Pumpkin flowers by Matti Friedman: A soldiers story of a forgotten Lebanon war. 2017 272pg

 

5/10/24 Reading this exactly at the time we had to run down to our air raid shelter in central Israel because the Israeli Airforce wiped out Nasrallah and most of the Hezbollah leadership. Iran sent 180 rockets into Israel  on 2/10/24 but nobody was hurt. 2 of our  window panes were shattered.

The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for “casualties.” foreshadow the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Oleander are the code for dead soldiers. Pumpkin was 3 miles north of Beaufort a Crusader castle turned into an army base.

 The group he was in was called the Fighting Pioneer Youth(Nachal) who understood combat was necessary but not concepts of "death before dishonor" or " no surrender" but rather "Lets get through with this "

Basic training  is like marriage, inside its unforgiving intimacy and you can't hide who you are for long. Friendship is created in a platoon under great pressure,  armies plan it this way knowing that this bond will keep men together is the lawless underworld of war, and will not run from enemy fire but go into it. Sargent's had them 18 hours on their feet and 6 hours in sleeping bag and again the next day. It was 1994 in the bushes of Lebanon  but the armies clock was still 1973.

  1977 and 1979 the Shah of Iran was overthrown and Kumauni brought the Islamic Revolution.

1980 to 1988 Iran / Iraq war.

1992 Nasrallah take over running Hezbollah in Lebanon, after Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in 1992.

June 1982 Israel fought a misguided war to support the Lebanese Christians and successfully drove  the PLO out of Lebanon hoping to set up a friendly government. However the local Shiites set themselves up as the Party of God. Israel withdrew to a buffer zone in Lebanon to protect her northern border.  

1994 the Pumpkin Incident, Hezbollah terrorist ambushed and killed   Israeli soldiers and had a cameraman filming it. The first of the "jihadi selfies" in this buffer zone. This took place at the same time as the Israel PM visited the Moroccan King.

1996 The Falcon Incident this is an unrecorded event at Pumpkin in which his friend died.  The term Improvised Explosive Devises started here against conveys bringing and returning soldiers to their bases. The result was that they started flying them there at night by Helicopter. 

1997 2 helicopters over Kibbutz Dafna  soon after taking off, crashed killing 73  Israeli crew and  soldiers. The soldiers in the unit that had been in the Falcon incident and the Helicopter crash had lost a third of number in 9 months and now knew this was a real war.  

In Jerusalem on the mount of Olives is covered with graves of 150,000Jews buried over the millennia to be close to the Temple Mount . In a Jerusalem suburb is a mass grave of surrounded by rosemary bushes of Indian soldiers including fighter from Hong Kong and Singapore who died while fighting for the British against the Turks.

 The kibbutz Ashdod Ya'akov had been one of the most successful agricultural communes before the 1950s but then there was a feud between the Stalinist and the moderate socialist and this tore the society apart and into split into 2 with a fence between them. Years later the next generation never understood what the feud was about.

Bruria from here was one of 4 mothers who protested to get the soldiers out of Lebanon. The subject of the buffer zone had never been debated, but once the loss of the 2 helicopters and 73 boys the price was too high. If nobody could make a decision Bruria would end the war. The war had never even been given a name. 

Living in Pumpkin the author say he never knew any other surrounding so well where day or night they never took their boots off and it s view remains imprinted on the retinas of his eyes years later. They looked at the town Nabatieh with the monastery of St Antony the Cal-Tex gas station the al Ghoudour hospital and mosques and abandoned homes . The population was both Shiite and Christian.

In the army no matter where you were the  religious soldiers would risk their lives to come  to make the place Kosher for Pessach. Matza and other Pessach food would arrive and a seder was help with dinner for those not on guard duty.

1998 The most important event then was the World Cup in France and the few who like him were unfamiliar with the game took guard while the other watched the favorite team which was Brazil. Even Nabatieh was draped with flags of the teams playing. When Zidane a non practicing Muslim from Algeria scored they celebrated.  

The outpost Red Pepper was manned by the South Lebanon Army a Christian militia allied with Israel. They had Soviet bloc material seized from the PLO fighters in the 1982 invasion. They allied themselves to Israel for protection against the Palestinians but by the nineties some lower ranks  were Druze and Shiites who did it  for the salary Israel paid in US dollars.

1999 A new left wing government promised to make peace with Palestinians and Syrians and to get out of Lebanon, even right supporters wanted this. The mothers protesting didn't talk of soldiers but children. Everyone's children. A soldiers death is considered more tragic than that of a civilian. The army Education Corp warned that you must not let your political beliefs interfere with  your duty.

Everyone knew the 4 mothers by now and Hezbollah could fire rockets over the outpost from deeper in Lebanon to hit Israel. The Palestinians had long gone but Hezbollah was supported by Iran and Syria. Iran wanted us inside Lebanon where they could hit us with their pawns. On the hill was a very  wholesome life with not serious drinking or drug taking. There was a guitar and free books passed around. Instead of soldiers in trenches looking out you had TV screen with joysticks. 

Trucks arrived bringing hundreds of disc mines that were safe until live detonators were  added. They saw around them outposts Basil and Beaufort blow up. Hezbollah started firing at Pumpkin which was empty by now, tried to make a last  effort against us before Pumpkin blew up.

The finger of the Galilee was clogged with armored vehicles coming south out of the security zone. Christian militiamen and their families were escaping to Israel.

2007 The movie Beaufort was made by Joseph Cedar on the abandoning of a outpost, unlike what  the movie portrayal they functioned till the end. 

He was thinking about travel after his discharge  to India and the far East where most Israeli  youngsters go after their 3 years in the army. Instead he studied at the Jerusalem University. Middle East and Arabic studies. He met others from the other outpost and they came to the conclusion that this was an error  a decade of chronic pain that shaped us all.  He now was not  interested in politics but progressing in his own life

Israel then had a period of suicide bombing which was eventually dealt with and brought under control. Hezbollah wrote that what happened in Lebanon could happen in Palestine. This was when Iran started pouring money, weapons and advise to her proxies in the middle East. Any ideas of a compromise were shattered and amongst the Israel politicians.

2001   you had 9/11 and the American were at war in Afghanistan.

A Canadian friend visited him after a tour of Lebanon. With a clean Canadian passport he flew from Toronto  to Beirut and was waved in with not problem. Beirut is a cosmopolitan city.  He went to see the areas that he could view from Pumpkin and was driven around by friendly taxi drivers.

 He enters into Lebanon as a Canadian tourist and had to hide throughout his visit 1) his Jewish identity; 2) his Israeli citizenship; and 3) his service to the IDF. The most powerful part is when he was on his way to the Pumpkin (the outpost where he was stationed in the 90s) in southern Lebanon, and remarks that he "had traveled 12,000 miles (from Toronto) to arrive 20 miles from" where his family's home was.

50 Flippen Brilliant South Africans by Alexander Parker 2012 269pg

With cartoons by  Zapiro  (Jonathan Shapiro)25/9/24

This is a strange collections of people connected to South African, so well known others never heard of .

Chris Barnard 1922 to 2004  he was the first to do a heart transplant at Groot Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.  The first patient Blaaiberg only lasted 5 days after the  transplant. The second Washkansky survived 3 weeks but died of pneumonia . These were people who knew that they would die without surgery. Suddenly Barnard became the most famous surgeon in the world , the team did not realize the enormity of their achievement. A later patient lived 23 years after the drug  immunosuppressant Cyclosporine was brought into use. This did not have the side effects of the earlier medicines to stop rejection. Barnard later divorced his wife with 2 children and had 2 more marriages each with 2 children.

Chris Hani 1946 to 1977 He set up the black consciousness movement got got the world black substituted for native,  bantu etc. He was the only black leader around when Mandela and others were in jail or exile. He was a well educated academic and the police basically decided to kill him. 20 years later 5 police at the Truth and Reconciliation  admitted this. Helen Zilla exposed the coverup and Donald Woods wrote the book Biko which became the move Cry Freedom. Donald Woods had to go into exile.

Margaret Calvert   1936 born in Durban  and moved to England aged 14. First in Britain an later all over the world her standard signage  took over, she worked with Jock Kineir . The typeface called Calvert was used and signs for roads , railways airports all used her standard. The pictures of children crossing the road or men at work. 

Winston Churchill 1864 to 1965 The book mentions that his SA Boer War experience made him. The people who organized his escape saw the sentre and remained behind. He was due to be released in any case as he was not a combatant but he never mentioned that.

Johnny Clegg 1953 to 2019 Created black music that became known world wide he saw himself as a white Zulu. singer-songwriter, dancer, anthropologist and anti-apartheid activist. He had a Jewish mother and lived in Yoeville where he got a black worker to teach him their music.

JM Coetzee 1940 Won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. His novel Disgrace is the most important book on post apartheid SA.

Alan Cormack1924 to1988 Inventor of the CAT scan.

Basil d Olivier1931to 2011 SA top cricket player who had to live in Britain because he was colored and became an embarrassment to the apartheid government.

Ernie Else 1969 Top Golf player and philanthropist.

Brenda Fassie 1964 to 2004 Queen of  Kwela and Madonna of the township African top class singer entertainer.

Mahatma Gandhi 1869 to 1948 He learned his craft of passive resistance to colonialism in 19 years in S. Africa.                    

Herschelle Gibbs1974 Top SA cricketer.

John Heschel 1792 to 1871 In the Cape set up the SA Astronomical Observatory and documented the southern sky from there.

Waddy Jones 1974  Singer , entertainer.

Nishingwayo Khuza 1810 to 1883  He beat Lord Chelmsford at the Battle of Islandwana 1879 at the very beginning of the Zulu wars.

Simeon Khambula 1800s  Xhosa fighter who helped the British in the Battle of Roukes Drift

Chad le Clos 1962 Gold medal Olympic swimmer in 2812

Albert Luthuli 1898 to1967 He tried to peacefully bring about a normal South Africa, Led the ANC and received Nobel peace prize.

Winnie Mandela 1936 to 2018 Wife of Mandela. While he was in jail she was powerful and represented him but afterwards she was a trouble maker and he divorced her in 1996.

Miriam Makeba 1932 to  2008 She reach the top of the world music scene as the voice of African music but lived in exile most of her working career.

Sailor Malan 1910 to 1963 Leading pilot and legend in Second World War in Britain. 

Nelson Mandela 1918 to 2013 Died aged 95  First President of post apartheid South Africa between 1994 to 1999.

Thaba Mbeki 1942 President that followed Mandela 1999 to 2008. He is also in the 50 people who stuffed up South Africa.

Eric Merrifield 1914to 1982 and Aubrey Kruger 1935 They were harbour engineers that deisigned the dolos a large  concrete shape that you drops a few hundred togehter and they act as a wave break, now used worldwide.

King Moshoeshoe 1 1822 to 1870 He build up the Sotho Nation by giving shelter to all who fled the Shaka or other tribes and  the Boers  to the mountains of Thaba Bosiga. Then asked the British to make it a protectorate of Basutoland.

Elon Musk 1971 High tech billionaire was born in S. Africa

Mama Nthatisi 1781 to1836 Founded  the Tlokwa tribe in the Caledon lands of the OFS but were know as the Manthtisi .

François Pienaar 1967 The Captain of the Springbok Rugby team who Mandela gave full encouragement to win the  World Cup Rugby when it took place in South Africa in 1995. Mandela saw this as a means to unite all the races in South Africa.

Oscar Pistorius 1986 The blade runner. He was a successful legless sportman but became notorious as he murdered his wife. Known as the blade runner.

Sol Plaatje 1876 to 1932 Polyglot and founder of the ANC and wrote the Nkisi sekelele Africa.

Ian Player  and Magqubu Ntombela

Lucas Radebe 1969 Leading soccer player for S.A. and also played in Leeds United.

Cyril Ramaphosa 1952 President of  SA since 2018

Sixto Rodriguez 1942 to 2023 Unknown American pop singer who sold in South Africa and so finally  became famous 30 years later. Set the music of the SA protest movement.

Ampie Roux 1914  to 1985 South Africa's leading physicist. 

Ryan Sandes 1982 Sports runner of marathons' 

Jody Scheckter 1950 Formula One  Ferrari winner and businessman

Caster Semenya 1991 She won 800 meter race in Athletics world Championship 

 Shaka1789 to  1828 unified tribes into the Zulu nation. He was known as the Black Napoleon and conquered all the tribes around him.

Mark Shuttleworth 1973 the youngest billionaire and paid $ 20 million to go into space.

Walter1912to2003 and Albertina Sisula1918 to 2011 She was a nurse and he had a white father. The shared the freedom struggle together. She works for women's rights. She mothered her own children and those of Mandela's first marriage whle their husbands were in jail. The were considered  South Africa's greatest love story.

Jordy Smith1988 Surfing king.

Jan Smuts 1870 to 1950  Prime Minister of  the Union of South Africa between 1919 and 1924 and between 1939 and 1948, before apartheid.

 Irma Stern 1894 to 1966 An S. African artist whose painting fetch the highest prices on world market. Leading portrait painter.

Max Theiler 1899 to 1972 a medical man who discovered the cause of  malaria.

Charlize Theron 1972  Afrikaans speaker who became a leading Hollywood actress. She mastered an American accent.

Desmond Tutu 1931 to 2021  Became secretary of the SA Council of Churches in 1973 Awarded Nobel prize in 1984. After the association of Chris Hani in 1993 helped keep the calm when he talked about the Rainbow nation of Africa. Mandela appointed him to head the Truth and Conciliation Commission.

Pieter Dirk Uys.1945   Entertainer.

 

The Precipice by Robert Harris 2024, 441pg

 The Story of PM Herbert Asquith and his relationship to Venetia Stanley his mistress.30/9/24

1914 In London there were up to 12 mail deliveries a day. Besides aristocrats you had Nancy Cunard the shipping heiress only 18. Constantine Beckandork "the Cossack" was the son of the Russian ambassador who had organized this river ship outing which the accident took place. This was a story of a drunken wager very embarrassing if it became public.

In 1914, British prime minister H.H. Asquith, a 61-year-old married man, carries on an affair with 26-year-old Venetia Stanley.  DS Paul Deemer investigates the accidental drowning of Asquith’s son. He afterwards is in a police dept. that arrests saboteurs, spies when the war begins. Since Venetia was on the guest as a witness, he questions her. Were the guests drunk - all the bottles were thrown over the side.  femme fatale - using female charms of beauty and sexual allure

Herbert Asquith1852 to 1928 his first wife Helen Mellend died in 1898(Who left him 5 children). Then he married Margot Tennant. You can never have 2 so dissimilar wives.

Home Rule of Ireland was a big issue and he had to offer it to keep votes.

Venetia's cousin is Clemmie Churchill, and Winston arranges for Venetia to go flying. Her parents were trying to get Venetia away so she wouldn't see Asquith but the war intervened. 

The German Ambassador was Prince Lichnowsky. Before the war they all mixed in the same circles.

With War Sir John French was appointed Inspector General of the army.

Edwin Montague Financial Secretary of the Treasury, had twice proposed marriage to Venetia but because he was a Jew this was problematic for her inheritance. The French were selling their British bonds to get money for the war and Rothschild was worried if tis would rock the market.

People would have objected to women in a "petticoat government "

Richard Haldane  had studied in Germany, spoke German and understand the war issues but was not wanted in the government.

Deemer had to look after his younger brother after his parents died, he was an unstable person till Deemer forced him to go into the army at a time that Britain had been at peace and didn't think he one day might have to fight. There is nothing like war to make men see the true value of things. 

Britain would not make a bargain with Germany to keep neutral at Frances expense. This would tarnish Britain's status in her Empire.

In Whitechapel you could hear Polish, Russian, German ,Yiddish , French spoken.

George V was gruff unsubtle non intellectual. The bank of England suspended the exchange of gold for paper currency and interest rates on the pound double from 4 to 8 %.

When Venetia travelled alone she always travelled 3rd class. 

The Germans had issued an ultimatum to the Belgium government demanding a free passage through their territory. Asquith had managed to keep the government together over this crises. 1914 Britain declared war on 4th August at 11pm.

Asquith managed to stop Kitchener from returning to his post in Egypt and got the Field Marshall to be in charge of the war. Kitchener said that to defeat the Germans will take till 1917 as they need to raise an army of 2 million men and to recruit and train them would take 3 years. Casualties will be enormous.

MO 5 had arrested  22 suspected spies. The First Sea Lord Louis Mountbatten was born in Austria. There was also spy mania with people reporting suspects.

A grisly war is on, to which politicians and generals send young men to die by the tens of thousands, The nature of Herbert Asquith and Venetia Stanley’s affair has long been a well known subject of speculation and debate. The war will be the end of the aristocrats and their way of life. There will be taxation as somebody has to pay for the war.

Carbon copies or 'flimsies' were found all over the place and arrived at Scotland yard and they discovered the PM has just dumped them. Aristocrats believed themselves above the  rules of ordinary people. The PMs car Napier Type 23,  number plate A3141 could be looked up and traced as details of number plates were kept from 1903.

The Stanley's lived at Penrhos House, Holyhead , Anglesey, Wales. Deemer got a job as a gardener here for 3 pence and hour, to be able to find out about the PMs letter going to Venetia.   Now Deemer was given an office in the London Mount Pleasant mail sorting office and was able to get all her letters first. 

The Times published that the British were running out of shells (how did that get through the censors)

Casualties were called The Role of Honour you found the names of officers of the killed in lists in the press. Not the ordinary soldiers as there were too many to print.

If a man was careful not to get his girlfriend pregnant it was "leaving the church before the sermon" was the euphemism. 

The Belgium government abandoned Antwerp and moved to Ostend, causing the loss of this important port, the naval commission escaped during the night and went to Ostend. The British General Staff bred obsolete tactics of 25 years ago.

"To be or not to be"-  duty versus love, convention versus passion death as a welcome release from a life not worth living. This was all in the poetry by Robert Browning the Asquith and  she discussed. Venetia felt it was a patriotic duty to keep the "Prime" happy.

Venetia realized that her life was on the wrong track and to extricate herself from Asquith paid 13 guineas to do a 3 month course to become a nurse at the Whitechapel Hospital in the poverty of the East End. This hospital had 500 poor and 500 wounded soldiers. She had never had a job in her life and the more she saw the horrors the more she determined she became. Later this became a soldiers hospital only. She saw , trench foot , gangrene amputated arms and legs, shattered Jaws and skull fractures and gaping shrapnel wounds. Hard work and hospital food had caused her to lose weight. The hospital staff were aware of her relationship with the Prime Minister. Margot had told her that her husband Asquith always needed young women around him but her relationship had gone too far.

At the Ypres they lost 13000 men in 2 weeks. Oc Asquith had a new friend Rupert Brook (a best membered " trench poet") and his sister Violet was keen on him.

Zeppelin's dropped bombs over Dover and the Thames estuary.

The whole of London society knew that the navy was heading towards the Dardanelles - an element of surprise? 

1769 to 1822 Castlereagh has slashed his throat in with a scissors in 1822 when he was foreign secretary. The offensive on the western front  Neuve Chapelle had to be halted as they ran out of shells.- men I can replace but artillery's shells not.

Edwin Montagu never bored her while she had reached a point where Asquith did. He however was not attracted to going to bed with Montagu. She was not moved by any church service and could convert to Judaism like crossing a road. She enjoyed being with Montagu on a weekend of birdwatching. Montagu said he loved her for her mans mind and women's body. Marrying was a way to escape Asquith.

1908 Asquith had gone to Biarritz in France to kiss Edward VII hand to be made Prime Minister. The King was on holiday in France.

Lloyd George was planning a temperance campaign. At the ammunitions' factory in Newcastle Asquith said that there was plenty of munitions despite having a telegram that there was only enough for a weeks supply at the front. Workers here were working 68 hours a week average and women were also being employed at the Armstrong factory.

1915 The German torpedoing of the Lusitania caused the loss of 1200 and over a hundred of them were Americans. The Germans had also started using poison gas on the Western front.

Deemer on a visit to his boss saw him talking to Lord Northcliffe (1825 to 1922) The owner of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror and realized that Deemer had been kept in this illegal operation for purely political reasons.

Herbert Asquith had the last Liberal Government in the UK. Venetia sailed to France to take up her nursing duties and the coalition cabinet now had 6 Liberals the PMs Grey, Lloyd George , Crewe, Mc Kenna and Simon. 6 Unionists Bonar Law , Balfour, Lord Curzon , Carson, Austen Chamberlain. a Labour member Arthur Henderson and Kitchener was non party.

Churchill left to join his regiment in France. The Dardanelles was abandoned as a failure in Jan 1916.  The dead here amounted to  over 110,000- 34,000 British 10,000 French, 10,000 Australians and 56,000 Turks. Churchill lost his reputation for years as a result of this.

1916 Lord Kitchener died on a warship on a mission to Russia that hit a mine off Scotland. Raymond Asquith killed  on the Somme.

1917 Oc Asquith wounded and his leg was amputated. Bob Asquith remained in the army till the end of the war. Violet married Maurice Bonham Carter. She had loved Rupert Brook.

1916 After 9 years in power Asquith was ousted by Lloyd George.

1915 Venetia married Edwin Montagu  who became Secretary of State for India (He was a passionate anti Zionist) who opposed the Balfour Declaration and died in 1924 aged 45. She was not physically attracted to him and his being Jewish was a problem but she liked his company. (He had, had a gay relationship to Maynard Keynes the well known economist at Cambridge.) This also got her away from Asquith. He had told Venetia she had a women's body and a mans head. Venetia gave birth to Judith in 1923 DNA tests later proved that the Earl of Dudley was the father. She also had affairs with Lord Beaverbrook. She died in 1948 aged 60

560 letters from Asquith to Venetia are held at the Bodleian Library. Roy Jenkins( PM from 1974 to 1976) used them when he published  a biography of Asquith in 1964. Violet, Asquith's daughter was shocked to learn of their existence.

 

V2: A novel of WW2 by Robert Harris 2020 307pg

4/12/20

At the end of November 1944 Germans fired missiles from Scheveningen on the Dutch Coast. From the RAF base at Medmenham they  were working on photographic reconnaissance  Werner von Braun and SS General Hans Kammler were involved in these rockets. Von Braun had once stated that the rocket would not save Germany and that the aim had been to build a spaceship. 1934 Werner von Braun said there are people alive today that will get to the moon. To develop space ships he convinced the military that rockets could be used as  weapons and they set up an Army Research Centre at Peenemunde. 

V1 and V2 stand for Vergeltungswaffe or Vengeance Weapon. 1942  Oct first space travel type rocket succeeded.

1943 Aug Operation Hydra was launched to destroy Peenemunde which had 20, thousand engineers , scientists, teachers , construction workers and slaves mostly from France and Russia.1944 V2s attacked both London and Antwerp.  The fuel was methyl alcohol, liquid oxygen and hydrogen peroxide.  They launched the rockets during periods of heavy cloud so that the RAF could not find them. The V2 weighed 4 ton empty but 8 and a half to when fueled. It reached the speed of 3500mph in the atmosphere. It detonated a ton of amatol high explosives. V2 landed without warning of time to shelter. The bulk of Germany's potato crop was commandeered to distill alcohol fuel for this. the failure rate of the rocket was about 1in 10.  At Peenemunde, a power station , airfield and liquid oxygen plant were set up, the Luftwaffe paid for the construction of this. After this had been destroyed the SS took over the project and took a gypsum mine in Thuringia to be the V2 factory. Dr. Hans Kammler SS was a civil engineer, the mine was opened so that trains could enter it and cross the tunnel. Capacity would be 900 missiles a month. The supply of slave labour was inexhaustible. Himmler was formally given control of the rocket project "you could be shot by the SS  imprisoned by them or work for them. The RAF recruited Women, well educated middle class with different professions like archaeology were recruited to study reconnaissance photos. 8 were sent to Mechelen, Belgium which had been under Germany 3 months previously. With slide rules and log books and Euler formula of the theorem of the parabolic curve.  Raidar would measure the point of the ballistic curve and get the report of where it landed in London, this way the location of the launch pad could be worked out in 6 minutes and the RAF informed to bomb it before it moved away. There was no Luftwaffe left to speak of at the time. Von Braun and his closest colleagues Walter Dombergerand, Bernard Tessman had all their plans on microfilm and as soon as the war ended they would be in great demand by the Americans in White Sands , New Mexico. When they were later driven through London, remarked "We fired more than a thousand rockets at London. "All they places that propaganda had said were destroyed like Buckingham Palace , Parliament , Piccalilli Circus were all intact. 20000 people had died making the V2  2700 people were killed in London with 6500 wounded. This program had cost Germany more dollars that the whole Manhattan Project The last V2 was fired 6 weeks before the end of the war and killed 140 people in Whitechapel

The Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen 2023 289pg 30/9/24

Relocation  is the original title in Hebrew and shows a   split and tension in the lives of expatriate Israelis who have relocated to America. 

 Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s 4th book. Note the original Hebrew published in 2021.

Silicon Valley, tells us that her son Adam, 16, has been accused of killing a Black boy from his school.

 “We raised an American child who went to high school with American children, and now they say he killed another American child.”   “Since when do Blacks attack Jews? That’s always been the white people’s job.”  ​“The great­est mys­tery in people’s lives is their children.” 

 Parenting, antisemitism, masculinity are the themes   Displacement of Black communities in certain parts of America (in this case Palo Alto) through gentrification with the arrival of High Tech workers.. The factors that have pushed Israelis to leave their home country which they want to stay connected to but that also puts pressure on them to succeed in America.  Her husband is the sole breadwinner and she with a doctorate can't advance her career. Had she stayed in Israel she would have got her doctorate published. She has job part time at a care home with little challenge and doesn't pay much. She screened the movie East of Eden which is a Cain and Able Plot.  You had consultants for breastfeeding and consultants for  toilet training but the people who did the work were the Hispanic women.

In Pittsburg synagogue on Rosh Hashana a man goes in with a machete wounding several and killing a woman. There are kids that choose to do karate classes and those who are the chess types.

Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer. There, for the first time, he finds a sense of confidence and belonging. Lilach is  glad that there is at least one adult Uri  who can communicate with her son.

Visitors from Israel bring sunflower seeds. His visiting cousins Assi and Aviv were up running every morning to be able to join an elite combat unit. As boys they had a  competition to see who could pee the furthest - Now they compared their children in the same way as they compared their pricks then. 

Uri had been part of the IDF general staff and after leaving the army the boys heard he had joined the mossad. Is the class of Krav Maga a cover story. Israelis hardly ever come to the synagogue.

Adam had not been keen to go to this party at Josh but his parents persuaded him to.

Uri's voice not only commanded people but also forces of nature.

Adam saved a puppy which he named Kelev (dog in Hebrew) that had been badly beaten and because it had a scar kids did not pet it "The scar isn't ugly only the people who gave it to him are ugly"  These same boys bullied Adam and were led by Jamal Jones.

Another dead boy in America , Jamal Jones was a black Moslem. He died at the party of cardiac arrest  later it is called drug overdose.. For almost 20 years there were get togethers with Israelis and they always discussed where you served in the army..

Tethys Ocean area of ocean in the period of Gwondaland before it split up. Before Mikhail  met  Lilach he had never thought of opening his adoption file,

Uri - Adam didn't tell you that he was being bullied at school, Jamal was the worst bully, .and made up songs about Adam that he posted on the class chat  group. School bullying is very common. Kids are hassled for wearing glasses or being fat. A child who hurts other is a child who is hurt by others.   Mikhael had planned to recommend Uri to Berman to offer him a job. Programmers are a dime a dozen but good people are rare.

After the graffiti the police kept everyone out the school till they had checked it for bombs. There were only 20 Jewish kids in the high school of 400 students. Jamal's mother had left her drunk husband and worked as a room cleaner in the hotel.

When Lilach visited Jamal's mother she was shown Jamal's room with a picture of Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. She never said anything but Adam's  Jordan sneakers and  other thing taken from him with his name on them were in the room. She was almost glad the boy was dead. The press said that he had overdosed on a home made drug.

Lilach had wanted to raise Adam in a place that had no wars but maybe she was exposing him to a different kind of insanity. Boys need motorcycles to prove to themselves they are boys. They discuss the difference between friendship in nature and friendship in captivity. Of the Israeli community abroad.

Uri advised Adam to erase his search history on the computers and phone before the police ask for it.  Uri came into their lives a few months ago and knew more about their son than the parents did. Uri's slogan was "if someone wants to kill you, rise up and kill him first.

On the kibbutz Omer Shapiro  teased him as they said he was adopted.(true ) as he was a darker shade than his parents, In the pool he held Omer under water to punish him and when he pulled him out he was regarded as a hero for saving him. Omer kept his distance after that.

The worst thing that can happen to an 18 year old kid is he is told he can do anything he wants.

People in Silicon Valley put everything The Nation the politics aside to get rich. Money is the most dangerous ideology, it holds nothing sacred and allows you to do everything. American children smelled foreignness the way great white sharks smell blood.

After refusing to speak Hebrew outside the house at 6,  at 16 the dormant Israeliness awoke at once. Netta left Uri's class there were 3 rats caught and he asked for volunteers who could kill them with their bare hands, he made a ritual of it. Your son is a nutcase like the Uri that he admires.

Mikhaels company developed security products i.e. weapons. Typical Lilack prepares schnitzels. The narcotics squad visits the house with dogs. Embarrassing the family and took Adam's laptop and notebooks, but the chemistry lab had vanished. In Jamal's room they found traces of weed and his mother admitted her son was gay and liked boys. How well do you know your son she asked Lilach.

 Kids got Ritalin from friends to cope with exams and half the class takes it in pill form. In the states when children grew up they rolled all over the continent like marbles.

The rabbi says he didn't think that there would be a blood libel against Jews in this day and age. A rock came through the window.

In the Galilee while Lilach was pregnant their was missiles falling and she later lost the daughter. I loved Israel the way a women loves an abusive husband and understands she must get away from him to save the children. They were suspicious of the same car driving around till somebody said it the neighbors driving to get his baby to fall asleep

People on their deathbeds always spoke the languages they were born into.

Their Kelev was killed and they phoned Uri to help. Uri helped them bury the dog and stayed the night and they feel safer. Adam is in shock.

When Lilach phoned the Hotel in Washington DC, she discovered that he never stayed there and realizes that he took a different hotel with his secretary secretly.  All vice president fuck their secretaries. It turns out that they arrived switched hotels as they were in the same hotel as their  competitors and were worried about espionage. His secretary didn't come and another secretary took her place.

Meanwhile she had a relationship with Uri and he had to send an email message and asked her for the code to Mikhael computer as he didn't have his cellphone with him.. The more they worried about Adam the more the let Uri insinuate into their lives.

Uri was arrested when he tried to sell information to the competitor  and found stuff on Uri's computer. He needed a lot of money and fast so he could get near to his kids.

The reason he trusted Uri was comradeship amongst solders but the Pentagon could not take up their product as a result as it had been compromised.

Annabel Jones will present  Jamal Jones Scholarship for excellence at graduation.

 Adam after graduation goes for 3 weeks Birthright trip to Israel and it hints that he will remain there.

The books ends with her visiting Uri in jail where he is for industrial espionage, he will have no other visitors and he bites his nails..

 

Orphan Train by Christine Baker Kline 2012 278pg

                                                                                                                                                   2/9/2024

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children. transported more than 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children between the ages of 2 and 14.  Some children were orphaned when their parents died in epidemics of typhoid, yellow fever or the flu. Others were abandoned due to poverty, illness, or addiction The phrase "orphan train" was first used in 1854.Many teenage boys and girls went to orphan train sponsoring organizations simply in search of work or a free ticket out of the city. Most children on the trains were white. Prospective parents could choose to take a single child, separating siblings .Average of 3,000 children via train each year from 1855 to 1875. Children were not sent to the southern states, as Brace was an ardent abolitionist. Many rural people viewed the orphan train children with suspicion, as the incorrigible offspring of drunkards and prostitutes. The majority of children under fourteen were leading satisfactory lives. Charles Loring  Brace's notion that children are better cared for by families than in institutions is the most basic tenet of present-day foster care

Very much like On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry,

Orphan Train opens with Vivian  Daly, now aged 91, sitting in her home in Maine 2011.  Molly is an orphan who is in the foster system she gets into trouble and has to do community work so she is helping Vivian go through her attic and sorting Vivian's past.  Later she discovers that Vivian was on Orphan Train child.

Another story starts in  of 1929 Naanh and her family have immigrated from Galway Ireland to New York city. There is a fire in the tenement, killing her family and she is taken over by Children's Aid who send orphan children out of the city to the Midwest for adoption. She is given a baby Carmine to look after as she is skilled with looking after he younger siblings. She an the boy Dutchy get on well.

The greatest demand is for small babies by childless couples.  Then young boys are wanted by farmers on their farms and Naanh is taken by a couple who have a cottage industry of dress making. She and Dutchy promise that they will find each other.

In Minneapolis area children are supposed to be sent to school and brought up a devout Christians  but there is no implementation of the rules. Naanh is given the name Dorothy and becomes a skilled seamstress but gets no schooling . The fall of Wall street and the depression result in the collapse of this factory and she is returned to the Child Aid Agent. Then is put on a farm with poverty, an incapable sick mother with lots of children. She is sent to school  but on the farm she suffers, from the dirt , hunger a lice outbreak where they shave off all their hair. Eventually the farmer tries to rape her and the wife packs her off in the middle of the night and she takes refuge at the school.

Dorothy's teacher's landlady places her with a couple who lost their only daughter to diphtheria. She goes to school, helps run their store and is adopted by this couple and takes on the name Vivian of their dead daughter.

On an outing Duchy recognizes her orange hair and freckles and they get married he is a musician and a music teacher, but after Pearl Harbour he goes off to war and dies in action. 

Molly now is looked after by the 90 year old rich Vivian and it through Molly  that Vivian's story is put together. With computerization one is able to trace what happened to Naanh's sister Maisie who was adopted by the neighbour and had children and grandchildren.

Home Children  from the British Isles.

1869, Annie Mc  Pherson founded a child migration scheme, under which more than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The program  was largely discontinued in the 1930s but not entirely terminated until the 1970s.

In the 18th century, labour shortages in the overseas colonies also encouraged the transportation of children for work in the Americas,

"The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy through the reformation and emigration of children." In 1832, the first group of children was sent to the Cape Colony in South Africa and the Swan River Colony in Australia, and in 1833, 230 children were shipped to Toronto  and New Brunswick  in Canada.

2011 Home Children, Canada claimed  that one in ten Canadians is a descendant of a home child.