Hamas, Palestine, and CNN

Whatever your feelings are on the existence of a separate nation known as Palestine, the fact of the matter is that the Palestinian people voted in a democratic election, and Hamas has won control over Palestinian government in a landslide of votes. Regardless of whether you feel they should be labelled 'terrorist' or 'militant', whether you see them as a resource providing medical and educational services to the palestinian people or just another fanatical group intent on blowing babies to shreds, CNN has done it again, and shown the world just what total absolute douches head their editorial board.

In a What is Hamas? Interactive popup banner, CNN gives a brief overview of (it's version of) Hamas, likely for the purpose of educating (or brainwashing; again, whichever reading you choose to give it) Americans as to what this mysterious entity is.

An exerpt from the popup reads:

Introduction
Hamas is a fundamentalist group that wants to establish an Islamic state on what it considers "historic Palestine," which includes modern-day Israel.
Its political wing won a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections, while its armed faction is renowned for attacks on Israelis.
...
Hamas' official charter calls for Israel's destruction, but that demand was not central to its platform in the elections. It refuses to recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist and opposes a U.S.-backed two-state solution.
...
Its military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, has claimed responsibility for terrorist operations, including suicide bombings in Israel as well as attacks on Israeli troops and Jewish settlers in Gaza and the West Bank.
...

Okay, here's my favorite part:
Its fighters have mostly observed a cease-fire for the past year.
Leaders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
-cnn.com

It is physically impossible to 'mostly' observe a cease-fire. If you are only mostly observing a cease-fire, it means you aren't observing a cease-fire. Once someone starts kind of firing their gun, the cease-fire is totally unobserved. It's like being mostly pregnant.
Observing a cease-fire is a binomial state. You either observe it, or you don't. It's that simple. If you're mostly observing it, you're also partially violating it. Hey! Another binomial state!


Also, isn't it really cute how they put the line about the Israeli-led assassinations right under the part about mostly observing the cease-fire? Like, without mentioning that the airstrikes took place before the cease-fire came into effect? As if they were trying to say "Oh, all we did was shoot off a couple of guns, but the big bad Jews got us with their big bad planes..."

Hamas' official charter calls for Israel's destruction, but that demand was not central to its platform in the elections.

Oh. Good. I'm glad they swept that under the carpet then. Because it would have been totally embarrassing for the Palestinians if they had elected a party that was all "Hey, vote for us and we'll end the corruption caused by the Fatah and finally send your children to school. And let's go lynch us some Jews, y'all!". You just don't get invited to many social functions after that kind of a faux pas.

Another thing: "Its political wing won a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections, while its armed faction is renowned for attacks on Israelis" . Am I supposed to take this to mean that the two wings are unaffiliated? Because something inside me tells me that it doesn't work that way. You can try as hard as you might to divest a government of the wrongdoings of it's army, but the political faction carries the full moral and legal responsibility of the actions of it's military/armed faction. If the political faction is saying that they are not in fact responsible for their military wing, then the Hamas military is in fact effecting a military coup, which entirely undermines the democratic process in which they came to power.

What a Catch 22.

And what is this renowned business? Did someone give them an award? Is CNN actually congratulating Hamas for attacking Israelis?

The writer of the pop-up has managed to do two very opposing things at once, which is impressive, to say the least. S/he has a) managed to make the Palestinians look like complete idiots for having chosen such a fanatical and yet wishy-washy (because if you are going to violate a cease-fire, you might as well go all the way. What's this mostly garbage? Syria wouldn't stand for that crap) group to head their people and b) managed to be virulently anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, all at the same time.
Seriously, that kind of talent deserves a round of applause.

*sound of one hand clapping*

(You really have to ask yourself, a-what kind of drugs were the editors who let this one get by on, and b-where can you get some of that?)

PS: CNN: W.T.F. You guys really need to fire your editors. They're killing you.
PPS: Douchebags.

Cesspool of Disease

First of all, how great is the word cesspool? It just implies 'grossness' all over the place.

Second of all, I am a walking, talking cesspool of disease. It seems I have tonsillitis. Again. Second time in a month. In fact, my tonsils are so badly infected, that when i finally got to see the doctor, he looked in my mouth immediately said "Oh, gross."

I love it when the medical professionals are all grossed out.

My throat is covered in yellow pus, and I have spent the last 48 hours imitating a cat with a severe hairball problem when i spit into the sink because my throat is so swollen that I can't swallow much anything. (hey! great new diet...) My roommates are beginning to worry that I'm dying.

Fun Fact: "I am dying" in Hebrew is אני גוסס\ת or ani goses/et.

The upside of waking up to fever sweats and the feeling of a thousand tiny knives stabbing you in the throat is that I am actually getting some work done vis a vis my exam notes for lexicology, the bane of my existence. I will not be nearly this productive for my semantics or morphology exam notes. Unless I can't sleep because i wind up sitting next to some gross person on the plane, God forbid phtoo phtoo phtoo.

Another upside is that I'm taking Rafapen, which come in doses of 1000 mg of penicillin per pill. So anything in my system that even thought of acting up is now steamrolled to oblivion.

Excellent.

New people are here for winter ulpan, and I've tried making friends, but it really will have to wait until after exams and Toronto when i can be more social and less holed up in my room glued to my computer and notebooks.

It's too damn cold here. Ten degrees is like freezing now to me.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Sucks to be Canadian! and in Canada! Where 10 degrees in January is a heat wave!

I need it to be March soon so I can 'do my homework' on the beach again. Every day. For the next five months.

Again: Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Ackthp

Yesterday, in the middle of checking my email, my screen went black and then did this epileptic seizure thing where it flashed back and forth between the normal screen and the black screen.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Message to my Inspiron 5100: I hate you. I hope you get stolen and then insurance covers it and then Dell will be all "oh, the Inspiron 5100? Yeah, we recalled those. Cause they suck. Here, take this brand new iBook. it's so cute!"

*hate*

We are experiencing technical difficulties

There is a curious burning smell emanating from the centre of my keyboard.
This is because my computer sucks at life, very much like the dumbass settlers in Hebron, who, after being informed that they were being evicted from the palestinian homes in which they were illegally squatting (is that redundant? does 'squatting' pre-empt the 'illegal'?), they began to riot, because apparently they have nothing better to do, and hurt an Israeli soldier with stones they were throwing at which point they expressed regret for hurting the Israeli soldier because (quote) "that's not what [they] meant to do", but in that case, what in the hell did they mean to do with those rocks in the first place?

Right.
Anyways.

You know what, I'm not going to end the digression. Your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose; it's like the bully who closes his eyes and starts kicking at the air, and whoever gets in the way of his feet, well, too bad. Haaretz.com offers a 'talkbalk' option, where readers can submit their opinions to certain articles, and I believe that one reader had it right when he said "the IDF shoots at palestinian stone throwers, and they should shoot at the israeli ones, too". And the reader, while extreme, is absolutely right. When you commit a violent act, you should a)be lined up and shot and/or b)arrested. Personally, I'm a fan of option A, but whatever. Maybe just knock them around a little bit. Like, "Oh sorry man, I totally didn't mean to pistol-whip you with my M-16. I was merely using my freedom of expression to express my annoyance that some dumbass settler thought that throwing rocks at soldiers was an appropriate outlet for his poorly disguised bigotry against the Arabs and left-wing Jews. At least I had the safety on, eh? That could have been embarrassing. Hey, you should put some ice on that, it looks like it's gonna bruise..."

Back to reasons why i am technologically retarded...

My computer goes through phases, much like an obnoxious teenager. Sometimes, when I'm watching a movie, it says "Hah! Screw you!" and shuts down. Other times, after being idle for a while, it refuses to refresh the screen, and informs me of a critical error upon being rebooted.
It seems that my computer and I are in an emotionally abusive relationship.

If anyone from Dell is reading this, I have an Inspiron 5100 and I hate it and please for the love of God, recall the damn thing and hook me up with something cute and small like the newest cute and small iBook or something from the sexy sexy Sony TR series, even though you don't manufacture them, I NEED them....because the Inspiron 5100 currently sitting on my desk? Is no longer my best friend.

Also, my cellphone likes to short out every now and then. See, when I was out dancing at a club, I stuck it down the front of my shirt because I didn't have good pockets or any kind of purse with me and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But apparently my cellphone is sweat-sensitive, and after 15 minutes, the only keys working were the zero and the five key. If you have never blowdried your cellphone, it's an experience that shouldn't be missed. Three weeks later, I am still having problems with the seven and the eight key. Oh well. Six more months.

And lately, the elevator and I, which have never been really close, are bitter bitter enemies. There is one elevator servicing about one thousand or so students (give or take a couple hundred) living in the dormitories, and in fact we really do need to use it because either you take the outside stairs in the cold and the rain and the wet or you take the elevator, because the inside stairs are blocked off from public access between the second and the fourth floor (i.e: Unless you are one of the IDF soldiers studying....i don't know, garbage can burning....here, you ain't gettin' to that there third floor), which means everyone needs to take the elevator down to the second floor, i.e my floor, if they come from inside, which they do, because the outside stairs have somehow formed a windtunnel and it's actually colder to take them than it is to just stand outside. Anyways, the elevator is always packed with people from about 7:30-8:30 in the morning so often I just take the damn stairs anyways to get to class, but what is unacceptable is when at 8 pm, I'm just trying to get up to the main floor and I get in the elevator, and the doors close...and ding open again because something is covering the electric eye. And then close and then ding and close and ding and close and ding.... (repeat until idiot foreigner gives up and leaves the premises screaming trilingual obscenities in the elevator's general direction and storms up the stairs promising no uncertain death to the technicians in this @#*%ing country, then proceed to work normally for the Israeli students who will later avoid looking the idiot foreigner in the eye next time they pass her in the hallway because it is uncertain when she might trilingually tweak out at them too.)

I want sushi.

Grades!

For those of you keeping track, my marks are in for Hebrew

*drumroll*

98%.

That would be an A+

And if Queen's wasn't giving me pass/fail for every single credit taken here, that would be even better =P

In other news, I got 95% on my Morphology midterm, and 91% on my Semantics midterm. No word yet on the mark for my Lexicology project, but it's looking promising.

Updates, updates.

I have not updated in so long simply because I am lazy. So I am now succumbing to peer pressure (read: Arielle's lovely post which yelled "JESSIE UPDATE". Classy), and providing a full account of the last two and a half weeks.
And after realizing that nothing new really happened, I have come to the conclusion that I am an awfully boring person.
Meh.

After the baby jackass penguin scandal, I spent a relatively quiet Christmas Eve at Noa's. In fact, I seem to be spending most weekends/free time where I'm not procrastinating on the internet at Noa's, cf. last night when we had a pyjama party at her apartment to watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Most of my friends from the Overseas Department have now left me for bigger and brighter prospects in North America, which is fine, but leaves me here. Alone. With nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and pretend to be doing homework.

And you'd think I'd go out and explore the country, but no. It's raining here now, and you'd think that in the Holy Land, we could rain somewhere more productive, like the Negev desert as opposed to the tree-dotted countryside. Actually, Haifa probably needs the rain, too. I just wish it didn't. Because the rain is mixed with the cold and it actually reached 2 degrees yesterday, which is unacceptably close to Canadian weather, and promises to be just as cold for the rest of the week. So the moral of the story is that the weather is not conducive for travelling, and also, at some point I really should buckle down and finish my essay due monday and work on exam notes and maybe pack for my trip to Toronto.

So instead I idle away the week, in class Monday's and Thursday's, volunteering at Bet Sefer Ofakim for children with severe developmental and/or neuro-muscular disabilities Wednesday's and Sunday's, sleeping in on Tuesday's, pretending to do homework over the weekend, and going either to Noa's or to Aunt Shirley's in the evenings to veg out and be fed and watch TV.

I'm clawing at the walls. I hope the spring semester students get here plenty fast.

That's all for now. Happy New Year's, etc, and maybe at some point I'll post about how I'm a completely technologically inept, but the shower beckons to me.

-J