SCHADENFREUDE
                                                             
A Great German Word;  by Si Frumkin*

"I am not a great fan of German achievement. I believe that a Lexus or a Cadillac is  better than a BMW or Mercedes. But I do acknowledge that Germans  have a way with words. They created words that other languages simply do not have.

Schadenfreude is such a word.  In case you are not familiar with it, it takes 7 English words to  define it: "malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others".
 The dictionary also explains it with a quote from the New York Times about historian Peter Gay -- who felt Schadenfreude as a  Jewish child in Nazi-era Berlin, watching the Germans lose coveted gold medals in the 1936 Olympics; he said that it "can be one of the great joys of life."  All this is a prelude to
 inform you that I felt - and greatly enjoyed -  Schadenfreude recently.
A friend had recently come back from a trip to Russia.. He told us that he saw beautiful flowers at an expensive flower shop in Moscow and asked where thes  out-of-season flowers had come from.  "Holland," he was  told. "Most of our flowers come from Holland but the Dutch buy a lot of them from Israel and resell them throughout Europe. We are  lucky to get them.".
Another friend spent a week in the French countryside where he enjoyed a
 wonderful tasty fruit, apparently some kind of a cross of a peach  and a plum. He asked what it was and was told that it was  imported from Israel, the only place where it was cultivated.  I am sure that at least some of the flowers, fruit and vegetables that cater to European  sophisticates came from the more than 3000 Gaza greenhouses. They  were all built on barren empty land by the Jews who - until a few  years ago - employed over 12,000 Palestinians there. Since the  start of the last Intifada and several terror attacks by the more  demented employees, the number of Arabs working the
  greenhouses was drastically reduced, and they were replaced by Thais, Africans and  Filipinos.  
During the months of  preparation for the Israeli withdrawal there were many questions on what should be done with the greenhouses. They were  state-of-art agricultural marvels with their own sophisticated temperature and humidity control systems, they turned  out millions of dollars worth of produce yearly and they were a  source of employment for thousands of people in an areawhere
 close to 40% were unemployed.  Should these marvelous  structures be destroyed?  Moved?   Abandoned?  And  then a wonderful and heartwarming solution was found. A small group of wealthy American Jews decided to buy the greenhouses  from Israel and donate them to the Palestinian Authority. One of
  the donors was former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who
  put up $500,000 of his own money. All in all, $14 million was  collected, the deal was done and appreciative Palestinian spokesmen announced that the greenhouses would become the  cornerstone of the future Palestinian economy.
So where is the Schadenfreude, you say? Happy ending for all, right? 
 Palestinians get the greenhouses, Israelis get $14 million and the small group of admirable Jews in America get the warm freeling of having made the world a more tolerant and loving place where Arabs appreciate Jewish kiindness and are less  eager to murder Jews, right?  Well, no, not really. Have you
 heard the old story about a scorpion that asked a fox to carry  him across a river? The fox refused: "You are a scorpion and you  might sting me," he said. The scorpion scoffed. "Don't  be ridiculous. Why would I sting you? We would both drown if I do," he said.   The fox thought this made sense and told him to climb on his back.  Halfway across the river the scorpion stung the fox. "Why? Why did you do this? We'll both  drown," cried the drowning fox. " I know, my friend, but this is the Middle East," said the scorpion before dying.
Just an  hour or so after the Jews left Gaza thousands of Palestinians
  swarmed into the empty settlements. The Palestinian  police watched the mob demolish the abandoned synagogues and set them on fire.  They also watched with interest as part of the  crowd turned on the greenhouses -- breaking windows, taking  plates of glass, wiring, computer and electronic parts and
  irrigation pipes and timers. It didn't take long  -- after a few hours or so the greenhouses that it had taken years to build were just so much junk.
And so I have Schadenfreude.
 The Palestinians will not export flowers to Holland or fruit to  France. The greenhouses will not be rebuilt. The Palestinian  economy, such as it is, will continue to be mired in corruption,  hatred and violence. They will suffer -- Schadenfreude--but still, they'll never admit that it was their own fault.  And
 I have Schadenfreude towards the naive rich Jews who thought that the Arab reaction to their gift would be based on logic and not on inbred hatred. You silly people, didn't you learn yet that this is the Middle East where scorpions sting even if this means their own destruction? "