Exposé of messages from guys on OkCupid.com

Last week, I accidentally stumbled onto my blogged “Real Talk” featured on a Monster.com and BBC News article (not sure which site  referenced which): http://news.monster.com/a/other/beware-dont-add-this-to-your-cv-ff1a0. Basically, I was harping on a resume-writing grievance: fluff words [‘damned, insipid weed of words blotting out the view of their substantive counterparts’].

I constantly draw parallels in best practices between dating and job-hunting.  The same thing that works in a kitschy, dim-lit Italian restaurant date often works in a more ‘austere’ office interview. I mourn the fact that many of us subvert real talk for an version of political correctness, a pony show of one-way vetting that erases our strong and beautiful lines.

Let me pivot to the dating arena.  I was showing a bro-friend samples of good and bad messaging approaches on Okcupid in my book and this reminded me about my thoughts on aforementioned article (for which I caught flak from quite a few defensive readers – hint, hint: click that link because who doesn’t love to read trash talk).  Exposé:

Flunks:

– The wall-flower statement:I’ m honest, loyal, considerate, fun to hang out, laid backed and always with a good attitude. <- Same canned excrement you could find on resume: “I’m a team player with good problem solving skills.”  Aka, I am your bland, white-bread spread that tells you nothing about who I am.  I’m the Mr. Nice guy next door who colors inside the lines and cries because girl doesn’t get my awesomeness when I don’t even know what it is. I’m also the guy with the resume that’s a rap-sheet of responsibilities and no accomplishments.

-The TV-dinner, EZ-mac rendition of Point Z: “Let’s meet” or “Let me take you out to dinner.” Deafening period. Bold, declarative intent is inherently good but you don’t just tender a prospective employer to “hire me” or “to partner up” nor submit a resume that says “Looking for a xyz job opportunity where I can xyz” in an otherwise sea of blank white space.  (Shy away from a job objective which is the resume-version of a toddler going take-sey, crying “Me want.” Be adult table-setting your value in your give-sy professional summary.)

 – The canned compliments: “Hey there, you seem like a nice person, liked your profile…”  Nice is criminally stale in many a contexts.  It’s a remedial class way of saying someone is awesome but probably not knowing if and how they actually are awesome.  “Your company seems nice to work for” <– You think that would make a hiring manager lean back in his tufted leather chair and lick his lips?

 – The canned Horn dog: Damn…you are hot…isn’t it hot in herre? Lol.” <– Extra negative points for misspelling and the invocation of “Lol.”  Hell, as much as I’d pay to NOT watch ‘Fifty Shades of Grey or, even better, pay to burn author’s books, his plebeian-appealing upchuck of “I don’t know whether to worship at your feet or spank the living sh*t out of you” is more welcome at this point.

WINS or somethings closer:

As I mentioned in my profile, I work in defense. Don’t get excited. It isn’t a Jason Bourne situation. I lead teams building cool software related to national security. I love it. There are few things I would rather do. Probably Major League Baseball player. Definitely Batman. But that’s about it. When did you figure out teaching is your passion? Once you get your master’s will you focus more on policy or administration? <– Funny, true story: He became one of my billable consultants for a more ‘Simon Cowell’ than ‘Paula Abdul’ type of client.  I credit this to the way he wowed them by knowing and belting out the unapologetic, raw, strong innards of himself– in tandem with his technical prowess.

I’ve never done an online dating site and last week was my first time on this. Your profile resonated with me and, yes, I thought you were very pretty… (I get that’s said to you but it doesn’t illegitimize my perception)I really would like to learn about you and it dawned on me after talking to a girlfriend that I shouldn’t ask you out in the first note but I’m direct, so my apologies but would love to get together for a drink if that’d be comfortable for you?

I thought your profile was hilariously written. My dad is an author and my sister writes for Entertainment Weekly in NYC… So the writing genes weren’t evenly dispensed there. My preferred means of self expression is through the spoken word. <– So, this one was a bit more ‘school boy’ but it felt real and interesting all the same.  The guy was humble and honest– acknowledged his descent into the ‘clique’ stuff, showed he’d taken the time to really browse through my profile, and give meaningful giveaways about himself.

Anyhow, I’d walk over a floor of broken glass for the chance to talk to you more online, let alone in person, a la Bruce Willis in Die Hard. So, say something! Otherwise I’m going to make a mess trying to recreate that scene. <–[A guy’s second or third message.] Humor and non-serious self-deprecation is usually Good Game.

Can’t forget the haters:

Well written, your profile is elegant in style but arrogance is very apparent. Michel Richard-type places? Dear, you are not Cheese-Cake Factory worthy. Don’t think your pretty looks allows you to say whatever you want. After-all, this is okcupid and I found the ok in your personality by looking at your profile picture and reading your summary. <–  I like this guy’s writing.  He’s intelligent if not all-discerning.  (However, I stand by the belief that my love for the esoteric and non-franchised restaurants can be more real talk than it is princess talk.)

————

My two cents on how not to ‘flunk:’

Engage in real talk.  I’m not saying be real butt-naked right off the bat style (unless you are cool with it).   Shed some of your clothing.  Judiciously excerpt yourself in a way that’s comfortable and manageable for someone who’s not used to you yet and who you are not yet used to.

Don’t troll; don’t copy-paste; don’t do a ‘one size fits all’ approach– at least not if you are online to find something “serious.”  Ya know, as a recruiter, even the pressure of turn-around times and requirements has led me down the pathway of canned email-blast merges.  It’s so easy to save an email template beginning with “I came across your resume and felt you had the skills we are looking for!”  In the recruiting world, where it’s nowadays a seller’s market, sometimes you do gotta troll and fish mass-factory style to raise the odds of catching a few svelte blue-fins caught in the mix (WHILE also doing some more targeted deep-mining for the diamonds in the rough).  The thing is, it’s usually insulting because the reader knows it’s impersonal.  The average girl on OKC and the (not as average) Open Stack, Palentir-alumni Big Data guy on Dice.com gets enough solicited interest. They aren’t going to dignify an “I don’t give a crap enough” type of solicitation from sender.

When I actually take the time to articulate how I “see” someone and rationalize my interest, they often bite.  Even those not on the job market.  I emailed one cool tech cat: “Going through resumes, I found yours and  I really like your overall experience– from the CI practitioning to the way you talked about your fluency in languages (love the “conversational” and “speak haltingly” verbage), the Fitnesse and Selenium test refactoring, work with ElasticSearch and Big Data, and even the side Groovy/Ruby/Perl.”  <— I told him enough details to convince him I had taken the time to vet him out if even in a prelim, window-shopping way and he responded appreciatively:  I have to tell you that I can count on one hand the number of people who have responded with the level of personal detail that you have shown in your email to me. I receive many (generic?) emails from recruiters that do not even mention my name, for example.  He went on to propose a phone conversation or Starbucks meetup.

Aline Lerner recently wrote a brilliant article ( https://blog.hired.com/what-i-learned-from-reading-8000-recruiting-messages/ ) where she shows the correlation between personalized, targeted messages with positive response rates. I think what she and I have to say works for both the potential ‘rockstars’ of your work or dating world.

I feel like I’m quoting some rapper (with a warning that  I’m slightly more in tune to Olde-English absinthe or plain-nerd speech) but  “Do You.”  The best of you.

Prompt 3: Write about Picnics

One of my first grade students asked “What do grown ups do for fun?” I stared into a sea of trusting, blinking faces resting on cherub-fleshed sculptures and remembered the panicked thought I experienced even as a child: What was there for adults after play?

I still don’t have the answer for that. Except to refute that the very premise of the question is unfounded. Years or decades later, one must often get ‘jolted’ to transcend back into a higher, primitive state of mindfulness– a living in the present acknowledging Neverland isn’t so much nirvanic in its never. Adults live upside down. We should all have stayed frocked and head-banded, poised to jump into the looking glass.

At least a few times in the summer, my parents would take me to a local park. We’d pile up in my Dad’s boxy Volvo Turbo wagon with a portable freezer of Mom’s cold fried chicken and vinegar-dressed noodles. Several miles away, my brother and I would alight a few giddy paces ahead of our parents into a decidious forest bespeckled with playground equipment shaped as pirate ships, giant caterpillars, or thatched-shape huts and far-off ‘choo’s in the distance from a real-working toy train. The kind with a painted smiley face such as plastered onto “I Think I Can’s” Thomas the Engine. The train was my brother’s favorite. Mine, the carousel. I’d weave my way through fluff-haired mares and fiercer looking steeds, alight upon one with pink roses dotted into its half-faded gray mane, bequeath it “Duchess” and let Mom hoist me onto my wooden muse in a moving music box.

—

My friends always think that summers off from my cherubs and their blinding questions are welcome. Au contraire, I didn’t like silence. The fading of kids and their tumult sent me into great unease. I was glad the few times my lover could ‘work from home.’ One time, he told me to dress comfortably and wouldn’t tell me where we were going. We stopped by a grocery and left with sundry tubs of salad, edamame beans, wings, and sub sandwiches. Instead of staying on the main throughfare, we turned into a narrow winding path that suddenly burst into a graveled court. Because he had made it his neglect to tell me where we were going and why I was to dress ‘comfortably,’ he had to half-carry me up a hill, down a dip, and into a shade overlooking a murmuring brook. We batted away the occasional gnats on our skin, arugula leaves on the corner of our mouths, and we laughed at our mishaps, moments before he undid his pants and pressed his legs against my legs against the bark of a beech tree.

—

Afterwards, we settled. I on a beach towel. He on a foldable nylon chair. I sketching him bent over
an algo graph or regression algorithm (because, as a financial analyst, he was still technically ‘working from home.’)

One time, we fell asleep under a beech tree. I took an upwards photo shot of foliage before I drifted off.
Another time, a wasp came calling, and I threw a loaf of Ciabatta bread at him.
—

Years later, another lover and I sat on a boulder overlooking a stream, our backs to a sandy trail. We shared a cigarette and I watched the waters moving past rocks, the waters’ edges looking like tufted hair.

—

I want to go back to that park with the Thomas train and the carousel, where Mom would do all the re-lidding of containers filled with half-eaten noodles and wings once we were sated. And we’d clamber around, up and down, side to side and, then, head back down the winding path not too weary.

My response to the recent health-laced backlash against Chipotle

Admission: I am a Chipotle stock shareholder. But I’m a Chipotle fan/patron first (the kind that has to alternate between three local Chipotle stores and still suffer the embarrassment of being teased for always ordering the same items/toppings– Fajitas, no beans; get that sour cream and cheese away from my bowl) before I am the aforementioned.

Anyways, in some recent article, a Taco Bell burrito was credited as having far less calories and fat than its Chipotle counterpart. No shit, Sherlock. First of all– to invoke rocket science, size matters. So, if the latter is at least 3x bigger….well, more is more. Let’s also note that Tacquerio Bella does not usually include rice. So, uhm, you aren’t comparing apples to apples.

Some more rocket science: There are ways to eat at Chipotle 4-5x a week and be its version of the Jared Fogle [Subway spokesman known for his very effective sandwich-diet>weight loss]. Example: Opt for the bowl and not the burrito. Thank god, I hate cheese and sour cream and many dairy products to the point I’d rather probably eat dandelions or nail cuticles. Example: Sofritas bowl with tomato salsa, lettuce, fajita vegetables minus curdled-milk crap is UNDER 400 calories.

Replace sofritas with steak,and it’s still only 420 calories.
Let’s keep upping the ante. Add beans to the steak bowl and you have a meal intake of low 500’s. Yo, you still have enough caloric allowance left over for a few glasses of Souvignon Blanc and a bag ol’ chips.

At the end of day, it’s all about the personal choice you make at the cashier counter. (I mean, even McDonald’s was voted into one of top ten healthiest choice restaurants. While the merit in such a nomination is debatable, it does make sense on some level– given its Yogurt Parfait or other sundries.)

So to parlay back into my epicurean and monetary investment, don’t be that typical-Americano, fatty ignoramus– ya know, the kind that loads up the Vinagrette on his/her Caesar salad (and it might as well, at this point, be my college-version, meat-chili salad) or suck up some fruity-tooty, half-a pound shake.

Make love to me, Burritoful. (Hi…meow.)

P.S.  If some lover wants to lavish me ….think, Chipotle gift card (I’m talking enough injected into card for at least half a year’s worth). (Forgivable substitutes are as follows: robo-cleaner, customized closet-shelving system, or all-expensed trip to [‘Am I sure I didn’t die and go to heaven?”] Banyang Tree Lijiang.)

Prompt 2: A Different Version of Cinderella

Project: http://creativewritingprompts.com/#

(Prompt #4: What happens if the shoe fits one of the icky sisters?)

Stepmother was hell-bent on marrying off one of her daughters to the Prince. As soon as she heard that he was scouring the kingdom for the lady of the glass slippers and that this lady, furthermore, had the most ridiculously tiny feet, she sent a servant to the apothecary to buy bandaid gauze and a vial of chloroform. Then, she summoned her girls into their parlor room. The elder stepsister, Snooty, trounced in- each index finger pinching a fold of her dress between her thumb to reveal a flash of her new Kingsley McChadwick heels (they were the fashion rage of that era). The younger stepsister, Sluggy, trailed behind her.

Stepmother’s eyes swept over her progeny. Well, it was no contest here, who was the more savory of the two evils. “Snooty dear, be modest and let down your dress.” In response to a glower: “Soon, you’ll forget all about those when your feet rolls into McCharmings.” Snooty gasped. As prestigious as the McChadwick brand might be, nothing trumped the McCharming reserved, in law, only for royalty. McCharming shoes were more art than wear– blinding art, at that, as they were always encased in the rarest of gems. Snooty instantly comprehended Stepmother’s meaning. Sluggy traced her toes over the curlicue designs of an Orient-imported rug– stifling a yawn. “Oh…Mother! I’d just die for them! Just think– me, Princess! McCharmings! Prince Charming!” Stepmother’s lips curled upwards slightly into, arguably, a smile.

Hours later, wails pierced every nook and cranny of the large manor. Servants were seen carrying a bucket of hot water and half-bloodied sheets and gauze out of Snooty’s bed chambers. Inside, she lay– sobbing. Her McChadwicks lay at the foot of her bed. Stepmother had heard about a foot-binding ritual from a China Man who had ventured from his own kingdom to ply fine silk. The whole ceremony, while grostequely painful, was the only way. Snooty would emerge– a bit broken but mostly thankful– for her newly unnatural “Lotus-like” feet.

Down in the scullery, all the servants were murmuring about the strange going-on’s. Cinderella sat on a bench by a knobbed worktable– peeling potatoes for a broth and wondering with them.

—

Prince Charming eventually reached their manor. Thankfully, the common etiquette in that kingdom and in that day was for a gentleman to avert one’s eyes from a lady’s bare foot. So, he never saw Snooty’s stump of a former foot with its piggishly backwards-bent toes, although he did fancy, for a moment, that he had caught the whiff of some stench. Cinderella didn’t learn of Snooty’s departure to the palace until she overheard Stepmother’s admonition to Sluggy to try to muster up some energy and charm– especially given their newfound kinship to the royal class. Cinderella snuck up to her bedroom in the attic to cry but the tears didn’t last long. Cinderella, for all her soft, pretty, doe-eyed looks, was no idiot. She realized she might have dodged a javelin. I mean, imagine going off with a man who remembered you by the merit of your foot size and nothing else! However, poor her current conditions, she felt she was better off– or would be.

—

Fastforward a year later. Stepmother, in her old age, had caught dementia. She spent most of her days lying in her bed or sitting by the window overlooking the spires of the Charmings’ castle far off in the distance, absent-mindedly stroking a fur blanket that she thought was her long-dead Siamese cat (good riddance, said the rats). Without her iron grip and in grudging rememberance of her former abuse, most of the servants had packed their meager belongings and left. At the end, Cinderella was really the only one left trying to take care of the household. Sluggy had no ambitions (as she had no personality). So, she deferred to Cinderella in all matters of decision-making. When Stepmother finally passed, Sluggy– eager to avoid the mental labors of estate transfers and other such legalities– automatically bequeathed Cinderella with those responsibilities and rights. She rightfully trusted her anyways. Cinderella was a strong-minded, enduring pushover when she had to be. And then, just plain, strong minded other times. Cinderella immediately went about transforming one unused wing of the manor into a Bed-and-Breakfast haven. Within a few short years, the patronage of coming-and-passing folks had turned a fair profit for the household. Cinderella now sat as matriarch of the household (and unfailing benefactor to Sluggy– making sure some staff member always ensured her pillows plumped and blankets turned and re-turned for her thrice-a-day naps).

—
Now, let’s not forget Snooty and the Prince. We had left off, with them, galloping in carriage back to the palace where they, of course, promptly wedded. Snooty never looked back. So, it wasn’t until she became pregnant (due to a night Prince Charming came in– hammered after a drinking duel with his father) and tradition dictated that a ball with all family present be held in honor of the occasion, that she invited her family. Of course, by this point, her family was reduced to Sluggy and Cinderella. It was a grand affair– fifty-tiered, dangerously wobbling cake; garish chocolate fountains sprouting here and there; orchestra in some unseen pit furiously pumping out gay music as the Princess and Prince sat stoicly on their thrones and watched their guests dance. Cinderella had reluctantly left her business to come to accompany Sluggy so she was periodically excusing herself to the nook behind a stairwell a bit removed from the ballroom to get wind of her manor’s going-on’s. (No, she wasn’t on a phone since those had yet to be invented. Remember, she was beloved by animals, and her bird friends would swoop past a royal alcove as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, alight upon her shoulders, and chirp news into her ears.) It was during one of these ‘back-stairwell’ breaks, as she was communing with her winged couriers that she bumped into Prince C. The ball for his Princess was tragically dull to him– especially given, that in deference to her condition, it was a dry ball. He was hankering for a shot of whiskey and edging his way towards the stairs up to his royal bed chambers when he had happened upon her voice: “Well, tell Sir McSutton that interest is edging up a tithe’s percent, but don’t forget to ask after the Missus! [Pause] No, there’s no bandying about the fact; in fact, it’ll be two tithes’ worth if his errand boy doesn’t show with the proper pences by next day before Sabbath. This isn’t an almshouse, mind you– perhaps, so for the poor but not so for those who can manage. And, well, he can manage– mistress and such.” Prince C’s stealthy gait grinded to a halt. As heir to a kingdom’s realm and business, he had long been privy to such talks but never in the pitch and tone of a lady. And one so lovely– like a lark!

Some small movement made her turn. You know what happens next. Instant electricity. All the cliche stuff.
He pursues her. She fights it. He doesn’t know why he wants her so badly. She knows why she needs to run from him so badly.

Ok, I’ll backtrack. The two were a good-looking match. She was as curved as he was chiseled. That was the first thing. The second thing was that she was different from any other woman he had met. She was an aspirant on her own two feet alone– a woman with numbers and other stuff in her head that was just unheard of in a woman. But, even during their first beguiling exchange of few yet highly charged words, she knew better.

So, she took off– running (yet again) down the grand palace stair– this time, with shoes left intact, leaping into her carriage and riding off. Prince Charming was beat and he defeatedly returned to his chambers where, by this time, Princess Snooty had retired– complaining about her swollen lotus feet.

—

Cinderella, while good-hearted, was no virtuous hand-maiden. He, by his intelligence’s wiles, found her location. He came to her manor while she was summarily wielding her business. He wound her up in his brawny arms and they crumpled, in the manor’s garden, into a kiss of forbidden lovers. In a way, she welcomed the descent into something that was consuming that was not about business.

But, when he declared his undying devotion for her, she shook her head and retreated. He could have commanded her to re-open the doors, taken her at his whim. But he knew too, that on some level, things wanted are best as such because of the wanting. He trudged back to the castle and a few months later, the moment was forgotten as he welcomed the birth of his son in the bed chambers shared with his Snooty who was just a moment ago, wailing– now sniffling. Snooty smiled when she saw his tears trailing from his cheeks down to his five o’ clock shadow. And, in that magnificent room, with trumpeters blairing right outside the terrace, they shed their separate tears.

Story Prompt: Write a story about a Keepsake

New project: http://creativewritingprompts.com/

Beltway traffic starting at 4pm on any given weekday is an anathema. A price you pay for residing in one of those cities more likely to appear on some superlative-style list– top most affluent, or transient, or unwholesome, or cultural. I, a versed Metropolitan of this damned city, knew better. For all my poor planning, I could resign myself to the fact that I was here, parked, for a right reason.

Some many nights ago, our mutual friends told me that her little brother died in an accident along a winding, childhood road. I must have been drinking some many nights later when I, buffeted between scholarly articles, trash reads, and thoughts of her in the background, stumbled across a DIY site that led me to fish a paper clip out of the space between my nightstand and bed. With a puckered brow, I mutilated the clip figure-eight style– once, twice, and some other multiples of tries until I could sit it back on my nightstand as a clip resurrected into the crude, bent liking of an angel.

A street patrol waved me into the church parking lot. I sat in my car for a few minutes– shrouded in dark save for the lit end of my cigarette butt and the sporadic flecks out the window. Entering the chapel felt like entering the cavernous inside of some great beast the way a prominant rib of wooden beams ran from one end to another across the ceiling. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt both the urge to scuttle and drag my feet across the aisle. She was sitting at the front pew silently crying next to her mother wailing and her sister frozenly stoic. People grabbed them in tight embraces; for a moment, I imagined we were all, by touch, endeavoring to squeeze out some of their sadness. Like squeezing acrylic paint or toothpaste out of a tube.

The reality was that when it was my turn, the tightness of my hug felt more like a declaration of a tightness inside that wouldn’t let go.

My name did little to inspire my nature. I was a Machivavellian lady-prince with hard surfaces. When I pressed it into her palm, though, the softening in that moment was a strength passed between us and not an egg shell breaking.

Sisyphus, Israelis, and Palestinians

Stumbled across an ex-something’s Facebook and discovered his resumption as a commentator/writer from a Palestinian-American perspective. Led me back to a subject near and dear to my heart.  Resurrecting an article i wrote on The Daily Journalist in 2014, during the heat of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The question of whether I’m pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine is a hard one to answer.  Inherently dangerous in that question is its positioning of stance as one that is for or against a people-based entity.  A “right” answer in this context can never be black and right.   What I can say is that I deviate from the United States government’s pro-Israeli stance—one that has effected our government, alongside the rest of UN, in failing to support non-Israeli, Arab state resolution efforts; overlooking recurring Israeli government violations for over half a century while committing over half of total foreign military financing to Israel; fueling a consistent Middle Eastern Arab perspective of Israel as the biggest threat with the United States as a second runner-up; and fueling sentiments of distrust, anger, and Intifada-propensities that manifests in humanist-based revolts against perceived imperialist dominance.

Let’s start with the Palestinian Israeli conflict as it stands today with Israeli’s ‘ground incursion’ into Gaza.  Israel statedthat the objective here is to destroy terror tunnels.  Yes, this perhaps disrupts the conduit through which weapons/military material such as longer range rockets from Iran reaches Hamas. But the strategic advantage here is the opportunity of damaging the overall Hamas infrastructure and the basic medicine, construction supplies to Gaza civilians struggling under a 40%+ unemployment rate and shortage of aforementioned needs.  In keeping with these facts, the Hamas’ trumpeting objections to recent propositions have essentially been objections to the status quo—that is, border crossing restrictions that have sharply limited basic, sustenance-level goods and aid.  (Oh, and the allegations that the Hamas weren’t even consulted parties on the cease-fire proposal.)  In the 8-day Israeli operation led out in Gaza in 2012, Israel’s Interior Minister stated “the goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.”

Alright, so basic goods aside, still, the danger of weapon smuggling and, even, abductions.  The Israeli-trumpeted stance has rang tunes of ‘limited’ and ‘short term’ in its vision of this incursion to destroy these tunnels.  Yet, a day into the incursion, there were already talks of possible extensions.  For what?  Dry statistics over the last several weeks show a 200+ to 2 ratio of Israeli to Palestinian casualties with the majority being civilians (and, mind you, this ratio has been jarringly reminiscent of ratios in similar conflicts in the past few decades); a clear military superiority in deflecting most of Gaza’s missile launches with the Iron Dome. Israeli’s Gaza-based opposition has a military capability that’s comparably laughable; it’s emasculating on Israel’s part to say that Gaza is an actual threat.  A need to invade as a tête-à-tête measure, doesn’t tactically add up.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was quoted as regretting the Israeli offensive and, alongside French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, urging the state to restrain themselves in civilian-casualty-related moves.   Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan denounced the ground incursion as an act of terrorism and genocide on the part of Israel—echoing his categorization, years ago, of Israel as a terrorist state for its treatment of Palestinians.  (The Turkish state has often been a desirable model of emulation, amongst a number of Arab countries.  Turkey has shared a [albeit wavering] partnership with the US and NATO allies while, at times, questioning their motives.)

Even if Israel’s allegations of the Hamas using civilians as human shields stands, Israel has struck over 1500 Gaza targets within a densely populated (and impoverished) strip of land. And, maybe, Israeli military gave phone/flier warnings to civilians near/within Israeli military targets minutes (yes, minutes— what expansive, epochal units of time) before their own strikes or those mini mortar bombings before the actual bombs (in Jon Stewart’s words, “amuse bombs”) but, then, they’ve had incidences of striking prior to warned times and targeting civilians on the basis of being related to accused family members via ‘lawfully sanctioned” punitive home demolitions.

Perhaps, the Hamas has rightful allusions to terrorist identifications but what about Israel? The United States government has quite loosely defined terrorism as activities/acts ‘dangerous to human life or potentially destructive to critical infrastructure or key resources.’  I’m not clear on how it negotiates this meaning when dealing with the endangerment and destruction of life and core infrastructure wrought from both sides—leading me, with my limited resources, to surmise (alongside the majority of Arabs polled) that the final negotiated designations are products of ‘special interests.’

To my discredit, I’ve sifted through only enough information on the Hamas group to document redundant encounters of polarized sentiments ranging from the Hamas’ militant, self-destructive obstinacy, violence and suicide bombings, to their reputations for social service delivery and building bases of support lending to political party involvement (Hamas won majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections; from 2008 to 2010, member of Council on Foreign Relations/Board of Directors of Human Rights Shibley Telhami’s pollings showed that more Arabs in every country threw their support to the Hamas versus the US-backed Palestinian Authority).   The Human Rights Watch has documented war criminal activity on all involved parties.   The ends doesn’t justify the means; nor does the beginning justifies the move towards those means.  At the same time, the beginnings are important for us to gain kernels of perspective.

So, let’s heat up the kernel, sit back, and watch: From 1947 to 1948, the UN designates over 55% of the region to an Israeli population at most half in volume to the Arab’s—on the pretext that Jews (for the most part, displaced thousands of years ago) would emigrate.  No kidding, Palestinians didn’t embrace this designation.  A year later, state of Israel has “bloomed” from 55% to 77% of the territory.  And, you have the broad-scale expulsion and ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’ (authored and termed by Ilian Pappe) replete with city/village-wide depopulations, mass slaughter, land/home demolishment, enclosures by separation walls, curfews/checkpoints, imprisonment and torture without cause (and, even in present day, within the past month, detaining about 700 Palestinians for undefined, renewable periods of up to half a year without due process, charge or trial).

It’s the invisible Holocaust repeated—even, referenced by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai in the 2008 conflict when he warned that the Qassam rocket fire “will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah.”  (Shoah, in Hebrew, means Holocaust.  Google it; Wikipedia it to find that H word horrifically and unquestionably emblazoned in the search results.)  Again, cue US definition of terrorism—as acts ‘intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population… to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction…”  The human rights and economic injustices persists through the decades; between 1955 to 2013 there were 77 UN targeted resolutions on Israel—indicative of 77 formally/globally recognized violations—as opposed to one targeted resolution on Palestine: touching upon attacks, raids, and bombings on Lebanon, Syria, Karameh (Jordan), Tunisian; violating Lebanon’s sovereignty; continuing the proliferation of  settlements/’outposts’ in occupied territories; failing to abide by Forth Geneva Convention terms, etc.

“It’s not you; it’s me.” Besides the aforementioned establishment of itself as an oppressive regime, Israel has numerous documented incidences of sabotaging opportunities for resolution.  So, call the Hamas self-destructively stubborn or what you will, but here outlines some of the ‘windows’ of glimmering (if not wholly bright) outlooks for de-escalatory dialogue and Israel’s response: Israel mowed over Camp David negotiation terms by carrying on with Palestinian land confiscation and settlement-building.  Israel rejected PLO’s 1988 renunciation of terrorism and efforts to dialogue until it saw militant groups as a greater threat to its secular counterpart.  In the 2006 conflict with Lebanon, Israel opted for an airstrike escalation over an Arab League summit led by Egypt.  In 2002, and, again, in 2007, it rejected the Arab Peace Plan (endorsed by all Arab states save for Libya) calling for “an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including recognition of Israel, peace agreements and normal relations with all the Arab states, in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967.” (Middle East Research and Information Project committee’s “Primer on Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict”)

Foreign Policy journalist Mark Perry (in “You Can’t Kill Hamas, You Can Only Make It Stronger”) captures the tense climes of a world of states increasingly troubled by the disparity in their principles and reconciliatory shortfalls: During a Tel Aviv conference earlier this month, Philip Gordon, White House Coordinator for the Middle East, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out on Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians in its ongoing occupation: “How will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank?” Gordon asked. “How will it have peace if it’s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security, and dignity?”

Dial back to February, at the Munich Security Conference set ostensibly for talks on the Ukraine crisis, where John Kerry got an earful from the European Union representatives on Israel’s non-commitment to the peace process—with warnings that the EU “was willing to support efforts to delegitimize and boycott it.”   Kerry relayed to Netanyahu that Europe was fed up and done listening to the US on the matter.  The response? A very condescending finger-wagging from the Israeli secretary of state; subsequent allegations of Kerry as a proxy for “anti-Semitic forces,” and a frustrating question on why Israel would turn on “a country that’s one of [its] last friends in the world.” Anti-Semitic? The radicalizing rhetoric brings to mind such on the Hamas as part/parcel, in nature of being, with the ISIS movement or other ‘radical’ groups.   (This should really make you think twice about taking these rubber-stampings at face-value.)

So, maybe, “It’s not just you me; it’s also me.”  So, yes, about six decades into the oppression, during the second intifada, you behold the genesis of suicide bombings from these dubbed ‘militant,’ ‘extremist’ groups.  So, yes, there are, in fact, long standing acts of violence against the sanctity of human life, from people within Hamas or various other groups just as there has been from Israel.   But we need to understand these wrongs—while remaining wrongs—in the fuller historical context.  Decades of cyclic and, ultimately, failed peace processes and a sense of hopelessness, distrust, and humiliation have played into peaceable to violent uprisings and quells against the former.

In “The World through Arab Eyes,” Shibley Telhami aggregates a decade’s worth of polling data.  He finds that “every major regional political movement since 1948 has made Palestine and Jerusalem a central theme of its origin and narrative” and that the issue “remains a ‘prism of pain’ through which most Arabs and many Muslims [anywhere from 70% to 86%, to be precise] see the post 9-11 world.  In a 2006 poll amongst Arab countries,  the Shiite Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, won voted acclaim as the most admired world leader (even amongst Sunni-majority countries) because of his unapologetically vocal stance against Israel.  In 2009, his ranking was usurped by Turkish minister Erdogan: Erdogan embodied a similarly decisive stance but perhaps, more vividly so, in his storming out of a World Economic Forum debate after denouncing Israel’s offensive against Palestine.  Arab countries see Israel as a derivative of American power, an engine of oppression, a subject of their ‘prism of pain.’

Telhami’s polling data in 2011 also shows that, while over two-thirds of Arabs in six Arab countries, and a lesser but still prominent 43% of Israeli Jews, supported the two-state solution, the majority believed the two-state solution would never be successfully realized.   It’s been a solution talked to death.  Seemingly simple answer: A two-state solution with separated political franchises but shared, open economic zones and borders.

The death is always in the details—from the question of how to draw up the two-state borders, to the Israeli skittishness against the right of Palestinians to return (but, we know, dependent upon where they’ve ended up in refuge affects their choice to return and, then, there’s the option of financial restitution), to the status of Jerusalem (‘easy’ answer: some unique status as a site/capital for both).   And, we need outside nations to step up their hand in mediation; the U.S., sometimes as a price of backing Israel, has done quite a bit of pussyfooting here.  If I got a penny for every person naming the two-state model as a solution….well, you know.

Decades of variegated pundits, leaders, leagues of states, coalitions, regional and global movements— in acts of brilliance or flawed strokes—couldn’t bring us any closer.  There’s a heavy history here that coalesces into stories and processes of the political and the personal, the religious and the material from different points of identities.  There hangs heavy, as a breath, that status quo that is both intolerable yet seemingly indomitable.

In the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the gods condemn a king to ceaselessly roll a boulder up a mountain.  He is the ‘absurd hero’ in mental and physical recursion of his burden although some look at the struggle as something meaningful in and of itself, with this very perception as a means of reclaiming one’s own fate.   My hope is that, like Sisyphus, we know the night in the reverse of victory and understand the ‘heights’ in the toil.

Original link: http://thedailyjournalist.com/elcafe/israel-versus-palestine-who-do-you-support/

Highlights of Angela’s Week

Pictures of the week: 

Doodle of the week:

Book of the week: Mark Cuban: The Maverick Billionaire by Sean Huff 

Unapologetically honest, blustery serial-entrepreneur and Shark Tank’s ‘shark investor.’ One of his mantras: “Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession… if a business is an obsession, it’s not really a risk to go after it.  One of his favorite expressions: “No Balls, No Baby.”

Website of the week: http://www.deviantart.com/ (global online community and ‘visual explosion’ of user-made artwork)

Articles of the week: Excerpt: Never Eat Alone http://www.fastcompany.com/bookclub/excerpts/0385512058.html (for those critics of networking); Why You Hate Work: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/why-you-hate-work.html

Quote of the week: “I logically reason that the more emotional and social path is better, but I emotionally feel my more logical and socially constraining path is what I would nudge them towards.” – Ross Finman’s “Am I the Dumb One?”