Also this issue: Not Hearing Voices -Bruce Schimmel How The West Was Lost America’s actions bode ill for its future. -Gary Large Letters to the Editor

April 10-16, 2003

pretzel logic

For Duty and Humanity

by Howard Altman

As often happens in life, it all comes down to the Zen of Moe, but Yoel Mester, the young vice consul of the Israeli consulate in Philadelphia, is not getting the reference.

Mister Mester is in my office to talk about the state of things in the Jewish state and the conversation has turned to the Zen of Moe as I express my frustration with the festering Israeli-Palestinian strife that is killing lives and hope.

"I want to grab the Israelis and Palestinians and bang their heads together, like Moe," I tell Mister Mester.

"Moe?" he asks.

"Moe," I say. "Moe Howard. Of The Three Stooges."

"I have heard of these Three Stooges," says Mester, adding that he vaguely recalls references to Moe, Larry, Curly et al. in movies and television shows, but that he had never been formally introduced to the wondrous, mirthful mayhem that is the Stooges.

As funny as the Stooges are, the conversation leading up to my digression into the Zen of Moe is deadly serious.

A week earlier, I had received a call from the Israeli consulate, asking if Mister Mester -- newly posted to Philadelphia -- could stop by, introduce himself and talk up Israel. I never turn down such an invitation and so here Mester is, and I take this golden opportunity to offer my plan for Middle East peace.

But first, as I always do when I discuss this issue, I give Mester some of my own history, so that he understands that I understand.

I have relatives in Israel, I tell him. My parents used to live there and my youngest brother was a sergeant in the IDF. I have Arab friends and my family has Arab business partners. I covered the first intifadah and had guns pointed at my head by 18-year-old Israeli soldiers and stones thrown at me by a mob of angry Palestinians.

The Middle East, I tell Mester, is no abstract concept to me.

My Yid cred established, I tell Mester what I really think. I tell him that Arik Sharon is a real obstacle to peace and that the settlements should be removed and a Palestinian homeland created.

I tell him that Israel is winning no friends in the world, or any long-term security, by occupying Gaza and the West Bank and that this nation I care deeply about will never prosper as long as young Israeli men and women are forced to oppress and young Palestinian men and women are driven to bomb.

I tell him that I agree strongly with Amir Rosenfeld, a former IDF captain who joined the ranks of Refusers, those soldiers unwilling to serve in the occupied territories. And I tell him that we ran an opinion piece by Rosenfeld, which helps me explain to Mester that, though we are a Philadelphia paper that helps explain Philadelphia, the Middle East is very much on our minds.

I also tell him that peace is a two-way street and that, should a Palestinian state be unable to rein in the terror bombers, then it is war.

For his part, Mester is polite and understanding and admittedly resigned to the fact that Israel is in a tough spot.

Which brings up my frustration. And the urge to knock heads together to force cooperation.

The Zen of Moe.

Clearly Mister Mester is puzzled, so, always ready to do my part for Middle East peace, I pull from my shelf Michael Fleming's Stoogerific illustrated history of Drs. Howard, Fine and Howard and give Mester a quick lesson on nyuks, eye pokes, pie tossing and wisecracks.

"See, Moe is the guy with the mop top," I say, showing him a picture of the three on the book's cover. "Larry is the guy with the porcupine hairdo and Curly, well, he's the guy with no hair."

This is funny stuff, I tell him.

Israelis and Palestinians need funny.

Flipping open Fleming's fine tome I land, serendipitously, on a page devoted to "I'll Never Heil Again," the second of two Stooges shorts eviscerating the Third Reich.

"These guys were the first people to publicly mock Hitler," I explain, knowing that -- with Mester here to talk, among other things, about Yom Hashoah, the Israeli day of Holocaust Remembrance -- such an explanation is likely to resonate.

And it does.

"I will have to learn more of these Stooges," says Mister Mester, very much a mensch.

I consider this a step in the right direction and very much in keeping with the Zen of Moe mantra, "For duty and humanity."

Everyone in the Muddle East should learn more of these Stooges.

Because nyuks and eye pokes and pie tosses and wisecracks are a hell of a lot better than bombs and bullets and death and destruction.