As for the beer–sounds lovely and I would be honored (watch the eyes get nice and wierd and glassy) to meet one of the Jewlicious people. You have my email address. Alternatively, a friend and I are doing chili for Shabbat lunch; you are welcome to join us. Kosher basari with extra basari and extra chili b/c who wants wimpy chili.

TOMORROW THE SITE BECOMES MINE! ALL MINE!

I mean obviously, despite his being a dick, I don’t wish him ill, and I’m sorry about the pain that he went through. If I could do anything to be of assistance to him, I would because I did live with him after all, and he is a fellow Jew, and its pretty cool that he made aliyah at such a difficult time for Israel.

But still, what a dick he was.

I’ll be in Israel … tomorrow. I’d be honored to buy you a beer. Not because of what happenned to you, but because you shared with us a perspective that we rarely hear about. You can email me at ck [at] jewlicious dot com.

Actually, what was really funny (well, okay, twisted) was the reaction of some people in the community. A lot of people pitched in to help me out, which was lovely. And a lot of people invited me for Shabbat. Also lovely. Until I got there, and I was introduced as “This is X. X was injured in the bombing at Y”. And from that point on, I was not a person, I was X, The Victim of Terror. As soon as I had healed enough that it was not immeidately obvious that something had happened, I got into the habit of telling such people (when I was invited over, of course) “please don’t mention that I was injured”. MAN! Did those invites dry up fast.

I still have people today (did I mention that it has been years) who say they would be HONORED to have me for Shabbat b/c I was injured. Their eyes generally have a glazed, awestruck expression when they say this. I avoid these people. These people are unlikely to be any fun. If you talk to your former roommate the dick, tell him to avoid them too.

Decency dictates that I ignore your analogy. The dick flatmate has no idea grandmuffti and I write for this blog.

There were also silent protestors across the way (Women in Black, etc) who didn’t cause any trouble, although occasionally someone would wander through our rally with a “zionism is ethnic cleansing” sign or something similar. They’d quickly be escorted away by security when they were causing trouble. One that really stood out to me was an arab family, with 3 kids maybe 5-9 years old holding these *really* gruesome signs of body parts with slogans like “Palestinian kid vs F16″ and “I used to be a woman”. I was sickened that their parents were using them like this (those kids were nowhere near old enough to understand what they were doing), but that’s another story.

Anyway, towards the end, after one of the speakers finished (I believe he called “our friends across the street” cowards for not standing up to terrorists and supporting the killing of innocents), a big group of arab protestors came charging over, marching right past the bus on their way. As they approached they were met by a large number of people from the rally and that confrontation is the one that made the news. All of the camera crews that were there recording the rally charged into the fray (of course) while the MC called for the police to step in. That’s when the police put on the riot helmets and stepped in to break things up.

I was on the far side of the rally at the time and stayed clear of the scuffle, although I did walk over afterwards to listen to a little bit of the heated “discussion” between a few of the parties. I agree with elder punk of zion, it’s not worth trying to debate someone who isn’t listening.