Cinnamon Yes, Cardamom, No

A friend of mine sends me an e-mail with the question: “Any idea why the spices are on the No list?”  What she is talking about, I am thinking and I click the link, and this is what I get.

It is pretty ridiculous, isn’t it? These are the items the Israelis will, and won’t let, into Gaza. I don’t know about the spices. Why the cinnamon and the black pepper, but not the coriander, the nutmeg and the ginger? Or, why even any of them at all.

Picture from The Economist (source)

Finkelstein has a good story on it, but I’ve read it with that voice in several sources now. It's all tongue in cheek.  Who are they to decide over others? 

I have been warned by other bloggers that if you write anything anti-Israel, or anti-zionist, you end up in a rink, as they call it, where your comments box is flooded with posts from fictional characters, who pretend to be real, who will publish very lengthy stories about how delusional we are to think that they are wrong. I know from one Dutch bloggers who actually stopped blogging, because he got a certain “A.’ on his tail, as the person identified himself, who dominated the comment box of all his post, wishing him horrible endings as he did not like the content of the blogger's posts. We’ll see.

Here is a list of things that have been permitted lately.