Today's Max Kellerman show (in my opinion) was less about the games played this weekend and more a preview on next week's Giants - Eagles game (sprinkled with the usual dose of satire).
Max opened with an observation that "the real MVPs" will be playing in the upcoming game between the Giants and the Eagles. He identified the NFL MVPs in the order of importance - Eli Manning, Brandon Jacobs, Donovan McNabb (evidently no one who plays outside of the NFC East merits recognition). He later talked about how Desean Jackson of the Eagles "scares" him because much like Devin Hester he is a game changer.
Since the Dolphins were eliminated by the Ravens there had to be some mention of Chad Pennington who now may be forever linked to Brett Favre. Max again revisited the issue of how Brett Favre had a stronger arm than Chad, but that Chad stayed healthy and played smarter than Brett in leading his team to the playoffs before he turned into Brett in the Raven game by throwing four interceptions.
There was also an interesting take on the important players on a football team. Max floated the idea that the most important player on a football team is the quarterback, but the 2nd most important player is the back up quarterback. In so doing he made reference to the value of Jeff Hostetler to the Giants in the 1980s.
No Max Kellerman show would be complete without two things - Max picking on Louie Gold and his injection of his personal life into the show. Today, Max told Louie that G-d hates him (I can only guess this was in reference to his being a Mets and Jets fan). Max then told Louie that he was like Job, to which Louie responded - who?
Max also talked about the difference between when his wife makes eggs and when he does the cooking. This came within the context of a discussion about nursing and whether Erin really needs to take as long as she does. Having gone through that phase four times (and with my wife now sitting next to me) I cannot possibly comment.
But back to eggs, Max talked about how when Erin makes eggs they taste better than when he does, but that it takes much longer and he's starving before he can eat them. He mentioned that when she asked him to cook she had all these instructions (which either were not shared with the listening public, or maybe I just was not paying attention) which made the process so much longer than when he normally makes the eggs (but had much better results).
Regular readers of this post know that I usually find some way to derive a Torah thought from Max's Monday musings. However, today's post will not contain such thoughts (although if you want, you can probably discern it from my take on the show above). Instead, I would like to talk about the victimization of Israel in the press - a topic not discussed by Max in today's program.
Why write about this in today's post? Partially because I received an anonymous comment on a prior Max Musing column which I have chosen not to publish because it was off topic and anti Semitic. Also partially because the lack of even handed reporting is really starting to get to me.
While the loss of life in Gaza is certainly a tragedy, the news reports are totally silent about the cause of the incursion into Gaza and what is going on in Israel today. Over the last year there have been thousands upon thousands of missiles and mortars which were launched from Gaza into Israel. Picture yourself sitting at a dinner table in Sderot or in your factory in Ashkelon when a rocket comes through the window or roof. The rockets were never launched at military targets as all the thugs in Hamas were interested in was making sure that the rocket or mortar struck somewhere in Israel.
Why were these rockets being launched? Because Israel had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005 and uprooted its citizens and army and forcibly resettled them in Israel. Once the Israelis left Gaza, the Palestinians were left to their own devices to govern their territory. What resulted was a coup in which Hamas deposed the Palestinian Authority and then began to indiscriminately fire mortars and rockets at Israeli cities and towns.
The results were predictable. Those who had the ability to leave the southern part of Israel did so and as a result the population in the area has dropped 25% according to the Israeli Consul General. Eventually Israel began to strike back and after a number of months, the international community brokered a six month truce. What happened during this period? For a while, life was somewhat calm as the number of missiles launched from Gaza dwindled to the single digits per week. Then towards the expiration of the "truce" hundreds of missiles began to rain down on the Southern towns on a daily basis. More importantly, the missiles penetrated deeper into Israel as "the truce" had allowed Hamas to rearm with Chinese and Iranian Grad missiles.
So finally Israel reacted and began the air strikes and ground invasion. Predictably, the world objected. Why? Because Israel as a victim is acceptable, whereas Israel as an aggressor is not. Its laudable that Israel has been able to ignore the international pressure because the bottom line is this - its not French or German or Dutch homes which were struck by thousands of random projectiles over the last three years. As such, its not for them to pontificate on the appropriateness of a response to these attacks.
Simply put - stop telling us to lie down and die quietly -- that game ended sixty four years ago.
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