Illustration by Denis Shifrin

Picture it – an orderly procession of people, old and young, queuing up to receive an innocuous-looking cardboard box with the words (among lots of other words), “DO NOT OPEN” printed on it. Now what would Beryl and I, your average common or garden sixty plus year olds, producing an average or common or garden amount of flatulence, be wanting with a contraption enclosed in a not-to-be-opened box?

“Gas” is the buzzword here in Israel with lots of speculation in the publicly traded shares of companies who have / have not / might have / could have found payable amounts of gas in the Mediterranean off Haifa. I mean I would never have thought of going public with my gas production – it would cause too much of a stink! But what would you make of the following admonition, also printed on the box – and I quote verbatim “Open this kit only under clear instructions from the rear command!” The distribution is being coordinated by the Home Front Command (shades of wartime England here). With quite a stretch of the imagination, I imagine that the translation from Hebrew to English resulted in “Home Front Command” becoming “Rear Command.” I should point out that the information on the box is printed in four languages; Hebrew, English, Arabic and Russian. I was quite chuffed to find that English is second from the top – in most other cases, especially when trying to get service telephonically, it is last.

Oh now I recall. There was this report in the local newspapers a short while ago that because of the nefarious intentions of certain of our neighbors and near-neighbors to do harm to us by fair means or foul, our government was to spend a rather tidy sum of money (I may be wrong, but I think it was $220,000,000) in providing every citizen with a gas mask. There’s only one definition for “gas mask” in the Concise Oxford Dictionary – “a protective mask used to cover the face as a defence against poison gas.”

Seriously now, think of it. In today’s age, a country having to issue its citizens with gas masks because its neighbors might use chemical agents to attack its populace. It’s bizarre. I’m sure that all of this need not be if we would only give our neighbors a piece - a piece of Jerusalem, a piece of northern Israel ... This would make peace? I’m no right-wing fanatic and I do believe that some sort of territorial concession is pragmatically necessary, but to believe that this will make Hamas, Hizbollah and their backers stop wanting to destroy us is totally delusional.

I haven’t got “THE ANSWER”. These are just some thoughts on receiving my very own gas mask.

Raanana, 10^th November, 2010