As these things go, Israeli and Jewish publications have been arguing furiously over a... history book. Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People alleges that a historical "Jewish people" does not exist and that the bulk of Jewry today descends from converts, rather than from the inhabitants of pre-Roman Judea.

Sand, in writing the book, has placed himself in a proud tradition of Jewish contrarians. Given that us Jews are the most self-mythologizing and status-quo doubting people this side of the Irish, it's not a real surprise.

Every ten or so years, after all, there is another intellectual who sparks eager fights among university professors and journalists through a new reading of the historical record. Norman Finkelstein's potshots at "the Holocaust industry" in the nineties. Benny Morris' deconstruction of the Israeli War of Independence in the 1980s. Before that, Arthur Koestler's Khazar hypothesis (which Sand resurrects) and Immanuel Velikovsky's attempt to reconcile Biblical events with the space race. Some of these writers, of course, were much more successful than others.

As an unrepentant history geek, I wanted to read the book when the English edition — translated ably by Yael Lotan from the original Hebrew — was released in late 2009. The press trail was intriguing. Among others, the New York Times, Times of London, Guardian, BBC and al-Jazeera English all featured the book, along with the usual blogosphere suspects. Then there was the fact that Tony Judt, Simon Schama, Tom Segev and other prominent historians had all taken the time recently to weigh in on Sand's book, whether pro or con.

So I put an order in to Amazon. My book arrived.

I was disappointed.

Here's the thing. Sand, a professor of modern French history at Tel Aviv University, could have written four very good books. Unfortunately, he mashed them all together into one ungainly mess of an incediary device.

Continue reading...

Israel's top politicians are up in arms after the catering for cabinet meetings was switched for healthy cuisine. Starting this week, pastries and cakes were removed from the menu at daily conferences:

Government ministers were shocked last Sunday to discover that their usual cabinet meeting breakfast of burekas puff pastries, rugelach and croissants was replaced with granola, vegetables and yogurts. Juices were also replaced for water.

The person responsible for the new diet, which caused an uproar among the ministers, is Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser, who said he got the idea from Yona Bar-Tal, the President's Residence's deputy director-general.

"I reached the conclusion that the ministers should have a healthy menu with as little dough and fat as possible. Currently they are accustomed to get burekas puff pastries, sandwiches and cakes.

"We did away with juices and replaced them with water. We completely removed the burekas, rugelach and cakes. We put in yogurts with granola, fruits, vegetables, whole wheat bread, low-fat cheeses and other healthy foods," he said.

(Note: The East Coasters among us know what rugelach is - sugar filled deliciousness. Burekas are Ottoman-descended puff pastries stuffed with cheese or savories that came to the country via Turkish Jews. For obvious reasons, Israelis are not generally big fans of bacon and ham at breakfast.)

All this would just be a funny quirky story if not for the fact that most of Israel's Hebrew-language dailies ran a paper on the story today. That's because several cabinet members essentially used the change of menus as an excuse to troll for votes:

Several ministers welcomed the change for obvious health considerations. Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon noted, "Finally we have a cabinet secretary who recognizes the true value of Israeli agriculture and the land of milk and honey."

The eating habits of politicians are fair scrutiny for the Israeli media. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke in 2006 that left him in a semi-vegetative state. His legendary love of unhealthy food is believed to have been a contributing factor.

This post originally appeared on True/Slant and is reprinted with permission.

Terrorist organizations have to spread their ideology somehow.

Enter the strange, fascinating world of... al-Qaeda's magazines.

For the past few years, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has published the magazines Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battle) and Sada al-Jihad (The Echo of Jihad).

Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula is a branch of al-Qaeda that operates primarily in Saudi Arabia; they are the charming folks responsible for the kidnapping and murder of New Jersey helicopter engineer Paul Johnson in 2004. Johnson was executed live on camera as three men held him down and one jihadi beheaded him with a sword.

According to intelligence experts, the group was also responsible for the 2004 massacre of American, European, South African, Sri Lankan, Indian and Filipino expats in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. However, they are also perfectly happy to work outside of Saudi; the group engineered a bombing in Qatar in 2005.

Issue 11 of Sada al-Malahim started appearing on jihadi online forums a few days back in PDF form ready-to-print. A copy may be obtained here, complete with a charming cover showing a beaker and a hand grenade. It’s a dense little bastard of a magazine, clocking in at 73 pages of text, graphics and basic-Pagemaker design. As one might expect; al-Qaeda magazines don’t include such kuffar innovations as advertising.

Read the rest of this story on true/slant. 

I was going to write a post about how American students and expats in Beersheva were dealing with being under rocket attack. But apparently, a Grad landed behind my apartment complex a few hours ago.

It makes me happy that I decided to head up the road to Tel Aviv a few days back - which in retrospect was a damn good decision.

This is what I found on my Facebook wall (If 'Nam was televised, this crap is microblogged) when I came "home" a few hours ago, courtesy of one of my classmates and friends, who lives in the same apartment complex as I do:

“woo did you miss action. A rocket hit the fence next to your building. Very loud. Lots of security people walking and people with huge cameras running after them. I wonder if we will ever learn again? B”S is deserted. There are still some people in the dorms, but the university is empty. Hope your Israel tour is going well! I’m calling it a tour to make it sound exciting.”

Writing anything under these circumstances... fuggedaboutit. Glad I decided to stay in Tel Aviv and didn't go into missile range today. Let's just hope the suicide bombers don't start again anytime soon.

I put up some more about this at Negev Rock City; as for me, I'm just reflecting on the irony that my MA will be in "Middle Eastern Studies." Yeah, this is some Middle Eastern study.

UPDATE: A student at Ben Gurion University captured the rocket attack on my building on video:

During wartime, the cognitive dissonance in Israel is overwhelming.

I'm typing this piece from the safety and comfort of Tel Aviv, where I went after my neighborhood was struck by rockets. There's a bloody and terrible war happening an hour's drive from here. 19 year olds who would be attending keggers in America are in gunfights with Hamas militants. Little kids are being blown to bits because their next door neighbor launched rockets at Israel a few months ago. There is madness, stupidity, heroism and a million other things besides happening here.

But right now I'm staying in a comfortable neighborhood in north Tel Aviv that reminds me of the Upper East Side back in New York. There are lots of ladies who lunch and a strip of coffee shops a few blocks down where you can get a decent cappucino and pain au chocolat.

I am bouncing between the houses of distant relatives and friends because of the war. These days, I'm normally an MA student in Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva. However, Beersheva came under rocket attack on December 30 and 31. One Grad rocket landed less than 700 meters from my house on early Wednesday morning. I ran in midsleep to a bomb shelter and heard the explosion as clear as day through the fortified concrete.

As a result, the IDF's Homefront Command has indefinitely cancelled classes at Ben-Gurion University and shut down almost all commerce in the cities surrounding Gaza.

I returned yesterday to Beersheva yesterday to pick up some personal effects. I stumbled onto a ghost town. Workplaces that don't have rocket shelters are closed. Stores that aren't fortified are closed. Schools are closed. Restaurants are closed. A few hardy kiosks, greengrocers and cafes that run day-by-day are remaining open and risking government fines. Nothing but stray cats, retirees chain-smoking outside their shelters and little kids sneaking away from their moms to throw rocks at the stray cats. Too depressing, too zombie movie.

The only hopping place in Beersheva right now is the Soroka Hospital, the Negev's largest medical facility. Though Beersheva has been lucky enough to escape rocket fire during the past few days, other cities haven't had that blessing. Ashkelon, Ashdod and the poor citizens of Sderot have been under constant rocket attack since the cease fire between Israel and Hamas broke down a few weeks ago.

Although both Ashkelon and Ashdod have hospitals, the critically injured are bought to Soroka. Helicopters land at Soroka carrying poor bastards whose arms and legs were shot full of shrapnel. There are Bedouins from the desert whose villages lack air raid sirens and cannot hear the warnings. There are manual laborers who work outdoors and don't have access to shelters. And then there are just the people who can't run quickly or who found their shelters padlocked shut by a neglectful city government.

Hell, there are even a bunch of Gaza civillians who were medivac-ed out of the war-sieged territory for treatment here.

Coming to Beersheva by train, almost all of the other passengers were reservists called up to duty. There was one kid who looked like one of my Russian friends from high school. There was a cute girl with a hipster-ish haircut reading Israeli gossip magazines while wearing a shoulder tag for an elite intelligence unit. There was a reservist with an iPhone and designer glasses who looked for all the world like a New York blogger. On the ride down to the Negev, we could see black helicopters flying over the Occupied Territories looking for any escalation of the situation there. Radio attachments from cell phones were playing the latest news from Gaza. I tried to use my limited knowledge of Hebrew to figure out what was happening while talking in broken English to the reservist in the next row.

I came back to Tel Aviv to hear of stone-throwings by Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank and of more deaths in Gaza. Meanwhile, I'm sitting at a bar, drinking imported beer and eating a Cubano while talking about Barack Obama and the IDF with the bartender in bad Hebrew.

And there's a war an hour away, but everyone's ignoring it here in the "Tel Aviv bubble."