Israeli young women are indeed recruited to the army when they're 18. After basic training (where they are indeed taught to clean and use guns) they are subjected to a two-years term of service where they are frequently subjected to the sexual harassment of their commanders, who get to decide whether they get leave or not on the weekend.

The problem of sexual harassment is endemic in Israeli society (the *president* is on leave of absence due to rapte charges, and the former minister of justice was just pardoned and rehired after he was convicted of forcing himself sexually on a much-younger woman. A soldier, in fact, who was stationed at the office next door to his.)

Why bikinis would change anyone's mind about the world's longest ongoing occupation, I cannot imagine. They must really think Americans are stupid.

A book I inherited from my grandfather, called “The German Jew” (written in Germany, May 1933; first published in the U.S. in June 1933, the edition in my hand being the second printing, published in September 1933), concludes as follows:

Behind the nationwide auto da fe conducted by the paranoid, medieval Hitler, lurks an inferiority complex with which he has succeeded in infecting a noble nation. Using the psychology of defeat he has made the Jews the scapegoat of that defeat; he has made less than one per cent of Germany the bugaboo of ninety-nine; under the pretext o abolishing Communism, too, he has become more and more Communistic in his arbitrary pronouncements and enforcements. Once again he has proved the observation of Renan [French omitted]: "Examine closely the enemies of Jewry and you will find that they are generally enemies of the modern spirit."

We write the final pages of this little book on May 10, 1933, the day devoted by Hitlerism to the public burning of Jewish books and of other volumes proclaiming the spirit of liberation. From these ashes, as from the ashes of old, the Jew - the Phoenix of peoples - will arise. These are but the embers of an ancient holocaust. Together with the silenced Germans who regard this persecution with shame we watch the inglorious flames. Together with them we know this is not only a conflagration of Jewish books; on these pyres burn, too, the lost liberties of the German people. And that liberty, too, will rise, Phoenix-like, from these ashes.

I find it both horrifying and fascinating, inspiring of hope (Germany – nowadays – really is a bastion of liberality) and horror (oh, what it went through between the date of the writing and today!).

It is also, interestingly, the earliest recorded usage of the word “holocaust” in connection with the persecution of the Jews. Some lexicographer can have a field day with that.

It seems pertinent to our own times, of making scapegoats due to an inferiority complex and an enmity to the modern spirit. I hope we catch it before America become the newest burnt offering to that enmity.

..."And that liberty, too, will rise, Phoenix-like, from these ashes."

I'm not sure why it didn't appear as I expected.

After 1948, any Arabs who tried to walk back to the homes they had been forced out of by threats of massacre (Dir Yassin, anyone?) were referred to by the Hebrew press as "mistanenim" - infilitrators (מסתננים).

After the PLO was organized, they were "mehablim" or "mehablei fatah" - terrorists or PLO terrorists (מחבלים or מחבלים מארגון הפת"ח).

By the nineties, every time a Palestinian Arab picked up a rock he was "ish Hamas" - a member of the Hamas - or "haver beirgun Az A Din Al Qassem" - a member of the Az A Din Al Qassem Brigade. (איש חמאס or חבר בארגון עז א-דין אל קאסם)

It's a form of dehumanization. First an organization is described as beyond evil - and incidentally, beyond negotiation - and then anyone you don't like gets described as a member of that evil organization.

That doesn't allow much hope for any kind of calming down of the roiling tragedy in Palestine. But why would the U.S. administration want to emulate the total failure that Israel's policies in Palestine are? I understand that they like (some) Israelis, but their policies don't work. Unless, that is, the goal is another roiling tragedy.

I've got several friends who'll be getting your book as a gift.

The repetitive stuff, both voice and motion, sounds a whole lot like the "stim" and rote behavior that characterizes people high on the functional side of the autism spectrum.

Since one in 166 people is on that spectrum, and many of those affected work at "regular" jobs, and do them badly, contact is very likely.

Being around such people is maddening. They tend to understand neither subtle clues nor direct demands - but often are perplexed when a repeatedly ignored hint leads to a justifiably irate co-worker.

At the community college, there *must* be a HR department that knows how to handle such things. Check with them for strategies - there may very likely be a workplace mentor who can help coach him to a more successful "passing for normal" style.

If that is indeed the problem, it is eminently solvable - because the only reason the behaviors continue is that the co-worker has not realized that they are "wrong for doing in public". You see, if he's gotten as far as having a job, he's got an internal mental list of many other types of behavior that are normal-for-him but must be done in private. As soon as those annoying mannerisms get onto his internal mental list of no-nos, your problem is solved, and you'll get to enjoy all the positives of working with an aspie.

(And you may say a prayer of gratitude that things like picking his nose, belching, aligning all the books on all the desks - not just his own - and "flapping" his hands are already on that list. Teaching the inappropriateness of those is *hard*!)