Sunday, November 18, 2012

Experimenting with watercolours


I am still experimenting with watercolours. I bought some hardboard for watercolour paints but it is not the same as the paper but it does give some interesting effects all the same.

While there is less ignorance about Israel and Palestine there is still too much....

Most do not realise how racist Israel is as a society and Judaism is as a religion.

In a recent survey, more than half of those questioned said they believed a Jewish woman marrying an Arab man to be a "betrayal of the country and the Jewish people''. And 50.9 per cent agreed the state should encourage Arab Israelis to leave the country.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/pers ... untry.html

A new poll conducted by Dialog shows that the majority of Jewish Israelis are in accord with their government’s racist leanings. Some 59 percent of those polled said Jews should be given preference within the civil service; 49 percent thought the state should ensure Jews receive a better treatment than Arabs and 42 percent admitted that they would not want to live in the same apartment building as Arab-Israelis or send their children to schools with Arab pupils.

http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/7894


A good Jew hates Arabs
Hatred of Arabs is part of the test of loyalty and identity that the state gives its Jewish citizens - a loyal Israeli will leave an Arab to die, because 'he's an Arab.'

Quote:
It's not necessary to read the disgusting book "The King's Torah," in which rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur - from the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in Yitzhar - write that "the ban on killing a gentile does not stem from the intrinsic value of his life,

Israeli "literature" promoting hate of Arabs predates the occupation. The children's book series "Danidin" by Shraga Gafni is full of expressions and illustrations that laid excellent infrastructure for Arab-hatred. The "Mikraot Yisrael" (Israeli Readers ) series, which helped educate hundreds of thousands of Israeli children, is striking in terms of the "incitement" concealed within it.


http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/a-good-j ... s-1.459832

How the Jews treat Christians in Israel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlT3ARuUSGc

Sami Michael: 'Israel - Most racist state in the industrialized world'

The following is the translation of a speech delivered by prominent Israeli author Sami Michael at a conference in Haifa in June 2012. It is a ‘cri de coeur’ that is full of love and grief.


http://972mag.com/author-sami-michael-i ... rld/52602/

In his controversial speech last month, he said he was too old to emigrate but envied those who could. Although he insists he is still a patriotic citizen, he no longer feels that Israel can be his spiritual homeland: It has turned its back on “humanistic values and the rights of mankind.” Racism, fanatical religiosity and the occupation are destroying the state, he says. We are liable to lose it all.

The rising tide of racism continues to mount with the encouragement of Knesset and government members, both through infamous public statements and by legislating draconian anti-democratic laws against outsiders, foreigners, and against human rights organizations. In any case, Israel can pride itself on having the dubious title – the most racist state in the developed world.

Two incidents last week underscored how broadly and deeply in Israeli society runs a streak of hatred against Palestinian Arabs. In one, seven Israeli teenagers, including two girls—one thirteen years old—were arrested for what witnesses described as an attempted lynching in West Jerusalem of several Palestinian youths, one of whom was beaten unconscious and is still hospitalized. In the same hospital lies one of the victims of the other incident: the Palestinian driver of a taxi that was firebombed near a West Bank settlement.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party—which is part of Netanyahu's governing coalition—has said in sermons that Palestinians are “evil, bitter, enemies” whom God ought to “perish from this world,” that “it is forbidden to be merciful” to Arabs, that Arabs are “evil and damnable,” and that “you must send missiles to them and annihilate them.”

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-p ... srael-7381

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Why IVF may be a disaster in waiting...

and should only ever be used in extreme cases of need. I saw this article today and had to write to the journalist:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/flying-solo-more-women-abandon-search-for-prince-charming-and-opt-to-have-ivf-baby-20121110-294u5.html


Perhaps in the name of balance and responsibility you might also write an article warning of the dangers.

Until a generation of IVF babies have grown up and lived what amounts to normal lives and their children have done the same there is no gaurantee that IVF will not have side-effects. Already as many IVF babies reach the age of 30 they are discovering a large increase in mental illness - depression, schizophrenia. You might do some research. Being created in a test-tube, forcibly fertilised, forcibly implanted will have an impact. We just don't know what it is as yet although we do know that IVF babies are prone to problems and we are beginning to realise there are other, even greater problems once they grow up.

IVF has become a business and many of those encouraging IVF may well be found to be criminally culpable in the years to come.

On the psychological/emotional side, given the demonstrated trauma of adoptions in past years where children have been denied their biological parents, there is  a potential disaster awaiting those who 'create' children who will never know a mother or a father, let alone a biological one.

Your article makes it all seem so easy and so harmless when it is in fact the very opposite. As any parent of grown children knows the easy bit is the cute bit. Once your child becomes an adult is when it gets hard and if that adult is going to have physiological problems because of IVF or psychological problems because it is missing a parent, then that constitutes a trauma beyond imagining.

Erring on the side of caution might be a wise bit of advice for anyone who thinks IVF is an easy way out and who may well find that after 12 years of the 'easy' they end up with 50 years of the 'hard' with varying degrees of mental and physical illness.

Regards,
Roslyn Ross

p.s. as a former journalist I am still idealistic enough to believe that providing balance is a journalistic responsibility.