Opuscula What an Opportunity

 

Jordan has filed a complaint with the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization.

Jordanian officials have said the operations at an expanded Timna airport will affect takeoffs and landings at Aqaba’s airport.

Currently,

Israel has an airport near Eilat.

Jordan has an airport near Aqaba.

There are only 4 air miles (6 km) between the two ports. The distance by sea between the Port of Eilat and the Port of Aqaba is 10 nautical miles (roughly 11.5 statute miles).

The two ports are so close together that most area maps put one almost on top of the other.

BY COMPARISON, the distance between

JFK and LaGuardia is about 12 miles (19 km); shuttle services connect the two airports

O'Hare and Midway is 31 miles (50 km); the two are connected by local rail

Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood and Miami is 27 miles (48km)

LAX and John Wayne is 40 miles (64 km); shuttle service connects the two airports

. Timna's airport is north of Eilat.

The King Hussein International Airport is north of Aqaba..

The Timna airport, in place but to be expanded to accommodate wide-body planes, is 6.22 miles (10 km) from Jordan's King Hussein International.

Jordan is understandably concerned but the Timna Ramon airport was in place for some time sans problems.

Israel is planning to spend NIS 1.95 billion, and even though that's Israeli shekels, that still is a lot of money, especially for a country that is having budget problems.

It would seem reasonable - and that may be the main problem - that whichever airport now serves wide-body aircraft should be the - dare I write it? - a REGIONAL airport for both Israel and Jordan (or Jordan and Israel).

Since both Timna and King Hussein are international airports - that is, they have customs, passport checks, etc. already in place - it would seem logical that instead of enhancing the existing Timna airport to build a light rail from airport to airport.

Timna still would serve domestic flights and "narrow-body" jets from Europe, but any wide-biddy aircraft would use King Hussein.

Israel and Jordan could split revenue based on passenger destination and origination. Israel and Jordon could jointly staff Customs and passport checks - incoming passenger would go to the left for Jordan and to the right for Israel (or vice versa).

The inter-airport shuttle (light rail) could originate and terminate in secure areas of the terminals, assuring that Israelis don't wander around Jordan with out the proper papers and Jordanians don't tour Israel sans authorizing documentation.

Even if Israel paid for the tracks between the two terminals, it still probably would cost less than the estimated cost for the Timna expansion.

An aside: There already is scheduled airline service between Lod (TLV) and Amman (AMM).

It seems this would be a win-win for both countries.

But it's the Middle East, so . . .

Opuscula Capital punishment as Answer to recidivism

 

THERE ARE THOSE WHO contend that the death penalty serves no purpose.

It doesn't prevent others from committing heinous crimes - murder, rape, mutilation - and there is some evidence to support this theory.

The death penalty, however, DOES effectively prevent recidivism.

Ahh, the anti-capital punishment people respond, most of murderers were one-time killers; they won't do it again.

They also will remind us that there have been far too many innocent people on death row, many thankfully found innocent before their execution. No argument there.

JEWISH LAW - BIBLICAL LAW - requires two witnesses to a capital crime and at least one of those witnesses must warn the person about to commit a murder of the consequences.

It's a good law and one that seems to very well protect against sending an innocent person to the executioner.

Unfortunately, we find that many of the people charged with murder, particularly terrorists, when released return to their pre-arrest ways; they are repeat offenders.

The U.S, learned the lesson - well, perhaps it failed to learn the lesson - when it released terrorists captured in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel, which repeatedly caves to terrorist pressure to "trade" hundreds of jailed terrorists for one or two Israelis - frequently already dead Israelis - has too much experience with recidivistic killers.

In Israel, a Member of Knesset (parliament) tried to propose a bill that would make capital punishment part of Israeli law. (Israel is a democracy and is home to people of many different beliefs, not all based on the Bible.) In all its modern history there has only been one court-sanctioned execution, that of Adolf Eichmann.

The country's prime minister sent the proposal to committee to prevent the entire parliament from debating the bill and possibly failing to vote his way. (Meanwhile fanatics continue to murder civilians - infants to the elderly - knowing they will sit in an Israeli jail, getting their masters degrees before being traded back to do it all again.)

The only people who are guaranteed NOT to be recidivists are the suicide murders who succeed in their plans.

While I agree with the anti-capital punishment folks that

a) Some innocent people have been executed; thanks to DNA this potential execution of an innocent is greatly reduced.

b) That many murders were committed in the heat of passion (which usually precludes murder in the first degree for which the death penalty is an option) and, therefore, the murderer probably won't commit another murder in another "fit of passion.

The above does NOT apply to rapists who typically have a history of rape and sexual perversion on unwilling victims.

c) Execution is not a deterrent; if it was there would be no more murders and rapes.

HOWEVER, execution does prevent recidivism. Murderers will not murder others; rapists will never rape another woman or molest another child.

Limit the death penalty. It's less expensive to incarcerate a a person for life-and-a-day than it is to execute the person, given the cost of automatic appeals, etc. (I have no objection to automatic appeals.)

There is a place for the death penalty, and there is a reason for the death penalty.

Persons convicted of murder as a means to terrorize the population should be the prime candidates for the executioner.

Opuscula Interfaith vs. INTRAfaith

 

WE DON'T NEED MORE inter-faith meetings.

What we need are INTRA-faith meetings.

OK, I realize Jews need to work with non-Jews for the betterment of all.

Especially now when anti-Semitism is on the rise and even the Amish are vocally condemning us. The Amish!

BDS is bad enough.

Extreme Islam is a plague - not only on Jews and Israel but all the world.

Yes, we do need INTER-faith discussions and inter-racial ones and inter-everything else, too.

But most of all, we need INTRA-faith talks.

Talks between the Orthodox of all stripes - modern, hasdic, Zionist and anti-Zionist - and "the rest" of Jewry: Conservative, Humanistic, Reform, and the fallen away, and never present agnostics.

It might even be necessary to have an intra-faith conversation between converts and those who, mostly due to their own ignorance, denigrate converts and cause them pain. That would necessarily include rabbis as well as three day (sometimes "three hour") Jews.

Today, in Israel, there are skirmishes between the rigid rabbis and the revolting rabbis. The battlefields are marriage and conversions; religion as government.

Unfortunately, Jews at both ends of the spectrum are heavily dug into their positions; there seems no way to bridge the gap, but if we are to survive our factionalism we must at least make an effort to talk - AND LISTEN - to one another.

 

AGNOSTIC

1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2: a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something {political agnostics}

ATHEIST

: one who believes that there is no deity

Opuscula 2 Israelis go to Gaza Must lives be risked To bring them back?

 

TWO ISRAELI CIVILIANS by all accounts voluntarily crossed into Hamastan (Gaza).

One person, identified as Avraham Mengistu, 28, an immigrant from Ethiopia, apparently voluntarily climbed the fence separating Gaza from Israel in September of 2014.

Now, his brother is playing the race card claiming Israel has not done enough to repatriate his brother.

Hamas and the PA leadership deny either man is in Gaza.

ASSUMING THAT the two Israelis-in-Gaza crossed the border sans permission from the Israeli government, why should Israel make any effort to retrieve them from Hamas' hands?

According to the Times of Israel article, “We’re sick of it. We want to go public with the story,” Mengistu’s oldest brother Yalo Mengistu told the Israeli daily Haaretz, adding that during the first two weeks after Avraham’s disappearance, the family was not briefed by IDF or security officials.

Hamas has denied holding Mengistu, saying he left Gaza for Ethiopia via Egypt, a claim Israel denies. HOW Israel can know with any certainty that Mengistu stayed in Gaza - if he climbed one fence, he surely could climb another to enter Egypt, or go via a Hamas' tunnel - is beyond my ken. Spies, perhaps.

Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni told a local radio station that Mengistu’s crossing into Gaza was the result of the socioeconomic plight of the Ethiopian-Israeli community, the Times reported.

IS THE RACE CARD JUSTIFIED? Maybe.

Israeli absorption history would suggest that new comers are not immediately integrated into the community, even with the help of Hebrew language and Israeli culture ulpans and special immigrant housing.

North Africans who made aliyah in the 50s and 60s are only now taking their place in the national government. Unlike the Russians that came to Israel in the 70s - I know many - the North Africans lacked Vitamin "P" in government; they didn't have "connections." Conversely, the "Russians" (Ukrainians for the most part) I knew had relatives in place to make their integration easier. The fact they looked more like the Ashkenazis controlling the nation helped.

Anyone remember the David Levy jokes? How about Amir Peretz's insistence that Israel develop and deploy the Iron Dome? Because both were Moroccan, they were dismissed as not worth anyone's time. Still, David Levy turned out to be a very good Deputy Prime Minister and Amir's Iron Dome saved thousands of lives. I happen to know Mr. Levy personally.

I have known people - a "Russian" named Anna as it happens - who was unable to adjust to Israeli life. We were in an ulpan together in 1975. She departed Israel before I returned to the States. I know that even then the government and Jewish Agency made every effort to integrate her into the national community. She went back to "Russia," not to a state that wants to wipe Israel off the map.

I don't know where an Ethiopian immigrant could go if he wanted out of Israel. Could he have appealed to any of the embassies and consulates in Israel for assistance, for a visa?

Was Mengistu mentally stable?

The bottom line is that he - an another unnamed Israeli - literally went over the fence to Gaza and Hamas. Given that, why would anyone expect Israel to make any effort to being him back? Let him stay in Gaza or go where he may; as soon as he crossed the border into enemy territory he ceased to be Israel's concern.

Who does he think he is? A Member of Knesset ?