A Liberal Theory of Relativity

The Yankees are winning games, so I don’t care if the Celtics are. While oil keeps spilling into the Gulf, I can be patient with our super’s inability to staunch the water trickling through my toilet bowl. As long as people of all faiths respect what the Jewish people continue to contribute to the arts and sciences (and belt an occasional show tune), they can judge us all they want. Everything’s relative.

“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” goes the proverb. Maybe my new eyeglasses have something to do with it. Maybe it’s that my grandson has started losing his teeth and I’m not losing mine! I have perspective.

I know to eschew the Yankees v. Phillies and Celtics v. Lakers long enough to hear my president address the country about the oil spill. Setting myself apart from 51% of the country, I know I can listen, respectfully and objectively, to what he has to say.

I’m prepared for him to begin by stating “our nation faces a multitude of challenges,” and to enumerate, “At home… to recover and rebuild from a recession…” and “Abroad… taking the fight to al Qaeda wherever it exists.” I do a perspective check for “wherever it exists.” I have it in my rear-view mirror.

We get to the big challenge: “Because there has never been a leak of this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology.” And the limitations of human beings!, I want to add, but there’s no time—the president is “multituding” the challenges: “…just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge.” I’m ready and waiting with perspective on this one. Much as I wouldn’t wish any ill spill on President Obama, far better it happened on his watch than his predecessor’s, so that W’s VP couldn’t assemble “a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers” from BP “to tackle this challenge.”

It didn’t take long for President Obama to provide the undeniable perspective, vividly. With one word: epidemic. “The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.”

I listen and learn that “30,000 personnel… are working across four states.” Jobs, I think. “Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding.” Heartening, I think, but am relieved that a flotilla from Turkey is not among them.

It’s nigh onto the fourth inning at Yankee Stadium, I’m guessing, when the president says, “…if something isn't working, we want to hear about it,” and I know he isn’t thinking of my toilet.

SOS: From an Israeli Naval Commando

I am posting the following letter without comment; readers can form their own conclusions. It was written by a member of Shayetet 13, the elite Israel Defense Forces naval commando unit that intercepted the flotilla ship bound for Gaza, the Mavi Marmara, on May 31st.

Dear Friends and Family-

This is Amir writing you after reading what you sent to my father.

As you know, it was my unit and my friends who were on the ship.

My commander was injured badly as a result of the "pacifists" violence.

I want to tell you how he was injured so you could tell the story.

It shows just how horrible and inhuman were the activists.

My commander was the first soldier that rappelled down from the helicopter to the ship.

When he touched ground, he got hit in the head with a pole and stabbed in the stomach with a knife. when he drew out his secondary weapon-a handgun (his primary weapon was a regular paintball gun- "tippman 98 custom") he was shot in the leg.

He managed to fire a single shot before he was tossed from the balcony by 4 arab activists, to the lower deck (a 12 feet fall). he was then dragged by other activists to a room in the lower deck were he was stripped down by 2 activists.

They took off his vest, helmet and shirt. leaving him with only his pants and shoes on. when they finished they took a knife and expanded the wound he already had in his stomach.

They cut his ab muscles horizontally and by hand spilled his guts out.

When they finished they raised him up and walked him on the deck outside. he was conscious the whole time.

If you are asking your self why they did all that here comes the reason.

They wanted to show the soldiers their commanders body so they will be demoralized and scared.

Luckily, when they walked him on the deck a soldier saw him and managed to shoot the activist that was walking him down the outside corridor.

He shot him with a special non lethal bullet that didn't kill him.

My commander managed to jump from the deck to the water and swim to an army rescue boat (his guts still out of his body and now in salty sea water). that was how he was saved..

The activists that did this to him are alive and now in turkey treated as heroes.

I am sorry if I described this with too many details, but I thought it was necessary for the credibility.

Please tell this story to anyone who will listen.

I think that these days you are one of Israel's best spokesman.

Thanks and Shabat Shalom!

Amir

"You're Going... I'm Staying"

The old man, an improbable El Al Airlines luggage security screener, was the first ever to ask me if I’d left my bags unattended at any time. I hesitated. I’d been in Istanbul getting a difficult story; I’d barely seen my hotel room or my luggage. He gently said, “You’re going… I’m staying.”

Only days earlier, in New York, the harrowing film account of an American interned and abused in a Turkish jail, “Midnight Express,” put the fear of God into me; with the taking of 52 American hostages, the Iranian Revolution put radical Islamic fundamentalism before the world’s eyes; and the Turkish military had already put itself in control of Turkey’s government. I’d been aggressive in getting my story, an ethnically sensitive one. Indicating the authentic “Midnight Express” prison to me, a poker-faced state functionary told me I’d asked too many questions and it was time for me to leave.

The old man waited for an answer. Mine was,“Check ‘em.”

El Al has set airline industry standards for security procedures. Every passenger is interviewed individually prior to boarding and can be questioned by as many as three different screeners, all of whom are extensively trained and skilled. They look and listen for evasive answers, withheld information, and anxiety or nervousness. Yes, they have profiling. Yes, they do have armed, plain-clothes sky marshals in passenger seats on every flight. And yes, I’m only scratching the surface of the precautions they take and omitting the technology they employ. El Al was the first airline to resume international flights out of New York after 9/11.

Prior to 9/11, I mischievously used to test the airlines’ security—not a game I would play today. In Moscow, I lifted a bulky suitcase around Domodedovo Airport’s X-ray scanner instead of passing the bag through it. A week later in Uzbekistan, pushing my luck, I hoisted the same suitcase around the scanner again at Tashkent International Airport. No one said a word in either instance and suitcase in hand, I boarded.

In Germany, I fought against passing a film (in a canister) through the metal detector or scanner, and won. Gracious in defeat, Lufthansa officials gave me a seat for it! I put up the same fight in Tel Aviv and was on the ropes when a wise official intervened and suggested I open the can and unspool the reel sufficiently for him to see that it was… film.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) blames President Obama for lacking focus on terrorism and for failing to appoint a head of the Transportation Security Administration. He’s the same Jim DeMint who was at the forefront of blocking a vote on the President’s nominee for the position, Erroll Southers! The logic apparently is: in times of terrorist threat, no head of the TSA is better than a President’s choice. In all fairness to Senator Jim, he suspects Southers would allow TSA employees to unionize. Jim Demented.

Wish Jim had been present at Los Angeles International Airport when I observed an Arabic-looking man in a nice suit and tie hand a package around the metal detector to a swarthy, poorly-dressed man who speeded out of sight. When I reported what I’d seen to TWA personnel at the boarding gate, they were at a loss for what to do. I had to insist on seeing a security guard, who also didn’t have a clue. I practically forced him to “do something.” We boarded and walked through the plane for my flight twice as I looked left and right, in vain, for my suspect. I was content he was not on my flight, but the security guard was too content—for me—that the man was not on somebody else’s. Fortunately, I didn’t read bad news about it.

Another time at the L.A. airport, a former Israeli intelligence agent carrying my suitcase walked with me past the scanner and through the gate without being asked to show the flight ticket he didn’t have… to the entrance ramp to my plane, set the case down and said, “You see, that’s how bad security is in this country.”

So, Senator, pay attention. While you fret over unionization, security in this country is so bad that a machine dispensing airline tickets is asking purchasers the same sensitive questions on a screen that trained security agents ask passengers in order to observe their reactions and determine possible threats! So naturally we have to ask: can a machine tell if a suspect is perspiring… his eyes shifting… her words faltering? Your words are nonsense, Senator, and like the airport machine, self-serving.