Are we living in the inferno?

 YOU MIGHT think it would be impossible for the inferno in Israel and Gaza to burn hotter. Yet Binyamin Netanyahu is fuelling three simultaneous emergencies: a humanitarian one in Gaza; a torching of support among European allies; and a constitutional crisis over who controls the security services, army and courts. The pressure on Israel and its institutions is almost unbearable for the country. A culminating moment is probably imminent. 

Quote from The Economist. I respect The Economist's journalists. But living here, I don't see what they see. Should I believe The Economist, or my shortsighted eyes?

P.D.: Only a month ago, The Economist thought Israel was full of hubris, victorious and expanding.

Commandment

 
 Benedixitque eis Deus, et ait: Crescite, et multiplicamini; replete terram et subicite eam. Et dominare piscibus maris et volatilibus caeli et universis animantibus, quae moventur super terram. Primus homo Adam, sicut dixit, potestatem habuit super omnia regendi.

See the original Hebrew text. 

Mysterious Message

 

Investment reflexion

Gold (zahav in Hebrew) is mentioned 400 times in the Bible.  Silver (kesef) is mentioned 300 times.

Nvidia is not mentioned even once. 

Photo: Hanukkah Gelt.

Arctic People

 The Nenets. Living near the North Pole does something to you. 

Die Goldene Medine

Israel has demonstrated that its Iron Dome anti projectile system is effective. America is building a Dome for itself. For us, it is existential. For America, it is a sign of retraction, of isolationism. 

The future is up for grabs. Carl Bildt.

The future is ours. At least, a part of it. 

Making Order at Harvard

Over the years, Harvard had evolved to be judenfrei, rejecting and hunting down Jewish students and "diversifying" to colored, Third-world, violent trash. They elected an unqualified Haitian female as President of the University. The idiots held pogroms in the campus, making life for Jews dangerous. I am happy that the reaction is coming. 

"As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' policies, you have lost this privilege." 

Mala Suerte

The Economist has a clear table of economic and financial indices. Raw material prices, including oil, and most industrial products are falling. GNP growth is negative in almost all countries except India and Israel (7% growth in the last quarter! *). The US dollar was devalued 10% in the last three months. Nvidia and other shares are falling. Not good.

The war against Hamas is unending. I and the rest of the world are tired of it. The Houthis fired two or three missiles today, I heard the explosions. TASE is falling. I had a "misunderstanding" with my oldest client. Not good. 

The bank sent a SMS that someone changed my keyword and should notify. It seems to be fake. Not good.

I am sleeping well and have low BP. Auntie N. sleeps better, and her BP is even lower, since she died today. She was 101 and wanted to die. 

(*) It was corrected to 3%.

The Water Gamal (Camel)

This is the water camel of my current project.

Arrival of the Swallows

 

Looking out from my window, I see hundreds of agile, fast swallows crossing the sky. The last time I saw them was in Hungary, where we called them fecskek and they built their mud-nests under the roof. Here they are transients. 

Last night there were no mosquitos, maybe the hungry swallows finished them. 

You shall wage war with deception

An Israeli special forces unit in civilian clothing infiltrated a site in central Khan Yunis, assassinated a man, and arrested his wife and children.

Photo of a camouflaged bag left behind by the special forces, containing weapons disguised as displacement materials.

Amphidromia

The Economist's Word of the week: amphidromia, an ancient Greek ceremony during which the father decided whether to keep a baby or abandon it on a hillside.

I tried to look up the word on the internet, and I got other definitions: It was a name-giving ceremony five to seven days after birth. At the amphidromia, friends and relatives would arrive with gifts for the child. Decorations adorned the outside of the house: olive branches for a boy and fillets of wool for a girl. A feast was prepared for the guests, followed by the child being carried around the hearth by a nurse or one of the parents.

No mention anywhere of abandoning the baby on a hillside. The meaning of the ceremony is running around a fire, that is, the father ran around. The newborn was declared legitimate and given a name, or illegitimate and abandoned. It is well known that Spartans killed weak or malformed babies, and all Greeks abandoned most of the newborns. Conclusion: The internet is incredibly censored and softened to present an infantile, saccharine reality. Like the ancient folk tales, where the Big Bad Wolf ate the grandmother and the girl too, while contemporary versions tell some sweet nonsense. 

Pic.: Yoruba naming ceremony.

How Christian Algeria became Arab

The Wiki explains why Algeria is Algeria: 

 Between the Nile and the Red Sea were living Bedouin nomad tribes expelled from Arabia for their disruption and turbulency. The Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym for example, who regularly disrupted farmers in the Nile Valley since the nomads would often loot their farms. The then Fatimid vizier decided to destroy what he could not control, and broke a deal with the chiefs of these Bedouin tribes..The Fatimids even gave them money to leave.

Whole tribes set off with women, children, elders, animals and camping equipment. Most arrived in Ifriqiya by the Gabes region, arriving 1051. The Zirid ruler tried to stop this rising tide, but with each encounter, the last under the walls of Kairouan, his troops were defeated and the Arabs remained masters of the battlefield. The Arabs usually did not take control over the cities, instead looting them and destroying them.

Mansourah Mosque, Tlemcen

The invasion kept going, and in 1057 the Arabs spread on the high plains of Constantine where they encircled the Qalaa of Banu Hammad (capital of the Hammadid Emirate), as they had done in Kairouan a few decades ago. From there they gradually gained the upper Algiers and Oran plains. Some of these territories were forcibly taken back by the Almohads in the second half of the 12th century. The influx of Bedouin tribes was a major factor in the linguistic, cultural Arabisation of the Maghreb and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by the Banu Hilal tribes had become completely arid desert.^[88]

Algeria's name derives from the Arabic Jazāʾir Banī Mazghanna (جزائر بني مزغنة, 'islands of Bani Mazghanna')

 

They lost me

 
I scheduled a meeting this morning but could not make it on time, and I probably lost the account. 

Nasdaq index rocketed 4% up yesterday, and I estimated that TASE would follow. It did not; it is on red. Is USA tariff agreement with China bad for us? Is HAMAS agreement with President Trump bad for Israel? Israel expected Trump to visit Israel, but he ignored us and went to the wealthy Arabs in Saudi Arabia. 

 I am lost. 

Houthi missile destroyed in the air

Ten minutes ago, the Civil Defense alarm sounded, and we moved to the hardened shelter room. The city became quieter, more so than usual on a sunny Friday afternoon. Already, we can see the missile being hit by an Arrow 3 (pic). I'm continuing with the difficult Gan Yavne project. That's my life in short. No big pleasure. 

The Client, after working without a permit for 15 years, gave the project to a known permitting office. There, the job wandered from one desk to another, till I asked for a file on what they were doing and sent my half-finished plan to them. I should never have done that! NEVER SHOW A HALF-FINISHED WORK TO A COMPETITOR. That horrible woman immediately fired an ugly email to our Client, stating that I was working on the wrong plan and it was all wrong. The client immediately called What the hell are you doing? I took a tranquilizer and sat down to investigate what was going on. Clearly, they are re-planning the whole building, while I am trying to get the permit for the building as it is. I hate those uncooperative, aggressive, embittered women I find once and again in my work in Israel.  

Carving Up Syria

 Epoch magazine says that Turkiye and Israel are holding conversations in Azerbaijan over their respective areas of influence in Syria. Just now, I am rereading the book about the Sykes-Picot line that marked the mandates of France and Britain after WWI.  In the last hundred years, Turkey has rebuilt itself as a regional hegemon, and the insubstantial Zionist movement has grown into a strong state in the Middle East. The old imperialist powers, Britain and France, have enough Arabs and little interest in acquiring more.

Unimaginable Futures

 
Claude: Based on trends, we can estimate when the birth numbers might equalize:

If Poland continues its approximately 11% annual decline in births (from ~272,000 in 2023), and Israel maintains relatively stable birth numbers around 180,000 (with slight variations), the crossover point would be reached in approximately 4-5 years (around 2029-2030).

By that time:

• Poland's births would be around: 272,000 × (0.89)^5 ≈ 160,000
• Israel's births would likely remain around 180,000 or grow slightly

For this old Eastern European Jew, it is unimaginable that Israel will have more births than Poland. A few years ago, a German said that, according to the trend current then, Guatemala would soon be more populous than Germany, which was impossible and unimaginable for him. As things are now, that is still far away. 

Surprise

 לקח זמן לגורמים בישראל להגיב על הודעת הנשיא טראמפ, לפיה החות'ים נכנעו ולא רוצים להילחם יותר - והנשיא גם
סומך על מילתם והורה להפסיק מתקפות נגדם. כשבירושלים התאוששו מהאירוע מספיק כדי להגיב, התגובה שניתנה למי שפנה ושאל, הייתה לא רשמית, בעילום שם והסתכמה בהודאה הכנה: "לא ידענו. טראמפ הפתיע אותנו".

"It took time for officials in Israel to respond to President Trump's announcement that the Houthis had surrendered and no longer want to fight - and the President also trusts their word and ordered them to stop attacks against them. When Jerusalem recovered from the event enough to respond, the response given to those who approached and asked was unofficial, anonymous, and amounted to an honest admission: 'We didn't know. Trump surprised us."

Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti explicitly denied that they would halt their terrorist activities altogether, stating: "We stress that we will not commit to stopping our military operations in the Red Sea".

Cryptozoologycal Adventure

 About the book of Lukas Meisel:   Almost every culture in Asia knows the creature by name - as Yeren in China, Chemo in Tibet or as Orang Pendek in Sumatra. For centuries, it has had a firm place in myths and imaginations. Only science does not want to know anything about the "missing link" between humans and animals.

Robert Akeret is determined to change that. At the behest of a cryptozoological society, he sets off on an expedition into the interior of Papua New Guinea. At his side: a man from the Bugis ethnic group; at the helm of the boat is someone who calls himself Jonah. And then there is Blum, his Swiss assistant, a man in his mid-twenties with weak nerves but a keen sense of correct manners. Together they embark on a journey into the well-measured unknown. With a hand-welded cage on the bow ...

Lukas Maisel is possibly the "missing link" between Claude Lévi-Strauss and Karl May. His debut novel, "Book of the Dreamed Islands", is a literary adventure, light-handed and intelligent, a captivating combination of cultural history, ethnography and narrative imagination.

BTW, Robert Akeret was a real person. Robert U. Akeret of New York City and Essex, N.Y., passed on peacefully on Nov. 12, 2016. Bob is survived by his four daughters, Kim and husband Tony, Julie and husband John, Liza, and Teal; and his four grandchildren, Molly, Nick, Will, and Sam. He was a successful psychoanalyst and author. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1928, Bob immigrated to the United States with his mother, Emmi Akeret, when he was six years old. Bob received his doctorate from Columbia University and his certificate in psychoanalysis from the William Alanson White Institute, where he trained with Rollo May and Erich Fromm. He wrote five books: "Not by Words Alone" (1972), "Photoanalysis" (1975), "Family Tales, Family Wisdom" (1991), "Tales from a Traveling Couch" (1996)

Virtual Romance

Female orgasm wasn’t necessary for conception, but he had read somewhere that orgasmic contractions were supposed to help.

‘It’s just a story, I know. But . . . what would we tell our children?’ he said, and instantly regretted it.

‘Do you sometimes imagine having children with me?’

He nodded.

She smiled.

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Whenever he slept with a woman, he couldn’t help but imagine accidentally getting her pregnant and having to stay with her. Not because he had this great longing for children – it was the opposite. For the same reason, when he was rock-climbing, he sometimes imagined falling. It made him value his current situation all the more, and take proper safety measures.

‘Do you give them names?’

‘I just know what names I wouldn’t give them. Kevin. Marcel. Thomas. Rita. Sabrina.’

‘You’re right, those are awful. Luckily, I only know one Marcel and one Sabrina. They’re both terrible human beings.’

‘A person can’t help being called Sabrina, though.’

‘Why don’t you want to tell my parents how we really met?’

‘If they’re anything like mine, they’ll think people who use that app are just looking for sex. I don’t want them to think I was only after their daughter’s body.’

By Lukas Maisel, born in Zurich in 1987. His debut novel, Buch der geträumten Inseln, received  the Terra Nova Prize. From GRANTA magazine. 

Permitting real estate in Israel

The police destroyed a luxury "villa" (pic) and an unfinished department building in the Arab neighborhood of Ramla. They were built on public lands and had no building permits. 

How were they connected to the municipal infrastructure - water, sewage, streets?  What were the owners of these buildings thinking - maybe they believed they always could pay off the major? 

These actions are very good for the permitting business.

The Indus River Conflict

 The 1960 treaty between India and Pakistan states that aside from certain specific cases, no storage and irrigation systems can be built by India on the western rivers. India is allowed to store 3.60 million-acre feet (MAF) of water from the western rivers, 2.85 MAF for conservation storage and an additional 0.75 MAF for “flood storage.”

India is building the Kishanganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants in Jammu and Kashmir. The 60 y/o/ Treaty needs adjustments, but the riparian powers are at war. Both possess nuclear weapons. No joke.

Disastrous Impatience

I was hoarding a lot of ICL stock for years. It was my most loved stock, ever since Mr Doyle organized a world cartel and pushed potash prices to heaven.  Ten years or more. But Doyle retired and potash stocks never moved, and their perspectives were not improving, as Canada was opening new mines and Australia, too. I lost faith in potash. 

Last month I sold most of my hoard to help my daughter purchase an apartment in Yokneam. 

I should have waited. Unexpectedly, President Trump imposed high tariffs on potash imports (among other items), causing enormous tension in the USA potash market. Prices on the NASDAQ and TASE are starting to move and climb. 

In all probability, I missed the bonanza. 

 

Viking hoards

As of 2015, more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) of silver from over 700 caches deposited between the 9th and 12th centuries have been found on Gotland. This includes 168,000 silver coins from the Arab world, North Africa, and Central Asia. Left: A Khazar silver coin.

Genetic research indicates that the Vikings (Danes) derive from Finnish stock from North East Asia. The Mari and the Samoyeds are the Finns who stayed in the place and did not migrate a thousand kilometers west. The Scandinavians beget the Germanic tribes that invaded the Roman Empire after its dissolution. The Russian people originated from the Finns. 

The Vikings produced nothing, built nothing, but sold blond slaves to the Greek and Muslim world. They were basically slavers. The enormous hoards found indicate their worldwide business interests and their wealth. 

Interestingly, the Achaeans from the Iliad were also known as Danae. They were seafaring people who raided maritime settlements and took slaves to be sold. That piratical livelihood was discovered and practiced in different places and eras.