israelis secretly envy the West

I admit that I have only studied israelis and their atrocities in earnest in the past couple of years. But, I can't help but get the feeling that they secretly envy not only the west, but also the Arabs who they openly detest.

Starting June 24, matzo balls and curveballs will mix as the Israel Baseball League debuts in and about Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The six-team circuit plans to play 45 games over two months in three 3,000-seat stadiums.

Games will be seven innings long, with ties broken by a home-run derby. There will be no games scheduled between sundown Friday and midnight Sunday (Saturday night), in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.

"After being cooped up for the Sabbath for 25 hours, I think people will come out," said IBL founder Larry Baras, a Boston bagel magnate.

Three managers - ex-Yankee Ron Bloomberg, ex-Chicago Cub and Oakland A Ken Holtzman and ex-Met Art Shamsky - are the best-known names involved.

The rosters will be peppered with players from the States, Australia, Latin America and elsewhere - and you don't have to be Jewish to suit up.

Could it be because if you had to be Jewish to play, then it would be a complete flop?

There will be two Jerusalem-area teams, the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox and the Modi'in Miracle, and four teams in northern Israel: the Tel Aviv Lightning, the Ra'anana Express, the Netanya Tigers and the Petach Tikva Pioneers.

Manhattan Realtor Leon Feingold, 34, a self-described ex-Cleveland Indian minor-leaguer, hopes to pitch. "This gives me an opportunity to do something amazing," he said.

What a fool.

I guess he thinks that pitching an awesome curve ball could make up for the fact that he swears allegiance to a racist, apartheid state.

If you want to be loved, the normal way to go about it is to join humanity, not isolate yourselves in an exclusive enclave and then proceed to kill and destroy everyone and everything around you.

You can't make up for that by doing the 'cool' things that your victims do.