From Today's Inbox:

Hello.

McDonalds invites you to The Free Dinner Day which will take place on 23 June, 2011, in every cafe of ours.

Free Day’s menu!
- Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich
- Chicken McNuggets
- Side Salad
- Chocolate Triple Thick Shake
- McCafe Latte

Print the invitation card attached to the letter and show it at the cash desk of any of our restaurants.

Every manager will gladly take your card and issue you a tasty dish of Free Day.
And remember! Free Day is whole five free dishes!

Thank you for your credence.
We really appreciate it.



Thank me for my credence? In my anti-virus, anti-spam & anti-fishing software I place my credence; they identified the attached file as a virus. But seriously, Free Dinner Day at McDonalds?! Why on earth would I want to attend such a thing, even if I didn't boycott McDonalds for not being sufficiently kosher for my religious standards?

עֲנֵנוּ אַבָּא שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם, בְּעֵת אֵלֶיךָ נִקְרָא
עֲנֵנוּ, עֲנֵנוּ כִּי בְשִׁמְךָ נִקְרָא
וְהַצִּילֵנוּ מִכָּל צָרָה
עֲנֵנוּ כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בִּתְקוּפַת הַמִּקְרָא.

כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת יוֹנָה בִּמְעֵי הַדָּגָה
כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת אֲבוֹתֵינוּ מִדֶּבֶר וּמִדְּאָגָה
כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת חוֹנִי עֵת עָמַד בְּתוֹךְ עוּגָה
עֲנֵנוּ, יְיָ, עֲנֵנוּ.

מְשִׁיחַ צִדְקֶךָ אָמַר לְפָנֶיךָ
עֲרוֹב עַבְדְּךָ לְטוֹב, אַל יַעַשְׁקוּנִי זֵדִים.
עֲנֵנוּ בְּעָמְדֵנוּ בִּתְפִלָּה לְפָנֶיךָ
הוֹשִׁיעֵנוּ מֵאוֹיְבִים, רְשָׁעִים וְצָרִים.

כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת אַבְרָהָם עוֹקֵד יְחִידוֹ
כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת דְּבוֹרָה עַל מֵי מְגִידּוֹ
כְּשֶׁעָנִיתָ אֶת זְכַרְיָה בֶּן בֶּרֶכְיָה בֶּן עִדּוֹ
עֲנֵנוּ, יְיָ, עֲנֵנוּ.

הוֹצִיאָה מִמַּסְגֵּר אַסִּיר וּמִצָּרָה רַגְלֵינוּ
שְׁלַח לָנוּ מְשִׁיחֲךָ וּגְאָלֵנוּ
הוֹשִׁיעֵנוּ כִּי מַיִם בָּאוּ עָדֵינוּ
עֲנֵנוּ, יְיָ, עֲנֵנוּ.

I have, during the recent few months, become quite politically active on Facebook, and got involved with and "befriended" many promiment members of the Israeli Radical-Leftist Movement. Many of those support what is called by its initials: BDS—Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

I have given the issue much thought. I have discussed it at length on various occasions, with people I consider true friends, albeit virtual ones. People from both sides of the Political Fence and such that "sit on the fence" itself.

The case for support of the BDS movement has never been so strong. Israel continues its oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and inside Israel itself.

The IDF continues its policy of unproportional retaliation in Gaza, killing and injuring terror activists along with any innocent bystanders happening to be there whenever a few rockets, mortars and missiles strike across the border, even if no one actually gets killed by those. The siege on Gaza continues even though in a considerably lessened degree after the Mawi Marmara Flotilla incident.

Israel continues to build in occupied Palestinian territory, and mostly avoids removing illegal settlements previously built. Radical Settlers (a small minority, claimed by the Mainstream Settler Movement to be "scutch-grass," acting against any parental or communal authority), regularly wreak havoc, vandalize, burn and physically attack Palestinians and their property, their buildings (including Mosques), their crops, their olive trees, and all they receive from the rest of the country is vocal criticism but hardly any actual restraint by the State Security Forces.

Bedouin "unrecognized" villages are regularly destroyed by the IDF and NFL, who declare them "illegal," in spite of their legal status not being finally decided yet by the Supreme Court of Justice. These Bedouins have been living in the region for centuries, raising livestock which they moved according to seasonal grazing-lands' availability, and engaging in occasional agriculture, but since they never settled in permanent towns or maintained writtenly documented ownership on specific plots of land, their claims to the Negev desert area is rejected by the State of Israel. Israel officially offers to move them into designated ghettoes it calls "towns," with no real means by which to support themselves, denying them the right to keep their ancient semi-nomadic lifestyle. Israel hardly does anything to solve the high unemployment and crime rates in the existing Beduin town Rahat.

Israel systematically poses extreme Bureaucratic difficulties on any Palestinian attempt to authorize Municipal Building Plans in East Jerusalem, to meet the needs of the growing local Arab communities, designating all available land to Jewish neighborhoods instead.

Settlers have obtained ownership documents for a number of houses in the Sheikh Jarrakh suburb of East Jerusalem. These houses belonged to Jews, according to Ownership Documents dating back to the Ottoman Empire. In the 1947-48 war, the Jewish owners fled the suburb, which was conquered by Jordan. The U.N. together with the Hashemite Kingdom offered the vacant houses to Palestinian refugees, who fled their own houses in Acre, Haifa, Lod, and the suburbs of Talbiyye, Rehavia and Qattamon in West Jerusalem, and many similar towns and villages which Israel took possession of during that war. Now when such refugees come back with Documents proving the ownership of their families on their previous houses and lands, Israel applies for them the "Law of Absentees' Property." But this law, apparently, does not apply to Jewish absentee owners. Only to Arab ones.

The current Israeli Parliament and governing Coalition is one of the most Racist, Undemocratic ones I can recall. Laws are in the process of being enacted to strengthen the power of the Security Forces against the Citizen. The citizens most harrassed and abused by the Security Forces on a systematic basis are Arabs; more power to the regime and less to the citizen will only worsen their situation. Laws are in the process of being enacted to require any immigrant to swear allegiance to the state of Israel "as a Jewish and Democratic State," but only if they are inelligible for Israeli citizenship under the "Law of Return," which grants automatic citizenship to Jews, their spouses, and some of their relatives. De facto, it will mostly affect Palestinians wishing to immigrate as part of family reunion. Laws are being enacted to stop state funding to organisations allowing under their auspices commemorating the so-called "Naqba," meaning "catastrophe," the name given by Palestinians to the establishment of the State of Israel. Laws are being enacted to stop funding from artists refusing to perform in the Occupied Territories. And so on.

This year, on September 9-10, 2010, I was in Synagogue almost all day long: from 7:00 AM till 17:30 on the 9th, and till 16:30 on the 10th, with only a less-than-an-hour refreshment break (called "kiddush" by us Jews). I was celebrating the Jewish New Year, like millions of Jews all around the globe. I was praying that day, led in prayer by one of the greatest pious Rabbis still alive, one who has only a few thousands of devout followers (what we call chassidim), but who is held in respect and esteem by far more than those--secular and religious, Jews and non-Jews, among residents of the city he lives in, by people from the entire country of Israel, and from all across the globe.

I was praying on these days for a blessed new year, for myself, my close relatives, my close friends, my brethren in Judaism, and the entire world. I also prayed for the destruction and death of a select few people: the Iranian president and his production project of deadly weapons of mass destruction, and his allies and cronies in the Middle East--the Lebanese leader of Hizbollah, and the Damascene and Gazan leaders of the Palestinian radical-muslim terror organisation. Not with a light heart did I pray for their death and the destruction of their plans: however, I do believe that, for the sake of the good and heavenly blessings for the many, it is unavoidably essential to destroy the opposing evil forces standing in the way of good and blessing.

I was not thinking of Bin Laden on these days, perhaps because he has kind-of-faded out of public memory lately, at least in this little corner of the world I live in. I am sure other Jews, praying at least as devoutly as me, however, did mention him in their prayers, probably along with one or more in my previous list.

I certainly did NOT pray for anything bad to happen to anyone besides these select few and anyone chosing to ally themselves with them. I certainly did not wish any evil upon all muslims. On the contrary: Just before I left my house to embark upon this extended weekend of holiness, I posted both publicly and privately to my friends on the Internet greetings and blessings--to the Jews, for the Jewish New Year; and to the muslims among them, for the holiday that ends their Ramadan, called `Id el-Fitr, that coincided this year on the same time--the Lunar new month.

However, I look around me at stuff various people post on the Internet and shudder. I begin to realize that religious tolerance, as much as we'd like to promote it, can no longer be taken for granted.

Many Americans, and people of various other Western countries, feel their tolerance of the Islamic religion is being taken advantage of. They see the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center as abuse of this tolerance.

It is time people in general and Muslims in particular must realize, that Democratic values cannot be taken for granted. Religious tolerance, for one, cannot be one-sided. When Muslims insist on building a Muslim Religious Center in such close proximity to Ground Zero, many Americans consider it an affront to their personal and emotional feelings, to their Democratic values. It shows lack of respect on behalf of those Muslims and Imams who stand behind this initiative. Such Intolerance, my friends, begets more counter-Intolerance in return.

A religion that repeatedly, throughout its history, consistently shows next to zero tolerance towards any other religions, cannot demand at the same time, with a straight face, tolerance from other religions. At the very least, it needs to condemn and renounce violence others commit in its name, and treat the feelings of others with minimal respect and understanding. Building a Religious Center so close to Ground Zero, with total disregard for those who died there at the hands of fellow-Muslims acting in the name of that very religion, and for those who gave their lives in the attempt to save such people--fails to meet those minimal requirements, IMHO.

Christ taught his disciples and followers that when they are struck on one cheek, they should meekly turn the other for another strike. Looks like fewer and fewer Christians, especially Americans (but not only), realize we humans are unable to actually live up to such high (and some may say: hypocritically high) standards. Sometimes a human has no other choice but to stand up and fight, and leave the saintly behaviour for other, real saints.

Ok. I have two kinds of passwords: 3 global ones, which I remember by heart and use indiscriminately on forums, online games etc.; and a host of others, which I create individually ad hoc for each new site and store in a strongly-encrypted word document on my disk-on-key.

Of the 3 global ones, one is an English word, another is a telephone number, and the 3rd is a bunch of random letters and numbers which I memorized for this purpose.

Until now I have treated acebook as an online game, and used the 3rd global password for it.

No more: having read about Turkish hackers gaining access to password lists of Israelis, I realized how important a part Facebook has become of my life and what a disaster it would be if some Ahmet Ataturk broke into it and hijacked it.

So now my facebook password is a random string of letters, numbrs and punctuation marks, used only for here and stored on the device.

That's great: Now if the disk-on-key gets lost, I will be locked out facebook, since it is attached to my gmail account, whose password is also stored there.

So tonight I'm gonna store a copy of the passwords' file on my work computer. It is safe as can be, with no Internet access.

Paraonid? Sure. If I suffer anyway from paranoia, why not at least make some good use of it?

I have read, a long time ago, a fine Hebrew translation (or rather, only part of it, as the copy that fell into my hands was already torn and missing the beginning), of a Jules Verne novel. The Hebrew version was called חורבנה של העיר השטה, "The Demise of the Floating City," according to a book dealer I have purchased many used books of. It is considered rare and extremely hard to find.

The novel was about a String Quartet, travelling on an Artificial Floating Island, and the adventures of the Billionaires on board.
Perusing Verne's Bibliography, I came to understand the work I had so fond memories of was Une ville flottante.
I proceeded to order a copy from Amazon.
Guess what?

The accursed French author wrote two novels with a similar name; the one I actually was interested in being called, L'Île à Hélice.
This book, unfurtunately, has no complete English translation.
I feel cheated, having paid lots of money for a book I have no interest in (and in poor printing quality to boot), but have only Verne himself to blame (and my own stupidity).

A comment on:
Silent Jewish Majority
since Al Jazeera rejects my comments.

Disillusionment is a very long, arduous and emotionally difficult process. It took me, a religious Jew living in West Jerusalem, more than 40 years to realize real life is not all black and white, not all Jews -- not even Rabbis -- are saints, and not all Arabs or Muslims are devils in or out of disguise.

But people do occasionally stop to think, and, as tragic as it is, it is moments like the Mavi Marmara fiasco that make us, Jews (and especially Israeli ones), stop and think.

Only now does a larger and larger part of the Israeli public realize that our siege on Gaza is neither Just nor Effective, and that we urgently need to find a better solution to our Security problems.