Every day I leave the gym at 1 o'clock, pause for a moment on the sidewalk in front and enter the new pizza shop they opened there, buy some nut and peanut, and go home. On Tuesday of this week, I didn't come to the institute. I was busy. But who did show up? Mr. Halaila, who came especially from Hebron to carry out an attack in front of my institute.
Suddenly, my phone at home starts tangtangling vigorously, and everyone asks, "Are you okay?" There was an attack at your place, in the Dan housing complex. With us? On our sidewalk? Hakhwara were, to the Tapuach junction of our blood? I rushed out and walked all 56 meters from my house to the scene of the attack.
Halaila was already lying in a black ZAKA bag, Brahanu Tegania was already at the front of the scene and reported, the van used in the attack was squashed on the bus stop, not understanding who had treated him like this, after being loyal all his life, and full of curiosities, myself included, stood around and did not believe that something had happened in our neighborhood, that anyone even knew about its existence. Even the news called it "Ramat HaHayal" because it was assumed that no one had heard of Shikun Dan, the neighborhood that was once home to the bus drivers of the Dan Cooperative, and where people now live, most of whom never ride the bus.
Counted. 30 security vehicles, 6 ambulances, 11 reporters, including foreign networks, the police commissioner, the district commander, full of yeshiva students who had an excuse to cut in the middle of class, hundreds of citizens, some of them speaking hate speech they learned on social media, shouting death words and filming as they went along, and in the sky, an overseer from above, one of his helicopters. Such scenes have not been seen in us since the first Dan driver built his house on the distant sands of northeast Tel Aviv.
The incident ended, the wounded were evacuated, the terrorist began to cool down, and security vehicles continued to flow into the scene with sirens and emergency driving. You know why they came. Are they bored in the office? Did they think that maybe the attack would replicate itself in the same place? Just like extreme driving and meeting colleagues? What is certain is that the manpower shortage in the police has not been felt. And woe betide those who wanted to get through the red ribbon. They didn't even give Brahanu any.
Four hours after the incident, the street was still closed, perhaps to prevent people from passing through the bad energy created by the event. Just an exaggeration. Come on, clean and open, what do you have to stay? And only my daughter said to me: Daddy, tonight I will have nightmares. I told her: Everyone in our country has nightmares sometimes, today it's our turn. Let's get over it, and let's hope that no other terrorist has heard of Shikun Dan.
Stuck
Nothing happened in a stranded settlement. It was decided that from now on smartphones would not be given to children until the eighth grade. What an important and good decision, the Tekoa children were saved from the fate of most of the children of Israel and the world, to exchange human relations for screens. In Tekoa, children will remain children, the evil part of their souls will not be empowered by the use of social networks, and will remain to a degree, as with the children we were. We were not perfect, there was both evil and violence, but there were no murderous attacks like there are today, every day, everywhere in the country.
Just yesterday, like all parents at my daughters' school, I signed a draconian agreement not to use phones. I pledged not only not to give the girls a phone in hand, but also not to have another phone at home, a general phone, for their use when necessary, not to allow them to form any WhatsApp groups from my phone, and generally to maintain face-to-face contact rather than through devices in the coming years, until it is decided otherwise.
Say – and I'm told a lot – progress can't be stopped. That's right. The world is going in one direction, and artificial intelligence is amplifying that direction a trillion times, but if you make the right decision, you can give children grace time without technology for the first few years of their lives, until their brains mature, accumulate real communication experiences, and only then become addicted to the phone, like the rest of us.
I read a saying this week that I liked. "In the next 20 years, the most successful people in the world will be those whose parents didn't give them access to social media as children." Why? Because cellular communication flattens emotions, suppresses language, makes all children faceless and identityless, stuck on a screen all day, obeying instructions from TikTok like zombies, defensive and attacking. They have no space to create self-identity, no field for studying human communication. Therefore, children who grow up today without, even though they seem to be lagging behind in the technological race, will be the leaders of humanity in a decade or two.
A parent who today gives a phone call to a young child in years determines his destiny - to be like everyone else, to work like everyone else, to fight like everyone else for the same resources. Give your kids a comparative advantage in a competitive world – take their phone. Today.
Shi-in
The girl wanted a sleeve for the summer. Legitimate request. But where am I going to get her a sleeve? I haven't seen them in the stores I visit from time to time, something airy like that, made of thin, cheap, colorful fabric. I guess in the Ramla market I'll find one, but to drive all the way to Ramla for Sharwal? Tight on me.
So I went to the world's leading fashion website, Shi-in, which is called Shine in Israel for some reason. Within a second, I found sleeves in a variety of colors and ridiculous prices. I spoiled three. Within five days they were here, flapping in the damp evening breeze on the girl's feet.
But then I happened to stumble upon a Netflix documentary about what's happening on this site, Shi'in, in China. I learned first of all that this site produces the clothes only after they have been ordered, so it does not have to hold huge inventory and can sell really cheaply. Within a day of ordering, the garment is manufactured in one of hundreds of small factories in China, and let's go. What's bad? All bad. Gloriously bad.
The employment conditions in the site's factories are comparable to the employment conditions of rowers on slave ships from Africa to America. First of all, the working day is 16 to 18 hours a day. Accommodation in the factory, in the conditions of a neglected urban kennel. Vacation? No. Sometimes once a month, sometimes it doesn't either. Pay? Conditional on sewing 500 items per day. That's the quota. And if one stitch is not perfect, a third of the daily wage is foreclosed.
In short, this sleeve was sewn by slaves to allow my daughter to feel a summer sense of freedom. Suddenly, the graceful and cheap purchase took a chilling turn, like the hot dog I ate when I was 10 years old and suddenly realized that it was actually a dead animal.
This film led to a big protest movement against Xi'in, and this week they flew all kinds of online influencers to China to see for themselves that the situation isn't that bad. Reminded me of forced labor camps built on other days for Red Cross visits.
And the conscientious person at this time, what will he do? Won't he buy cheaply the fruit of slave labor? And if he doesn't buy silk-in, where will he buy and how will he make sure that his purchases come from a proper place?
The answer is the price. If a product is very cheap, then there is slavery on its assembly line. And whoever wants to ignore it should ignore it, because a new dress for 20 shekels is more important than the life of a forced laborer in Guanzhong. And that we will always be on the side of the liberators and not the enslavers.
avrigilad@gmail.com
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