The Brooklyn Spectator: Al's Toyland
Tucker, William
THE BROOKLYN SPECTATOR by William Tucker Al's Toyland since childhood. On a good day, they'd The biggest little toy store any kid ever saw. even escort you into the back room, where everything...
...Even so, the Palestinians maintain (and the Israelis have so far suffered them to maintain) official presence in Jerusalem, especially the notorious Orient House, to which foreign visitors and diplomats like to make pilgrimages...
...The list of violations of the Agreement goes on and on...
...Total Disregard by the Palestinians...
...Over at Al's they adopt you when they put you on the payroll...
...In any case he was a common Brooklyn type, 35 going on i8...
...Support the Clinton economic agenda, and your fondest wish will be granted: import protection, research subsidies, fat government contracts, you name it...
...Otherwise, the door was always padlocked...
...The toys were actually out of the boxes and on display...
...A few years ago, while my door...
...0 or According to legend, Al had taken over the business from his father, who started on the same corner in the 194o's...
...Israel's Commitment to Peace...
...Your tax-deductible contribution allows us to publish these important messages...
...the arrest and interrogation of Israelis by the Palestinian police...
...What are the facts...
...That certainly was a shame, but over at Al's you couldn't even squeeze in the front door without turning sideways...
...It's a strategy that has shown some signs of working, but even the President must be a little surprised by how responsive the U.S...
...On Saturday mornings there was story hour...
...Whenever I encounter such congenital pessimists, I always tell them the story of Al's Toyland...
...Israel has meticulously adhered to its commitments under the Agreement...
...I suspect they'll also be first in line when Barnes and Noble opens...
...Two blocks from my house, civic groups spent two years hying to prevent the local hospital from putting up a five-story office building on the site of an ugly parking lot...
...In the summer when he wore shorts, you could see the tattoos on his legs...
...Sadly, Al's didn't last much longer...
...Another pretext for violence was the construction of housing within the city limits of Jerusalem...
...The shelves were stocked mainly son was in nursery school, I was explaining with board games based on TV shows of to one of his friends why another kid the 1960's...
...Young Al's name probably wasn't even "Al," but in this kind of business the name goes with the store itself...
...His mother took him to visit FAO Schwarz," I told him...
...57 Al's...
...the movements of Palestinian "police" outside the so-called "Area A" without prior permission...
...No peace can possibly come about until . . . the Palestinians . . . comply fully with the Agreement and . . . realize that violence cannot take the place of negotiation...
...Now the rumor is there'll be a Barnes and Noble on the ground floor...
...Some were losing their hair...
...The professional worriers are up in arms about the effect on local booksellers...
...An armed robbery...
...without knocking something over...
...Yet the victory over Pennywhistle had become part of the neighborhood legend...
...Yet they didn't buy much...
...Al's was a store that was a legend in my neighborhood for almost a generation...
...Nothing terrorizes these people more than the possibility of living next door to people just like themselves—or living with the consequences of their own consumption...
...Despite repeated assurances that they would amend their infamous Charter, which unequivocally calls for the destruction of Israel, this has still not been done...
...This acknowledgment of the murderous PLO and its acceptance by Israel as a peace partner was an unprecedented act of generosity...
...No peace can possibly come about until the world forces the Palestinians to comply fully with the Agreement and until they realize that violence cannot take the place of negotiation...
...They have taken insufficient measures to combat terrorist activity — in fact the Palestinian Authority (P.A...
...Incomprehensibly, Israel (always accommodating) has provided this "police" with an arsenal of attack weapons, which at the first trumped-up occasion (the opening of that tunnel entrance) were turned and used with deadly effect against Israeli civilians and military...
...An embezzlement...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FL AmE Facts and Logic about The Middle East P.O...
...It's now more than three years since that handshake between the late Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat...
...Right to the end, the kids crowded into Pennywhistle, delving into the finger-paints, performing science experiments, sitting cross-legged on the floor for story hour...
...WILLIAM TUCKER is The American Spectator's New York correspondent...
...The Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs threaten at every hitch in the "peace process" to break it off or to resort to bloody violence...
...Then strange things began to happen...
...Oppose him, and he'll do to your business what he and his wife did to the pharmaceutical industry, whose stock prices still haven't recovered from the Clintons' February rhetorical onslaught ("profiteering at the expense of children") and threatened price controls...
...Anybody who embezzled would be looking for a new place to sleep...
...Al's didn't Al's was the kind of store you still see all encourage the hands-on approach...
...It was hard to turn a corner wouldn't be in school that day...
...Box 590359 III San Rancisco,CA 94159 FLAME is a 501(c)(3) educational institution...
...Even though the Agreement demands an end of incitement to violence, Yasser Arafat and his lieutenants consistently whip up their followers to "jihad" (holy war...
...Regrettably, the United Nations, which takes scant interest in the mayhem, mass murder, and genocide that goes on all over the world, takes a totally disproportionate and one-sided (consistently pro-Arab) interest in this "peace process" and in the alleged "violations" of it by Israel, without considering the almost total disregard of virtually all of its provisions by the Palestinians...
...Then Pennywhistle had an embezzlement...
...And so, ye yuppies and gentrifiers, take heed...
...Is it bigger than Al's Toyland...
...should have no authority in Jerusalem...
...How have the Palestinians performed under the Agreement...
...A nicer bunch of lummoxes you'd never want to meet...
...Had the hospital been proposing to tear down an office building and replace it with a parking lot, the same people would have screamed just as loud...
...continues to release well known members of terrorist groups...
...over Brooklyn, a place where you had to The store just mesmerized the neigh-squeeze sideways just to get in the front borhood kids...
...The Israeli-Palestinian "Peace Process" Are both parties doing their share...
...BOY CLINTON FOUR YEARS AGO Senator Phil Gramm defines Clinton's strategy of prying segments of the business community loose from the Republican coalition as "seduction and intimidation...
...Those are primarily that an independent Palestinian state would be allowed to come into existence, that Jerusalem would be divided, that the eastern part of the city would become the capital of such a state, and that the "refugees" — people who left Israel almost fifty years ago — should be allowed to return...
...the unauthorized construction of Dahaniye Airport...
...They'd scale those narrow shelves like mountain goats, fetching toys you hadn't seen live in a neighborhood where the urban I gentry live in constant fear that their neighborhood will become gentrified...
...It has, unfortunately, opened vistas and expectations among the Palestinians that will never be fulfilled...
...Daniel Wattenberg, "Clinton's Echo Chamber" TAS, JUNE 1993...
...The first and most notorious was the rioting in response to Israel's opening an entrance to an archaeological tunnel in Jerusalem...
...What's FAO Schwarz...
...An asthma attack felled Al a year ago at age 37—but before he died he left a lesson for us all about gentrification...
...Alongside Al was a collection of neighborhood scruffs...
...Despite its legendary stature, Al's quickly became a target of gentrification...
...After Al died, his scruffy assistants decided to clear the back room and change the line to housewares...
...even escort you into the back room, where everything over $25 was kept...
...the unauthorized construction of Gaza Port...
...he asked...
...At the counter, the most popular item was a whoopie cushion, which looked something likra hot-water bottle made in ° Imperial China...
...He cocked his head and gave me a funny look...
...Right in the front window stood an intricate Danish train set beckoning children to come in and experiment...
...Chamber of Commerce has been to his mating call...
...Besides, Al's boys would just stuff the guy in the back room and nobody would ever hear from him until next Christmas...
...The Al's of the world will not roll over easily...
...Just out of high school, they already had beer bellies...
...It was his wife...
...and much more...
...The whole thing collapsed within six months...
...the abuse of VIP privileges...
...Israel committed to grant wide-ranging independence to the Palestinians...
...There is the failure to confiscate illegal arms...
...I don't mean cut flowers, I want plants for my living room...
...For years I couldn't figure out whether the attractive woman working behind the counter was his mother or his wife...
...After two years, the place closed...
...Thus, while Israel has meticulously kept its commitments under the Agreement, the Palestinians have lost no opportunity to foment unrest and bloody demonstrations in response to imaginary "violations" on the part of Israel...
...It wasn't just that Pennywhistle featured educational toys of a decidedly European strain...
...How would anybody carry a gun in there...
...n "It's the biggest toy store in 70/ the world...
...How have the parties performed their respective obligations...
...A couple of years ago, a woman wrote to the local newspaper complaining about all the mom-and-pop stores that were being pushed out as yuppies moved into the neighborhood...
...All Israel asked in return was security and an end to tenor...
...the failure to enforce visitors' permit requirements...
...Their disregard for virtually all of its provisions has been so egregious that it amounts to a mockery...
...Neighborhood sages shook their heads...
...She ended by asking, "By the way, does anyone know anywhere where I can buy lilies...
...Al's would be gone within six months...
...One of the most egregious violations of the Agreement is the size of the Palestinian "police" force, which is now estimated at over 50,000 (virtually all of them former PLO terrorists...
...The answer is: very poorly...
...It was also agreed that the P.A...
...As the bloody riots in connection with the tunnel opening and with the construction of housing units have shown, such incitements always fall on receptive ears...
...Tom Brokaw's wife was rumored to be involved as a part-owner...
...Moreover, Pennywhistle had the chutzpah to set up shop right across the street from 64 June 1997 • The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...
...First there was an armed robbery at Pennywhistle...
...When the new arboretum opens across from the neighborhood florist, she'll be the first to complain...
...Five years ago, in a neighborhood filled with anxious parents considering Montessori, there arrived the branch of an upscale Manhattan toy store named Pennywhistle...
Vol. 30 • June 1997 • No. 6
