guess who's still alive

Jerusalem Post reports: "Family quietly marks comatose leader's birthday; says occasion marred by son's impending incarceration."

Yeah, like it's Omri's getting locked up that is marring Papa Arik's 80th...

Shas files, tectonic edition

Yesh Matzav's favorite Knesset faction keeps it classy:

The recent earthquake that was felt across Israel was the result of the "homosexual activity practiced in the country", Knesset Member Shlomo Benizri said Wednesday.

Ynet.

A little awkward in your Haaretz classifieds

Bank if required?

Yeesh. Shot not.

גברותיי ורבותיי, מהפך

During his historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem, late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was pampered in the city's luxurious King David Hotel. A recent visit to the hotel shows that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin also booked a room. Can you imagine how awkward it was at the check-in desk?

Begin: Shalom, My wife and I have a reservation in the penthouse suite.

Clerk: Name please?

Begin: Begin - Menachem and Aliza.

Clerk: Okay, let me check my list...ah, yes, Mr. Begin...there's a bit of a problem...

Begin: Yes?

Clerk: Well, we aren't allowed to rent you the penthouse suite.

Begin: Did that Boutros Boutros Boutros fellow already take it?

Clerk: No, it's not that...

Begin: Well, we have a reservation! This is an outrage! Let me speak with the management!

Clerk: Sir, it's exactly that: the management think you pose a security threat to our hotel.

Begin: A security threat?! How is that possible, you already have staying here the man who brought this country on the brink of annihilation just four years ago...

Clerk: Indeed, but President Sadat he didn't blow up this hotel!

Yesh Matzav's outrage on encountering the apartheid wall, apparently aka "the dumb wall"

In a Borat accent:

"High Five!"

A little treif, but hard to resist.

All in the Family

While the world is wondering who killed Imad Mughniya in Damascus on Tuesday night, a Queens dock worker named Archibald Bunker is laughing. Archie, as he is known by most, has fooled everyone: getting the world to think a terrorist was killed, when it was really his pesky Polak son-in-law, Mike "Meathead" Stivic.

One look at this AP photo and this still of Meathead portrayer Rob Reiner as "rockumentarian" Marty DiBergi in This Is Spinal Tap says it all:




Which one is now reposing with seventy virgins?

I'd like to be under the sea

In the wake of the death of Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniya, Hamas has called on Arabs and Muslims around the world "to act decisively against the Zionist octopus". This is not the first time that either Jews or Israelis to mollusks (here the cover of is a book called al-Ukhtubut al-Sihyuni - the Zionist Octopus), it goes back to grand old European antisemitic notions about international Jewish conspiracies. However, in the wake of sixty years of hearing about "Zionist gangs", "the Zionist entity", "Zionist occupiers", and "Zionist terrorists", it should somewhat refreshing to be called after the most intellegient invertebrate.

The Zionist-as-octopus motif might have something to it. The Octopus is a clever hunter, can adapt well to its surroundings, and can survive even after losing limbs. After all, isn't the whole idea of Zionism for the Jews to have a garden paradise "below the storm, in a little hideaway beneath the waves...knowing that they're happy and they're safe...with no one there to tell (them) what to do." There you are: one hundred and twenty years of Zionist ideology boiled down to one song off Abbey Road.

Pieces of flair

New York Times today:

Iran’s top leaders still define themselves in large measure by their opposition to the United States. The supreme leader is still the Guardian of the Revolution. The clerics who lead Friday Prayer still keep one hand on a weapon as they preach. Revolutionary identity and anti-Americanism remain inseparable…

Ok, so that's awesome. Tell me more:

“Everyone here is thirsting for American brands, it’s that simple,” said Mehdi Mortazavi, who is helping create Friday’s, a restaurant in Tehran. The sign out front looks just like a T.G.I. Friday’s in the States, with red and white stripes. But the “T.G.I.F.” was dropped because Thursday is the last day of the work week here, and the reference to “God” might not have gone over well. But there will be waiters with suspenders decorated with buttons, Cobb Salad and hamburgers on the menu.

The Islamic Republic is a good fucking time.

Oriental gaze in the sports section

Actual caption: Egyptian fans. Enjoying comfort in Ghana.

Caption Yisrael Hayom considered, then rejected: It's the Edward Said fan of the game!

Tzphoney

So we live in north Tel Aviv, a hotbed of wealthy leftists. Meir Yaari Street, named for the founder of the far-left Kibbutz Artzi federation and the pro-USSR Mapam party, runs not far from our house in north Tel Aviv, flanked by luxury condos on both sides. Then there’s the mall where we do our grocery shopping:

“Coming towards us from the opposite direction was a sleek new gray Jaguar with Amman license plates. The driver was wearing a double-breasted blue blazer with an ascot tucked into the open collar of his shirt, and his female passenger had "big hair" and carefully-applied red lipstick.

I rapped Gal's helmet with my knuckles and shouted into his ear, "Did you see that?! That was a car from Jordan!"

"Oh yeah," he shouted nonchalantly, "Rich Jordanians drive over all the time. They stay at the Dan Panorama [a five-star hotel] and go shopping at the new mall in Ramat Aviv."”

Sometimes while biking through I like to imagine what Meir Yaari would say about the boulevard named in his honor. Today’s guess: “Look at these yuppies with their high-tech jobs, pure-bread puppies, and SUVs. They don’t even hire the proletarian ‘new Jew’ from the other side of the Yarqon to clean their houses or walk their parents (?!); they bring in people from Arab villages and who knows where in southeast Asia!” Except old Meir might say Indochina…

***

The good news is that it’s impossible for us to be gentrifying a neighbourhood like this. In Ramat Aviv, young, creative types like us are more likely to be decreasing the neighbours’ property value. Forget being Bohemian in Florentine. We’re living the true revolutionary lifestyle—nudging the bourgeois out of Tel Aviv’s upper west side.

Or maybe we’re just full of shit?