# 179 – Pukka & Screams

April 3, 2011

Perhaps you have not noticed that I’m not a grandfather yet. If few really know what’s happening in Israel, how can I expect people to be concerned whether Eliana’s baby has come out or not.

Well, I wrote the following about Pukka (which is the baby’s name until she comes out…)

Pukka

Starting this while Pukka’s in

Imagining the state I’ll be in

When Pukka’s out.

Been waiting long for this day to come

The first of several

Not just one.

How to describe this feeling

Inside outside all through and deep

Enlivening my waken hours

Smoothing out my sleep.

We came a long way to see this day

From Eliana’s birth

Then Shira’s

And through their lives

Everything we dreamed for them

Our hopes our love our ambitions

All now step out from the womb.

Looking forward to meet, Eliana said

She’s right, for this is a being

With hand to shake

And eyes to speak.

A new friend is born

She will have love

And warmth and connection

She will have friends and fights

Sleepy days and restless nights

A coat when it’s cold

A fan in the heat

She’ll have a smile for the sad

A word for the deaf

A hand for her mother

A hug for Dad

She’ll paint and run

Have thoughts and fun

She’ll be there when others are gone

Offer a shoulder to cry on

Pull out onto land when the water is deep

She’ll fly when others are asleep

She’ll read stories to me

When I lose my glasses

And draw a rose for Safta.

They’ll listen to her

When she has something to say

And she’ll know how to listen

And hear.

Goldstone

18 months ago, this silly (and very learned and respected) man led a UN enquiry into Israel’s attack on Gaza, and came out with official accusations of war crimes etc. etc.

Now he apologises.

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document”, he wrote in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Well, thank YOU. As David Horowitz (Jerusalem Post editor) wrote today, this “will not garner a thousandth of the publicity, nor have a thousandth of the impact that his original, baseless accusations against Israel drew”. (Btw, Libya was on that UN council at the time….).

Scream!!

A letter to the IHT today from Jeff Warner in California

Mohammed Dajani Daoudi and Robert Satkoff, in their article “Why Palestinians should learn about the Holocaust” (Views, March 30^th) don’t go far enough. Besides adding the Holocaust to Palestinian school curricula, what is commonly known by Arabs as ‘the catastrophe’, referring to the birth of Israel in 1948, should be added to Israeli school curricula. Knowledge and understanding will set us all free.

Scream!!

Main editorial in today’s IHT is an essay from a Syrian activist.

I cannot believe the naivety of some of the World’s opinion leaders. They actually believe ‘Basher’ Assad when he says that his country is a bastion of stability etc. etc. (They even said that about Libya). This is the country, and this is the son of the man who ordered the quashing of a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, which killed between 10, and 80,000 people (according to Wikipedia) – just 29 years ago.

Syria has been ruled (officially) by emergency law since 1963.

There is a serious danger – in my opinion – that the uprising in Syria could be the bloodiest in this whole mess.

Scream!!

When you come to think of it, all these protests are basically about…the right to protest.

Stephen