Arab-Uyghur Love Affair

I am wordless. 

Disaster at Ayalim Hedge Funds

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The Marker (a supplement of the infernal HaAretz) writes about Ayalim Funds that lost in 2018 about 9 billion sheqels = 2.5 billion US dollars. It is a lot of money for Israeli savers. Apparently the fund invested in high-yield corporation bonds, like Kardan, Africa Israel, IDB Pituach (I have all of them) and lost over 30%. Well, I still believe that it is paper loss, those companies will pay their debts or renegotiate them in better terms. The 5% loss in sheqel managed funds caught my attention, how that happened? I went to Ayalim website and checked that fund, and it sent me to the TASE website. Seems the page was deleted and the link changed. Not nice. In 2016 Ayalim was the star fund, and that may have gone to their heads.

My portfolio has a positive yield in sheqalim, but I am losing in dollar terms. The reason is the strength of American economy and possibly the imperceptible devaluation of the sheqel vis-à-vis the dollar, possibly because the political uncertainty in Israel. I think that the robots that trade following key-words (trying to evaluate the political-economical sentiment of the country) are to blame, that is, they read the media that is consistently anti-Israel (in the word) and anti-government (in Israel). Reading HaAretz one could think that I am living in Equatorial Guinea and not in prosperous Kever Benjamin City.  

America Should Assist Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan

The brutal sinification of the Turkish Uyghurs is increasingly generating national-racial radicalism and we are hearing more and more about Uyghur fighters escaping to Afghanistan and Central Asia. ISIS had several Uyghur units fighting in Syria and Iraq, and Uyghurs have been carrying out terror acts in Europe and Turkey. Since America has concluded that China is a hostile rival not to say enemy, it needs to find allies whose interest are aligned with the anti-Chinese sentiment. The Uyghurs are a potential asset and should be assisted. Since the only friends they have are Muslim guerillas in Afghanistan, those friends of our potential friends should be organized into the Asian alliance America is trying to build.  Video: Uyghur folk dance. 

The Hui Muslims of Western China also have differences with the Han and their dictatorship. They have no territorial demands but their religion and their contacts with Central Asian Muslims are inacceptable. The Chinese are notoriously arrogant and insensitive (they believe in nothing - only bureaucratic promotion and money) and they are unable to distinguish between Jews and Muslims, and their subdivisions seem bizarre and incomprehensible for them. The last time I was in China, they assigned an Uyghur muslim secret policeman to look after me. I did not care and accepted his presents (enormous peaches and apples) but it was very strange. I asked him to take me to the Jewish street of Kaifeng, which is in the middle of the Muslim quarter, and I also entered mosques, and it was clear that the Huy recognized my escort like the policeman he was. I wondered if the Chinese authorities were aware of the difference between a Turkish Uyghur and the Arabic Huys. I wonder how are doing the Jewish-descendants in Kaifeng. Some have made Aliyah.  

Shuffling the Deck in Israel

We are entering a hotly contested pre-electoral period here in Israel. Political Alliances that held for years are dissolving and everybody is scrambling and positioning for the coming contest. Netaniyahu secured for us seven years of no-war and prosperity, the natives were pacified and the University of Ariel was funded. I wonder if the new political constellation can follow this act.

I am also worried about Oumuamua. 

Wishing the Best to Rashida

Her family’s story is typical of many Palestinians, with relatives scattered across the West Bank, Jordan and the United States. Rashida Tlaib (42) (pic: Pelosi swearing in  the new representative) is the eldest of fourteen children of a Palestinian immigrant to Detroit. The mukhtar Mohammed Tlaib said some 50 people from the illegal Arab settlement on Road 433 have immigrated to the US and now have children in schools and universities in America. 

“It’s a great honour for this small town. It’s a great honour for the Palestinian people to have Rashida in the Congress,” said Mohammed Tlaib, the village’s former mayor and a distant relative. “For sure she will serve Palestine, for sure she will serve the interests of her nation. She is deeply rooted here."

Let me add my congratulations and sincere best wishes for Rashida. I am happy that she and her numerous family have left Israel and are prospering far away. Already I feel safer driving on Route 433 to Jerusalem knowing that fewer Shahabs are throwing stones to Israeli vehicles. And Hon. Muhammed is wrong, she is not deeply rooted here, since she and her hamoolah abandoned their ancestral land for the Goldene Medine. Many Palestinians have reached high political positions in Latin America and now in the USA, and caused us no further problems. From this Kever Benjamin settlement, I wish 

All the Best, Rashida!

Mysterious rising salinity of Lake Kineret

There is increasing alarm among Israel's water officials that the salinity of the Lake - Israel's main reservoir - is rising, even to the point that it will become too saline for drinking purposes. Historically, the lake's salinity varied and it is assumed that in the times of Petrus the fisherman, the lake was undrinkable and the fishing villages bordering the lake derived their water from springs.

The graph shows how salinity and water level are inversely related, that is, when the water is low, salinity increases. That is logical. Today the lake is very low, and therefore saline. It appears that the cause is NOT climate change, and the rainfall - within historical oscillations - has not decreased. So, it must be that the contributing rivers flowing in from hostile countries, as damming and overpumping, maybe to harm us or just because they are using the water for irrigation. That was the accepted view.

But no, inflow measurements at the border show no change. The Syrian Golan is depopulated because of their civil war. and Lebanon's agriculture is agonizing under the Hizballah. The conclusion must be that WE are extracting (stealing?) more water from the upper Jordan stream. But how could that be if our use of water is strictly regulated by the Water Authority (my former employer) and every drop is accounted for?  Everyone here knows the answer but the journalists.

I prefer to quote Sherlock Holmes. “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” 

Steady as she goes

NASDAQ entered the manic mood and a buying panic has taken over the trading machines. In this very moment we are touching 7%  rise, a rate never heard of in this chaotic times. I had held steady all the time and did not sell when the end of the world was announced in the WSJ and now I am riding the rising wave. A bad person could say that I was not steady but drunk and sedated. Or too busy learning Old English to read Beowulf. Who cares...