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July 28 The Curious Case of the Vanishing Blog - Part 2Well, as you can see, my blog module has been restored. For this, I owe a debt of gratitude to Mark, (Little Fish, Big Pond) who suggested limiting the number of blog entries visible on my space's opening page to five, so that any old entry, with possibly corrupt code, would not be displayed. Well, I tried that - and it worked! So then, I tried increasing the number of displayed entries to ten. That, too, was all right. It was only when I increased the number of displayed entries to fifteen that the blog module on my opening page vanished once more. So I went back to ten entries on the opening page and now (touch wood), I have my blog module back again and visible on the opening page.
So I heartily concur with Kenny. Mark is one of the most helpful people I have met on the Internet and I warmly recommend his website, which can be found at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.slack1/ He's got loads of useful and fascinating stuff there too.
And many thanks also to Kenny (see my Friends List), without whom, I would never have met Mark.
The logical deduction to be made is that there was some corrupt code in one of the blog entries between eleven and fifteen (going backwards from the latest) although I have absolutely no idea why the problem should not have manifested itself before now. That is not the only unanswered question, of course. Why was the blog module invisible only on the opening page, but visible when accessed from Blog Summaries? Why was the entire central column visible to Firefox users but not to Internet Explorer users? Why was the blog visible on the opening page, even using Internet Explorer, from one of the computers at work and from the computer in my eye-doctor's waiting room, but not from my computer at home, nor from the second computer at work?
Why and why and why? A dozen unanswered questions.
This being a Microsoft Mystery, I suppose we shall never know...
The Face of EvilThe other morning, I opened the newspaper and looked upon the face of evil - the child murderer Samir Kuntar in Beirut, dressed in Hizbollah uniform and greeting his adoring fans with the Nazi salute. But it was when I looked at his eyes that I was really jolted. Oh, the moustache and the hairstyle helped but it was the eyes that did it.
Just look at the pictures below. I think you'll find no words are necessary. July 24 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O JerusalemI have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day or night,,,
Thus says the prophet Isaiah (chapter 62, v. 6).
One such watchman was David Shriki, a young Border Policeman from the town of Rishon-le-Zion, stationed in Israel's capital. His mission was to defend the holy city and its inhabitants. On Friday night, the Sabbath eve, July 11th, he and another policeman were shot and wounded in a cowardly terrorist attack at the Lion's Gate in Jerusalem. David, who was shot in the head, has been fighting for his life for the past two weeks. Sadly, he lost the battle. Yesterday, at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, he died of his wounds. He was nineteen years old.
May G-d avenge his blood.
July 21 The Curious Case of the Vanishing BlogIt is a truth universally acknowledged that when using Microsoft Windows, totally inexplicable things have been known to happen. A case in point is my vanishing blog module. After I added my last blog post, about the amazing similarity between the child-murderer Samir Kuntar and a certain German dictator, all the text in the central column of my Live Space vanished, leaving a blank space. Yet my father, who uses Firefox, rather than Internet Explorer, told me he could still see the blog module in the central column when he visited my space. Today, I heard from another Live Spaces user that his blog module had also disappeared. However, shortly afterwards, he informed me that he had added a test blog, and all his previous blogs had been miraculously restored. So I'm going to try and see if the same thing happens to me. And while I'm about it - has this happened to anybody else? July 13 Samir Kuntar - Son of SatanIf the news reports are to be believed, the prisoner-exchange between Israel and Hizbollah is likely to be carried out within a few days. To secure the release of two Israeli reserve soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, kidnapped on Israeli soil by Hizbollah terrorists, Israel will release 4 Lebanese terrorists - including Samir Kuntar - and dozens of Palestinians. All this, despite the fact that according to Israeli Intelligence reports, the two Israeli reservists are almost certainly dead. Hizbollah has refused to give any information proving they are alive. It would not be the first time Israel has agreed to a prisoner exchange with Hizbollah, only to discover, too late, that in return for live terrorists, we were receiving coffins.
Over the past years, Israel has released even terrorists "with blood on their hands", in various prisoner exchange deals, but has always refused to release Kuntar - and with good reason. This animal, this vile Son of Satan, has no right to live, let alone walk free. In case anyone has forgotten, let me remind you who - no, what - Samir Kuntar is. On April 22, 1979, the eve of Shabbat (a favourite time for those who love to murder Jews), this piece of filth, together with 3 other members of the Palestine Liberation Front, sailed from Lebanon and landed on the coast of Nahariya. They murdered a policeman who spotted them and then broke into the apartment of the Haran family, where they took hostage the father, Danny and his four-year-old daughter, Einat. Danny's wife, Smadar, hid in the apartment's crawl-space, together with the young couple's second daughter, two-year-old Yael.
The terrorists took Danny and little Einat down to the beach. There, the Spawn of Satan Kuntar, shot Danny in the back and then drowned him, to make sure he was dead. He did this before the terrified eyes of his four-year-old daughter, for the sadistic purpose of ensuring that this would be the last sight the toddler would ever see, before dragging the child over to the rocks as she whimpered and begged him not to hurt her. There, he smashed the little girl's head on a rock with his rifle butt. Can you imagine anything so horrific? To smash a rifle butt, over and over again, into a little girl's skull! To smash her head on the rocks! This is the "hero" Hizbollah wants freed! This scumbag who has never once expressed regret for his actions, who has even boasted of them in a television interview which Israeli authorities, for some incomprehensible reason, allowed him to give, while in prison!!!
And what of Smadar and her younger daughter, her baby, two-year-old Yael? Were you thinking that at least they were safe? Think again. In her desperate fear lest the gang of murderers hear the child's whimpering and discover their hiding place, Smadar had covered Yael's mouth with her hand. The toddler suffocated. Smadar lost her entire family that night. Samir Kuntar was responsible for that. And this is the piece of human excrement that our government is going to release in exchange for - what? Corpses?
Pictures speak louder than words, so I will leave you with a picture of Danny, Einat and Yael Haran, taken just a week before their lives were so brutally ended by an animal who doesn't deserve to live, much less walk free on G-d's good earth.
July 12 Say a little prayer...I promised updates on the terrorist attack last night. Unfortunately, the need for them has come sooner than expected.
One of the two Border Policemen wounded in the shooting by the Lions' Gate, David Shriki from Rishon-le-Zion, is now in a critical condition, having been shot in the head in last night's cowardly attack. It is feared he may not survive.
Please pray for him.
The Son of Satan who shot him is still at large, but I have no doubt he will be caught, sooner or later - and then our imbecilic government will no doubt agree to exchange him for more corpses... The Week in RetrospectIt's been a most enjoyable week for me. (I refer solely to the personal aspect. On the political front, both international and domestic, things are looking less than promising, but for the sake of my blood pressure, and so as not to spoil the weekend, I shall leave that for my next blog...)
Starting last Friday, most of the morning, and a good part of the afternoon, was given over to the General Rehearsal for the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir's end-of-the-season concert, which took place on Saturday night. (My apologies to Possum the MagnifiCat, whose 13th birthday on July 4th was sadly neglected for this reason
 ) We performed the Gloria by Vivaldi with the full choir (about 140 singers) and then the Chamber Choir performed the Te Deum by Charpentier. For those of you who aren't into classical music and who may think they don't know the latter work, let me assure you - you do (at least, you do if you are European). Remember the Eurovision theme tune? That's the Prelude from the Te Deum. In both these works, we were partnered by the Israel Camerata.After the interval, the full choir returned to the stage where we were joined by a fantastic soloist, Yonit Shaked-Golan, (whose voice recalls that of the late, great, Shoshana Damari), and the wonderful Ensemble Folklorico Latinoamericano for the Missa Criolla by contemporaryArgentinian composer Ariel Ramirez. The Ensemble, which plays on authentic instruments, further enlivened the evening with a selection of folk music from Argentina and the Andes.
The Henry Crown Symphony Hall, which has a seating capacity of 750, was packed. On Monday night, the 589-seatAlex Meir Auditorium at the Palace of Culture in Or Akiva (near Caesarea) was less full - Shmulik says he counted about 320 - but the audience was no less enthusiastic. Despite the climatic conditions (somewhere in the mid 30s Celsius, above the average for this time of year) and the fact that half of us made the 2 hour journey north in a bus without functioning air-conditioning, I think we sang even better at this second performance.
I didn't get to bed until about 1 a.m. and would have been happy to sleep late the following day, but since I had to be in court by a quarter to nine, that luxury was denied me. Fortunately, I had a relatively easy day, with my favourite judge - surprisingly so, when you consider that the two week run-up to Summer Recess is usually the most hectic period in the judicial year. And then, in the evening, I met Pati (see my Friends' List). Pati is from France, and she is the first of my Internet friends whom I have met face to face. We went out for coffee at a bookshop-café and spent an enjoyable three hours discussing everything under the sun - which included a lot of Girl Talk
 . Pati, if you are reading this, I want to say once again, how lovely it was meeting you. I hope you'll come to Jerusalem again, soon. Three days is too short a visit. Remember, Israel is your home.Wednesday evening was made memorable by Oratorio's end-of-the-season party, at which each of the 4 choirs which make up the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir, showed what they could do. But I think the highlights of the evening were, without question, the performances given by two of Oratorio's conductors, both of whom proved that as well as being superb musicians, they are really "part of the gang". Flora, of the Women's Choir, performed a comic operatic duet in Hebrew and Russian, in costume, with one of the members of her choir, which had us all in fits. In this, she was following a tradition she has already established, although we usually get to see it only at Purim.
The other star of the evening was our own, inimitable Ronen, who, as well as conducting the Chamber Choir, is also Musical Director and Conductor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir. I have already mentioned, in a previous blog, his talent as a darbouka player. On Wednesday evening, he wowed us all with his rendition of "It Ain't Necessarily So", from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. We of the Chamber Choir were his backing group, although we received the sheet notes only an hour or so in advance, and there was no time for a rehearsal with him. Fortunately, after ten years together, you might say we all know each other pretty well, and can anticipate each other's moves
. I would say, for an impromptu performance, it wasn't at all bad .Thursday and Friday were more or less uneventful, although as I was writing this blog last night, the news came through of a Palestinian terrorist attack near the Lions' Gate of the Old City. The Sons of Darkness have always had a penchant for attacking Jews on our holy day. Fortunately, this time there were no fatalities, at least at the time of writing. Let us pray that that does not change and that the two wounded - one of them seriously - will speedily recover. More about this in my next blog, when more information should be available...
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