The Ashford Zone Blog

Why didn’t somebody think of this before?

Reuven Zelinkovsky was a colonel in the Israeli army, but now he has renounced military might to join a squadron of yogic flyers at the Sea of Galilee to throw a "shield of invincibility" around the Jewish state.

As Hezbollah rockets fired from nearby Lebanon boomed in the background, he explained that the solution to the latest conflict to engulf the Middle East was "not to kill the enemy but to kill enmity."

This can be done through the "technology" of yogic flying which, for those trained in the technique, is the spontaneous result of transcendental meditation, said Zelinkovsky as he emerged Tuesday from the first of two daily four-hour sessions.

The bespectacled electronics engineer, who served in the army from 1966 until 1982, is part of a worldwide movement led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the former guru to The Beatles.

The movement’s Natural Law Party has unsuccessfully fielded candidates in US presidential and British general elections, touting yogic flying as a solution to the world’s ills.

Yogic flying, derided by critics as glorified bum-hopping, is the purported ability to levitate through the advanced practice of transcendental meditation, or TM.

Proponents of the art say world peace can be achieved by thousands of simultaneous yogic flyers spread across the globe.

I don’t know about anybody else, but it seems to me that if missiles are going to be flying through the air, the last place I want to be is in the air with them.

Look, I know it’s complicated.  And I don’t feel compelled to pick a side.  This much I will say.

There’s no question that Hezbollah is, or certainly acts like, a terrorist organization, and Israel is justified in defending itself from those attacks.

But to my mind, Israel’s response is disproportionate, over-the-top, and reckless.  Two example in the past 24 hours:

(1)  "Ooops" attack on the Red Cross.  Look at the picture — a missile entered the van with bullseye precision.

In Sunday’s attack, Chaalan was thrown backward while the other medics rushed to pull the wounded from the smashed vehicle. As they pulled the child out, the Israelis struck again, blowing up the second ambulance.

"I felt like I was dying," Chaalan said Monday, after his release from a hospital. "I thought, ‘I’m dead.’ "

Fortunately, he was only stunned and needed three stitches to close a wound on his chin.

After the attack, a Red Cross volunteer reached the organization’s headquarters in Tyre, which relayed news of the assault to the International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva. After nearly two hours of negotiations, the Israelis guaranteed safe passage for the volunteers and the wounded back to Tyre.

Despite a donation of blood from Chaalan, the wounded man, 40-year-old Ahmed Mustafa Farwaz, lost his right leg below the knee, while his son Mohammed Farwaz, 14, remained in serious condition with shrapnel wounds to his abdomen. The elder Farwaz’s unidentified mother suffered severe nerve damage to her legs.

(2)  "Ooops" attack on the UN, killing 4 U.N. observers, including a Canadian, a Chinese, an Austrian and a Finn. Kofi Annan is calling the attack deliberate.

Annan said in his statement the post had been there for a long time and was marked clearly, and was hit despite assurances from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would not be attacked.

"I call on the government of Israel to conduct a full investigation into this very disturbing incident and demand that any further attack on UN positions and personnel must stop," Annan said in the statement.