The Corona Chronicles – Letting Off Steam

On Tuesday morning, I awoke to the sound of rain pattering against my windows. Yet when I looked at the Weather Channel app on my mobile phone, it informed me that the sun was shining!
It just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read. That’s especially true when it comes from biased “human rights” organizations which seem to be obsessed with Israel, to the exclusion of almost all else.

That same morning Amnesty International released its latest piece of antisemitic fiction, accusing Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on all Palestinians, both in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and within Israel itself.

I have written before, on numerous occasions, about this outrageous and blatant LIE. The only way Amnesty International can fit Israel into the apartheid box is by redesigning the box ie. changing the definition of apartheid. Because nobody with the slightest claim to intellectual integrity could claim that Arab Israelis (whom Amnesty International considers “Palestinians”) are subject to segregation, denied the right to vote, prevented from owning land, or excluded from most skilled jobs. Nor are they excluded from power. The report claims that every facet of Israeli rule is designed to promote Jewish supremacy. Yet an Arab Islamic party is a member of the current government coalition. The Druze Director of the Ziv Medical Centre in Safad, Dr. Salman Zarka, is Israel’s current COVID czar. The former Chief Medical Officer of the Israel Defence Forces, Brig. Gen. Tarif Bader, another Druze, was appointed in October 2020 Head of the Directorate for preparing the healthcare system ahead of winter. A Professor in the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, in February 2021 he was appointed Director of the Kaplan Medical Centre in Rehovot. There are Arab and Druze judges, Knesset members, heads of university departments. Excluded from most skilled jobs? Give me a break!

An Arab woman has represented Israel in the Miss Universe contest. Another Arab woman has represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Under the apartheid regime in South Africa (the country which coined the word apartheid), Africans were not allowed to live in “white” neighbourhoods.
Well, for the record, my downstairs neighbour is an Arab. Skilled jobs? He is a lawyer. And his wife is a doctor. And in case anyone was thinking of claiming that Arabs aren’t allowed to own property in Jewish neighbourhoods, though they might rent – as the idiotic Richard Silverstein, a pathologically anti-Israel blogger from Seattle, did once when I challenged him on his outrageous lie that Arabs are barred from owning property in Jewish areas – my neighbour owns his apartment. It was sold to him by the previous (Jewish) owners and he is as much the owner of his apartment as I am of mine.

According to the report, the “territorial fragmentation” of the Palestinian population “serves as a foundational element of the regime of oppression and domination”.
By “territorial fragmentation”, they mean the fact that most of the “Palestinians” live in the so-called “West Bank” under their own government, the Palestinian Authority, or in the Gaza Strip, where they are ruled by Hamas. The remaining “Palestinians” are Arab and Druze Israelis, who are citizens of Israel. To “reunite” all these “fragmented” populations, Israel would have to cease to exist. But that, of course, is what Amnesty International really wants.

And now for the news on the COVID front. Israel is currently facing a new sub-variant of the Omicron variant. Quite a few Knesset Members and Cabinet Ministers have now tested positive for COVID – including Defence Minister Benny Gantz – who has already been vaccinated FOUR times! The number of deaths after contracting the virus has risen to 9,013 since the start of the pandemic. The number of seriously ill stands at 1,147 according to the Ministry of Health data dashboard (last updated this morning), of whom 353 are in critical condition. Of the latter, 274 are on ventilators and 18 are on ECMO machines. The experts tell us we are all going to catch it sooner or later – including people who have already had it and recovered. A couple of weeks ago, they told us we were past the peak, and that the end of the pandemic was in sight. Some said it was becoming an endemic disease.
And then came this new variant.
Who knows when it will all end? I really wish I could hibernate until it was all over – if it ever is.

At least maybe I could hibernate till winter ends. It has been so cold these past few weeks. Last Wednesday night, it even snowed. On Thursday morning, I awoke to this:

I should have taken a leaf out of the book of one of my friends from choir, who didn’t feel like going out into the cold and wet and made a miniature snowman out of the snow which collected on her window-sill!

The next time it snows, I am going to make a snowman on my front porch.