Sometimes you sit and watch a major event like the Terri Schiavo case and it seems so big, so dramatic and so alien that you forget that your own life has passed the same way.
My father had a massive cerebral hemmorhage in December, 1995 (also in Florida). He’d developed a severe headache and before the paramedics arrived he was essentially brain dead. By the time the family assembled by his bedside the next day, he was on a respirator. The doctors told us there was no brain activity whatsoever. They asked us what we wanted to do.
My mother tends to be old school. She saw her husband before her on the hospital bed. He appeared alive. She could not imagine life without him after over forty years of marriage. I know she struggled with what to do. But we, his sons all agreed that there was no point in continuing his life with a shell of a body all that remained. I think we knew that my dad himself wouldn’t have wanted to be kept alive artificially. To what end?
We decided to pull the plug. We each lined up to pay our respects. It was hard to look at my dad in that state. I decided to kiss him on the cheek. This too was odd since my father was not a physically demonstrative person. While I kissed him because I knew I couldn’t kiss him while he was alive I also felt cheated that I couldn’t kiss him until he was essentially dead. Isn’t it strange the thoughts that race through one’s head at moments like this?
They removed the respirator. My father’s strong heart slowed until it finally stopped completely. He was gone. Of course, given this was a hospital the monitors began emitting terribly annoying siren sounds which the staff took entirely too long to turn off. But once they had the whole ordeal was over. My dad had died quickly and in tranquility.
Why can’t Terri Schiavo do the same?
It’s so peculiar to me that it’s taken all this time watching the headlines and the circus before I realized that I’d gone through a mild form of the ordeal facing the Schiavo family (though my ordeal was thankfully minus the morality circus surrounding poor Terri).
David Broza, an Israeli pop star and Wisam Murad, founder of the Palestinian contemporary music ensemble, Sabreen, will deliver unprecedented performances of a song they co-wrote, In My Heart (B’Libi–hear it), on Galey Tzahal, Israeli Army Radio and Voice of Palestine (Israeli, Palestinian to sing for peace on air). The broadcast will take place this Sunday at 10:10 AM Israel time (12:10 AM Pacific Standard Time (PST)). Click here for the Galey Tzahal audio stream. Broza will perform the song in Hebrew on Palestine radio and Murad will perform the song in Arabic on Israel radio.
Not only is it unlikely this has ever been done on radio in either country, I don’t think it’s ever been done in a concert hall in either place either (though I could be wrong about that–and please correct me if I am).
The NBC Nightly News (video link–beware…MSN Video doesn’t play well with others…I couldn’t get it to play using Firefox) featured a riveting story on the song on last night’s broadcast. MSNBC provides a text version of the story which quotes Murad on the broader implications for peace inherent in the song: "If we love the land, if we believe in history, we can create good future for us." The NBC News clip indicates there is a music video of B’Libi. If any Israeli readers visit here, please help me get a link to the video!
Galey Tzahal deserves special praise for embracing the initiative as another Israeli station was first approached to participate and declined. According to Haaretz, Galey Tzahal DJ Razi Barkai presented the station’s manager Avi Bnaya with the initiative, and Bnaya approved it. "I agreed to play the song because I believe that in the new general atmosphere that has been created, music and lyrics can connect between hearts and people, mainly young people."
In Broza’s interview to publicize the performance, he stated that:
he and the Murads were hoping that airing "In My Heart" would narrow the divide between their societies.
"If Said and I could sit when chaos, bombs and havoc were all around us and could write about love, then others can. After all the pain and anger, something sweet can come out."
Amen to that.
David Broza is an interesting figure within the Israeli music scene. Although born in Israel, he grew up in Spain and absorbed a European musical sensibilty. When he first crashed the Israeli pop scene in 1979 with the smash hit peace song, Yihye Tov, (this 1982 version is by Yasmine, an ensemble including my brother and I), he was a brash young singer who wrote songs that delivered less than they promised. Yihye Tov’s title, tone and melody derived from Paul Simon’s wonderful, An American Tune. The former was an infinitely simple, touching and slightly syrupy pop song that embraced the values of the peace movement.
He eventually moved to the U.S. and began an English language music career. Over the years, Broza’s musicianship and songwriting have matured and become more nuanced and sophisticated. He now performs and records albums in Spanish, Hebrew and English and is a musician of the world.
I’ve now completed the translation of the Hebrew lyrics (except for a single word which I’m having trouble hearing and understanding clearly on the song file). If anyone can send me the Hebrew lyrics or provide a link, I’d be grateful. Also, I do not know Arabic so if anyone can translate the Arabic lyrics for me I’d be doubly grateful:
Adam ["a man"] is a man Time is a mere moment [In which] he builds his world And it blooms in his garden
In my heart In my body In my spirit In my bosom Is our land Our blood Our soul Our lives
The salt and the sea The light and the truth
The truth The light Drunk or sober In my eyes, my tears ["emotions"] You are my love
The more I study the lyrics in trying to translate them, the more I realize the utter simplicty and profundity of them. The style is a bit like Zelda’s (an early 20th century Israeli poet) stripped down language or perhaps like one of Leonard Cohen’s dirges or Samuel Beckett. These are stark words, full of pain, full of suffering and full of love of country. Many are calling B’Libi a "peace song." But strictly speaking this is not so. You will not see the word shalom in the Hebrew lyrics. That’s because the song is not about peace. It is about land, place, community and nation. The song posits that both peoples are rooted deeply in their native soils and traditions. It seems to say that once both sides can acknowledge this then peace will flow from this understanding. But peace cannot flower where one nation denies the rights and aspirations of the other.
Alluding to Adam in the first line provides the song with an elemental Biblical reference which also includes an allusion to the Garden of Eden and by inference, the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. What the songwriters are saying is: "this land of ours is our garden just as Eden was Adam’s. We only have it for the short time we are here. Let us treasure and share it so that others who follow us will not have to die."
If you read the lyrics you can easily imagine an Israeli settler or Hamas militant writing precisely the same words if they were to write a song. After all, what is more important to militants on both sides than land and blood? This ability to project the deepest emotions of both sides of the conflict is what makes B’Libi so powerful. It makes you realize that both peoples feel equally intensely about their respective countries and they also feel many of the same emotions. And if this is so, can reconciliation be far behind? No, the song tells us. We love the same things and in the same way. We are both human. There is yet hope for healing.
I studied at the Hebrew University in 1979-80. The campus student body was conservative and campus politics generally favored the Likud. Tzahya HaNegbi, son of arch right wing politician Geula Cohen and eventually Sharon cabinet minister in his own right, was student body president. That year, on Yom Student, the campus hosted a concert at which Broza was the featured performer. He sang one of his other hits, Bedouin Love Song. What was radical about his performance was that he performed one of the verses in Arabic. You cannot imagine what the sound of Arabic sung by an Israeli Jew on a right wing campus was like. It was electrifying (for those of us doves in the audience), but it was also slightly transgressive since we all knew how many students detested what Broza was doing. Broza was testing the limits of his audience, while broadening the discourse. A brave thing to do in a society not known for embracing ideas outside the political mainstream.
With this project to perform B’Libi on Palestine and Israel radio, Broza is again breaking new cultural and political ground. What the Mideast needs now is love sweet love, just the kind that Broza and Murad represent in their music.
In researching this post, I visited the Sabreen website, which hosted two mp3 files of their work. It is amazingly vital music and thankfully retains much of the traditional instrumentation of Arab music ensembles. Hear In the Silence of the Night.
March 22, 2005 at 1:49 pm · Filed under Mideast Peace
Rabbi Arik Ascherman repairs demolished Palestinian home (credit: RHR.israel.net)
In 2003, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights, physically interposed himself between an Israeli police bulldozer and a Palestinian home being razed because the owners had not obtained a permit ot expand it. Considering that Palestinians cannot get such permits, Ascherman thought it unjust for Israel to essentially force Palestinians to live in abject misery with no hope of improving their lives or living conditions. Like Martin Luther King, he and his group feel a moral responsibility to oppose a nation’s unjust laws especially as they oppress the weakest among them.
Yesterday, an Israeli court made Rabbi Ascherman a criminal (Israeli court convicts rabbi of interfering with demolitions). It should be said that the prosecutor asked the judge to set aside the verdict and commute the sentence to performing community service so that Ascherman would not have a criminal record. If I were Ascherman, I wouldn’t allow the Israeli justice system the satisfaction of assuaging its conscience in this way. I’d say like King did in the Birmingham jail incident, I would force them to sentence me to prison. This no doubt would strengthen the point Ascherman is trying to make in the eyes of Israelis: that they should not stand idly by while Israel oppresses innocents who seek nothing more than making their families a bit more comfortable.
Ascherman’s response to the court was:
"For us, this trial really was about the people who have no voice here, the victims of home demolition. And that’s why we’re going immediately from the courthouse…to begin the rebuilding of one of these homes."
The prosecutor also revealed this interesting reasoning behind the necessity for Ascherman’s conviction:
In a reference to the planned evacuation this summer of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank against stiff opposition from settlers, the prosecutor warned that "especially in these days" such protests could pose a danger.
"One can imagine what the situation would be here if we were to allow this kind of resistance," the prosecutor told the court.
It is preposterous for him to equate what Ascherman did to what settlers are doing in the face of dismantling their settlements. The Palestinians whose homes were demolished had lived in them for a long time, even generations, with the approval of the authorities. When they expanded their homes, Israel demolished their entire home (an extraordinarily disproportionate punishment). The settlers and their government have created these settlements in contravention of international law and against the wishes of the U.S. and much of the world’s governments. Many of these settlements do not even have Israeli government approval. In addition, each uprooted settler will receive $200,000 for losing their homes. What does the Daari family get for their trouble? Bubkis! You simply cannot equate these two situations. The prosecutor seeks again to assuage his conscience by saying we have to punish the rabbi or else the settlers will be able to get away with murder. It’s just not so.
The AP story puts the demolition into a very human context by describing the pain and suffering it has caused for the homeowners:
The foundation of one of these houses razed in April 2003 still stands, with crushed shoes and toys strewn about. On Tuesday, Ahmad Mussa Daari, the previous homeowner, watched as his two sons and Ascherman mixed cement for the cornerstone of what they hope will be a new house in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya.
Destruction of the homes left two large extended families homeless.
The families did not obtain permits to enlarge their houses, which human rights activists say is nearly impossible for Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Daari said he built the house a year before it was demolished to make room for his two sons and their new families. The seven-member Daari family now lives in a two-bedroom house.
Holding the hand of his 4-year-old son, Daari said he was "sad to hear the decision today, because one man helping another man should not be illegal."
Ascherman’s simple human act of lending a helping hand to another man in need represents the best of what Israeli-Palestinian relations should and could be.
The American people have spoken: in ABC and USA Today polls, the vast majority of Americans are disgusted by Congress’ antics in trying to prolong Terri Schiavo’s "life" (see Poll: No Role for Government in Schiavo Case).
Here are some of the salient results from the ABC.com online article:
* The public, 63-28%, supports the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube, and by a 25-point margin opposes a law mandating federal review of her case.
* That legislative action is distinctly unpopular: Not only do 60 percent oppose it, more — 70 percent — call it inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this way.
* By a lopsided 67-19%, most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved.
* Nearly eight in 10 poll respondents would not want to be kept alive were they in Terri’s condition.
* 54% of political conservatives support removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube, compared with seven in 10 moderates and liberals. And evangelical Protestants divide about evenly — 46 percent are in favor of removing the tube, 44 percent opposed. Among non-evangelical Protestants, 77 percent are in favor [of removing the tube] — a huge division between evangelical and mainline Protestants.
Another interesting point raised by the poll is that support for removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube is shared equally by Republicans and Democrats. There is no partisan political divide on this issue.
Before I saw these results, I just assumed that Bush/Rove’s poll results were telling them that evangelicals and Right to Lifers overwhelmingly supported keeping Terri alive. But this poll shows that at best a bare plurality of evangelicals feel that way.
Bush, Rove and DeLay must be calculating that the 70% who oppose them will not use their opposition as a reason to vote against them in the next election. As for the 30% that support them, they must find them absolutely a core constituency come election day. What this also tells us is that 30% of the American people are driving the nation’s political agenda when it comes to social issues such as this. The rest of us are being held hostage by this rump minority.
So where the hell are the Democrats on this issue? Why did they only manage to get 58 votes in opposing this piece of stinking legislation? All this talk about Democrats turning right in the aftermath of Kerry’s loss is unnerving. What does it get Democrats to cower in the corner when Tom DeLay and the Right to Lifers come calling? I think it’s pitiful that they couldn’t put up more of a fight.
When Firefox upgraded months ago from version 0.9.3 to 1.0, I installed the new version. Shortly thereafter, Typepad rolled out a few exciting new features, perhaps the most exciting of which was the rich text editor. I was intrigued by being able to see the formatting of your post as you type it. This helps tremendously if you do a lot of formatting (hyperlinks, photos, etc.) in your posts because it enables you to easily and immediately see whether you’ve coded and formatted things properly.
With a spirit of excitement and adventure, I configured TP to use the new editor. But all my excitement dissipated as soon as I tried to write my first post. After typing away for 30 minutes or 500 words, I clicked Save in Draft mode. Phhht! The entire post was gone. I tried it again, this time copying the text before hitting Save (just in case) and sure enough–phhht!–it was gone again. I tried typing individual words with formatting and they too disappeared. After that, all manner of weird behaviors happened. I began to feel that the rich text editor was somehow haunted!
Then I began writing a series of complaining Help tickets to Typepad complaining about the editor and asking why it seemed incompatible with Firefox 1.0. I started posting in numerous places where I thought people might have experienced the behavior I did. I was hoping someone might have an answer. I posted to the Typepad unofficial forum and found that several other Firefox users had similar problems (though other FF users said they had no problems). I posted to the Firefox forum. To some of my posts I received no response. I never received any responses that were helpful in understanding my problem or how to fix it.
Reluctantly and in utter frustration, I started using Ecto for all my blog publishing (except uploading mp3 files which apparently TP’s 3rd party upload settings prevents–when are you TP guys going to fix this?). Ecto’s really a great application and I congratulate Alex Hung for creating it, but it does mean working with a 3rd party app–forcing you to move among your browser, Ecto and whatever web (news, in my case)) pages you might be using to create your post. This can be slightly tedious if, like me, you often switch from one of these to another.
I don’t know what caused me to think of it this week, but I remembered seeing a link at the Mozilla site for MozSource paid e mail support. Desperate men seek desperate measures. I figured, what can I lose? So I set up my support account–the first thing I noticed that while in beta testing, Mozilla support is charging $5 per support ticket. Can you imagine solving the biggest headache you have with Firefox for only $5? What a steal. So I gave them my credit card info and wrote up my ticket and waited.
When Lee of the MozSource Support Team replied my heart sank a bit when I noticed what he suggested to fix the problem. Most were things I’d already tried (or thought I had). Update your Java software to the latest version; make sure you enable java-script in FF settings; and if all else fails, set up a new profile. I tried everything he suggested except the last one–nothing helped. Then I looked at his final suggestion and noted that even though I’d already tried setting up new profiles before, Lee suggested creating a new profile in a way I’d never done before. So I thought: "What the hell. I’ll try it just so I can say I exhausted every opportunity."
In case you’re experiencing this conflict, I thought I’d provide Lee’s instructions since they succeeded where all else failed:
Exit Firefox Click "Start" Click "Run"
Type "firefox.exe -profilemanager" in the "Open:" box (there is a space after the "exe")
Click "OK"
Click "Create Profile"
Click "Next"
Type a name for the new profile. Make sure to use a name that is easily identifiable. You should avoid trying to use the same, or similar names for profiles as it could become confusing while copying data from one folder to the other or selecting the correct profile to launch.
Click "Finish"
Start Firefox with the new profile selected and try again.
When I logged back into Firefox, I immediately opened my TP post edit box and configured it to display the rich text editor. I typed in words, formatted them and tried to save them. It worked. I went to two discussion forum sites with rich text editors which had previously failed for me (Democrats.com and Mamboforge.com) and tried using them. Democrats.com worked too (MamboForge’s WYSIWYG editor didn’t appear to work in either FF or IE, so I assume that’s a quirk of the site and not the fault of FF).
I couldn’t believe that fixing a problem I’d spent hours trying to solve and that I’d suffered with for six months or more would be so easy! God bless Lee and MozSource Support is all I can say!
One problem with creating a new FF profile is you have to move all your bookmark, cookie and password files from your old profile to your new. After posting to the Mozilla/Firefox forum, SCSmith replied with an extremely helpful set of directions:
To retrieve old bookmarks, cookies & passwords:
bookmarks.html <== your bookmarks!
cookies.txt <== cookie permissions signons.txt and key3.db <== saved logins/passwords chrome\userChrome.css and userContent.css <== custom browser appearance and behavior settings
Extensions and themes will need to be reinstalled.
All file copying from one profile folder needs to be done with Firefox closed.
I asked Lee what he tought might’ve caused the conflict. His reply:
A lot of problems come from the cache file, while others come from the file that saves the window settings (localstore.rdf). Occasionally the preferences file itself (prefs.js) is the root of the problem, while more recently, a lot of problems have been caused by extensions. So in many cases, it’s hard to nail down exactly what causes a problem such as this, which is why creating a new profile and moving over the bookmarks is the easiest and quickest method of solving the issue.
Finally, another good piece of advice (which perhaps I didn’t follow myself when I upgraded to 1.0)–uninstall your current FF version BEFORE you upgrade to avoid such conflicts.
In this blog, I've often inveighed against mixing religion, politics and science. When you allow religious values or politics to determine scientific policy or medical decisions you invariably end up with bad science and everyone in society ends up the worse for it. And so it is in the case of Terri Schiavo. Do I feel for her parents who want her kept alive? Of course. From the photos I've seen on CNN, she was a wonderful, vivacious and I'm sure charming person who filled their lives with joy and happiness. But the Terry Schiavo lying in that Florida hospital bed is essentially brain dead according to every informed medical judgment. She is not the same person she was before ...
March 17, 2005 at 1:11 pm · Filed under Mideast Peace
As a further indication of softening of attitudes among both the Israelis and Palestinians, the Jerusalem Post (I can't even believe I'm linking to an article from this right-wing rag--but even this is an indication of changing times) published a joint Israeli-Palestinian poll indicating tremendous support within both communities for current peace overtures. The poll was jointly conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace (Hebrew University) between March 8-13th. The margin of error was 3%. What is telling (and most unfortunate) is that the headline for the survey results at the Palestinian site is "Palestinians and Israelis Disagree on How to Proceed ...
March 15, 2005 at 2:28 pm · Filed under Mideast Peace
Ori Nir has written an astonishing piece in the Forward, Israel Reaching Out to Dovish Groups In Bid To Counteract Conservatives Seeks Support For Gaza Plan . When I read the opening sentence I almost couldn't believe it:As part of a recently launched campaign to neutralize Jewish and evangelical opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan, Israeli diplomats are reaching out to liberal American organizations that have historically aligned themselves with the peace camp in Israel.A right-wing Israeli government that opposes the evangelicals? The very evangelicals which these same Likudniks cultivated and feted for their Israel-right-or-wrong fervor? The Likud is making nice to the peaceniks? We're truly in Wonderland now, my friends.
One of those ...
Smithsonian Global SoundsI've written here before decrying the lack of world music sites which feature a broad array of downloads and sell music by the song or record. This site answers my prayers and then some. But it does more, much more. In fact, the download aspect of the site is almost incidental to its larger purpose: education and research.
I maintain an e mail correspondence with Jon Kertzer, whose Best Ambiance radio program runs on KEXP here in Seattle. Between Jon and Doug Paterson over at KBCS, they play some of the best African grooves I've heard (and ...
Judge James Kleinberg of the Santa Clara Superior Court ruled that three Apple-fan websites violated Apple's copyrights by publishing insider information about upcoming company products (Apple Can Demand Names of Bloggers, Judge Says). This ruling allows Apple to subpoena the names of the confidential Apple informants who provided the information to the websites. Some of the judge's reasoning according to the Times article: Judge Kleinberg wrote that assuming Apple's accusations are true [that the informants are Apple employees], the information is "stolen property, just as any physical item, such as a laptop computer containing the same information on its hard drive (or not) would be."Here we go again. This is the same fahrstunteh ("nutcase" in Yiddish) ...
