Forgive me please for trying to explain. It's a bit of a long story but might explain who and what I am, and where I am coming from on this subject.
I had never seen a computer, let alone used one, until I bought my very first one in early March 2005. The son-in-law of ex South African friends of mine is a computer guru, and he built it for me.
I didn't even know how to switch the thing on.
The first thing I did, after learning how to send emails, was to try to find a disability group. And I found one. After a lot of more and more inquisitive questions, someone said Oh, so why is disability treatment so much better for Jews in Israel than for the Palestinians.
What I did not know then was that the group, a private group, showed not my full email address, but my first name and the name of my email provider.
Incidentally, I am using my legitimate yahoo address for this site - the other email address is my private address, which I am willing to give to the owners of this site should they request it.
So this clever dick said oh, blank.net, that's an Israeli address. Well of course it is, because at that time it was the only Israeli telephone company in Israel.
Anyhow, I was verbally abused on the site, and had very nasty emails sent as somehow they managed to get my full email address. This was stopped by my ISP.
I then tried a public messageboard, not the one I'm currently complaining about, tried to hide the fact that I live in Israel and that I'm a Jew, until someone twigged that I didn't post on Shabbatot or Chagim [Shabbatot is the plural of Shabbat, the Sabbath, and Chagim is the pluran of Chag, Festival/Holy Day].
And I got shot down in pieces by various people on that set of boards.
So then I was told about the messageboards on which I've been posting since then. Busy boards. Many different separate boards.
And what has happened? Same old, same old. But I refuse to leave those boards, because I have to stand up [ok, so sit up in my wheelchair] and fight for the right to be me, and the right to post as a Jew and an Israeli.
I'm a chair user. So what. I had an accident and slipped on an icecream wrapper and fell down a flight of stone stairs. So what. I broke my back and neck. So what. I can just about cope with a few minutes on my feet using my forearm crutches for the times I need to stand to prepare and cook food, and if I can bear to wear my leg braces, one of which comes up to and around my waist, then I can stand for a few minutes longer, only those calipers hurt, believe me they hurt.
But the point is that I am me. I am still the same person inside this mostly useless body, and thanks to learning shorthand and touch typing before I went to university, I am able to cope with scribbling the odd note and coping with the keyboard.
Shorthand is OK as I can still read that whereas I can't really read my longhand these days, as I can't really hold a pen properly.
When I applied to join this site I said I was a chair user and agoraphobic. Why the latter? Because on 14 May 2008 I had an appointment at my audiologist about my new hearing aid [neither aids nor batteries are free here] and after that an appointment with my orthopod.
Only I wasn't well and phoned that morning to cancel. And that late afternoon I heard an explosion and my little concrete bungalow shook. And I knew, oh I knew, that it was a building that had been hit and not just another one landing in an open space.
And I should have been there, because the Grad Katyusha hit the roof and shattered all the Health clinics on the top floor of the shopping mall.
I should have been there Tony.
And now I can never go there again. I can't go into town. I can maybe go to the big shopping centre up the road maybe once a year, if that.
Even going more than 100 metres from my home is difficult for me now.
I should have been here, on Wednesday 14 May 2008
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