Month: May 2015

Currently on display in Jerusalem, the Netanyahu Paleontological Exhibition comprises 61 fossils from Israel’s distant past, reassembled with some intriguing deviations from standard bio-geological praxis and one or two highly dubious classifications.

Unfortunately, the Netanyahu collection lacks the usual exhibition notes that would make if a lot more accessible to the layman. Here, in the absence of formal notes, is a quick overview.

Since 1977 (the start of the Begin Epoch,) virtually every paleontological exhibition in Israel has been distinguished by a fly-by-night centrist organism, with the unique qualities of appearing suddenly, doing absolutely nothing and then disappearing just as suddenly. That role is played by the relatively recent (in paleontological terms) Kulanu in the new exhibition.

Kulanu is a simple but multi-celled organism, with only three of its estimated 10 cells having been identified so far – Kahlon, Galant and Oren. Other than having clear indications that the other cells exist, scientists are still in the dark as to their functions.

The Israeli coalition government that is due to be sworn in over the next few days is a criminal enterprise.

Its creation was the result of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public by allocating vast sums of public funds to the coalition’s member parties for distribution to pet projects, as they see fit. Those projects benefit only two of the country’s many population groups – ultra-Orthodox Jews and the settlers.

Such allocations contradict an opinion by the Justice Ministry last February that party-specific funding is both unethical and illegal, because it creates a relationship of dependency between the distributing party and the recipient, leading invariably to corruption.

Such was the case with the Yisrael Beiteinu Party of former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, which is currently under investigation for large-scale graft.

Over the past few weeks, as Benjamin Netanyahu has been cobbling together his coalition government, a series of unrelated events has highlighted the true substance of the country that the fourth reincarnation of Netanyahu will be leading, at the head of a reshuffled pack of the same old faces.

It is a nation incapacitated by decades of fear-mongering and brainwashing.

Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day were sad and somber affairs, as befits the memory of the fallen. They were also artificial and stage-managed spectacles – as befits a country in which memory and commemoration are political tools.

Far be it for Israelis to be left to mourn and commemorate as they see fit. Mourning in Israel is the prerogative of the state, which manipulates such occasions to deliver blunt, emotion-sodden messages.