Almond seaweed.
Egg Fried Rice.
Shredded smoked chicken.
Shredded Szechuan beef.
‘Family Style’ Beancurd.
Green tea throughout.
(Excluding the Little Zionist) various puddings, sweeties, cream slices and grapes, in controlled quantities and after the requisite 45 minutes.
Blade and I were in a taxi to Cambridge station very early in the morning as I was on my way to Israel. The taxi driver was hideous, and not at all like my righteous Liverpudlians mentioned below. He attempted to make smalltalk as Cambridge taxi drivers sometimes do. He asked where we were going. Blade foolishly told him I was flying to the holy land - to palestine. It then transpired that he too had been to the holy land - to palestine. Blade and I thought this somewhat odd, something Blade expressed by subtly poking me in the side and squeezing my hand. As if I had not noticed this oddness of this man’s visit. We asked for further details and learned that the hideous man had run out of money when travelling ‘around europe’ and ended up in the holy land - in palestine. He said he had an awful time there, and was kind enough to dispense some advice about how best to make my visit bearable. I will list the advice in easily-degistible bullet-points below*:
1. Arabs offer the best hospitality in the world - especially coffee.
2. Israelis are arrogant people.
3. Israelis will not look after you, they will only look after their own.
4. Israelis are oppressing the palestinian [sic] people.
5. Stick to the Arab areas and you will be fine.
*This advice can be made more generally applicable by inserting the word ‘Jew’ where ‘Israeli’ appears.
Blade expressed his incredulity, and mild excitement at meeting a real-life antisemite, in the same way as described above. I did not tip the man.
Blade and I have entertained. I will relate the menu before he does.
Halal milk bottle sweets.
American ‘natural’ Cheetos (only for thelittlezionist).
Lychee puddings (only for Ru).
Jelly Beans.
Yeo’s chrysantheme juice with vodka.
White wine left over from Cambridge Limmud 2006.
Publix root beer with rum.
Tamarind chink drink with rum.
Marks and Spencer’s Alpho mango cocktail mixer with water and vodka.
Sadly Galloway is coming to Cambridge again. He’s at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on the 12th. Here’s an email I sent to the executive director of the theatre. I doubt he will take much notice of it. The director’s email address, by the way, is davejmurphy@btopenworld.com
Dear Mr. Murphy,
I am writing to you to express my disappointment at the decision to schedule the forthcoming event An Audience With George Galloway. I saw Mr. Galloway speak at a political meeting in London in July, and was disturbed and intimidated by the atmosphere he created. Instead of levelling legitimate critism at the government, or at Israel, he exploited existing prejudices and tensions to whip up what became a manic fervour in some sections of the crowd.
As I am sure you are aware, Mr. Galloway recently spoke at the Cambridge Union as part of a debate on the efficacy of military action in combating terrorism. In this context, I found him significantly less repugnant. It is important that Galloway’s stance be debated rigorously, and I believe that it is in the context of debate that his views are best aired. Sadly, you have given a forum for Mr. Galloway to go unchallenged, and I fear that he will use the occasion to whip up hatred as I have watched him do in the past.
Although I am disappointed by your decision, I am consoled by the fact that Mr. Galloway seems to have utterly discredited himself in recent weeks.
Yours sincerely,
Little Zionist
While hanging around the Experimental Psychology library looking for interesting reading material last term, I found a pile of blue ‘Psychologist’ magazines about 3 months past their sell-by date. I picked up one in order to avoid doing any of my work; you cannot resist the opportunity for some instant edification when it is packaged so shinily and bluely. Sadly, I realised that the magazine’s articles ran the full gammut of rubbishness, just a lot of discursive tosh for the psychlogy student. So, standing strong in my quest not to conjugate any Hebrew verbs, I turned my attention from the pursuit of edification, to the pursuit of puerile entertainment.
Once I’d finished reading about the evolution of couple therapy, I read a psychologist’s response to the public’s reaction to the July bombings. It seems that fear, obviously the most immediate reaction, produces a desire to regain some control of the situation. This is in turn translated into avoidance or anger (an emotion that is apprently easier to deal with and control). So you either get on your bike, or defiantely head for your local tube station the next morning. To me this all seems pretty obvious, and hardly worth couching in the pseudo-scientific terms favoured by the ‘CJ’ who signed his initials at the end of this article.
CJ did put forward some interesting information, though; a study by Dr. Jennifer Lerner, a social psychologist at Carnegie Mellon universtiy in the US, showed that both the anger and fear responses were easily intensified. The anger response by, for example, watching a video of Arabs in Iraq celebrating the attacks. The intensification of anger was shown to trigger a more optimistic outlook, and a decrease in feelings of fear and wariness.
The study concluded, fairly predictably, that taking participants who were already judged to be reacting with fear, and showing them a video warning about the dangers of a possible anthrax attack made them even more scared.
If the media wants to produce the kind of courage - or bravado - that makes the public ride the tube the day after an attack, its power to do so is clear. This kind of defiant response is what disarms terrorists; if we really are not afraid, then we can deny them the effectiveness of their human weapons, and we can formulate our response to terrorism rationally.
The obvious responsilities born by a media that can so manipulate our feelings aside, there is a crucially important judgement call to be made when covering terrorist attacks in a country so unused to them. Fearlessness, when faced with a second attack, can wilt into fear. Politicians claiming that we must carry on with our lives, and defy the terrorists are essentially saying that they have the situation under control. As soon as there is a second attack, the public’s confidence in this control and in their leaders’ judgements can be shattered, leading to more widespread fear. In order to disarm terrorists, we do need to carry on as normal, and words such as Ken Livingstone’s ‘Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail’, can play an important role in inspiring the public to do so. However, we must be so careful that this bravado does not work against those who preach it, and shatter into fear the next time we are attacked. As for me, I think my anger response was pretty much set in stone from the minute I heard the news.