I'm growing my shoulders

I was going to grow my hair but difficult times call for difficult choices and I have decided that I should focus instead on my shoulders.

I have spent the last several days reading not only the news reports from Canada, the US and England, concerning last weeks Freedom (hahahahahah) Flotilla. But more informatively, I have been reading the readers comments section that follows every article.

Let me summarize a week's worth of comments for you: Generally speaking, and with very few exceptions, the world hates Jews. Even a lot of Jews hate Jews -- and they hate themselves for being Jews. And given the opportunity on a silver platter, that hatred is no longer brewing quietly just beneath the surface of human civility but rather it is bursting through and becoming de riguer conversation. "You hate Jews? Me too. It's so good to say that out loud!"

That's why I have decided to grow my shoulders. I think most Jews who still support Israel (the number is dwindling) are going to have to do the same. I have no intention of going back to Poland or Germany because I never came from there and I am willing to bet my last dollar that whatever my grandparents called home in Poland and Lithuania was quickly trampled by cossacks long before I was born. I am also not going back to Canada where I was born because a) I don't like the cold or the snow and b) after living in Israel, I can't even begin to imagine life there. For me, it wouldn't hold a candle to life here.

I am sad that the world sees us as they do. For the most part we are not much different from any other people in Western Society. We wake up every day. Go to school or work. Do laundry. Drive carpool. Try to raise our children to become decent adults. Eat. Play. But for whatever reasons (and there are many ... have you read "Constantine's Sword"?) the world has collectively decided that we are the root of all evil and deserve whatever we get.

Of course, it hasn't helped that the president of the United States has jumped on the "I Hate Jews" bandwagon.

And that is why, going forward, I am going to need very broad shoulders. It is totally naive to think that this wave of Jew hatred will subside any time soon -- I'm talking generations, not weeks. I just feel bad for the Jews who hate themselves -- hard to grow broad shoulders without the necessary convictions of your people.

Last week my mother told me about a sign that supposedly someone had painted on the side of the Israeli Embassy in Manilla on the occassion of Israel's 62nd birthday in May. It said (and this is hearsay because I have done some googling and I can't find it): 62 years old and everyone still wants to fuck her. Happy Birthday Israel!