#power born of dreams: my story is palestine | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

berniesrevolution · 6 years ago

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On the list of America’s irrational fears, Palestine is near the top. This is no small feat for a “country” with no actual territory and a population about the size of South Carolina. Despite its lack of an air force, navy, or any real army to speak of, Palestine has long been considered an existential threat to Israel, a nuclear-armed power with one of the most powerful militaries in the world and the full backing of the United States. Since there’s no military or economic justification for this threat, a more nebulous one had to be invented. Thus, Palestinians are depicted in the media as hot-blooded terrorists, driven by the twin passions of fanatical Islam and a seething hatred for Western culture. So engrained is this belief that the op-ed page of the New York Times can “grapple with questions of [Palestinian] rights” by advocating openly for apartheid, forced expulsion, or worse.

This worldview demands an Olympian feat of mental gymnastics. It can only be maintained so long as most Americans have no firsthand contact with Palestine or Palestinian people. Even the smallest act of cultural exchange is enough to make us start questioning the panic-laced myths we’ve been taught since birth.

Of course, the best way to discover the truth about Palestine is to visit the country yourself, though most Americans don’t have the free time or financial resources to do so (this is not a coincidence). This means that those of us who are fortunate enough to visit have a responsibility to share what we’ve seen and heard, without lapsing into pre-fabricated narratives, even “sympathetic” ones. We can’t fight untruth by telling untruths from the opposite perspective. What we can do, however, is report what we saw and heard in Palestine. We can try to provide a snapshot of daily life and let people come to their own conclusions.

With this in mind, here’s what I learned during a recent trip to the Holy Land…

The Palestinian doorman of the Palm Hostel in Jerusalem is a large and friendly man who insists his name is Mike. My fiancée and I are skeptical, as we’d expected something a bit more Arabic. We ask him what his friends call him.

“Just Mike,” he says, and taps an L&M cigarette against the wooden desk. He’s sitting in a dark alcove with rough stone floors, nestled halfway up the staircase that leads from the fruit market to the Palm’s small arched doorway. A pleasant, musty oldness floats in the air. You could imagine Indiana Jones staying here, if he’d lost tenure and gone broke for some reason. To Westerners like us, it seems too exotic to have a doorman named Mike.

Before we can ask him again, though, Mike pounces with a question of his own. “You’re from the States, right?” He speaks English with a thick accent and slow but almost flawless diction, an odd combination that is causing my fiancée some visible confusion, which seems amusing to Mike. I tell him that we’re from Minnesota, a small and boring place in the center-north of the USA. His grin gets bigger, which makes me self-conscious, so I also explain that Minnesota has no mountains or sea, and the winters are very cold.

“Yeah, I know,” says Mike. “I lived in El Paso for thirty years. Border cop, K9 unit. It was a nice place. Had a couple kids there.” Now it’s my turn to gawk, and I start to race through all the possible scams he might be trying to pull. Mike seems to guess what I’m thinking. “Really. I even learned some Spanish.” He scrunches his brow in mock concentration and clamps a hairy hand over his forehead. “Hola. ¿Como estás?Una cerveza, por favor.” He opens his eyes and laughs. “Welcome to Jerusalem, guys. Damascus Gate is that way. Enjoy.”

I don’t know why I’m so surprised he knows a handful of Taco Bellisms, or why this convinces me of his honesty. However, now it’s impossible to walk away. We have too many questions. The first one: Why’d he return to Jerusalem? Mike looks down at his cigarette, smoldering into a fine grey tail of ash. He flicks it against a stone and a bright red ember blazes to life.

“This is my home. I had to.”

Later, as we sip sweet Turkish coffee outside a rug shop in the Old City, it occurs to me that Mike was the first Palestinian person I’d ever spoken with face-to-face. His life story seemed unusual, but I have no idea what’s “usual” when it comes to Palestinian lives. I’d never thought about them before, to be honest. The world has an infinite number of stories, and the days are not as long as I’d like. It’s not like I’d chosen to ignore Palestine. I just hadn’t chosen to be interested in it.

Which was odd, because Palestine has been all over the news since I was a kid. There isn’t a single specific story I recall, just a murky soup of words and phrases, like “fragile peace talks” and “two-state solution” and “violent demonstrations.” They all swirl together, settling under the stock image of a bombed-out warzone as the headlines mumbled something about Hamas or Hezbollah or the Palestinian Authority. I remember reading about rockets and settlements, refugees and suicide bombers, non-binding resolutions and vetoed Security Council decisions. Not a single detail had stuck. I could feign awareness of some important-sounding events—the Balfour Declaration, the Oslo Accords, the Camp David Summit—but I couldn’t say what decade they happened, or who was involved, or what was decided.

For years, I’d been under the impression that I knew enough about Palestine to be uninterested in what was happening there. This isn’t to say I felt any particular animosity toward the Palestinians. But it’s impossible to fight for every cause, no matter how righteous, if only for reasons of time. Every minute you spend feeding the hungry is a minute you’re not visiting the sick. Life is a zero sum game more often than we’d like to believe.

As we headed toward the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion, I began to feel uneasy. The Israeli police (indistinguishable from soldiers except for the patches on their uniforms) who stood guard at every corner still smiled at us, and they were still apologetic when they forbade us from walking down streets that were “for Muslims only, unfortunately.” Their English was excellent. Many of them were women. They were young and diverse and photogenic, a recruiter’s dream team. But all I could see were their bulletproof vests and submachine guns. Above every ancient stone arch bristled a nest of surveillance cameras. Only a few hours ago, I’d been able to block all that from my sight, leaving me free to enjoy the giddy sensation of strolling through the holiest city on earth.

The road ended at the Lion’s Gate. Just as we approached it, a battered Toyota came rattling through. It screeched to a halt and a squad of Israeli police surrounded the car. All four doors opened and out stepped a Palestinian family. The driver was a young man in his 20s, with short black hair cut in the style of Ronaldo, the famous Real Madrid footballer. When the police told him to turn around and face the wall, he did so without a word. It was obvious this was a daily ritual. The policeman who frisked him looked as bored as it’s possible to look when patting down another man’s genitals. Soon it was over, and the family got back in their car. One of the policemen pulled out his phone and started texting.

If I’d made a video of the search (which I didn’t) and showed it to you with the volume off, you probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. The Israeli police didn’t hurt the man, and he barely made eye contact with them. There were no outrageous racial slurs or savage beatings. The only thing you’d see is a group of people in camouflage battle gear standing around a small white sedan, with a middle-aged woman and a couple of young girls off to the right. Unless you have hawk-like eyesight and an exceptional knowledge of obscure uniform insignias, I doubt you’d be able to tell “which side” any of the participants might be on. All you could say for sure is that the police wanted to search the family’s bodies and belongings, and the family looked very unhappy about it, but the police had guns and cameras, and that settled things. It’s interesting what conclusions different people might draw from a scene like that.

Later that night, after we get back to the Palm, I tell Mike about what we saw. He asks what we’d thought. “It was fucked up,” we say.

Mike sighs. “You should see Bethlehem.”

Jerusalem is so close to Bethlehem that you barely have time to wonder why all the billboards that advertise luxury condos use English instead of Arabic as the second language before you arrive at the wall.

The wall is the most hideous structure I’ve ever seen. It’s a huge, groaning monument to death. Tall grey rectangles bite into the earth like iron teeth, horribly bare, cold, sterile, a towering monstrosity. The wall makes the air taste like poison.

We’re in the car of Mike’s cousin Harun, who is Palestinian, but his car has Israeli plates so we aren’t searched at the checkpoint. We inch past the concrete barriers and armored trucks. Harun holds his identity pass out the window, a soldier waves us through, and a few seconds later we’re in Bethlehem, a short drive from where Jesus Christ was born. It feels like entering prison. I don’t say prison in the sense of an ugly and depressing place you’d prefer not to visit. I say prison in the literal sense: a fortified enclosure where human beings are kept against their will by heavily armed guards who will shoot them if they try to leave. This is what modern life is like in Bethlehem, birthplace of our Lord and Savior.

Looking at the wall from the Israeli side breaks your heart because of its naked ugliness. On the Palestinian side, the unending slabs of concrete have been decorated with slogans, signs, and graffiti, which break your heart for different reasons. One of the hardest parts is reading the sumud series. These are short stories written on plain white posters, plastered to the wall about 10 feet up. Each story comes from a Palestinian woman or girl, and most are written in English, because the only people who read these stories are tourists.

One in particular catches my eye, by a woman named Antoinette:

All my life was in Jerusalem! I was there daily: I worked there at a school as a volunteer and all my friends live there. I used to belong to the Anglican Church in Jerusalem and was a volunteer there. I arranged the flowers and was active with the other women. I rented a flat but I was not allowed to stay because I do not have a Jerusalem ID card. Now I cannot go to Jerusalem: the wall separates me from my church, from my life. We are imprisoned here in Bethlehem. All my relationships with Jerusalem are dead. I am a dying woman.

The flowers are what gets me, because my mother also arranges flowers at church. Hers is an Eastern Orthodox congregation in Minneapolis, about 20 minutes by car from my childhood home. That’s about the same distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, although there aren’t any military checkpoints or armored cars patrolling the Minnesotan highways. Until today, I would’ve been unable to imagine what that would even look like. The situation here is so unlike anything I’ve ever encountered in real life that all I can think is, “it’s like a bad war movie.” For the Palestinian people who’ve been living under an increasingly brutal military occupation for the last 70 years, an entire lifetime, I can’t begin to guess at the depths of their helpless anger. What did Antoinette think, the first time the soldiers refused to let her pass? What did she say? What would my mother say? There wouldn’t be a goddamned thing she could do, or I could do, or my father or my sisters, or anyone else. We’d all just have to live with it, the soldiers groping us, beating us, mocking us. No wonder Antoinette gave up hope. In her place, would I be any different? We walk in silence for a long time.

We end up in a refugee camp called Aida, where more than 6,000 people live in an area roughly the size of a Super Target. Here, the air is literally poison. Israeli soldiers have fired so much tear gas into the tiny area that 100 percent of residents now suffer from its effects. If they were using the tear gas against, say, ISIS soldiers instead of Palestinian civilians, this would be a war crime, since “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases” are banned by the Geneva Protocol. However, such practices are deemed to be acceptable in peacetime, since there’s no chance an unarmed civilian population would be able to retaliate with toxic agents of their own. Without the threat of escalation, chemical warfare is just crowd control.

Before we continue, there are three things you should know about Aida. The first is that there’s no clear dividing line between Aida and Bethlehem, so an unwary pedestrian can easily wander into the refugee camp without realizing it. The second thing is that it doesn’t look like a refugee camp, at least if you’re expecting a refugee camp to be full of emergency trailers, flimsy tents, and flaming barrels of trash. The third thing is that the kids who live there have terrible taste in soccer teams.

We meet the first group as soon as we enter the camp. There are five of them, all teenage boys. One of them is wearing a knockoff Yankees hat. They’re staring at us, and at once I’m very aware of my camera bag’s bulkiness and the blondeness of my fiancée’s hair. A loudspeaker crackles with the cry of the muzzein, and it’s only then that I realize how deeply we Americans have been conditioned to associate the Arabic language with violence and death. The boys exchange a quick burst of words, raising my blood pressure even higher, and cross the street toward us.

“Hello… what’s your name?” The kid who speaks first is tall and stocky, wearing the same black track jacket and blue jeans favored by 95 percent of the world’s male adolescents. He’s also sporting the Ronaldo haircut, as are several of his friends. Two of the kids start to pull out cigarettes, so I pull out my cigarettes faster and offer the pack to them. Is this a bad, irresponsible thing to do? Sure, and if you’re worried about the long-term health of these kids’ lungs, you should call the American manufacturers who supply Israel with the chemical weapons that are used to poison the air they breathe every day.

I tell the kid my name is Nick, and he shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Shadi.” He’s carrying a rolled-up book, as are his friends, so I ask if he’s going to school. “Yeah bro, exams. We have three this week.” His friends laugh, and then engage in a quick tussle for the right of explaining that they’re heading to their math exam now, which is a boring and difficult subject, and I agree that it is, although at least you never have to use most of it after you finish school, a sentiment that earns me daps from Shadi and his friends, and we stand there giggling and smoking on the street corner of the refugee camp, though for a few moments we could be anywhere in the world.

My fiancée and I, both teachers by trade, start to pepper the kids with questions. Shadi says that he has one year left at the nearby high school, which is run by the UN refugee agency that was just stripped of half its funding by Trump. After he finishes, he plans to study at Bethlehem University. The other guys nod with approval, and speak of similar hopes. I ask them who their favorite footballer is, and they all say Ronaldo, at which I spit in disbelief, because everyone knows that Ronaldo sucks and Messi is much better, visca el Barça! Shadi and his friends break into huge grins, since few elements of brotherhood are more universal than talking shit about sports. Seconds later we’re howling with laughter as Shadi’s buddy makes insulting pantomimes about Messi’s diminutive size. A small part of my brain is loudly and repeatedly insisting that everything about this moment of life is batshit lunacy, that there’s no reason why I should be standing in a Palestinian refugee camp, yards away from buildings my country helped bomb into rubble, with my pretty fiancée and expensive camera, talking in English slang with a group of boys whose lungs are scarred with chemicals made in the USA, the exact kind of reckless young ruffians whose slingshots and stones are such a terrifying threat to the fearsome Israeli military, and the craziest thing of all is that here in the refugee camp, surrounded by derelict cars and rusty barbed wire and 6,000 displaced Palestinians, we are not in danger, at least not from whom you’d think. Here, in the refugee camp, we can joke around with people who speak our language and know our cultural references and actively seek to help us navigate their neighborhood. None of this is to say that Aida is a safe, comfortable, or morally defensible place to put human beings, but only that the people who live there treated us with such overwhelming kindness and decency that I have never been more ashamed at what my country does in my name. I tell Shadi and his friends to take the rest of my cigarettes, but they smile and decline.

“We, uh, have to go now,” says Shadi, as his friends start to walk up the street. “Do you have Facebook?” We do, because everyone does, and as we exchange information, I wish him good luck on his math exam. “No way, bro, I suck at math,” he says. We both laugh, and I pat him on the back.

“Fuck math. But hey, you’re gonna do great, Shadi.”

“Thanks bro. Fuck math.”

I hope he gets every question correct on his exam. I hope he goes to university and wins a scholarship to Oxford. I hope he invents some insanely popular widget and it makes him a billion dollars and he never has to breathe tear gas again.

We continue walking through Aida camp. The buildings are square, ugly, and drab, but the walls are decorated with colorful paintings of fish and butterflies and meadows (along with a somewhat darker array of scenes from the Israeli military occupation). We meet a group of cousins, aged four to 10, all girls, who ask if we can speak English. When we offer them a bag of candy, they take one piece each, and run away yelping when a man limps out the front door of their house. “Thank you,” he says, his face a mask of grave civility. Cars, all bearing green-and-white Palestinian plates instead of the blue-and-yellow Israeli ones, slow down so their drivers can shout “Hello!” We meet another group of kids, boys this time, who grab fistfuls of candy and make playful attempts to unfasten my wristwatch. We make a hasty retreat from this group. The streets are scorched in spots where tear gas canisters exploded. Narrow strips of pockmarked pavement lead us down steep hills and into winding alleys, and soon we’re lost.

This is how we meet Ahmed. He’s a tall man, about 40 years old, with a small black mustache and arms as thin as a stork’s legs. A yellow sofa leans against the concrete wall of the three-storey apartment building where he lives. Ahmed is sitting there with an elderly couple. He asks if we’d like a cup of tea, and although we’ve been warned about the old “come inside for a cup of tea” scam, we accept his offer. The elderly couple greets us in Arabic, and I try not to notice the large plastic bag of orange liquid peeking out from beneath the old man’s shirt.

While we climb the stairs to Ahmed’s apartment, he tells us that the old people are his parents. “They live here,” he says, pointing to the door on the first floor, “because they don’t walk very good. My mother has problems with her legs, my father is sick from the water.” He traces the pipes with his finger, and we see they’re coated in a thick reddish crust. “Here is the home of my big son,” he says when we reach the second floor. “He has a new baby.” We congratulate him on becoming a grandfather. “And I have a new baby, too! Come, I show you!” One more flight of stairs, and we arrive at Ahmed’s apartment.

It looks remarkably similar to a hundred other apartments we’ve visited. Framed photos of various family members hang on the living room walls, which are painted the same not-quite-white as most living room walls. There’s a beautiful red rug and a small TV. A woman is sitting on the sofa, nursing a baby as she folds socks. “My wife,” says Ahmed.

She speaks a little English too, and says that her name is Nada. She has a pale round face and long black hair. Her eyes are soft, kind, and completely exhausted. Yet if she’s annoyed or embarrassed by our presence, she doesn’t show it. She just hands the baby to Ahmed and goes to make the tea.

“I’m sorry for my house,” says Ahmed, cradling his son like a loaf of bread with legs. “We try to be clean, but…” There’s not so much as a slipper out of place, but I know what he means. “We rent this flat. And my son, and my parents. All rent. Before we have a farm, animals, olive trees, but now, we rent.” I ask about his job. He smiles and shakes his head. “I want a job,” he says, “I love to work. With my hands, with my mind. I love to work. But here, haven’t jobs.” For a second he looks like he’s going to continue this line of thinking, but he stops himself. “I help my wife, that is my job.” Ahmed laughs and passes his baby to my fiancée. “And he, he helps in the home?” She demurs while I protest in mock indignation. I do the dishes every morning before she even wakes up! Still laughing, Ahmed rubs his shins, and again it’s easy to forget we’re sitting in a refugee camp in Jesus’ hometown.

Then the baby wheezes. It’s a dry, scratchy wheeze. Ahmed squirms in his seat, looking embarrassed. The baby begins to cough. My fiancée rubs his back as the coughing turns wet and violent. Machine gun explosions blast from his tiny lungs. As an asthmatic, I recognize the sound of serious sickness. The baby writhes in my fiancée’s lap, struggling to breathe. He’s gasping and it’s getting worse fast. At moments like these, personal experience tells me that a nebulizer can be the difference between life and death. I don’t insult Ahmed by asking if he has one, because it’s clear that he doesn’t. All I can do is rub the boy’s chest with my finger, a stupid and useless massage. He kicks and stretches as if trying to wiggle away from the unseen demon that’s strangling him.

Nada hurries back with the tea. “I’m sorry,” she says, picking up the baby. She coos to him in Arabic and rubs his back, both of which are comforting but neither of which can relax the inflamed tissues of her infant’s lungs. “My baby…” Unable to find the words in English, she looks to her husband.

Ahmed rubs his cheek. “When she is pregnant, one night the soldiers come. They say the children throw stones. They always throw stones. So the soldiers shoot gas in all the houses. In the windows, over there.” His voice gets quieter. “And she is very sick. When the baby is born, he is sick too.” I ask him if it’s possible to find medicine. “Sometimes yes,” says Ahmed, “but very, very expensive.” For the first time, there’s a note of frustration in his voice. “Everything is expensive here. You see this,” and he picks up a pack of diapers, “it cost me thirty shekels. 10 dollars, almost. And the baby needs so many things. It is impossible to buy. I haven’t money for meat, how can I buy medicine?” He points to a plastic bag with four small pitas. “This is our food. One bread for my two sons, and two breads for my wife. She must make milk for our baby.” When I ask him what he eats, he holds up his cup of tea.

Somehow Nada has soothed the baby out of danger. His breathing is almost normal again, just a quiet raspy crackle. She’s still staring at him, her big brown eyes wide with worry. I don’t know how many times she’s done this before. I don’t know how many times are left before her luck runs out.

Somehow she’s keeping her baby alive with nothing but the sheer force of her love. I ask to use the toilet so I don’t have to cry in front of her.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #current affairs #foreign policy #long article #long reads #worth it #Israeli Occupation #freepalestine #apartheid

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omegaplus · 7 years ago

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# 1,769

Finds in 2017.

Burial “Nightmarket”

Vatican Shadow “Take Vows”

Powell self-titled

Salah Mustafa self-titled

Uniform Wake In Fright

Post-Trash Volumes 1 & 2

We Are Not Trump Volumes 1 & 2

Richard H. Kirk “Martyrs Of Palestine”

Aster Aweke self-titled

Richard H. Kirk “Never Lose Your Shadow”

Horse Jumper Of Love “Nature” (demo)

Dame Charm School

Nine Inch Nails “She’s Gone Away”

Eric Gale “Morning Glory”

JJ Doll “Dirge”

Miss Red “No Guns”

Bombshells, The Bake-Sale Hotties

Zoviet France “Rattle Stick Cruss”

Appetite “Kiss Of Judas”

Health “L.A. Looks”

Crim3s “Militia”

Girl Pusher “Best Ever”

Unstoppable Death Machines “Space-Time Continuum”

Pharmakon “Transmission”

Isn’t Ours “Osseous”

Blanck Mass “Please”

Ngly “Speechless Tape”

Tala ft. Mssingno “Tell Me”

Eagulls “Requiem”

Isolated Showers “Death Through Open Eyes”

Clams Casino “I’m God”

Current Affairs “Eyes”

Death Of Pop, The “Sun In My Eyes”

Eagulls “Skipping”

Ngly “Psychosis 1”

Mary Bell “I Hate You”

Nite Jewel “2 Good To Be True”

Giant Drag “Kevin Is Gay”

3ndles5 “Polyester”

Sonic Arts Union Electric Sound

Steve Khan “The Blue Man”

Alan Parsons Project, The “Fall Of The House Of The Usher (Pavane)”

Rasa Everything You See Is Me

Black Merda “Lying”

Negril self-titled

Lost Peace self-titled

James Clarke “In Suspension”

Link Wray & His Wray Men “Rumble”

Asylum First And Last

Raul Lovisini & Francesco Messina “Hula Om”

Tomorrow’s People Open Soul

Bad Zu KllKllKll

Chino Amobi “Warszawa”

Alice Glass “Without Love”

Thee Oh Sees “Tunnel Time”

Priests “No Big Bang”

Algiers “Cleveland”

Aphex Twin London 03.06.17

Dreamcrusher “Fear And No Feeling”

Fuzzoscope label Earwax Shelf Life

Wolf Alice “Yuk Foo”

Breakfast Muff “R U A Feminist”

Omar Souleyman “Heli Yuweli”

Alan Vega “DTM”

Black Marble It’s Immaterial

Zola Jesus “Soak”

Believer/Law “Task At Hand”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Gamma Knife”

clipping. “Story 2”

Ho99o9 “United States Of Horror”

Nine Inch Nails “Less Than”

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya “Hop Off”

Oldbills “smoke.mirrors”

Shapednoise “Witness Of A Heart Attack Death”

Sun Ra “The Star Gazers”

Thee Oh Sees “Toe Cutter / Thumb Buster”

Hysterics “Leave Me Alone”

M.I.A. “Born Free”

Martin Rev “My Street”

Pris Love, Labour, Loss

Rhyw “Vixen For Society”

AD/S “Transversal”

Harry Pussy “There’s A New Sound (Coming Through Your Town)”

Kamixlo “Splxcity”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Mr. Beat”

Pygmy Shrews “Catheter”

These Are Powers “Little Sisters Of Beijing”

Chromatics Just Like You EP

Covered In Sand “Heaven’s Gate Suicides”

Dreamcrusher “Trapdoor”

Pris Unbeknown02

Antwon “Helicopter”

SHXCXCHCXSH “Strghts Rrcnstrcns”

Stormzy “Big For Your Bootz”

Tourist “Placid Acid”

Algiers “Walk Like A Panther”

Counterparts “Bouquet”

Martin Rev “Stickball”

MPIA3 “Casual Welding”

Westside Gunn & Conway “Machine Gun Black”

Cold Cave “Rue The Day”

Eric Random & The Bedlamites “Call Me”

Bereket Mengistaab “Lebay”

Jaye P. Morgan self-titled

Jah Wobble & The Edge & Holger Czukay “Hold On To Your Dreams”

Couch Slut “Summer Smiles”

Appetite self-titled cassette

Wilbert Longmire “Pleasure Island”

Drvg Cvltvre “United States Of Fuck You, The”

Annette Peacock & Paul Bley “A Loss Of Consciousness”

Gordon’s War “Got To Fan The Flame”

Moon Diagrams “Nightmoves”

McNeal & Miles “Ja Ja”

John Carpenter “Assault Theme” (Legowelt RMX)

Drvg Cvltvre “Analogue Warfare Pt. 1″

Ciarra Black Pendulum

V/Vm “All Night Long (Butcher All Night)”

Marijuana Deathsquads “Crazy Master”

Unsane Sterilize

Ninos Du Brazil Vida Eterna

Zola Jesus “Vessel”

Cold Cave “Glory”

Eric Copeland “Neckbone”

Bernice Chardiet “All By Myself”

Happy Meals “Tomorrow Could Be Heaven”

Traces Of Ghosts “Nasty”

Couch Slut “Penalty Scar”

Jah Wobble & Jaki Liebezeit & Holger Czukay “Twilight World”

Pharoah Sanders “Greeting To Saud (Brother McCoy Turner)”

Cansei De Ser Sexy “Honey”

Prurient & The Rita “Side A”

Eric Random & The Bedlamites “Father Can Yell”

Jah Wobble “Blueberry Hill”

Damn Whore “Sadie Pinn”

Slothrust “Sex And Candy”

Metz “Drained Lake”

Marijuana Deathsquads “Crosstown Crippler”

M.O.T.O. “It Tastes Just Like A Milkshake”

Guitar Wolf “Fujiyama Attack”

Dedekind Cut “Fear In Reverse 2″

Birthing Hips “Sex Bias”

Hirut Bekele “Lishekem Fiker”

Sakura & The Quests “My Boy Lollipops”

Krimewatch 2016 demo

Orphx “What Will Burn”

Roman Cross Winter Cross Reh

Daeva Pulsing Dark Absorptions

Farah “Into Eternity”

Pharoah Sanders “Creator Has A Master Plan, The”

Godflesh “Post Self”

Bill Orcutt “Collective Action” (live)

Moon Diagarms “Magic Killer”

Snakehole “Something To Become”

Symmetry Themes For An Imaginary Film

Demdike Stare “Savage Distort”

Bathory self-titled

Subtle Turnhips “F* The People F* The Power F* The People To The Power”

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dubsism · 4 years ago

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Today’s Movie: A Woman Called Golda

Year of Release: 1982

Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Ned Beatty, Franklin Cover

Director: Alan Gibson

This movie is not on my list of essential films.

NOTE: This installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called The 5th Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blog-A-Thon being hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema. She hosted the first blog-a-thon in which I ever participated; you might say she helped create the monster you see now some 90 episodes later. At one time, I wondered why she kept having me in these events; after all, she has to be smarter than that considering she just earned an advanced degree in “filmy stuff.” Then I realized her genius…she has me around as my thick-headed slop makes the other participants look that much better 🙂

You can see all the contributors to this blog-a-thon here:

Days One, Two, and Three

The Story:

youtube

Have you ever heard the old saying “save the best for last?” No doubt, there are some hardcore Bergman-o-philes who might recoil in horror at what I’m about to suggest, but for my money, Ingrid Bergman’s final performance may very well be one of her best.

For purposes of full disclosure, I’m not the world’s foremost Ingrid Bergman fan. I don’t get far off the “beaten path” when it comes to her work; I couldn’t take a discussion much beyond “Casablanca,” “Gaslight,” or “Notorious.” I could barely tell you if Rossellini is a pasta dish or a director, but I can tell you this. Anybody who does consider themselves a fan of Bergman needs to have this movie in their “watched” folder.

The Necessary Backstory

If it weren’t for “Movie for a Rained-Out Ball Game,” I wouldn’t have discovered this gem either. Now, you can’t be a “movie snob” and still appreciate “A Woman Called Golda.” Going in, you have to understand this is a “made for television” effort; it has the inherent flaws of such a movie.

First, it’s pretty clear this movie lacked the luxury of a large budget. Second, having such low overhead is why local television stations had this film in the bank ready for the “rainy day.” Lastly, there’s the issue of casting. Most such films have three core characteristics:

1) A Collection of “That Guy” Actors

This is a tactic shared by disaster movies as I explored in the low-budget Martin Milner 1976 TV epic “Flood!” The difference is the price tags on the cast of familiar faces. “A Woman Called Golda” is no exception. The first-time viewer of a sufficient age is certainly going to recognize some faces of the time. If you were a fan of “The Jeffersons,” you might recognize Franklin “Mr. Willis” Cover playing Senator Hubert Humphery. Fans of the “Star Wars” franchise might recognize this movie’s “Mr. Macy” as General Rieekan from “The Empire Strikes Back;” the guy who looks like he’s wearing throat lozenges on his uniform. Then’s there’s the ever-present Ned “Squeal Like a Pig” Beatty.

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That’s just for openers. If for no other reason, you need to watch this movie to spot all the familiar faces. This cast features one Oscar winner and four Oscar nominees in a melange of the recognizable. You can even make a drinking game out of spotting them all.

2) A Television Legend

Arguably the biggest legend to date is television history in William Shatner. But if his first series didn’t become so iconic, Shatner is likely little more than a footnote in the grand scheme of the small screen; he’s forever the guy who sees gremlins on the wing in “The Twilight Zone.”

Let’s be honest, “Star Trek” doesn’t become a staple of television history with out Leonard Nimoy; Shatner lived long and prospered because of “Spock.” In the very same vein as the green-blooded Spock did for Captain Kirk, Nimoy’s presence in this film as Golda Meir’s husband lays the foundation for the capital piece of casting for any film of this ilk…

3) Honest to Goodness Hollywood Royalty (albeit an aging one)

Character actor extraordinaire Robert Loggia’s portrayal of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered the opportunity to portray one of the great dynamic characters of all time. Sadat was one of the military officers who staged a coup d’état against King Farouk in 1952. He became prominent in Egyptian politics serving as Vice President and Minister of State under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat succeeded Nasser as President of Egypt in 1970, the year after Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel.

The problem is Loggia was normally known for playing “Mob” type uber-hoodlums and he simply just wasn’t up to the task of playing a statesman like Sadat.

Frankly, there are times when Loggia’s performance borders on the clownish, but putting him in that role was either the definition of “accidentally successful” or pure, unadulterated genius. If an actor capable of exploring the depth of a character like Anwar Sadat had been cast in that role, it very easily could have forced a pivot in perspective of the whole film. If they had been able to put Anthony Quinn in that role, they might as well have re-worked the whole picture to “A Man Called Anwar” rather than “A Woman Called Golda.”

In terms of world history, the tales of Anwar Sadat and Golda Meir are inextricably linked, which makes telling the tale of one without making a co-star of the other intrinsically difficult. Besides, as previously mentioned, Paramount Domestic Television only had budget for one Hollywood monarch, and that was Ingrid Bergman.

Even if they hadn’t re-worked the picture, the Sadat character could have easily stolen the movie. When Sadat comes to power in 1970, he is the leader of a nation orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than Israel. Not only is that nation thirsty for revenge for the loss of the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 “Six-Day War,” but the Soviet Union is Egypt’s main source of foreign aid and also wouldn’t mind seeing the Jewish state wiped off the map. Sadat know that being hostile to both the United States and Israel was a hindrance to industrialization and modernization of Egypt, but changing those things was not going to be an “overnight” project.

But by 1973, the Arab states, particularly Syria, Jordan, and the Egyptian Army – those who had lost territory to Israel in 1967 – were ready to unleash the dogs of war yet again in a bid to recapture the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the other lands lost in the previously. This leads us to the defining moment of Golda Meir’s life.

The Brilliance of Ingrid Bergman

Golda Meir with Anwar Sadat during his visit to Israel in 1977.

“A Woman Called Golda” was a four-hour “made for television” movie originally aired in two-hour halves in 1982. As the aforementioned “Hollywood Royalty,” Bergman’s main role was to lend gravitas to the film. The film opens in 1977; the scene being Golda Meir has returned to her old school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is telling the students the story of her life. Through a series of flashbacks woven together with Bergman’s narrative, the audience is drawn into the story-telling. In one fell swoop, all the problems are solved. The way this movie was made eliminated issues created by the the quirky casting, the also aforementioned “Sadat” problem, and opens the door for Bergman to deliver a tremendous performance for a story which richly deserved it.

Meir was born on May 3, 1898 as Golda Mabovitch in Kiev, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). Her father went to find work in America in 1903, and once he had saved enough money, the rest of the family emigrated to Milwaukee in 1906 to escape the ever-present persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Those struggles fed Golda’s dream of an independent Jewish state. In the meantime, she attended college, became a teacher, met and married Morris Meyerson (played by Leonard Nimoy) in 1917.

Morris and Golda moved to the British Mandate of Palestine (land that would eventually become Israel) in 1921 to live and work on a kibbutz. While Golda was not performing her duties of picking almonds, planting trees, tending chickens, and running the kitchen, her leadership abilities were noticed. As a result, the other members of the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the General Federation of Labor known as the Histadrut.

Despite the fact they left the kibbutz in 1924, Golda’s rise in the political world would continue. The couple eventually settled in Jerusalem where they have two children; a son Menachem and a daughter Sarah.

The next step in Golda’s ascension took place in 1928 when she was elected secretary of the Working Women’s Council (Moetzet HaPoalot). This position required her to spend two years as an emissary in the United States. While this was a major step for her, it also marked the beginning of the end of her marriage to Morris. The children went with Golda to America, but Morris remained in Jerusalem. Over the next two decades Morris and Golda grew apart, but never divorced; despite their estrangement, they remained married until his death in 1951. The next two decades saw Golda serve in a variety of roles in service of Israel.

Meir with President Kennedy when she was Israel’s Foreign Minister. 1962

By 1969, Meir was in a state of semi-retirement due to health concerns, but after prime minister Levi Eshkol’s sudden death, Meir was elected as his successor. She took office in March of 1969 and maintained the coalition government between her own Mapai party and two others, the Rafi and Ahdut Ha’Avoda. Eventually, these three would officially merge to form the Israeli Labor Party.

But early in her term as prime minister, Meir eschewed politics to court other world leaders regardless of their ideology with her own vision of peace in the middle east. This included the President of the United States Richard Nixon, Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausesçu, and and Pope Paul VI. In a highly controversial move, Meir even hosted a visit to Israel by West German chancellor Willy Brandt in 1973.

Through Bergman’s portrayal and narration, viewers start to see Meir’s overall strategy of making Israel a sympathetic figure by being the side seeking peace. This is only exacerbated in the wake of the Palestinian terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. This strategy becomes pivotal in Meir’s finest moment.

Early in 1973, Meir cemented her relationship with American President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when she agreed to Kissinger’s peace proposal based on “security versus sovereignty” in which Israel would accept Egyptian sovereignty over all of the Sinai Peninsula, while Egypt would accept Israeli presence in some of the Sinai’s strategic positions. However, this back-fired; in October of 1973 the Arab states began massing troops on the Israeli borders.

Prime Minister Meir, President Nixon, and Secretary of State Kissinger in 1973.

This is the moment when Bergman’s portrayal fulfills the “gravitas” role – and then some – because this is the moment where Meir is faced with a decision with the fate of a nation hanging in the balance.

On the eve of the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” war, Israeli intelligence could not conclusively determine that an attack was imminent, but the signs of a heavy troop build-up in the Golan Heights and in the Sinai were clear. Meir was convinced this was a set-up identical to the Six-Day War six years earlier. On one hand, there were advisors telling her an attack was not likely. The Israeli public shared that sentiment, especially given the crushing defeat which was inflicted on the Arab states in 1967. Despite the fact she had complete authority to order a full-scale mobilization for war, Meir did not do so.

But a few days later, it became clear an attack was imminent, and Meir’s delay only allowed the enemy forces to grow in strength. Mere hours before the outbreak of war, Meir met with Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff General David Elazar. While Dayan continued to argue that war was not likely and felt that only the Israeli Air Force and two Army division needed to be called up, while Elazar felt a full-scale mobilization was necessary along with launch of a devastating preemptive strike on the Syrian and Egyptian forces.

Meir agreed to the complete mobilization of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), but would not order the preemptive attack. Meir told Dayan and Elezar that Israel’s survival would depend on foreign aid. To that end, she believed they were not able to depend on European nations to supply Israel with military equipment, and the only country which would possibly come to Israel’s defense was the United States, but that wouldn’t happen if the Americans felt Israel initiated the hostilities. Meir placed her bet; million of lives including her own and the survival of a notion were at stake.

At 2 p.m. on October 6th, the armies of Syria and Egypt poured into Israel. The IDF launched a series of blocking actions against the Syrians and launched a mostly ineffective counter-offensive against the Egyptians in the Sinai. By October 11th, the invading forces had been pushed back by the IDF, but the Israeli Air Force and Army had suffered massive casualties and had no reserves. If the Arabs counter-attacked at this point, the Israelis could have easily suffered a defeat ensuring the destruction of the entire nation and a blood-bath of unimaginable scale.

But Meir’s gamble paid off. On October 12th, President of the United States Richard Nixon ordered the launch of Operation Nickel Grass, and within 24 hours American military hardware began flooding into Israel. Within days, the re-armed and re-supplied IDF was back on the offensive with forces across the Suez Canal threatening Cairo and breaking out of the Golan Heights on the road to Damascus.

One of the reasons why Meir made the right call on the preemptive strike is she hedged that bet by letting Nixon and Kissinger know her decision and why she made it. After Operation Nickel Grass was launched, Kissinger told Meir that she made the right choice; that if she had ordered the firing of the first shot, he and Nixon “wouldn’t have given Israel so much as a nail.”

Ironically, it was Meir’s triumph in the Yom Kippur war which led to her political downfall. In the aftermath, the Israeli public demanded answers for why the IDF seemed so -ill-prepared for the initial attack which led to it taking such heavy casualties. Both Meir and Chief of Staff Elazar became scapegoats and were forced to resign.

The Legacy of Golda Meir

Israeli 10 Sheqalim Banknote commemorating Golda Meir

The film ends by coming full circle with Ingrid Bergman bringing the tale of Golda Meir’s life story to a close with the audience of school children. Meir died shortly after this trip to her school; she had been suffering from lymphoma for years. Bergman passed away on her 67th birthday only a few months from the end of filming “A Woman Called Golda.” Like Meir, Bergman was also suffering from cancer.

But despite the ignominious end to her political career, Golda Meir is still a revered figure in Israel. Not only is she on a bank note, she is buried on Mount Herzl, the site of Israel’s national cemetery. The first and only woman to hold the office of Prime Minister in Israeli history to date, and only the fourth woman to be a head of state in the world at the time, Golda Meir was known as the “Iron Lady” of Israeli politics; this term would later be used to describe Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion called Meir “the best man in the government” and “strong-willed, straight-talking, gray-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people.”

Similar glowing words for Ingrid Bergman came from her daughter Isabella Rossellini after she had seen “A Woman Called Golda.”

She never showed herself like that in life. In life, Mum showed courage. She was always a little vulnerable, courageous, but vulnerable. Mother had a sort of presence, like Golda, I was surprised to see it…When I saw her performance, I saw a mother that I’d never seen before – this woman with balls.

Like I said, if you consider yourself a fan of Ingrid Bergman, and you’ve never seen this film, you need to change that. Even if you already agree with the words of her daughter, once you see “A Woman Called Golda,” you’ll have a whole new appreciation for them.

Look what it did for me…the guy who still thinks Rossellini is something that comes with a red sauce.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

Give or take a few years, Golda Meir was born right around the same time as Joan Whitney Payson. They both died within a few years of each other as well. But other than today’s hidden sports analogy, the similarities stop there.

Meir came to America as a penniless immigrant escaping the pogroms of Russia of the turn of the 20th century. Her father was a carpenter who sweated for every cent he ever had. Payson was the essential “trust find baby;” She inherited a trust fund from her grandfather William C. Whitney of the prominent Whitney family and on her father’s death in 1927, she received a large part of the family’s fortune…which goes all the way back to the colonial days. She was “old money” of the first order, was pedigreed at Barnard College, and was known as a businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and renowned art collector.

Joan Whitney Payson

But Payson was also a dedicated sports enthusiast who also happened to be a minority shareholder in the old New York Giants baseball club. Albeit on a different scale, post World War II Palestine shares a crucial characteristic with Major League Baseball of the same time; for both this was a time of complete upheaval. The effect of establishing a Jewish state in land held by Muslims since the Crusades speaks for itself. But the 1950s represented an equally tectonic shift in the demographics of the United States…and consequently those of it’s biggest sport at that time.

The Baseball Diaspora

The 1950s ushered in an era for franchise relocation and expansion for Major League Baseball. By 1957, the lure of new and untapped markets was so strong it reached the de facto capital of baseball, New York City. The “Big Apple” was home three teams; two of them being the biggest franchises in the game. To this day, no team has won more games than the Giants, and no team has won more championships than the New York Yankees. Conversely, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the “red-headed step-child” of New York baseball. The Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley wanted to buy land on which to build a stadium to replace the dilapidated Ebbets Field. For a host of reasons, this proved difficult.

Meanwhile, emissaries from the city of Los Angeles were looking to entice a team to move to California. After the war, the advent of transcontinental airline travel meant the obstacles of slow rail travel and the distance to the west coast were no longer in play. Nobody really thought a team would leave New York; as such the Angelino’s target to move west was the Washington Senators. It was no secret that Senators’ owner Calvin Griffith was open to be courted for a move. But when stories began to appear of O’Malley’s dissatisfaction with New York, the faction from Los Angeles shifted their focus.

In no time, O’Malley and the city of Los Angeles had a deal in place, but there was one snag. Citing travel and scheduling concerns, National League president Warren Giles would not allow O’Malley to move the Dodgers to the West Coast unless he could find another owner also willing to move. O’Malley began to put out feelers, but It was starting to look like Giles’ mandate was going to kill the deal. There were only eight teams in the National League at the time; the process of elimination left O’Malley with what he thought were no “real” options.

August Busch just had the city of St. Louis handed to his Cardinals as their exclusive market when the American League’s St. Louis Browns left to become the Baltimore Orioles in 1954, so there was no way he was moving. One of the biggest proponents of westward expansion was the Chicago Cubs’ owner William Wrigley; the Cubs were the first team to move their Spring Training facilities out of Florida, and he already owned the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. But for a host of reason, the idea of the Cubs abandoning Chicago was almost heretical as a team leaving New York. The one team which might have moved west with him was the Boston Braves, but they already made their move when they headed to Milwaukee in 1953.

Just when O’Malley was about to give up on the Los Angeles deal and the Brooklyn fans were beginning to rest assured they weren’t going to lose “dem Bums,” the bombshell hit that both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants were leaving the “Big Apple” for Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively.

Horace Stoneham and Walter O’Malley right before they head for the airport.

What nobody knew that O’Malley discovered was the Giants’ majority owner Horace Stoneham was having similar difficulty finding a replacement for his team’s antiquated home stadium, the Polo Grounds. While all this was going one, the city of Minneapolis was already constructing Metropolitan Stadium in an attempt to lure a baseball team and/or a football team to the upper mid-west. The Minneapolis Millers were the New York Giants top minor-league affiliate at the time and Shoreham was noted to have said “there were not two better major league stadiums.”

That’s when O’Malley put “two and two together” deducing Shoreham was at least entertaining the idea of moving the Giants to the Twin Cities. Being open to leaving New York was the only opening O’Malley needed; he persuaded Shoreham to move the Giants San Francisco, fulfilling Warren Giles’ dictate the Dodgers would have a National League rival closer than St. Louis.

Redrawing Baseball’s Borders

As a minority owner of the the New York Giants, Joan Whitney Payson was staunchly opposed to the move. She knew what this would do to the fans. Baseball fandom in New York in the 1950 enjoyed the same fervor as any religion. It was a major component of your personal identity; race, creed, national origin, and Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees. It was that simple and well-defined, and you couldn’t change any of them.

In one fell swoop, legions of New York National League fans were cast into the baseball desert. Their teams were gone, and there was nothing they could do about. While Dodger and Giants fans enjoy of the great rivalries in all of sports, they do have one unifying factor. They both have an eyeball-splitting hatred of the New York Yankees.

Imagine what would have happened if in 1973 Golda Meir had said something like “In order to escape the never-ending cycle of war, we’re going to move the State of Israel to Utah. It’s just like Palestine; it’s got a big, salty lake and plenty of desert. It’ll be great!” Granted, that comparison leans a smidge to the absurd side, but it makes the point. It also sets the table for something even more absurd which actually happened. Imagine that after Israel made the move to Utah, somebody told the Jews left in Palestine that they could always just convert to Islam.

That’s essentially what National League president Warren Giles told Dodger and Giant fans after their teams were ripped out from underneath them. Giles was a huge proponent of expansion or relocation; anything that would put his league into new markets. During his term as president from 1952 to 1969, the National League broke out of it’s borders not having any teams farther south or west of St. Louis. In much the same way the borders of Israel were redrawn by military conquest, the borders of baseball territory were being redrawn by Warren Giles and his quest to chase the ever-shifting American population demographics.

The first step was the two New York teams heading for California. But it was in the 1960s when the expansion of baseball really took off. At the dawn of the decade, Giles announced plans to add four teams to the National League, with two being added in 1962 and two more in 1969. The plan called for the 1962 expansion to target Texas and the South, while the 1969 additions would focus on the West and possibly even a foray into Canada.

When questioned as to why there was no thought towards establishing a new National League presence in the “Big Apple,” Giles’ notorious reply “Who says you have to have a team in New York?”

The Rise of a New Baseball State

Naturally, Giles’ comments didn’t sit well with New Yorkers. But what baseball fans didn’t know was Giles’ visions of expansion were the direct result of the founding of a third Major League. While the Continental League never played a game, the fact that it had investors ready to move big-time baseball into cities where it did not exist yet made both the National and American leagues take notice.

Founded in 1958 by prominent attorney William Shea, the Continental Baseball League (CBL) had prominent prospective franchise owners like Bob Howsam (who would help create the American Football League and become the founder of the Denver Broncos), Wheelock Whitney, Jr. (who was influential in bringing professional sports to Minneapolis and was an owner of the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings) and Toronto’s Jack Kent Cooke (who at one time owned the NFL’s Washington Redskins, the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the NHL.). That was a formidable line-up, but the CBL acquired its gravitas when Joan Whitney Payson threw open the door of her Fort Knox-ian bank vault to fund the start-up league.

Once she knew she couldn’t stop the Giants from leaving New York, Payson immediately sold her interest and began efforts to get another team in the “Big Apple.” But once she heard Warren Giles’ comments about New York, she knew the National League president did not want to give her an expansion team. But once she heard of the Continental Baseball League, Payson knew one way or another she was going to bring baseball back to Brooklyn and Queens.

When Warren Giles found out that Payson had just been awarded the CBL’s New York franchise, he knew he could not have somebody with her wealth and dedication to New York as a rival in the nation’s largest market. As a result, Warren Giles and the National League awarded an expansion franchise in 1960 for New York City to Joan Whitney Payson. At this point, both her and Shea abandoned the CBL to focus on their new National League franchise. This effectively marked the end of the CBL, which formally disbanded later that year.

Many have speculated over the years that the CBL was simply a canard used by Shea and Payson to illicit an expansion franchise out of Warren Giles. True or not, the fact is they brought the National League back to New York. The rest is history.

The Legacy

The New York Mets took the field for the first time in 1962. They had a record of 40 wins and 120 losses, making them easily the worst team in all of Major League Baseball. The wins and losses didn’t matter; what was important was baseball was back for Brooklyn and Queens. In those boroughs, there was no baseball; the hated Yankees were for Manhattan and the Bronx. Building on that,Payson managed to merge the fan bases of the departed Dodgers and Giants in much the same manner Golda Meir unified three political parties in Israel. The Mets’ uniforms featured both Dodger blue and Giant orange, and for their first two seasons they played their home games in the Giants’ old home, the Polo Grounds.

William Shea and the stadium that would bear his name.

In 1964, the Mets moved into the newly-constructed William H. Shea Municipal Stadium, or “Shea” for short. Payson insisted the new venue bear Shea’s name in tribute for all he did to bring the Mets to New York. As for Payson, she retained majority ownership of the Mets and functioned as the team president from it’s inception until her death in 1975. But she was no “figurehead” in the corner office. Payson was “hands-on” for the day-to-day operations of the New York Mets every day of her life. She was a fixture in the team’s facilities and was well admired by the team’s personnel and players, and all around baseball as well.

Joan Whitney Payson was the first woman in a major North American sports league found a franchise from the ground up, to buy majority control of a team rather than inheriting it, and as such was the first to have her team capture championship when “Miracle” Mets won the World Series in 1969.

Joan Whitney Payson was there from Day One of the New York Mets, and she gambled hard with her own money to bring the dream of a new franchise in New York to reality. Golda Meir was there from Day One with Israel, and she literally bet her own life to save her dream of an independent Jewish state. As mentioned, Payson and Meir came from very different backgrounds; Payson had money, and Golda Meir ended up on money.

But they both created something which means a great deal to a great many people to this day.

The Moral of the Story:

Even the largest of historical figures can’t make history alone. but Joan Whitney Payson and Golda Meir got pretty damn close.

FUN FACT: There was a television mini-series made in America in 1983 about the life of Anwar Sadat. He was played by Louis Gossett, Jr. and it was banned Egypt.

BONUS FUN FACT: This is not the first time Ingrid Bergman’s portrayal of Golda Meir has been mentioned on Dubsism. She was actually one of our first Sports Doppelgangers.

Check out Dubsism’s Movies and Blog-A-Thons page for a full schedule of projects past, present, and future!

Got a question, comment, or just want to yell at us? Hit us up at [email protected], @Dubsism on Twitter, or on our Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook pages, and be sure to bookmark Dubsism.com so you don’t miss anything from the most interesting independent sports blog on the web.

Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies – Volume 90: “A Woman Called Golda” Today's Movie: A Woman Called Golda Year of Release: 1982 Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Ned Beatty, Franklin Cover…

#Baseball #Classic Movies #Golda Meir #History #Movies #New York Mets #Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies

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sweetness-of-faith · 5 years ago

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Prophet Joseph عليه السلام was a son of Prophet Jacob عليه السلام and a grandson of Prophet Isaac عليه السلام and a great grandson of Prophet Abraham عليه السلام (Allah's peace be upon them all).

The Bible says (and the allusions in the Quran also confirm this) that Prophet Jacob عليه السلام had twelve sons from four wives.

Prophet Joseph عليه السلام and his younger brother Benjamin were from one wife and the other ten from the other wives. Prophet Jacob عليه السلام had settled at Hebron (Palestine) where his father Prophet Isaac عليه السلام and before him Prophet Abraham عليه السلام lived and owned a piece of land at Shechem as well.

According to the research scholars of the Bible, Prophet Joseph عليه السلام was born in or about 906 B. C. and the incident with which this story begins happened in or about 890 B. C.

He was seventeen when he saw the dream and was thrown into the well. This well was near Dothan to the north of Shechem according to Biblical and Talmudic traditions, and the caravan, which took him out of the well, was coming from Gilead (Trans-Jordan), and was on its way to Egypt.

At that time Fifteenth Dynasty ruled over Egypt, whose rulers are known in history as the Hyksos kings. They belonged to the Arab race, but had migrated from Palestine and Syria to Egypt in or about 2000 B. C. and taken possession of the country.

The Arab historians and the commentators of the Quran have given them the name of Amaliq (the Amalekites), and this has been corroborated by the recent researches made by the Egyptologists.

They were foreign invaders who had got the opportunity of establishing their kingdom because of the internal feuds in the country.

That is why there was no prejudice in the way of Prophet Joseph's ascendancy to power and in the subsequent settlement of the Children of Israel in the most fertile region of Egypt.

They could gain that power and influence which they did, because they belonged to the same race as the foreign rulers of Egypt.

The Hyksos ruled over Egypt up to the end of the fifteenth century B. C., and practically all the powers remained in the hands of the Israelites.

The Quran has made a reference to this in v. 20 of Al-Ma'idah: “...He raised Prophets among you and made you rulers.” Then there arose a great nationalist movement which overthrew the power of this dynasty and exiled 250,000 or so of the Amalekites.

As a result of this, a very bigoted dynasty of Copts came into power and uprooted everything connected with the Amalekites.

Then started that persecution of the Israelites which has been mentioned in connection with the story of Prophet Moses عليه السلام. We also learn from the history of Egypt that the "Hyksos kings" did not acknowledge the gods of Egypt and, therefore, had imported their own gods from Syria, with a view to spreading their own religion in Egypt.

This is the reason why the Quran has not called the king who was the contemporary of Prophet Joseph عليه السلام by the title of "Pharaoh," because this title was associated with the religion of the original people of Egypt and the Hyksos did not believe in it, but the Bible erroneously calls him "Pharaoh."

It appears that the editors of the Bible had the misunderstanding that all the kings of Egypt were "Pharaohs." The modern research scholars who have made a comparative study of the Bible and the Egyptian history are generally of the opinion that Apophis was the Hyksos king, who was the contemporary of Prophet Joseph عليه السلام.

At that time Memphis was the capital of Egypt, whose ruins are still found on the Nile at a distance of 4 miles south of Cairo.

When Prophet Joseph عليه السلام was taken there, he was 17 or 18 years old. He remained in the house of Aziz for three years and spent nine years in prison, and then became the ruler of the land at the age of thirty and ruled over Egypt independently for eighty years.

In the ninth or tenth year of his rule he sent for his father, Prophet Jacob عليه السلام, to come from Palestine to Egypt with all the members of his family and, according to the Bible, settled them in the land of Goshen, where they lived up to the time of Prophet Moses عليه السلام.

The Bible says that before his death, Prophet Joseph عليه السلام bound his kindred by an oath: "when you return from this country to the house of your forefathers you must take my bones out of this country with you. So he died a hundred and ten years old, and they embalmed him..."

Though the story of Prophet Joseph عليه السلام as given in the Quran differs very much in its details from that given in the Bible and the Talmud, the Three generally agree in regard to its component parts.

#تفسير القرآن #سورة يوسف #quran translation #surah 12 #Joseph #thursday thoughts

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intothenoise · 6 years ago

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Living in Exile, at Home and Abroad: Palestinians Cope with Ongoing Marginalization

(This post was originally published as part of IMES’ Regional Brief for January 2019, written by Jesse Wheeler)

News and Analysis

I was struck this past month by two very different, yet ultimately related news stories. First, on 12 December 2018 the Israeli Knessetvoted overwhelmingly to reject the Basic Law: Equality bill by a margin of 71-38. A direct quote from the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the text of the bill stated: “The State of Israel shall maintain equal political rights amongst all its citizens, without any difference between religions, race and sex.” Following on the heels of the controversial Nation State law, which essentially formalized de jure that which had always been de facto practice within Israel, the government has now stipulated in no uncertain terms that the state exists for the privilege of one socio-religious group at the expense of another. The overt discrimination and increasing hopelessness of the situation are only highlighted by the fact that that Palestinian citizens of Israel – Christian, Muslim and Druze – comprise nearly 20% of the population, excluding the Palestinian territories under military occupation (which push the figure upwards to 50%). Such statistics seriously challenge Israel’s claim to be “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Meanwhile, Palestinians remain caught in a situation of seemingly endless liminality, unwanted guests within their own historic homeland.

Second, to mark the 70th anniversary of UN Resolution 194 granting Palestinian refugees the right of return, Al-Jazeera published on 14 December 2018 a report titled, Palestinians in Lebanon Reflect on ‘Fading Dream’ of Return. For at least four generations, since 1948 when they were violently expelled or fled from their homes in what now comprises Israel, Palestinians have been residing as refugees in Lebanon. Their situation in Lebanon, another Middle Eastern democracy, is overwhelmingly marked by poverty and marginalization, as refugees lack civil rights and are legally banned from numerous vocations. Refugee camps first established for 500 families, like Bourj-el-Barajneh in southern Beirut where I once served as a volunteer English teacher, now house at least 50,000 souls and are lacking in basic infrastructure. The delicate, yet tense demographic balance in Lebanon makes it unlikely that such circumstances will ever improve. The situation is only complicated by the fact that Israel, and now the US, has sought to wash its hands of responsibility for the mess it first created by pushing for the elimination of the “refugee issue” from the scope of acceptable conversation, even to the point of denying the existence of a refugee problem or the existence of Palestinians as a distinct people group. This, of course, would be news to anyone in Lebanon.

Given this environment, the Al-Jazeera report captures three divergent viewpoints expressed by the youngest generation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as they cope with their ongoing liminality, caught between the Scylla of perpetual resistance and Charybdis of normalization.

It records the earnest, heartfelt longing of those whose ultimate hope for escaping their ghettoization is returning to a long-idealized promised land:

“It is beautiful in Palestine, greenery everywhere.”

“There are olive trees. It’s like paradise.”

“Inshallah! One day we will return!”

The report also captures the fading hope of those looking to escape their circumstances for greener pastures abroad – akin to many Lebanese – in Europe or elsewhere:

He will not give up on the right to return – as a principle. “It is our homeland, my homeland. Wherever I work, my country is still my country,” he said.

However, he said if he had a decent life in Europe, that is a right he could choose not to exercise.

Finally, the report captures the bleak, hopeless ambivalence of those youth who after four generations essentially see themselves as Lebanese:

“I was born here, and I want to live here. And who knows how the Palestinians will treat us.”

A return to Palestine might just turn her into a refugee again, she reasoned – only all the harder because it would be in the country that her family dreamed of for so long. She would rather put up a fight in a familiar milieu.

“If I get rights in Lebanon, I’ll take them here,” she said.

Theological and Missiological Reflections

The last thing I seek to do in this reflection is wade into the troubled waters of Lebanese politics, or dare proffer a solution. Having been robbed of their agency for so long, it is for the Palestinians themselves to determine how best to respond to their own marginalization, the seemingly eternal exile in which they find themselves – at home or abroad. I can simply encourage the parties involved to not lose hope and hold firm to the promise of scripture that God stands with the marginalized, that He hears the cries of the castaway, and stands in judgement over princes of this world.

One, albeit ironic, resource I might commend to the Palestinians is that of the Old Testament, a story concerned in its very core with exile. Despite the abuses the text has endured in recent memory, abuses of which the Palestinians are the greatest victim, a careful reading will reveal that they too are heirs to the universal promises found within. Rather than avoid the Old Testament as a source of embarrassment, this is where the Palestinian church might lead the way in reclaiming its subversive message. To appropriate the text in such a manner might send a powerful message, and it might be just what the Palestinians need to reassert their agency.

Finally, I recommend two phenomenal reflections written by my IMES colleagues in recent months which do greater justice to this topic than I ever could:

Standing on the Edge of a River: Palestine, Israel, and Identity, by Nabil Habiby, and

Death in the Shadows of Displacement: Forced Migration, Deathliness, and the Hope for Life, by Brent Hamoud.

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romancatholicreflections · 6 years ago

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25th November >> Daily Reflection/Commentary on Today’s Mass Readings for Roman Catholics on the Solemnity of Christ the King (Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33-37): WE HAVE REACHED the end of the Church year. Today is the 34th and final Sunday of the year. And, as usual, we celebrate today the feast of Christ the Universal King.

Contrast

There is a great contrast between the readings. The First Reading is from the Book of Daniel and the Second is from the Book of Revelation. These are what we call apocalyptic books. The word ‘apocalypse’ comes from a Greek word (apokalypsis, ἀποκάλυψις) which means an ‘uncovering’ or a ‘revelation’ of something hidden. The books reveal the inner meaning of life and both were written for people who were suffering great persecution for fidelity to their religious beliefs – Jews in one case and early Christians in the other. The books are full of hope and look forward to a day when God will come in triumph and overcome the earthly powers which commit so many evils and bring so much suffering.

Son of Man

The Book of Daniel was written during the time of King Antiochus Epiphanes who desecrated the Temple of Jerusalem and forced many Jews to adopt idolatrous customs and to abandon the requirements of their Law. Many resisted and paid for their actions with torture and death. It is in this dark atmosphere that the author of Daniel wrote in today’s reading: “I saw one like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven.”

Christians, of course, see in the “son of man” Jesus their Lord who often referred to himself as the “Son of Man”. He was presented before the “Ancient One”, God the Father, from whom he received “dominion, glory – and kingship”. And this kingdom, unlike all those which have gone before, “is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed”. As Jesus himself was to say, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” This kingdom is indestructible and everlasting.

Fierce persecution

The Book of Revelation from which our Second Reading comes was written in similar circumstances to Daniel. The Church in parts of the Roman Empire was undergoing fierce persecution. Many were being arrested and martyred while others were driven underground. The Book of Revelation represents an underground document intended to rally morale and build up the courage of Christians. It is full of symbolical language and imagery, which the Christians could understand but which made little sense to their non-Christian persecutors. While the meaning of much of the symbolism and images has been recovered, there are still parts of the book whose meaning we can only guess at. (Thus giving a field day to some evangelical preachers to see in these symbols references to present day events. Most of these speculations are quite unjustified.)

Today’s reading comes from the opening chapter and is a hymn of praise for Jesus, “the first-born from the dead and ruler of the kings of earth”. Echoing the Book of Daniel, it sings, “See, he comes amid the clouds!” It continues: “Every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him”, namely, those who condemned him to death on the cross.

“All the peoples of the earth shall lament him bitterly.” Both out of compassion for his sufferings and out of guilt in so far as their sins caused them. And, in a way, that includes all of us. For, it was because of our sins that he died on the cross. There is none of us who can say: “It does not touch me.”

Alpha and Omega

But, as the Lord says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the One who is and who was and who is to come.” Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. They represent the beginning and the end. Jesus Christ is, as Paul in the letter to the Colossians and John in his gospel tell us, the source of all that is, the Alpha. Through him, the creating Word of God, all things were created.

And he is the Omega, the final goal for all creation. Every experience, every dream, every achievement is subordinated to this. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts will never rest until they rest in you,” said Augustine. This is another way of saying that Jesus Christ is our King. He alone gives meaning to our existence, to our lives.

The King before his judges

The Gospel brings us to a totally different setting. Jesus has been arrested in the garden. He has been subjected to a summary trial by his enemies and found guilty of the capital crime of blasphemy for equating himself with God. However, the Jews have no authority to carry out capital punishment so they have to submit their prisoner to the Roman authorities.

Jesus now stands before Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Palestine. “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus. It is hard not to hear a mocking tone in the question as Jesus stands there before him, a dishevelled prisoner in his simple garment. Immediately, as happened before the Sanhedrin, Pilate experiences the power and dignity of Jesus. “Are you saying this on your own, or have others been telling you about me?” Pilate was not used to being addressed like this, especially by one of his subjugated people. And it is a challenge to Pilate the Roman to come forward with the kind of firm evidence that was required by a Roman law court. (It is a challenge to us too. Is our knowledge of Jesus based on personal experience or simply on what we have been told in catechism class or sermons?)

Anger and contempt

Not used to being challenged by Jews, there is anger and contempt in Pilate’s retort: “I am no Jew! It is your own people and the chief priests who have handed you over to me. What have you done?” There again is the phrase “handed over”, which echoes right through the Gospel. John the Baptist, Jesus and his disciples are all “handed over” into the hands of those who would wish to destroy them. And in the Eucharist – in a very different and loving way – the Body of Christ is “handed over” to us to be broken and shared among us.

And the question: “What have you done?” How is it to be answered in a few words? It is the story of Jesus from the moment of the Annunciation, through Bethlehem and Nazareth, to the public life of preaching and teaching, healing and liberating and finally suffering, dying and rising – out of love. Instead of answering, Jesus speaks of the nature of his kingship.

It does not belong to this world; it is on a different level altogether. If it was a political kingdom, then his followers would rally together to save him from being “handed over” to his own people. But no one is rallying to his cause. His followers, with one or two exceptions, have fled in fear and confusion. His kingship is on a different level, a level over which Pilate has no control.

‘I am a king’

Again, Pilate asks – now a little more respectful in response to the dignity and power he recognises in Jesus: “So, then, you are a king?” “If you say so, I am a king.” But Jesus goes on to explain what being a king for him means: “The reason I was born, the reason why I came into this world, is to give witness to the truth.” Jesus’ kingship is not one of executive or coercive power. It is to open people’s eyes to the real meaning of life, of their existence and that of the whole world in which they live. And, he continues, “Anyone committed to the truth hears my voice.”

They are words of challenge thrown to Pilate, to his Jewish judges – and to all of us. And that is how one becomes a subject of this King, by sharing fully with him his vision of what is real, his vision of life and to share his goals.

Extraordinary liberation

To be subject to this King is to experience an extraordinary liberation and an exciting new outlook on life. Earlier he had said, “The truth will make you free.” Many see Christianity as a religion of bondage. They imagine they have a greater sense of liberation by leaving the Church. But this is a distorted reading of the meaning of Jesus and his mission (a distortion, it must be said, not always of their own making).

No one is more free than the one who has seen the truth through the eyes of Jesus his King and who accepts that truth as the Way to Life in its fullness. “I have come that they may have life, life in abundance” and “the Truth shall make you free”.

Today then we celebrate Jesus Christ as our King. And not only our King but the King of people everywhere, whether they are Christians or not. We are all called to submit ourselves to the same Truth, the same Reality which governs all things. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of all things. Through him as the Word of God, we are led to the throne of the one who is all Truth and all Love. “Our hearts will find no rest until they rest in Him.”

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freeyorker · 7 years ago

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“Atlas of Beauty” Photographer Travels the World to Capture thE Beauty of 500 Women Around the World

Numerous jobs aim to explore concepts of beauty across the planet, but perhaps none so dedicated and comprehensive as The Atlas of Beauty. After nearly four decades of traveling continuously around the world, photographer Mihaela Noroc‘s portraits of girls around the world are being issued in a new 352-page publication.

The book, which was published on September 26, 2017, includes 500 pictures from more than 50 countries, with many previously unseen pictures. It’s the fruit of many years of effort, together with Noroc traveling the globe to listen to women’s tales, accompanied just by her backpack and camera.

Her stunning images catch girls of all ages and sizes, demonstrating that beauty is more than what we see in glossy magazines.

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA. A while ago, Jade took out a loan, bought a professional camera, and started to learn photography. She dreams of traveling and taking photos all over the world. I had the same dream—and it came true.

And while Noroc acknowledges that girls are under immense pressure to conform to beauty criteria, she hopes her novel could give them another perspective on what it means to be amazing.

“While traveling, I discovered that there’s a lot of pressure on girls to look and behave in a specific way. In certain environments, it’s the pressure to look attractive. In others, on the contrary, it’s the pressure to look modest. But each woman should be free to research her own attractiveness without feeling any pressure from marketing campaigns, tendencies, or social norms.”

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND. : I met Thorunn in her hometown on a freezing day. But her warm personality made me forget the cold. A popular singer in Iceland, she was also a new mom to a baby girl, whom she wants to grow up happy and confident. So Thorunn started an online community called “Good Sister,” which drew a third of the women in her country to join in support of one another by sharing their stories and giving encouragement.

“Real beauty comes from inside, encouraging peace and humanity, therefore if our outsides are authentic and natural, our interiors will be more visible. We will need to learn to be ourselves, but to do that we also have to learn to let others be themselves.”

During her journeys, Noroc has worked her way through typically touristed countries but has also ventured to many that few outsiders see–like North Korea and Iran. Utilizing her camera to violate the isolation these states typically reside in–whether because of politics or war–she completes a larger picture of humankind around the world.

MILAN, ITALY. Caterina began dancing when she was three years old. Her mother, Barbara, was supportive, but knew that there were few opportunities to study ballet in their small town so, although her husband and son stayed behind, she moved with Caterina to Milan, where her daughter could fulfill her dream and attend one of the most esteemed schools in the world. Art requires huge sacrifices, but imagine how Barbara feels today seeing Caterina dancing on the celebrated stage of La Scala.

At times, these isolated areas even defy expectations. The women that there loved to be photographed, with Noroc stating that it had been one of the few nations outside the Western world in which she had seldom been refused a photograph.

“I hope this novel will get into many houses across the world, convincing more people that diversity is a treasure rather than a cause for battles and hate. We’re very different, but at the same time we’re all part of the exact same family.”

The Atlas of Beauty is now accessible for order on Amazon. Visit Noroc‘s site for a listing of global retailers.

RAMALLAH, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES. Amal—her name means “hope” in Arabic—is Palestinian, but has lived in Saudi Arabia from age five, when her family moved there. “One year ago, I came back to Palestine for my studies. I really feel at home here. I feel I can become the woman I want to be.”

ISTANBUL, TURKEY. During my travels, I’ve met so many stunning women who told me they don’t feel beautiful at all. Influenced by the way the media depicts beauty, many people feel pressured to follow a certain standard of beauty. But that’s not the case with Pinar. She is Turkish Cypriot and has long dreamed of becoming a theatre actress. So, she moved from Cyprus to Turkey, worked hard and fulfilled her dream. While she loves playing different roles on stage, in real life, she adores being herself, natural and free. In the end, beauty is about being yourself, something people like Pinar prove to be true.

HAVANA, CUBA. An actress? A model? No, she wishes only to finish her studies and become a nurse.

WEST JERUSALEM, ISRAEL. When I saw her walking on the street, I briefly thought that we had gone back in time. Rikki loves to wear vintage clothes and is very creative. She was born in Russia to a Jewish family and decided to move to Jerusalem.

DELPHI, GREECE. On a normal day, Eleni works in her family’s restaurant. But once a year, she dresses like this for Easter. It’s fascinating to see that, despite the fact that Greece is a modern country, it preserves many of its ancient traditions.

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA. Rarely have I seen such a concentration of uniforms; they are everywhere in this society. This woman was a guide at a military museum.

OMO VALLEY, ETHIOPIA. With the high temperatures here, nudity is not unusual. Her tribe is called the Daasanach and they have lived in isolation for generations.

NEW YORK, USA. Abby and Angela are sisters with an Ethiopian mother and a Nigerian father. Both parents worked for the United Nations so the sisters grew up in six different countries, on three different continents. This gave them a broad perspective and allowed them to see where need was the greatest. After graduation, they both plan to move to Africa and put their knowledge in the service of that amazing continent.

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO. Captain Berenice Torres is a helicopter pilot for the Mexican Federal Police. This brave woman, who is also a mother, is part of a special forces unit to fight drug cartels, or to rescue people from natural disasters.

CHICHICASTENANGO, GUATEMALA. Maria is a vegetable vendor in the market of her small town. She became shy as soon as she saw the camera.

PARIS, FRANCE. I met Imane at an art exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, her favorite place to dream, before she had to leave for a job interview. She is studying art at a university and also works in three restaurants and does some babysitting to support herself. But she wants to someday have an art gallery, one that will bring together artists from different cultures. She has African and European roots and loves the diversity of the world.

NAMPAN, MYANMAR. For many people around the world, this is what shopping looks like. They don’t have their own cars, or big homes, or bank accounts. But most of them are great examples of dignity, strength, generosity, and honesty. If more of those who have fortunes and power would learn from these wonderful people, we would live in a much better world.

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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Israel Endorsed Kurdish Independence. Saladin Would Have Been Proud.

By David M. Halbfinger, NY Times, Sept. 22, 2017

JERUSALEM--With a two-sentence statement supporting the Iraqi Kurds’ plan to hold a referendum on independence this Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put Israel at odds with nearly every other major player in the Middle East.

Mr. Netanyahu, who endorsed not only the referendum but the establishment of a Kurdish state, had ample strategic reason: A breakaway Kurdistan could prove valuable to Israel against Iran, which has oppressed its own Kurdish population.

But given the interwoven history and shared emotion underlying his statement, present-day geopolitics can seem almost beside the point.

The Kurds and the Jews, it turns out, go way back.

Back past the Babylonian Captivity, in fact: The first Jews in Kurdistan, tradition holds, were among the last tribes of Israel, taken from their land in the Eighth Century B.C. They liked it there so much that when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered the Babylonians and let the Jews go back home, many chose instead to stick around.

Sixteen centuries later, Saladin, a Kurd, treated the Jews humanely after he conquered Jerusalem, and notably hired a Jewish doctor, Maimonides, as his physician.

In the modern era, Kurdish Jews departed en masse for Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948, leaving Kurdish civil society so bereft that some recall its leaders still lamenting the Jewish exodus decades later.

Ties between the two have only grown warmer and more vital since the 1960s, as Israel and the Kurds--both minorities in an inhospitable region and ever in need of international allies--have repeatedly come to each other’s aid. The Kurds have long patterned their lobbying efforts in Washington on those of Israel’s supporters.

And while Kurdish leaders have not publicly embraced Israel in the run-up to the referendum, for fear of antagonizing the Arab world, the Israeli flag can routinely be seen at Kurdish rallies in Erbil and across Europe.

The Kurds in turn have friends and supporters all across Israel, including some 200,000 Kurdish Jews. But 83-year-old Tzuri Sagi, a retired brigadier general, has more reason than most Israelis to root for Kurdish independence.

In the winter of 1966, Mr. Sagi’s commanders sent him on a secret mission, via Israel’s then-ally, Iran, to aid Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his pesh merga rebels in Iraqi Kurdistan. Six Iraqi army brigades were standing by to overwhelm the Kurds when the snow melted. Mr. Sagi, a lieutenant colonel, drew up defenses for Barzani’s lightly armed fighters. When those collapsed, Mr. Sagi advised the Kurds to allow the best of the Iraqi brigades to break out--right into an ambush.

The 5,000-man Iraqi brigade was wiped out, and the battle, on Mount Handrin, became a landmark in Kurdish history. Mr. Sagi recalls Iraqi officers driving up in two jeeps waving white flags.

“They said to the Kurds, ‘What do you want?’” he recalled.

Over the years, Israeli doctors set up a field hospital for the Kurds, its soldiers trained the pesh merga fighters and the Mossad helped arm them.

After Israel’s defeat of its Arab neighbors in 1967 and the Baathist coup in Iraq a year later, Iraq became inhospitable to its dwindling Jewish population. Then it was the Barzanis’ turn to help.

After nine Jews were hanged in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in 1969, Iraqi Jews were desperate to flee. The Kurds helped some 1,000 of them escape, over land to Iran and then by plane to Israel.

One of the escapees was Zamir Shemtov, 63, now a dentist in Herzliya, who was a teenager in 1970 when his parents and extended family made their first attempt to flee Iraq. Arrested and locked up for a month, they tried again, but this time they were blackmailed, robbed, caught by the army and sent back to Baghdad, where his father was brutally interrogated, Mr. Shemtov said. Released two months later, they tried to get out a third time. This time, a Kurdish taxi driver ushered them to a safe meeting point where a young uniformed Kurdish fighter loaded them in his jeep and ferried them across the border into Iran.

Mr. Shemtov said that near the end of the drive, his father offered the fighter his gold watch in gratitude.

“The young man answered, ‘I am Masoud Barzani, son of Mullah Barzani, and if Mullah would hear that I took a watch, he would hang me!’” Mr. Shemtov recalled. “‘Instead, all I ask as thanks is that you remember us well in the future.’”

A few years later, the young Masoud Barzani succeeded his father as head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Since 2005, he has been president of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Mr. Sagi, who returned to aid the pesh merga against Iraq in 1974, said he traveled around Kurdistan quite a bit in those years, posing as a British journalist despite what can generously be called a tenuous command of English. “Sometimes I would tease the Kurds, and say negative things about Israel,” he said. “It always made them angry. They’d say that Israelis and the Jews are the best in the region.”

Mr. Sagi said such sentiments stirred a reciprocal feeling in him: “I became a patriotic Kurd.”

He was not alone: The story goes that Israeli soldiers and Mossad agents wept when the shah of Iran double-crossed the Kurds by signing the Algiers Accord with Iraq, a 1975 resolution of border disputes that ended the Kurdish rebellion and forced the pesh merga to retreat into Iran.

Today, as the Kurds take a step they hope will realize a national dream of an independent state, they have been increasingly isolated.

Iraqis oppose the Kurdish referendum because they want to keep their country intact. Iran and Turkey fear it will escalate separatist ambitions among their Kurdish minorities. And a coalition of powers, along with the United Nations Security Council, fear the referendum could disrupt military efforts to defeat the Islamic State.

But Mr. Netanyahu had little to lose from his endorsement of the referendum, experts say.

“Israel is desperate for friends in the region, the Kurds generally want to be friends, and they don’t care about Palestine,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official who visits Kurdistan frequently.

Moreover, Israel stands to gain a potentially valuable ally in its struggle with Iran, he said.

“Iraqi and Iranian Kurds have deep ties,” he said. “And to create trouble for Iran, one way is to encourage independence for Iranian Kurds. The Iranians are terrified and furious about exactly that: that the Israelis are doing it, and that an independent Kurdistan will be a base for Israeli operations against Iran, via Iran’s Kurdish population.”

While United States policy is to try to preserve Iraq as one entity, the Israelis are more practical, said Peter W. Galbraith, a former diplomat with extensive experience in Kurdistan: “Why lose all of Iraq, when you could save part of it?”

At bottom, though, analysts and ordinary Israelis alike seem invariably to land on moral and emotional arguments for supporting the Kurds, often sounding much like Mr. Shemtov, the Iraqi-born dentist.

“Our two nations have fought against all odds when those surrounding us wanted to destroy us,” he said. “From my perspective, if there is a lone sign of light in Islam, it is the Kurds.”

#Iraqi Kurds #kurdish independence #Israel and Kurds #Jews and Kurds

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