Clinton, Huckabee and the whole crowd of presidential candidates should declare a moratorium on comparing anything that occurs presently to what happened between 1939 and 1945.

World War II — and all its ghastly consequences — stands alone.

 

 

International news

Netanyahu says it’s ‘not my job’ to dictate Iran vote

FILE - In this March 3, 2015, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, left, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, listen. Relations between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans have hit a new low. There has been little direct communication between Obama and the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill since Republicans took full control of Congress in January. Obama has threatened to veto more than a dozen Republican-backed bills. And Boehner infuriated the White House by inviting Netanyahu to address Congress without consulting the administration first. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — I dare say — is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

He told a delegation of congressional Democrats visiting him in Israel this week that it’s “not my job” to tell them how to vote on the Iran nuclear deal hammered out by Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives of five other world powers.

However, that doesn’t quite square with what he did earlier this year when, at the invitation of Republican U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, Netanyahu stood before a joint congressional session and — yep — told them in effect how they should vote on a deal designed to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Lawmakers visiting Netanyahu said the prime minister was respectful and frank.

He doesn’t like the deal. In many ways, I understand Netanyahu’s reluctance to deal with the Iranians. Their regime has declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the planet. The Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t to be trusted at any level, according to Netanyahu.

But President Obama, Kerry and all the participants say the same thing about the deal: It blocks “every pathway” Iran has to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Congress is going to take up the issue next month. A resolution calling for defeat of the deal is likely to pass. It’s also likely to lack the votes to overturn an expected veto from the president.

Never mind, though, that the Israeli prime minister isn’t telling members of Congress how to vote.

Wink, wink.

Actually, yes he is.

 

International news

Diplomacy ought to trump war every time

2 Comments

Barack Obama could have invoked the late, great Winston Churchill at his press conference today.

Churchill once said it is better to “jaw, jaw, jaw than to war, war, war.”

So it is with President Obama’s defense of the deal struck with Iran that seeks to end Iran’s quest to acquire nuclear weapons.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/obama-iran-deal-defends-press-conference-120154.html?hp=lc1_4

I remain more or less undecided on the merits of the deal, but the president has posed a fascinating challenge to his critics.

Is it better to take military action to remove Iran’s nuclear capability, or is it better to use diplomacy to rid them of their nuclear ambitions?

Critics, Obama said, haven’t offered a credible alternative to the deal that struck by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team of international partners. They blast the 159-page deal with words like “appeasement,” “disaster,” and “historic mistake.”

So, what do they suggest? Do we send in squadrons of fighter-bombers to blast the nuclear plants into oblivion? Let the Israelis do it? Do we risk all-out war?

The great Winston Churchill had it right: It’s better to talk than to drop bombs.

Always.