9
"Israel's Katrina"
Hezbollah and Jeffrey Goldberg ended up on similar pages regarding the giant forest fire in Israel, which killed 41 at last count as well as 5 million trees. "This fire revealed sheer helplessness on Israel's part," wrote a columnist in Palestine—and others came to this position with a little more glee. Meanwhile, stateside, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg had this to say: "Israel's per capita GDP is nearly $30,000. Israel is a rich country. The fact that it doesn't possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault."
Perhaps they could have managed the fire a little more effectively if they hadn't been using so many of their troops to shoot tear gas and rubber bullets at non-violent protesters in the occupied territories.
Those two things are obvs related.
i thought jerry falwell was dead.
No, he just move to Israel apparently. From the JPost:
"Shas Council of Torah Sages Head Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said on Saturday night that the devastating Carmel fire was a result of insufficient Shabbat observance in the area.
“Fires only happen in a place where Shabbat is desecrated,” he quoted from the Babylonian Talmud Shabbat tractate in his weekly sermon. “Homes were ruined," he continued, "entire neighborhoods wiped out, and it is not arbitrary. It is all divine providence.”
“We must repent, keep Shabbat appropriately. When the People of Israel repent, God safeguards them with a wall of fire,” but not of the incinerating type, Yosef added."
Maybe planting millions of non-inidigenous pine trees in a desert was not a good idea after all.
This really was my first thought.
Goldberg must be an anti-semite.
Shit, John, when you said "lake of fire" I thought you were being, like, metaphorical.
Give it 10 years and some area of the United States in which subscription fire services is the standard model will be similarly devastated.