New link added: Israelim.com
Certainly worth checking out.

There are 2 days of the year when I feel I have the right to complain on my blog. The first one is my birthday. The second: Valentine's Day.
Indeed, it is coming. Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and I am not seeing anyone. Not only am I not seeing anyone, but I don't even have any admirers, or even any stalkers (!) these days. I think I have to face the fact that tomorrow, I will most likely not get any sort of a love confession or even a Valentine's card!

I was reading the blog of an Icelandic co worker while on a study break, and I saw that he had displayed his results of "The country quiz" on his page. The quiz asked you a few questions about your quality of life, the food, climate etc your prefer, and then tells you "what country you are". My results were "you are Israel". At first I thought this was funny, since I like Israel. But then I saw what the page had written about Israel, and it was... What can I say. I read stories about anti-semitism every day, and seeing a thing like this still hurts.
Some of you might say "who cares, it's a stupid quiz". That is where you are dead wrong. Thousands of people see this, and readers don't really comprehend the fact that these are words that just happen to be written by a biased individual. They will eventually reach the conclusion that "this must be the case".
It reminds me of a discussion forum I visited the other day, where the topic was was Ariel Sharon said that "Europe didn't lift a finger to help the Jews during the holocaust". The readers (all of which were Icelanders/Europeans) were shocked and enraged. Everybody talked about how Sharon is clearly out of his mind. What I noticed more than anything though, was how some people said "oh but we did everything we could to help the Jews, at least afterwards".

It made me think the following:
If I am falling of a clip to face my death, what good will it do me if somebody will stand and watch me fall, and then help me after I'm dead? I was angry.

Here were the results of my quiz:


You're Israel!
Though a victim in the past, you've learned very little from this and have encouraged a cycle of violence in your life and the life of many you know.  You're a little paranoid and somewhat schizophrenic, causing you to promote both hatred and hope in cycling intervals.  Some of the paranoia is justified, as a lot of people don't like you, but more people are helping you than you'd ever really admit to.  At this point, you live on some valuable property and would benefit greatly from just giving peace a chance.


I encourage you to write letters of complaint to: storey@bluepyramid.org

Okay so I decided to check out where my blog readers are coming from, as I sometimes do. (Hah yes, I spy!). Usually most readers are Americans or Israelis, so I don't look into it. But this time (a long with yet another pervert from The United Arab Emirates) I was delighted to see that someone from Spain had looked me up and translated my blog into Spanish! I have now realised that my blog is the best in Spanish, it's even better than German (although German remains the best language for insults and anger). So check out my blog and my profile in Espanol!

Blog maravilloso de Maria (blog)

I don't like the BBC. Infact, I pretty much hate the BBC. They frequently shock me, and I have often sent them letters of complaint, as I have written here before. I do however, read BBC News. I barely leave the house without reading Al Jazeera. I'm also a longtime reader or Arab News, etc. I read pretty much everything. Well you know what they say, know thy enemy!
So, the BBC may be extremely anti-Israel, but they do provide a reader with an interesting read from time to time. Such as today, when they published "views on the ceasefire". They published the views of the Israelis, as well as the views of the palestinians. One may (or may not) wonder how selective they were about their informants...

Israeli views
palestinian views 

What strikes me when reading the comments of the people, is how obvious facts are being ignored, especially by the Arabs, such as Abu Mazen's past (indicating how he really feels about Jews):

The Memri Institute for monitoring media in the mid-east reports that Arafat’s newly appointed ‘prime minister’ for the PA, Mahmud Abbas completed a doctoral thesis in 1982 titled “The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement”.

In his thesis, Abbas wrote that the estimated number of Jews killed during World War II was “less than one million.” Abbas stated that the Zionist leadership collaborated with the Nazi regime to “facilitate the wide-spread destruction” of Jews. Abbas’ ‘research’ was later printed by a publisher located in Amman, Jordan.

Also, the palestinians view that "the Israelis are to blame for everything". Yet, I have a feeling that the BBC published interviews with the most "rashional" palestinians they found, or at least some of them. I am quite certain that a great majority has a more negative attitude towards the Israelis than the ones in question, and experience has proven my theory to be correct.

Guardians of the Anti-Israel Line

Following a hopeful summit meeting at Sharm, The Guardian maintains the ideological blame game.

This week's summit meeting of Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh furthered the general optimism that's brewing in the region. On a day of handshakes and hopeful pronouncements, most of the media depicted the event in positive, forward-looking terms, as illustrated in this cartoon by Gary Varvel of the Indianapolis Star:

Martin Fletcher of NBC News noted the key recent event that has made everything possible: 'What today's agreement shows is that America and Israel were right when they said that Yasser Arafat was an obstacle to peace.'

It's broadly understood that Arafat blocked progress because he was stuck in a 'blame-Israel-no-matter-what' mode. That type of thinking doomed previous peace negotiations, and is what the whole civilized world is now trying to move beyond.

Yet The (UK) Guardian is stuck promoting this very message. An editorial cartoon by Steve Bell spins the Sharm summit ¯ the most peaceful moment of the past four years ¯ as some sort of Israeli force-play against the Palestinians:

	Steve Bell of The Guardian

The starting point for any credible newspaper is a modicum of objectivity. But Bell's cartoon demonstrates that The Guardian is more aligned with the fringe anti-Israel ideology of Yasser Arafat, than it is with the ideal of journalism.

The Guardian employs Bell ¯ who has drawn a daily cartoon at the paper since 1981 ¯ to promote the paper's basic editorial positions. With this cartoon, The Guardian positions itself outside the bounds of objective journalism, stuck in an advocacy role of 'just blame Israel.'

Comments to: letters@guardian.co.uk

Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.

I have such interesting teachers at my university. Today I was in Hebrew class. My Hebrew teacher is very nice, but his pronounciation is hopeless, and I don't really think he knows Hebrew all that well. Okay so I'm taking a class in "Biblical Hebrew". So today the teacher corrected me when I read something, and pronounced the letter "tav" as a "t" sound. He said I shouldn't do that, and that I should pronounce it as a "dhhh". I found this to be strange, so I had the following dialogue with him, while in class:

Maria: But it's a "t" sound, isn't it?
Teacher: No, No it's NOT a "t" sound!!!
Maria: Okay, so is this like a difference of pronounciation between Biblical and Modern Hebrew?
Teacher: No! It's just not a "t" sound! And if you had learned the Hebrew alphabeth, you would know this!
Maria: I do know the Hebrew alphabeth, and it tells me that the letter "tav" is a "t" sound.
Teacher: No it's not! It's "dhhh". It's "DHHH"!!!!
Maria: But in Israel everybody pronounces it as "t".
Teacher: Yes that is IVRIT. Here we don't study IVRIT. Here we study Biblical Hebrew, and that is an entirely different language. Israelis go to school to study Biblical Hebrew, and THEY FAIL it, just like you guys!

After Hebrew class I started walking towards town, listening to Beri Saharof, quite caught up in my thoughts as usual, when my research methods teacher from last year suddenly appears:

What I do understand  about Americans.

What I absolutely do not understand about Americans. And while I'm at it: Peanut butter and jelly  don't go together!

Okay this is taking some serious time away from my studies. I'm laughing like an idiot by my computer. This is so much fun. Check this out:

Maria is so cool and she deserves some chocolate ice cream
Italian: Maria è in modo da raffreddisi e merita un certo gelato del cioccolato

I can't believe it! Thanks to Lisa for pointing this out!
Click here to enter the url of a website and have it translated. Shit is "shit" in Russian! Man I'm gonna have some fun with this! It's a pity it doesn't translate into any languages I understand, for me to check how well it works. Oh I think I better go find myself an Italian blog and translate it into English now! Ciao a tutti!

Update: I have been translating blogs. It is (apparently) customary to describe things (I haven't quite figured out what it means yet) as "spiny" in Italian. Such as a "spiny argument" (that makes sense though).