Israel is a country...

This is not mine and I don't know who wrote it, but I like it. So kudos to the anonymous author.

• Israel is a country where the same drivers who cuss you and flip you the bird will immediately pull over and offer you all forms of help if you looklike you need it.
• Israel is the only country in the world with bus drivers and taxi driverswho read Spinoza and Maimonides.
• Israel is the only country in the world where no one cares what rules say when an important goal can be achieved by bending them.
• Israel is the only country in the world where reservists are bossed aroundand commanded by officers, male and female, younger than their ownchildren.
• Israel is the only country in the world where "small talk" consists of loud, angry debate over politics and religion.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the coffee is already so good that Starbucks went bankrupt trying to break into the local market.
• Israel is one of the few places in the world where the sun sets into theMediterranean Sea .
• Israel is the only country in the world whose soldiers eat three sets of salads a day, none of which contain any lettuce (which is not really a food), and where olives ARE a food and even a main course in a meal, rather than something one tosses into a martini.
• Israel is the only country in the world where one is unlikely to be able to dig a cellar without hitting ancient archaeological artifacts.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the leading writers in the country take buses.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the graffiti is in Hebrew.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the "black folks" walking around all wear yarmulkes.
• Israel is the only country in the world that has a National Book Week, during which almost everyone attends a book fair and buys books.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the ultra-Orthodox Jews beat up the police and not the other way around.
• Israel is the only country in the world where inviting someone "out for a drink" means drinking cola, coffee or tea.
• Israel is the only country in the world where bank robbers kiss the mezuzah as they leave with their loot.
• Israel is one of the few countries in the world that truly likes and admires the United States.
• Israel is the only country in the world that introduces applications of high-tech gadgets and devices, such as printers in banks that print out your statement on demand, years ahead of the United States and decades ahead of Europe.
• Israel is the only country in the world that has the weather and landscape of California without the earthquakes.
• Israel is the only country in the world where everyone on a flight gets to know one another before the plane lands. In many cases, they also get to know the pilot and all about his health or marital problems.
• Israel is the only country in the world where no one has a foreign accent because everyone has a foreign accent.
• Israel is the only country in the world where people cuss using dirty words in Russian or Arabic because Hebrew has never developed them.
• Israel is the only country in the world where patients visiting physicians end up giving the doctor advice.
• Israel is the only country in the world where everyone strikes up conversations while waiting in lines.
• Israel is the only country in the world where people call an attache case a "James Bond" and the "@" sign is called a "strudel".
• Israel is the only country in the world where there is the most mysterious and mystical calm ambience in the streets on Yom Kippur, which cannot be explained unless you have experienced it.
• Israel is the only country in the world where sunsets in Jerusalem are gorgeous every evening.
• Israel is the only country in the world where people read English, writeHebrew, and joke in Yiddish.

On Barack Obama, Anti-Semitism and Self-Reflection

Do I think Barack Obama is an Anti-Semite?No. I don’t think Barack Obama is an anti-Semite. Arabs are Semites. Barack Obama is therefore not an anti-Semite.

Do I think Barack Obama is an enemy of the Jewish state? Yes I do. That is not to say that I think he is acting against of what he believes are the best interests of the country he heads. After all, he was not elected president of Israel. He was elected the president of the USA. Anyone in the Democratic Party would have been elected president of the USA. All it required was to be the un-Bush. So the process went the way it went, he beat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Primaries and became the Democratic Nominee for the presidency and therefore he won. My hear weeps for the Republicans. They never had a hope anyway.

So Barack Obama has a world view upon which he bases his domestic and foreign and economic agendas. Whether the economic and domestic agendas will eventually play out and he becomes an 8-year president is still to be seen. My concern is about his foreign agenda and in particular his agenda for the Middle East. His meeting last week with Jewish leaders in the USA was probably the most debasing meeting between a US president and representatives of his Jewish citizenry in modern history. I am angry that no-one there mentioned to him that he was the president of the USA and not the president of Israel. I am angry that no-one stood up and said, we engage in self-reflection all the time, Mr. President. We are constantly on the lookout to ensure that we abide by our own set of rules. And we do have one, Mr. President. We have a set of rules that goes back a few thousand years. And by and large, as a nation, we have abided by it for those few thousand years.

We should engage in some self-reflection? Shame on you, Mr. President!

Oh, and please spare me the retort that you also told the Arab nations in your speech in Cairo that they need to clean up their house, recognize Israel, yadda, yadda. Surely you’re not THAT ignorant. You gave the speech in Cairo. Something like Yasser Araft’s speech on Johannesburg. You know, the one “among buddies” with the wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Oh, and the demand that Israel not build homes for Jews in Jerusalem. What, are you inhaling too, Mr. President?

Yes, we are a small little country. But we can wait you out. Preferably, you’ll be Jimmy Carter-like and go away after 4 years. But if not, we’ll wait the other four. The Arabs figure they’ve waited everyone else out of this neck of the woods, and while you're doing their foul work, they’ll wait us out as well. Well, let me say, Mr. President, that we waited 2,000 years to get here and we don’t plan on leaving that soon. I am the second of three generations that have fought wars here, Mr. President - against your friends. We have never chosen a priori to go to battle, Mr. President. Unlike your friends, we prefer to live. For us, paradise is to be found in living and making the world a better place. We have beaten your friends every time. Mr. President, and if we have to, we'll beat your friends again.

So what’s your obsession with us Mr. President? You’re not an ignorant person. You know the difference between right and wrong. So it’s not about knowledge.

Therefore, there’s only one other option. It’s about belief. What do you believe, Mr. President? Beliefs are those concepts that become our paradigms early on in life, when our minds are wide open and the things we hear and are taught and observe over and over again become the foundation of our set of values, and they are the ones with which we go through our lives – unless we make a very concerted effort to change them. Do you know, Mr. President, what percentage of the population ever succeeds in changing their paradigms? 1%. And nothing in your behavior shows that your paradigm has changed.

Although you profess Christian faith in your adult life, as a child you were indeed educated in a Muslim school in Indonesia. Even you haven’t denied that. Now I’m not professing any Muslim plot or anything like that regarding your accession to office, but your paradigms are those you learned way back in your childhood. Those are your paradigms. They govern your world view. It cannot be otherwise. You obviously, by your actions, are also not interested in any otherwise.

So in all fairness, we can’t really expect anything different from you. You don’t like the Jewish State and nothing it can do short of delivering itself to your surgeon’s scalpel will please you. Now here’s the thing. You are not a trustworthy surgeon. You are not interested in this patient’s health. Your actions speak far, far louder than your very eloquent and carefully chosen adjectives and your meticulously selected and well photographed insults.

You see Mr. president, when you spit on us we know you're spitting on us. Don't be fooled by your wazirs into thinking that we assume it's raining. And by the way, you can also pass the message on to Mr. Mitchell. We've been here a lot longer than he's been there.

If you truly, deep down in your heart, when you stand alone facing yourself in your shaving mirror, believe that building a house for a Jew in Jerusalem is what stands between you and world peace, then you are in need of a little more than self-reflection.