Mate

I talked to my flatmate Cheli about France. Don't remeber why. We somehow got to speak about the referendum they had about the European Constitution.

Cheli: "They did a referendum about some constitution and we didn't do a referendum about the Disengagement".

Me: "Well, yeah, but then we're not really a democracy."

Cheli: "It's good that we're not."

I think that she's just about one person left with whom i'd rather not talk about the disengagement. She's totally left, of course. I'm not sure if she knows how right i am. I guess she doesn't read my blog, and i do my best not to express my radical views too clearly to her, although i drop hints sometimes. When i'm home, my orange wristband is not on my wrist; i put it on my desk, but i don't hide it in a drawer. And i think that she saw the orange stripes on my car, but we didn't have a confrontation about that either. I don't want any fights about politics at home.

But i loved the way that her subtle remark about democracy tears to little pieces the lefties' stupid little mask. It just drives me nuts: much more than they are for peace and democracy they are against the settlers. They are against them because they don't like the settlers' religious lifestyle and they totally ignore the fact that most settlers' caring about their land is not rooted in religious fanatism but in their good education, something that the secular schools lost completely. The religious are educated not only to pray, eat kosher and study mathematics well, they are also educated to be caring people. Some people who come from the religious education system may have ponderous arguments against what i'm saying here (Daniel?), but i seriously believe in it. And even Daniel would certainly agree that something's wrong with this country and it has something to do with education; and i bet that most of the impolite, violent, noisy Israelis about which Daniel rants in his blog all the time were not educated in a yeshiva-tichonit (Nev, if you're reading, i beg you to comment).

I wonder why it took me so many years to understand why my father, who loves eating pork and never has second thoughts about driving to work on Yom-Kippur, votes Mafdal.