A few questions.
And what a world we live in where a reality television star is President of the United States, a surfboard shaper is the most powerful political force in Australia and an anti-depressive surf website is the place where people come to calmly solve the long-ish simmering feud between Arab and Jew as it relates to the beautiful country of Israel.
Absolutely fantastic.
Those who spend time here, often, will know that principal Derek Rielly is completely pro-Zionist, having been won over on a trip to Tel Aviv with professional surfer Ozzie Wright. I, also a principal, am decidedly pro-Arab having studied in Egypt and spending much of the last two decades traipsing through Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, etc. (Buy here).
We are, the two of us, an international version of Mary Matalin and James Carville. Happily married with extremely opposing views.
Now, yesterday, a wonderful podcast listener (anyone who listens to us ramble is a saint) who happens to live in Israel and also describes himself as Zionist-leaning wrote a thoughtful response to a comment I made referencing apartheid in a conversation about the Holy Land.
It’s very worth an entire read (here) but the bulk of the argument rested on a genetic tie Jewish people have to the land and criticism that I was “trying to force western concepts on this situation” that was “historically inaccurate and not very constructive.”
I would like to ask a few questions.
First, what allowed for the conquest of Israel in 1948? Was it that genetic tie or the same guns, gold, banking and technological advantage that had propelled all European colonial powers to conquest and displacement of local rulers for the previous three centuries?
Second, is it really so wise to stake a claim on land that belonged to someone else, forcibly evicted on your very behalf less than 75-years ago, on a genetic continuity between Polish Jews and Yemeni Jews?
Does my Germanic heritage and connection to that land allow me to go kick some Turks out of Berlin and reclaim my birthright?
An extremely slippery slope.
I am not anti-Israel, not at all, and have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the bravest little nation on earth, even once partaking in a Shabbat dinner with settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank, but genetic arguments as it relates to the conflict is a decidedly western concept.
Can it not be called what it is? An exclusive club with membership and participation ruthlessly and brutally enforced?
Also have you watched Lawrence of Arabia?
It is the greatest movie ever made.
This explains a lot.
https://podcasts.apple.com/…
Lovely to see you promoting Barrack Obama’s favorite film Lawrence of Arabia ….
What a cast … Peter O’Toole looking very David Bowieish , Omar Sharif and Obe Wan Kenobe , Sir Alec Guinness …. I hardly recognized him dressed as Bex Medina in the screen shot from the film at the bottom of the article .
Billabong “Pump” was the greatest movie ever made!
I raised the same question on Jim Ganzer’s Instagram under a photo of Jan Michael Vincent in Big Wednesday, but I ask it here.
Prettiest man on film, ever:
1. Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.
2. Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black
3. Harrison Ford in whatever.
4. Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
5. Jan Michael Vincent in Big Wednesday
Any others?
Or is that just too gay?
Berber
Libyans
Matter…
Chas the very same article you tell us to read explained in detail the ethnic composition of Israel. Information that is way beyond the false dichotomy of dwellers in that promised land that you just presented. But if you really wanted to call bs on it all just point out the whole Hebrew Bible is a mix of oral stories of regional peoples written down, and a bunch of made up shit.
Yo, it’s all stupid human bullshit, innit?
Blow it all off as stupid human bullshit and return to nature.
Nature has integrity.
Go surfing.
He made a genetic argument for why the land belongs to Jewish folk. I retorted that is a very slippery slope, especially since 99% of those people’s families were not living there 70-odd years ago.
You pointed to the genetics being a binary of Polish Jews and group Y; his eloquent script to DR pointed out multiple genetics present in Israel, of varying % of population so either he’s wrong, or your 99% is way off. i.e., even granting framing it as a debate of genetics, you still are misrepresenting the complexity of it as shared from his ‘indigenous’ perspective.
This is all sophistry, though, as I know deep down you’re trying to bait Nick Dees to join in the fray.
It don’t stand at all. Certainly there are many different ethnicities in Israel but the only ones actually from there, pre-70 years ago, are Palestinian.
I also understand that “Palestinian” is more or less made up but shorthand for Levantine Arab whatnots.
I also understand that Arab is more or less made up…. but you get my point. The Jewish tie to the land, wherever they came from, is not a strong case.
Well, just get specific: they made up Yahweh, and thus the whole concept of the Promised Land. Humans are animals that live in ecosystems. Humans have lived in that part of the world for thousands of years. Can they get along today is the question. It seems believing in made up beings like Allah and Yahweh only get in the way of such getting along.
MDMA seems to bridge all divides!
microdoses seem to be effective in helping with PTSD.
Exclusive club with membership and participation brutally and ruthless enforced! Like peak 1OAK!
Can’t leave out the Sub-Saharan Africanites/Jews
so you use the mid length as a body board? radical.
…
Free Palestine.
That’ll cost ya. Hamas-ch ya got?
I ‘ll swap you 3 Hamas burgers for two falafels …
https://youtu.be/R6_eWWfNB54
I am not a vegetarian but I like the song
https://youtu.be/473r6Kt9dQ0
Free Victoria!
Maybe time to leave Queen Victoria and her family behind …. ? Strange to think that even tiny Barbados wants to have a local as the Head of State so the people of Barbados can aspire to be the head of state , which is not possible at the moment unless you are Prince Charles …. works for Canada .
If it puts more food on everyone’s table and dosent waste a single taxpayers dollar them I’m cool with it.
But it won’t so I’m not.
Bex Bentham …. greatest happiness of the greatest number …
. Wasting tax payers dollars is so Pre COVID …Budget Surpluses, Thatcherism and Governments can’t be in debt will possibly be relegated to the sidelines till the next Thatcher comes along ……Liberate your mind , and of course happy weekend China ( plate )
Ahh bexy … a sheep in wolf’s clothing
Viva Armenia
Could you define ” much of the last two decades traipsing through Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, etc.” A year, a decade, a month?
All in a good 3 years worth of time.
Merci. Oh and enjoyed the last book, Kindle version.
Chas, have you thought about writing a good article, not just a quick saccharine blast to the Beach Grit visit metric?
Because I’m addicted to writing books. BG is an in-the-second free-form jazz riff. I spend half my time doing this, and love it, but the real fun here is in the conversation. No?
It’s understood. My bad for wanting more than jew stuff and sharks. Peace!
There’s plenty fun in your articles and DK’s, and LongTom’s surf pulitzers. And choice of pictures for ledes. Sharks are getting old, though.
But I’m still having fun trying to personify them!
Auto fellatio may be fun for some, too–doesn’t mean you should publicly do it and subject others to it every other day.
“BG is an in-the-second free-form jazz riff.”
You have your moments.
Like Bubbles slipping one past the netminder playing hash hockey.
Cough, bullshit.
Actually it ain’t.
Ob yeah I forgot you studied in Egypt, my bad
As you were soldier.
I personally wouldn’t go near the shit hole full of misogynistic losers
It’s God’s country!
Thought they were historically polytheistic, so gods’ country?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFY...
Now we’re on that slippery slope!
Mountain bike and weed country. My hometown, hated the hippie shit and we all rebelled against it. Thrusters and punk rock changed things. I am just now starting to like the Grateful Dead. Haha
1972–some really creative live musicianship worth digging into. 1977 has some great shows, too. A different approach to music, for sure–better than the pish being put out today by most, that’s for sure.
I used to live in a music studio in Fairfax the first mountain bikes ever made were assembled at that house. Many bands played there like Jefferson starship, etc. I was listening to the clash etc but I was surrounded by that music
You and VONR need to talk.
will do
Reckoning is their best work to come out of a studio. Brilliant from beginning to end.
So basically what you’re saying is, “They sure don’t make music like they used to, sonny-boy!!!”
Nah, GD is unique–they revolutionized live music. Lots of good music being made today. Check out Tinariwen for example. Or until he just passed, Vaughn Benjamin’s work with Midnite.
And the birth place of monotheism when Akhenaten introduced the worship of Aten ….somewhere around 1351 BC
Depending on when one dates the onset of Zoroastrianism…?
naturally …. Mazda the good and the other , which has no car , the evil one ….
Cosmic dualism has fucked us, esp in the US.
Though it can explain …. Good and Evil ….unlike the logical conclusion of Monotheism that God is ummmm ….. Evil ?
Yes good theodicy. But even Zoro was monotheistic. Like later Judaism and early Christianity. He created the tempting evil force. But if that evil being is all knowing and powerful is it not a god, making for polytheism? Crazy we use 3k yr old myths to guide our lives now.
Yep even modern myths , inter subjective entities , like nations , currencies and corporations do not exist if we all stop believing in them ….
You took the red pill, too? Nice.
He was having a bad day when he came up with that rubbish. Each to his own tho.
Let’s face it youre not a ladies man like Derek used to be.. .
Egypt was my first overseas trip in 91 , and possibly still the best , for its glorious ancient history , troubled modern history , jeweled Seas , endless desert , mega city Cairo , and some of the most friendly and generous people I have met on my journey around the planet …. where else would a family take you by the hand , to help you cross an 8 lane highway with no traffic lights …. ( and ask nothing in return ) EGYPT !
Ps still suffering from an illegal donkey ride in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor and a taxi with 8 others from Aswan to Abu Simbel .
You say that, but you live in Australia.
Imagine wanting to live in a country where woman have the same rights as men.
Fanning the flames of Eugenetic theories?
Crazy how the nazis got their ideas from America, who would have thought?
Not Wernher von Braun.
Not a Euegentics fan?
Hello!!! MickFly!!! Hello!!! MickFly
Facts are scary
Eugenics.
Evolutionary Humanists …. what a bunch of K#ntz !
Let’s justify oppression by obscure religious text and dodgy science ……..Kiel has a park with busts , celebrating its Nobel Prize winners , the most famous being Max Planck , but one winner has no bust , Phillip Lennard , because of his latter work with the Nazis . Never Forget !
Okay now there’s a place where you aren’t full of it.
Lawrence of Arabia no question is the greatest movie ever made and just today I used that quote for a girl I Iike who has been relocated to Las Vegas by circumstance.
She is not a desert flower, she is a kelp bloom and I whipped out some Prince Faisal: “No Arab loves the desert. The Arab loves running water and green trees. There’s nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing.“
The Arabs prize poetry in speech, and that is one of the most poetic lines from the greatest movie ever made.
Was Alec Guinness nominated for Lawrence of Arabia? He wasn’t. Lame.
The Oscars aren’t perfect. Naomi Watts wasn’t nominated for Mulholland Drive, Josh Brolin wasn’t nominated for No Country For Old Men and Kramer vs Kramer beat Apocalypse Now for Best Picture.
Todd Phillips wasn’t too happy about Joker losing to Parasite, but he said – to me, in person, thanks – Joker will resonate longer – and a billion-dollar-plus B.O eased some of that statuette pain as well.
Lame.
Matter of fact I wrote a dystopian novel about California clearing the streets of vagrants and druggies and thieves and street-shitters and abalone poachers and Republicans by bringing back the English Transportation laws of 1700.
California declares “No prisoners!” and ships even the slightest law breakers off to desert penal camps in Nevada, Baja, the Atacama Desert and other desert places.
Those same English Transportation laws that lead to the hard-won settlement of Australia which eventually lead to the hard-surfing Carroll and Coffey families and other wonders down under.
And the title of that dystopian novella you ask? No Man Needs Nothing.
As for Israel. Oi vey. A world-class pain in the arse.
Can’t blame them for wanting a homeland after WWII, but the trouble and strife they’ve caused could spark WWIII – and some in high places are surprised it hasn’t already.
I fished the Yellowstone and later Hat Creek with an upper-level FBI agent named R____ L_____ who gave me his World War III scenario: Starts with the nuking of Haifa – not Jerusalem or Bethlehem – and Israel retaliates by like nuking the Aswan Dam or something heinous, and then it’s on for young and old.
As Aussie Rugby announcers like to say.
When that bomb went off in Beirut, I was pretty sure someone had let loose with one of those small tactical nukes – fortunately not. But intelligence dudes in high places are shocked that hasn’t happened yet.
The easy solution to Israeli/Arab conflict is to neutron bomb the entire Middle East and repopulate all of it with desert-loving Norwegians and Scandinavians.
They would handle it nicely nicely.
Anyone who recognizes the greatness of Lawrence of Arabia can’t be all bad.
I didn’t like Orange County much but one of the best things I did during my lonely times down there was watch L.O.A in 70mm at Fascist Island.
All movie directors worship Lawrence of Arabia and you will see riffs from Star Wars – the dude who played Prince Faisal is Obi Wan – to that scene in Inglorious Basterds where Leftenant Archie Hickox is briefed by Michael Myers – with Churchill sitting in the corner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5Azs_6uaCA&feature=youtu.be
Did you know that Churchill was played by Rod Taylor?
He’s getting on, innit?
I often mused on who could play Lawrence in a re-make – if anyone was dumb enough to attempt a remake.
Although I thought it was madness to re-make True Grit, – and even said so to Josh Brolin to his movie star face – but they pulled that off nicely nicely.
Although I thought Tom Cheney’s teeth were too clean and perfect. Someone in Injun country wouldn’t have teeth that pearly white.
So maybe Lawrence of Arabia could be made. Sponsored by Starbucks: Lawrence of Arabica.
We shall see about West Side Story.
But Michael Fassbinder was pretty good.
Michael Myers almost overplayed the General “There’s a good chap,” but I also didn’t like Harrison Ford’s cameo in Apocalypse Now: “They worship him… like a God.”
Michael Myers should do a version of Bertie Wooster. He’d be great. Hugh Laurie wasn’t even close.
Did you see Ray Fiennes as Lawrence in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia?
Probably closer to the real Lawrence.
What did Lowell Thomas say when he saw Lawrence of Arabia: “The only true thing about that movie was the sand and the camels.“
And I already detailed the conversation with Milius on the aircraft carrier about Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Why be boorish?
Gotta go. Someone is here to buy the Explorer. Hope they brought cash.
Aw shit, another Flakeslist deal.
I didn’t have the title or something so he wouldn’t buy it.
Damnit.
We realized there wouldn’t be world hunger if you people would live where the food is.
Sam Kinison
I’d love to get Kelly’s take.
His girlfriend is Chinese so its all good.