The Hebrew article is the sound “ha” affixed to the beginning of
any noun; thus “hamazel,” for example, means “the luck.” So it
required no great flight of sadistic fancy for my fifth-grade
Hebrew School classmates to dub me “Ha-maniac.”
Add to that the fact that we were studying the section of Talmud
dealing with finding lost objects, where we encountered the Aramaic
“hemnik,” meaning dinner fork; the case concerns finding your
neighbor’s fork which was accidentally thrown out with the garbage.
Instead of learning the lesson of respecting a person and his
property from the obligation to return the fork, my peers found
more ammunition with which to disrespect my person.
By the time, in my thirties, that a Russian immigrant explained
that Homnick is a variant of a Ukrainian word meaning “smart man,”
the scars had settled beyond the reach of mere facts. So you can
well understand that I would never indulge in so cheesy a pastime
as mocking a person’s name. Consequently, my commentary on the
despicable actions of Arash Miresmaeili at the Olympic Games the
other day will not compare his morals to a rash of smelly mires.
Instead, I will dig deep into my store of apt metaphors and choose
one at random. How about this: a leprosy of rancid bogs?
The good news is that I learned just enough judo to save myself
the exertion of heaping contumely on this genius. They taught us
that the secret of judo is to conserve one’s own energy, and with a
smoothly timed economy of movement, maneuver one’s body in such a
way that the attacker’s own forward thrust is accelerated. If you
are swift enough to get out of the way, the brute’s force hurts
only him when he strikes the floor or wall.
Here, too, our Farsi friend has proved less than far-seeing. Had
he framed his refusal to fight the Israeli judo champion as a
protest for poor treatment of Palestinians, he would fill a
harmonic slot in the international symphony of Israel-bashing. His
note, however discordantly jarring in American ears, would strike a
chord among global arbiters of political good taste. The Israeli,
Ehud Vaks, would have been left to wear the stigma of the pariah,
like the South African athletes of the apartheid era, whose bench
presses were treated like the benchmark of oppression and whose
swimming was despised as the laps of decadent luxury.
Instead, Arash was so rash as to announce that he does not
recognize Israel as a sovereign state (!?!). Now this is far too
progressive even for the avant-garde. This is the equivalent of
going beyond supporting gay marriage all the way to outlawing
heterosexual marriage (on second thought, an idea not without some
merit). This is so darned progressive as to be…
primitive.
Once again, those boys in the Middle East have proven that they
cannot marshal enough martial art to even fight like civilized
folks, much less live peacefully. You would think that with all
these mullahs mulling and all these imams mumbling, with all these
sheiks shaking and all these emirs murmuring, that someone would
have enough sense to wake up to the fact that the Jews, after two
millennia abroad, have come back to stay. Not only that, they
brought all the trappings of modernity alongside the Yeshivas that
guard their ancient patrimony.
If the Arabs were smart, they might find that Israel can offer
them a great deal in the areas of agriculture, technology and
medicine. Not to mention the fact that a militarily strong neighbor
who has no designs on your own territory is a very good asset.
Especially the Persians, who are not really Arabs, could benefit
from a good working relationship with Israel, as indeed existed
under the Shah. Need we remind them that it was Iraq that fought a
vicious war against them in the '80s, decimating their male
population? Israel has never picked a fight with Iran and never
will unless provoked.
It behooves Mr. Miresmaeili to buy avowal on the wheel of
fortune instead of trying to sell disavowal. Stick with the judo,
lose the jihad. You want to gain respect as an Olympian, find your
way to the high ground. If you can’t make it all the way to the
Twenty-first Century, at least take a step forward into the
Twentieth.
You see? No work required on my part. All the heavy lifting done
by Mr. M himself. Hoist by his own pet aardvark or whatever the
expression is. All it takes is a little judo-ism and the man hits
his own fool head. Saves me the arduous task of metaphor
manufacture. Oh, wait a sec. How about this one: an eczema of
putrescent fens?
