Rank and File

Feb.13, 2009 | 1:29 AM

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THEIR VOTES WOULD HAVE GONE UP IN SMOKE: If it were up to North American college students, Israel's fourth largest party would be the pro-Marijuana Green Leaf movement. This tidbit surfaced in a mock Israel election which took place on campuses across the United States and Canada this week. The 8,000-odd student voters gave Green Leaf 13 Knesset seats, placing it above Labor's eight seats and below Yisrael Beiteinu's 15 seats. Likud and Kadima reaped 34 and 24 seats respectively. Meretz, National Union, and Shas all nabbed four seats. The United Arab List, Hadash and Balad reached a combined electorate of five seats. "Green Leaf, which in reality didn't cross the voting threshold, was the surprise of the mock election," said Milwaukee-born Michael Eglash. The election was the initiative of his Jerusalem-based firm, Upstart Ideas. "This project helps educate the general campus population - not only Jews - as to Israel's free and democratic nature," added Eglash, who immigrated to Israel in 1993. (Cnaan Liphshiz) S FUTURE SHOCK: During Operation Cast Lead, author Roy S. Neuberger, who divides his time between Jerusalem and New York, was thinking about ways to support the Israeli troops. When he realized that his new book, "2020 Vision," which had just been translated from English into Hebrew, could provide the soldiers with "chizuk" (morale-boosting), he decided to distribute more than 1,000 copies of the Hebrew version in military bases in the South. "The whole point of the book is to encourage the Jewish people," the 66-year-old told Anglo File. "We went through so many things, so many difficult phases in our history, but we survived everything. We'll also survive this, and in the end everything is going to be good." "2020 Vision" takes place in a messianic future and describes a group of American Jews trekking to Israel in the aftermath of a global Islamic terrorist attack. Next week, Neuberger will talk about his work and the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people in several events in Jerusalem and Modi'in. For more information, please call (02) 567-0748. (Raphael Ahren) S JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE PARANOID: The political intrigue of the current election season pales in comparison to some of the more spectacular ruses which David Young reviews in his book on British Royalty. Young, an English teacher who immigrated to Israel from London in 1968, wrote the book - entitled "Of Plots and Passions" - in the form of a collection of conversations between a retired history professor and his intelligent granddaughter. Together, they try to ascertain whether Richard III really did kill his two nephews, and whether the death of William Rufus, the Conqueror's son, in 1100 while hunting in the New Forest was really an accident. The amateur historian from Jerusalem provides the answers to these and 15 other dark chapters in British history in his 284-page work, published by Librario Publishing. (Cnaan Liphshiz) Have an idea about an item for Rank and File? E-mail us at column@haaretz.co.il.

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