Israel: Like this, as if

Lehitraot, from Joseph M. Hochstein

2010-07-22T11:32:00.001+03:00

It's time to take my leave from this blog. You could say that it's long past time, since I have been inactive here for more than two years.

My last post here was a comparison of New York with Israel, dated June 11, 2008. I am responsible for posts signed with my name through that date. Posts that appeared at this blog between then and this note of farewell should not be charged to my account.

When we started "Israel: Like This, As If," the aim was to put together a group of bloggers who would write in English about life in Israel from various perspectives. Ami Isseroff provided the title, the concept and some writing for "Israel: Like This, As If." He signed his work as "News Service." I did most of the other writing. For a time I was ill and stopped contributing.

The larger group of bloggers never materialized, although a number of guest writers have contributed individual pieces.

"Lehitraot," the title of this little note, is a forward-looking term, an Israeli counterpart of the French "au revoir" or the casual American "see you." I hope we may meet again somewhere on the web.

In case we don't meet again, let me thank you now for your interest and attention.

All the best,
Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Censorship of Kiddies

2009-06-26T15:40:00.000+03:00

In a blogicle called "Not realizing which team he is on," Treppenwitz explains that he censored his five year old son's "inappropriate" TV watching activities, and his son did not understand that he is on the opposite "team" and was supposed to object. Cops and robbers.

As Halfowitz, I have a different point of view. In the first place, I don't see quite how to apply this idea to rasing kids in Israel. Let's say you're an Israeli kid. So one minute you are watching a parentally approved non-violent 100% kosher TV program and the announcer comes on and says "This is an emergency. Israel is undergoing a missile attack. Please stay calm and enter your sealed rooms." Another time, the broadcast is interrupted to announce that Yigal Amir murdered the Prime Minister. Another time, you turn on the TV and Zaka people are busy collecting body parts after a suicide attack, or you learn that the President is accused of being a rapist. So what are you going to think if Mommy and Daddy tell you not to watch "The Shield" because it has explicit sex and violence? "Like, where are they living?"

Ultraorthodox Jews created a kosher search engine to keep the world out of the Internet. It's called Koogle. From what I can see, it works fine. Any English language search term I entered returned "Page not found." World guaranteed to be shut out, totally.

Does reality have an effect? Is it harmful to your mental health? Is TV the same as reality? Can we shut out the world and is it worth it? I am not too sure that watching explicit TV programing in childhood is the explanation for the existence of ultra orthodox pedophiles for example. I don't have scientific data to support my ideas, admittedly, just my own experiences.

Our kids always watched whatever they liked. The oldest son watched Oedipus Rex at age three on the public broadcasting channel when we were in US. He explained to Ruth what it was about pretty well, and added that it was not nice at all. I think it was the only channel we got at the time. All three kids watched lots of "good stuff" of all kinds including people "doing it," people killing each other in very creative ways, and everything from nonsense and kiddie shows to an explicit homosexual series that was too much for me. They watched, at different periods and in the same periods, the Smurfs, the Muppets, Michal Yannai's kiddie show, Incredible Hulk, action flicks and series, Stephen Segal, Mel Gibson, Texas Ranger, Pamela Anderson, lots of cleavage stuff and people getting blown to bits. Generally they were only interested in junk suitable to they own age, with aberrant tendencies to watch works of art. They endlessly played Dungeons and Dragons too. which is supposed to be a good stimulant to evil behavior. .

I would like to report that our offspring are all homicidal, thieving, devil worshiping, drug addicted sex maniacs locked away in Ma'asiyahu prison with former Treasury Minister Hirschson and MK Benizri and President Katsav and others like them, just to prove the theories of the censorship advocates. Unfortunately, the three evil malefactors are not in jail yet I think, and our kids didn't turn out that way. The "boys" are grad students in chemistry and engineering and the "girl" is finishing the army. Maybe their futures in politics are ruined. Maybe Katsav and Benizri didn't get to watch enough junk on TV when they were kids. That is what comes of a deprived childhood.

As for me, when I was a kid in U.S.A. they didn't have "inappropriate" shows on TV or if they did, I was too dumb to know about it or to understand what was going on. If I wanted sexually explicit content and senseless violence I had to read the Bible I guess. The closest we could get on TV was Sheena Queen of the Jungle. I remember reading with shock that some group labeled the content as "inappropriate." After that, I made a point of watching it..Mostly, we watched cartoons, "Father Knows Best" and "The Nelsons" which were probably a lot worse for developing psyches than Oedipus Rex.

One type of program I always watched together with my kids when they were kids, were series about crooked cops. In those shows there are two teams, but you can never quite figure out which is the good team. That type of show is really dangerous I guess, because it introduces MORAL RELATIVISM. Still, naybe it is better if in families, everyone tries to stay on the same team, rather than playing cops vs junkies and murderers. Maybe people who play those games with their parents as cops, get to identify with the team of the bad guys.

If there is less sin defined, perhaps there is less sinning. With fewer rules but important ones, it is easier to keep kids, ultraorthodox teachers and politicians from doing the things that are really harmful and wrong. If no fruit are forbidden except those that are physically harmful, perhaps we eat the ones that taste best and we develop a taste for what is right.

Ami Isseroff

Henglish, or Why Gilad Schalit is not free

2008-11-23T19:43:00.003+02:00

Henglish is the language you get when you directly translate Hebrew into English. For example, the title of this Web log "Like this, As If" is translated from the Hebrew "Kazeh, Ke'ilu." That in turn is translated from the English slang, "so, like" as in "Jill Hennessy is so, like, foxy." (Well she is, isn't she?) So Kazeh Ke'ilu is Engbrew, the complement of Henglish.

Henglish has many comic constructions, such as "The situation is on the face." It is a direct translation of the Hebrew, "Hamatzav al hapanim," which it generally is. Usually, educated people who speak Henglish do it for laughs. The Jerusalem Post however, is not necessarily to be counted among the educated. As I noted in Why Gilad Shalit is not free, here's how they quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak's remarks about Gilad Shalit:

"We have a moral responsibility and to do everything fitting and possible to bring Gilad Schalit home. Not at any price and not only in negotiations."

The best minds in Israel, as well as the defense establishment, "are currently sitting on the matter,"

...

"The matter is crucial, and it is not simple..."

The best minds are sitting on the matter. In Hebrew "Hamo'hot hachi tovim yoshvim al hainyan." But in English, it conjures up Mr. Barak, with his ample sitting department, sitting on a big file marked "Gilad Schalit." And maybe some other ample "minds" are also sitting on it. No wonder Schalit is not freed yet, the Israeli government doesn't know the difference between its mind and its sitting department! Or maybe that's just the Jerusalem Post.

Too bad they don't have Jill Hennessy or Bar Raphaeli sitting on the problem - they have such lovely minds for sitting.

New York and Israel: Same same, as we say in Tel Aviv and other parts of Asia

2008-06-11T20:19:00.001+03:00

A travel article in Smithsonian magazine contains some perceptive points about what life in Israel is like. The article isn't about Israel, though. It discusses the behavior of New Yorkers.

The New York City described in this article is strikingly similar to Israel. In the following passage, wherever you see "New Yorkers," imagine that the author has written "Israelis."

[snip]
It is said that New Yorkers are rude, but I think what people mean by that is that New Yorkers are more familiar. The man who waits on you in the delicatessen is likely to call you sweetheart. (Feminists have gotten used to this.) People on the bus will say, "I have the same handbag as you. How much did you pay?" If they don't like the way you are treating your children, they will tell you. And should you try to cut in front of somebody in the grocery store checkout line, you will be swiftly corrected. My mother, who lives in California, doesn't like to be kept waiting, so when she goes into the bank, she says to the people in the line, "Oh, I have just one little thing to ask the teller. Do you mind?" Then she scoots to the front of the line, takes the next teller and transacts her business, which is typically no briefer than anyone else's. People let her do this because she is an old lady. In New York, she wouldn't get away with it for a second.

While New Yorkers don't mind correcting you, they also want to help you. In the subway or on the sidewalk, when someone asks a passerby for directions, other people, overhearing, may hover nearby, disappointed that they were not the ones asked, and waiting to see if maybe they can get a word in. New Yorkers like to be experts. Actually, all people like to be experts, but most of them satisfy this need with friends and children and employees. New Yorkers, once again, tend to behave with strangers the way they do with people they know.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/17669919.html
[snip]

Everything described above is something I have witnessed in Tel Aviv.

A comment about "sweetheart." In Israel, you may hear people calling one another "motek." This is a unisex term of familiarity, meaning "sweet one" in Hebrew. If you say "motek" to someone of the same or opposite sex, it doesn't necessarily convey flirtation or sexist overtones. You can hear "sweetheart" used the same way in New York.

Where do the similar behaviors in Israel and New York come from? Is it a Jewish thing? New York is sometimes seen, erroneously, as a city of Jews. It does have more Jewish residents than Tel Aviv. People who don't like Jews have long used the label "New York" as a pejorative synonym for things Jewish. The city has become a magnet for Israeli expatriates and Hebrew-speaking tourists. Sayed Kashua, a Haaretz columnist, was in Manhattan a few weeks ago and wrote, "I heard more Hebrew on the Upper West Side than I do in Jerusalem."

The Smithsonian piece does not even hint that there are Jews in New York. Its writer, Joan Acocella, a gifted essayist and critic, cites various factors to explain why New Yorkers behave as they do. She suggests that two reasons may be the difficulties of everyday life in the city, and the awareness of a shared plight. She writes, "When New Yorkers see a stranger, they don't think, 'I don't know you.' They think, 'I know you. I know your problems---they're the same as mine---and furthermore we have the same handbag.' So that's how they treat you." That observation could apply equally to Israelis.

Acocella points out: "The majority of people who live in New York City were not born here. Indeed, more than a third were not born in the United States." Thus, New Yorkers "are people who left another place and came here, looking for something, which suggests that the population is preselected for higher energy and ambition."

These New York data also bear a similarity to Tel Aviv, and to Israel in general. More than 30 percent of the Jews in Israel and also in the Tel Aviv area were born abroad. Tel Aviv, like New York, is a commercial and cultural center that attracts people loaded with energy and ambition. In 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, one of every 20 people in Tel Aviv had moved here less than 12 months earlier.

This raises another question: If the behavior of New Yorkers isn't particularly Jewish, what is it that causes Jews in Israel to behave like New Yorkers? The answer may lie in the old dictum that Jews are just like everyone else, only moreso.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

How some Israelis view the United States

2008-05-18T10:25:00.001+03:00

[Here is some old material that remains pertinent. Three years ago my college alumni magazine produced a roundup of articles on how Americans are viewed in eight countries around the world. They asked me to write about Israel. -- J.M.H.]

“Don’t look at me like that,” a man’s voice rings out in American English. It resonates over the Hebrew buzz of a Tel Aviv shopping mall. “I’m not going to steal anything from you,” the American snaps at the manager of a newsstand that sells foreign magazines.

The newsstand manager replies in Israeli-accented English. “What’s the problem? Why must you talk this way? I didn’t say anything to you. We are brothers.” Brothers they may not be, but they are about the same age, in their late 20s or early 30s.

As people do in Israel, I butt in. I ask the American if he has been here long. He says he arrived only recently. He is on military duty. We talk for awhile. The American is black. I tell him he will find that people here don’t view skin color the way Americans do. He returns his attention to the magazine racks for a few minutes and then vanishes into the crowd.

“He thought you were staring at him,” I tell the shopkeeper, explaining that a white man staring at a black man in the United States might provoke some discomfort.

“In America, they’d think I’m white?” asks the magazine seller, whose olive skin marks him in Israel as of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern background — historically, a group that has suffered discrimination by fellow Jews of European origin. He tells me that he spent a couple of years in the States — in Seattle and California — and was not aware of racism. He was living there illegally and thought it best not to divulge his nationality. He told everyone he was Italian — which went over well with women, he adds. He loves America and would move there in a minute, he says, if he could get the immigration papers.

Elsewhere in Tel Aviv, friends and neighbors express various views of the United States and its people. Moshe, who owns a stationery store, says Americans are “freiers” — an evocative Israeli term of disapproval that is variously rendered as “suckers” or “pushovers” or “gullible victims.” Moshe explains: “They go to places where they don’t belong — Iraq, Afghanistan. They try to be the police force of the whole world. They should stay home and attend to their own problems.”

Hannah, a school administrator, finds fault with U.S. family life. Adult children move away and see their parents only once or twice a year, she says, and even college students leave home to study. Accustomed to a society where the generations are reunited every Sabbath, she sees the way Americans live as cold and fragmented.

Mazal, a beauty-shop operator and mother of a combat pilot, is impressed with the U.S. work ethic. Even the richest Americans insist that their children find jobs, she believes.

Some years ago an Israeli journalist wrote about U.S. supermarkets. What struck him was the impersonal way in which store clerks told him to have a nice day. Later, a book by a pair of cross-cultural consultants found that Israelis often see Americans as insincere, naive, superficial, too formal, lacking spontaneity, insistent on going by the book rather than improvising, and easily taken advantage of.

Mordechai, a jewelry designer who has visited 11 U.S. states, thinks differently. The first word that comes to mind when he is asked about Americans is “kind.” He adds that the Americans who visit his shop in Tel Aviv are not stingy the way French tourists are.

I tell Mordechai he is generalizing. “I know that,” he says, smiling.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

(Cross-posted at ZioNation: Progressive Zionism and Israel Web Log)

Arabic voices, and the faces of Ma'alot

2008-05-07T18:53:00.001+03:00

It is memorial day, and we are waiting for the start of a ceremony for the war dead in Ma'alot, a small Israeli city near the Lebanon border. We already know more or less what the speakers will say. They talk every year about the heartrending loss of young soldiers' lives as the price of protecting the country.

While we wait, people sitting behind me are chatting in Arabic. Three of the four local people killed in the Second Lebanon War were young Arab civilians. They were Shanati Shanati, 18, Amir Naeem, 18, and Muhammed Fa'ur, 17. A direct hit by a Hezbollah katyusha rocket killed them Aug. 3, 2006. They had been riding together in a jeep and got out to take cover.

The fourth local victim was Sgt. Maj. Moti Abutbul, 28, a member of Flotilla 13, an elite unit that is sometimes likened to the U.S. Navy SEALS. A katyusha killed Abutbul and 11 other Israeli soldiers Aug. 7, 2006, near Kfar Giladi.

We saw the faces of the local dead last night. On every memorial eve Ma'alot shows the faces of its dozens of fallen soldiers and terror victims, displaying them one by one on a big outdoor projection screen. Brief narration accompanies each photograph, telling when and how the person died. As each face appears, a family representative mounts the stage and lights a memorial candle.

Arab family members showed up last night to light candles for the recent victims. They chose again today to take part in a program in memory of the Israel war dead. A Jewish high school put together the program today.

Whatever meaning you may read into this, it is something to set alongside current media reports which suggest that Arabs have nothing on their minds except the notion of the Nakba, the disaster which some say resulted from the birth of the state of Israel. In Ma'alot, life is much more complicated than that, and coexistence is a daily event.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

That's better. A 60th birthday logo that doesn't tear Israel apart

2008-05-05T09:05:00.004+03:00

Without fanfare, a cleaned-up version of Israel's official 60th anniversary logo has started turning up.

The revised logo appeared in a government advertisement in the Haaretz newspaper's May 2 Hebrew weekend magazine. What's new about it is that the country's name --- ישראל --- no longer is torn apart. It now appears as one unbroken word.

The original logo, which won a prize from a committee that picked it, ripped Israel into two unequal pieces, leaving "el" floating by itself, separated from the rest of the country's name. This typographic atrocity appeared in both the English and the Hebrew versions. There was no apparent reason for it, unless perhaps the committee that chose this logo thought it looked more original than competing designs which spelled the country's name the same old way that everyone else spells it.

The revised logo already decorates the website of the official 60th Anniversary Administration. The old design continues to appear in many other places. At this writing, these include the websites of the Prime Minister's office and a public relations firm which is promoting the birthday events.

Thousands of visitors to this blog have seen our September 2007 article finding fault with the old logo. We kvetched, "At first glance, the winning logo seems to express the confusion that afflicts Israel in many ways today. Even the country's name is typographically ripped apart."

It would be nice to think that our criticism helped bring about the change, but we could not have been alone in complaining. You don't have to be a design genius to see that the old logo didn't look good. The new logo is a big improvement.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Myth, legend and fact in the 1947 Exodus episode

2008-05-04T11:48:00.000+03:00

The word "mythological" is taking hold of the Hebrew media. Listen to a broadcast or read a newspaper and you will encounter this fad. People who should know better are lavishing the term "mythological" on various actual entities---an outstanding athlete, a sports team, a rock group, a local landmark, a record album that sold well.

It's not only newspeople who are representing our realities as myth. The distinguished author David Grossman referred in a British newspaper to David Ben-Gurion as "Israel's mythological first prime minister." A big-name business promoter recently described our military command center as "one of Israel's most mythological institutions."

This is misuse. "Legendary" is probably what they meant. Real-life subjects are not "mythological," a term that belongs to dragons, unicorns and the Tooth Fairy. Are we having a problem distinguishing between reality and fantasy?

Hold the question. Last week some 300 people including President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak gathered in Tel Aviv's London Park for a tribute to the late Yossi Harel, who commanded the refugee ship "Exodus 1947." Harel died April 26 at age 90.

The ceremony took place at the monument to Aliyah Bet in the little seaside park. Speaker after speaker took the trouble to say thanks to the departed Harel. This was a pointed reminder that the State of Israel never got around to awarding the Israel Prize to Harel in recognition of his contributions to the country.

Last week a Hebrew newspaper columnist found irony in Harel's words of acceptance when the Italian government conferred on him its Exodus prize in 2007. This prize, awarded for promoting peace and humanitarianism, is named for a refugee ship that Harel commanded. The Israeli hero thanked his Italian hosts "for teaching your children our history."

A headline on an Israeli obituary referred to Harel as "the real Ari Ben Canaan." This was a reference to the fictional refugee ship commander and hero of Leon Uris's 1957 novel "Exodus." Harel was widely said to be the inspiration if not the model for the dashing Ari, portrayed by Paul Newman in Otto Preminger's 1960 movie adaptation.

It is not surprising that the word "mythological" appeared in what was written about Harel after his death. In real life, Harel commanded four Haganah vessels that transported 24,000 refugees from Europe in the clandestine maritime operations which Zionists called Aliyah Bet and which Britain called "illegal immigration." One of these vessels was the Exodus 1947, a dilapidated former excursion liner crewed by North American volunteers and captained by Isaac "Ike" Aronowitz, a 23-year-old Israeli who had served in the British merchant marines. Aronowitz, who regarded Harel as a political commissar and disputed some of his command decisions, has also been called the original Ari Ben Canaan.

Uris put a disclaimer on the first page of his book: "There may be persons alive who took part in events similar to those described in this book. It is possible, therefore, that some of them may be mistaken for characters in this book. Let me emphasize that all characters in Exodus are the complete creation of the author, and entirely fictional."

The story of the real-life Exodus is largely forgotten today. It includes fascinating behind-the-scenes elements which resulted in a public drama after a Royal Navy convoy captured the crowded Exodus at sea July 18, 1947. Built to carry only 400 passengers and a crew of 58, the ship had escaped from a French port on July 11 with more than 4,500 Jewish refugees aboard. In the July 18 battle, three Jews were killed and 28 others hospitalized. Harel, Captain Ike and other underground members evaded capture by a standard Haganah ruse. They went to hiding places aboard ship. After the Exodus docked at Haifa, a work detail of Jews came aboard at Haifa to clean the filthy vessel, and the fugitives walked off among them.

With the capture of the Exodus, the British government decided to "teach the Jews a lesson," as Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin put it. Until then, the British policy had been to intern captured Jews in camps on Cyprus. Under a new policy, the government ordered the Exodus passengers returned to their port of embarkation in France.

Except for some 60 infirm and elderly refugees who went ashore in France, the Jews staged a hunger strike off the French coast and refused to debark from the prison ships on which they were confined. After a standoff of more than three weeks, with political criticism and negative news coverage mounting, Britain sent the prison ships to Hamburg, Germany, and put the Jews ashore there by force on Sept. 8, 1947.

The bravery of the Exodus passengers and crew may well have hastened the end of British rule here, as a result of the international attention and anti-British feeling which this series of events generated.

A much different incident takes place in the fictional "Exodus." In the book, 300 Jewish orphans proclaim a hunger strike at Cyprus aboard an old salvage tug renamed the Exodus, and they win British agreement to sail for the promised land. Nothing like this ever happened.

A brief synopsis of the real Exodus story does appear in the novel "Exodus," in Chapter 27 of Book I. It is not an important element in the plot, and it does not convey the political impact of the actual Exodus voyage.

The impact of the fictional Exodus has been immeasurable in other ways. This has to do with the story's epic sweep, in which the Aliyah Bet sequences are only a small part. In their times, both the book and the movie offered compelling presentations of the story of Israel's founding.

Many things about Harel's life are not publicly known. After his major role in Aliyah Bet, he went on to other activities which included Israeli intelligence and private business. He was only 28 when he commanded the Exodus. As a teenaged Haganah member, he served under Orde Wingate, the legendary British Zionist exponent of Jewish self-defense.

Friends and admirers have been remembering Harel as a person of great leadership ability, bravery, personal charm, negotiating skills and modesty. The author Yoram Kaniuk reminisced about Harel's concern for Armenian victims of genocide. The radio personality Natan Zehavi wrote a column in Ma'ariv on May 2 recalling that Harel told him in 1988: "As someone who spent many years transporting refugees, I have special feelings on the subject. It doesn't matter to me if they are Jews, Vietnamese, Palestinians or Indians. It's necessary to help refugees and people who have been exiled from their country."

The Tel Aviv gathering in Harel's memory on April 28 ended with a musical conflation of myth wrapping itself around reality. The performer Haim Topol concluded the ceremony by singing an authentic song from Harel's youth. Then, as friends and family filed out of the Tel Aviv park for a busride up the coast to bury Harel at Kibbutz Sdot Yam, recorded music sounded on the speaker system. It was the theme song from the soundtrack of the movie "Exodus."

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Racism and Israel

2008-04-27T00:37:00.002+03:00

A Jewish woman in the United States has sent a question to the Zionism and Israel Information Center. She is planning a visit to Israel and asks: "How would I be treated if I decided to make Israel my home?" She describes herself as an African-American convert to Judaism, active in her local synagogue.

She expressed concern about discrimination and asked what the Israel government is doing to combat racism.

Here is a response.

Dear ____:

How would you be treated as an immigrant to Israel? No one can answer with certainty, but I'll tell you two things I have learned in 25 years of life here.

1) Israel is not the United States. The two societies are very different from each other. U.S. terms and concepts often do not apply to Israel. If you want to use them, you need to append lots of footnotes and clarifications to explain why they don't really mean the same thing.

Discrimination exists in Israel, but it is not what Barack Obama was talking about in his celebrated speech about race in the United States. He spoke of "the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through -- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect."

The concept that people belong to different races is foreign to Israel. The Israel government doesn't issue forms asking us to identify ourselves by race according to six official racial classifications, as is done in the states. Israel has no background of segregation based on race, nor of laws forbidding miscegenation, nor, above all, of chattel slavery.

2) Israel's population comprises scores of different ethnic and national groups jostling one another to attain their place in a society that still hasn't developed a unitary Israeli culture.

Prejudice and discrimination in Israel express themselves in Israeli terms. These reflect the society. The biases are mainly ethnic, cultural, religious, economic and political. Ethnic humor is acceptable, and ethnic slurs often go unpunished. To the extent that a person's skin color matters in Israel, its only significance is that it may point to their ethnic or cultural affiliation. It does not signify that anyone is racially inferior or superior.

My guess, from what you have related about yourself, is that people in Israel will not readily know how to apply the standard Israeli categories to you, and this could give you a good shot at defining yourself.

Israelis often don't know what to make of Americans. Popular stereotypes see Americans as naive, unduly square or easily manipulated. Quite a few Israelis can quote "ask not what your country can do for you" from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address but seem never to have heard the part where JFK said "civility is not a sign of weakness." Our media know about U.S. identity politics but insist on using the discarded term "Afro-American."

What is the government doing about racism? As noted, Israel has many internal problems but they don't involve race. The solutions to social welfare problems generally depend on which political parties are in power.

Unfortunately, anti-Israel racism is a problem, and the government does have to deal with it internationally.

Sounds of music in a city more crowded than Gaza

2008-04-22T12:12:00.000+03:00

Some people will tell you that Gaza is the most crowded place on earth. Actually, Tel Aviv (aerial view at right) is much more densely populated than Gaza.

The first modern Hebrew city, not quite 100 years old, has already managed to cram almost 400,000 residents into its 51.8 square kilometers. This makes Tel Aviv more densely populated than Hong Kong or Singapore, which in turn are much more crowded than Gaza. (A note on comparative crowding appears below, at the end of this post.)

The other night at the seder, we sang loudly and made other noise. Some 20 of us, representing three generations, sat around a ping-pong table covered with white tablecloths in a central Tel Aviv backyard and sang Passover songs. No neighbors complained about the noise. From time to time, we could hear singing from other buildings.

A guest at the table remarked that nowhere but Israel would you hear voices from house after house, all singing the same traditional songs. Whether or not this is the case, it is true that sounds from apartments can be heard around the neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, especially in the mild months when windows are open. In a one-block stroll, you may hear my neighbors playing piano, various woodwinds, drums or electric guitar.

A trumpet player in the neighborhood used to walk down to the Mediterranean at night to find an empty place on the beach where he could play without an audience. One afternoon he was playing at home, fooling around with some improvised passages, and another trumpet answered from elsewhere in the neighborhood. The windows were open, and a fellow trumpeter had overheard his experimentation. He never found out who the other, unseen musician was.

The beach no longer offers much solitude at night. Tourists and local people in growing numbers visit the beachfront after dark. A cafe on a northern stretch of beach now stays open around the clock.

Even the rooftops of Tel Aviv don't provide much privacy. One recent day, a musician stood alone on a roof in the next block, playing jazz on a saxophone. Attracted by the sound, I listened from the rooftop where I live, 75 meters away.

It was a special event. I have heard this saxophonist perform with groups in concert halls, festivals, night spots and other venues. In years of living in the neighborhood, I had never seen him up on the roof before. If he had gone up there in search of privacy, he picked the wrong place.

A telephone rang and I went inside to answer it. When I got back outside moments later, the music had stopped and the other roof was empty. I don't know if the saxophonist had noticed that he had an audience, or whether he simply had finished what he wanted to play. I wonder if others in our crowded city got to enjoy his rooftop solo, too.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

===

A note on crowded places

The canard that Gaza is the most crowded place on earth continues to circulate.

The UK politician George Galloway wrote in The Glasgow Record last month that the Gaza Strip is "the most densely populated piece of earth on the planet." Galloway wrote that 1.5 million Palestinians live there.

Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist currently teaching at Princeton, wrote March 26 that Gaza is "one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 3,823 people per square kilometre." Kuttab's figure is in line with recent Gaza population estimates of 1.4 million.

If Galloway's estimate of 1.5 million Gaza population is correct, this is almost 4,200 people per square kilometer. The Central Intelligence Agency projects that the Gaza population will reach 1,537,269 in July. This would bring the density to 4,270 people per square kilometer.

Both Singapore and Hong Kong have more than 6,000 people per square kilometer. Tel Aviv has more than 7,000 people per square kilometer. If you count the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the metropolitan area with its population of 2.3 million has a density of more than 5,000 people per square kilometer, which is considerably more crowded than the Gaza Strip as reckoned by Galloway or Kuttab or the CIA.

Selected estimates of population density:

Mumbai
27,209 people/sq km
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/

Kolkata
24,000 people/sq km
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkata

Tel Aviv
7,445 people/sq km
(385,000 people, 51.8 sq km)

Hong Kong
6,352 people/sq km
http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/population.pdf

Singapore
6,252 people/sq km
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/keyind.html

London
5,100 people/sq km

Tel Aviv metro area including suburbs
5,050 people/sq km
(2.3 million people, 453 sq km)

Moscow
4,900 people/sq km

Tokyo/Yokahama
4,750 people/sq km

Warsaw
4,300 people/sq km

Gaza Strip per CIA projection
4,270 people/sq km
(1,537,269 population July 2008, 360 sq km)

Gaza Strip per George Galloway
4,167 people/sq km
(1.5 million people, 360 sq km)

Gaza Strip per Daoud Kuttab
3,822 people/sq km

The numbers for London, Tel Aviv metro area, Moscow, Tokyo/Yokohama and Warsaw are from the City Mayors site.
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html

--J.M.H.

The Proofreader's Guide to Israel

2008-04-10T22:32:00.002+03:00

The sign in the photo, captured at the Central Bus Station in Afula some time ago, offers you a hamburger in two languages---in Hebrew, and in mangled English as a "humborger."

Israel is rich in misspelled foreign words. A bakery sign in Tel Aviv advertised a "corazon" (a heart in Spanish). This is a blue-and-white improvised spelling of "croissant." It roughly approximates how the French word sounds when pronounced with a Hebrew accent.

The country's nonchalance about misusing foreign languages goes beyond spelling. The other day I was talking with someone in a Tel Aviv cafe. A cheerful server heard us speaking English, so she offered to bring us an English menu. We told her the Hebrew menu was fine. We addressed her in Hebrew, which both of us spoke better than she could speak English. Nonetheless, she persisted in speaking English to us, and she replaced the Hebrew specials-of-the-day card with an English card.

If you are a tourist, this treatment might be both helpful and charming. If you are a long-term speaker of Hebrew, it is something else. A widely accepted explanation for this behavior is that Israelis like to practice their English. Darker factors may also be at work.

A neighbor in Tel Aviv used to shout to me in English on the sidewalk. At times when she did address me in Hebrew, she would speak loudly and slowly, mouthing each word separately as if to suggest that I would not otherwise understand. Her attempts at linguistic one-upmanship stopped only when she moved away.

Last year this former neighbor and her family showed up in the Sinai at the same beach where I was staying. For the rest of her stay, this woman spoke to me loudly in clumsy English, even when I replied to her in Hebrew and even when she could see I was reading a Hebrew novel. Her lack of English skills never seemed to deter her.

A local blogger has complained about this phenomenon in treatment of new immigrants: "Scenario #2: An oleh chadash is hanging out with a bunch of Israelis. He is speaking in his best Hebrew and keeping up with the crew. Yet, despite this, the Israelis insist on speaking in stupid, broken English."

Back to misspellings. Last weekend, a newspaper printed a story about a couple of misspellings of French that appeared in a leaflet which the city government distributed in tourist hotels. Our officials misspelled "ce soir" as "se soir," and "Jeudi" as "Jedi."

The weekly Tel Aviv Time quoted Deputy Mayor Per Visner, head of the local Greens party, as brushing off the official display of ignorance with a couple of jokes and a non-apologetic comment. According to the newspaper, he commented that the errors weren't intentional, that mistakes always happen, and that they didn't cause great embarrassment.

A separate statement from City Hall disavowed responsibility for the spelling gaffes. It stressed that an advertising agency prepared and distributed the leaflets, that the misspellings were the fault of a French-speaking volunteer, and that the bottom-line result was that most of the hotel guests complied with the leaflet's request that they turn off their lights for one hour in observance of Earth Hour on March 27.

Many Israelis would second City Hall's suggestion that results count and spelling doesn't. In this country, which has accomplished so much in only 60 years, it is a national article of faith that results speak louder than words.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Spring & Flowers in Israel

2008-03-29T13:19:00.001+03:00

It is that time of the year again.

But these flowers are not in the wilds of the Galilee. These are on our window ledge.

Decline and fall of the almighty Dollar

2008-03-23T15:49:00.002+02:00

A long time ago, on another planet, there was an almost hypothetical country called Israel. Israel was a Jewish country. Naturarlly, people there made their living from the air business, or as the Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem called it, Luftgescheft.

Each year, the economic wizards of the world predicted that this state would inevitably be bankrupt in a year. The finance ministers of this country juggled numbers and books and currency. There was one dollar for buying imported goods, and another one for selling them, and a third, black market one, for spending abroad and buying things you were not supposed to buy. Israeli Milo Minderbinders made money by buying detergent in Germany for 4 cents, shipping it to Israel, and then selling it back to Germany for 2 cents, making a 2 cent profit with the government export subsidy. The exchange rate of the black market dollar, along with the going rate for sex services, was published in the newspapers.

The main financial instrument of this state was the printing press, and the major economic policy was devaluation. My great uncle, who lived in this hypothetical state, went to sleep a millionaire and woke up a pauper. He was not alone. It happened more than once.

Every few months, the finance minister would make some nonsensical pronouncement, approximately like this, "We have been anxiously watching the unrest in South America and Africa, the decline of the Japanese Yen and the fluctuations of the price of hay in China, which require realignment of national economic policy. Therefore, and in accordance with the above, the government has decided to devalue Israeli currency by 10%." The announcement was always made just before the Sabbath, when the banks had closed.

Eventually, the slide in the value of Israeli currency was so precipitious that announcements like the above became superfluous. Who can keep track of all the changes? The Lira became the Shekel. The Shekel became the New Israeli Shekel, and then it became the Newer Israeli Shekel. Each time, zeros were lopped off the exchange rate to ensure that calculators, computers and supermarket stickers would not be overloaded. At one point, salaries were devalued by twenty percent from the time they were paid until the time you could collect them. Confronted with a price in Shkalim, or Lira or New Israeli Shekels, tourists and new immigrants inevitably asked, "How much is that in real money?"

Inflation was a fact of life. The second summer I lived in Jerusalem, I waited in vain for the price of bananas to go down to 75 agorot again, as they had the year before when bananas were in season. That's how much I knew. Bananas were IL 1.50 in the second summer, and that was as cheap as they would ever get. This 100% rise in prices of just about everything was somehow translated into a 5 percent annual rise in the cost of living index.

To maintain some semblance of economic sanity, every price was tied to the dollar. Salaries, rents, prices of automobiles, prices of apartments and land, all were expressed in dollars. The idea of adopting the dollar as currency was considered seriously. It was called "Dollarizatsia."

Times changed. Today everyone thinks that "Luftgescheft" has to do either with the Luftgescheft Royal Bank software program (there is such a thing) or with the Israel Aircraft Industry, which acquired the name unofficially long ago. Every day we watch the little red arrows on the television screen next to the exchange rates of the US Dollar and the Euro with increasing amazement. The director of the Bank of Israel finally announced a massive program to buy dollars continuously and save the falling dollar from obilivion.

Tenants must be apologetically told that the rent is now tied to the Shekel, and customers must be told the rate in Shkalim.

It will take some time to get used to this psychic and economic shock.

Ami Isseroff

Threatening to leave the country

2008-03-23T13:14:00.001+02:00

Complaining about Israel and threatening to leave the country are favorite local pastimes. People threaten to leave Israel for reasons ranging from wars or election results all the way down to real or imagined insults from shopkeepers or government clerks. Some actually leave, but mainly they stay here and complain. For example:

At the corner of Gordon and Ben-Yehuda streets, a man asks me how to get to Tel Aviv.

"We are in Tel Aviv," I tell him. "Where do you need to go?"

The Central Bus Station, he says. I point to the #4 bus stop and tell him he could also take a sherut, a 10-seat taxi which costs less and stops anywhere you want along the #4 line. He thanks me and heads across the street.

A moment later, he is back, apologizing for his confusion. "I spend all my time in Tel Aviv, but always only passing through," he says.

He has been in Israel since 1951, he says, and would leave in a minute, if he could. His Hebrew bears an accent which I don't recognize. I had taken him for a tourist or recent immigrant.

"Give me a passport that doesn't say 'Israel,' doesn't say 'Jew,' and I'll be gone," he says. "Okay, it could say 'Jew,' but not 'Israel.' But how could I ever get such a passport? It will not happen. But if it could happen, I would leave today."

"I could move to Australia," he continues. "They have interesting animals."

I tell him he can find desert animals here in Israel, too. And many grains of sand.

"Only scorpions and ants," he replies. "And crime and corruption and bribery."

I ask what work he does. He says he is a technician for textile machinery, but it turns out that this is not exactly the case. Israel's textile industry has been in decline for years, and the factory where he worked no longer exists. He now works as a security guard.

We introduce ourselves. Abraham (not his real name) tells me he is 63 years old and has just been to a job interview. In his line of work, employers force him to change jobs every 10 months or so, before he can acquire employment security and rights to benefits. He is making 19.90 shekels an hour (less than $6 at the current exchange of the falling U.S. dollar).

Abraham came to Israel at age 5. He fought in three wars and has three adult children. His mother, age 80, receives 1,120 shekels a month (about $325) in national insurance, Israel's counterpart of Social Security. When she still owned her apartment, she was ineligible for this aid. She sold the apartment, and her geriatric-care expenses ate up the proceeds. Abraham's father died at 87. Abraham had a grandfather who lived to be almost 100 here. He smoked, drank alcohol, ate spicy foods and met his end when an Israeli driver struck him down.

Abraham's family is from Shiraz, in Iran. After coming to Israel, they lived in an immigrant camp. Later the authorities sent them to become farmers. "We had no agricultural experience since the grandfather of my grandfather," Abraham says. In Iran, they owned a textile factory.

Abraham says his dream is to return to Shiraz. He still has family there.

"Look at it on the internet," he says. "You'll see beautiful gardens."

We do not discuss the recent student demonstrations in Shiraz, nor the arrests of Jews there in recent years, nor the blood-libel pogrom of 1910.

Life is good for Jews in Iran, Abraham says. To get along in Iran, he says, a Jew needs to observe three rules. He enumerates:

1) "Your shirt," he says. "You could not go on the street in something like this." I am wearing a short-sleeved black t-shirt imprinted with a big, flamboyant cartoon of a rapper. It was a birthday present from my family. Short sleeves and immodest dress aren't acceptable in Iran, Abraham says.

2) No talking about Zionism in Iran.

3) No talking politics of any kind.

Having said this, Abraham returns to complaining about Israel. He delivers a diatribe against the government, the Prime Minister, the police, the people who give traffic tickets, the city government, and especially the politicians. It does not seem to embarrass him to be expressing threats and dreams which we both know he won't fulfill.

If our conversation were taking place in Iran, Abraham would of course be in serious violation of his rule #3, the warning against talking politics. But we are in Israel, and Abraham shows no fear of proclaiming his political views to a stranger on a Tel Aviv street corner.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

An only-in-Israel bus ride past Jerusalem yeshiva

2008-03-12T14:53:00.000+02:00

A friend forwarded the following item by Sharon Millendorf of Jerusalem. She writes about an only-in-Israel bus ride. --- J.M.H.

Every morning I take the 35 bus line to work. It's a quick ride and usually takes no more than 12 minutes. The third stop after I get on by the shuk is directly in front of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav. This morning I found myself a bit anxious, unsure of what I was going to see as we passed by. As I looked around, I saw death notices pasted all over the street and flowers that had been brought lined the entrance to the Yeshiva.

When the bus pulled up to the stop, the driver shut off the engine and stood. With tears in his eyes he told everyone sitting on the bus that one of the boys killed on Thursday night was his nephew. He asked if everyone on the bus would mind if he spoke for a few minutes in memory of his nephew and the other boys that were killed. After seeing head nods all over the bus he began to speak. With a clear and proud voice, he spoke beautifully about his nephew and said that he was a person who was constantly on the lookout for how to help out anyone in need. He was always searching for a way to make things better. He loved learning, and had a passion for working out the intricacies of the Gemara. He was excited to join the army in a few years, and wanted to eventually work in informal education.

As he continued to speak, I noticed that the elderly woman sitting next to me was crying. I looked into my bag, reached for a tissue and passed it to her. She looked at me and told me that she too had lost someone she knew in the attack. Her neighbor's child was another one of the boys killed. As she held my hand tightly, she stood up and asked if she too could say a few words in memory of her neighbor. She spoke of a young man filled with a zest for life. Every friday he would visit her with a few flowers for shabbat and a short dvar torah that he had learned that week in Yeshiva. This past shabbat, she had no flowers.

When I got to work, one of my colleagues who lives in Efrat told me that her son was friends with two of the boys who had been killed. One of those boys was the stepson of a man who used to teach in Brovenders and comes to my shul in Riverdale every Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur to be a chazan for one of the minyanim.

We are all affected by what goes on in Israel . Whether you know someone who was killed or know someone who knows someone or even if you don't know anyone at all, you are affected. The eight boys who were killed will continue to impact us all individually and as a nation. Each one of us has the ability to make a profound impact on our world. This coming Wednesday morning, I will be at Ben Gurion airport at 7 am with Nefesh B'Nefesh welcoming 40 new olim to Israel . We will not deter. We can not give up. We will continue to live our lives and hope and work for change, understanding and peace.

Sharon Millendorf

Haim Yavin: 40 years of television news

2008-02-11T20:02:00.001+02:00

The woman in the cartoon above is exclaiming, "Nostradamus was right! The end of the world is drawing near." She is watching Haim Yavin announce his departure after having delivered the evening news for the past four decades. The cartoon is by Amos Biderman, from the Feb. 6 Hebrew newspaper Haaretz.

***

Haim Yavin, the face on the television screen, is an Israeli institution, an iconic figure who has had a remarkable career presenting television news for 40 years. On Feb. 5 he said good night for the final time as news anchor of the government-run television channel.

Because Yavin anchored the news ever since television began in Israel, people are telling each other that we have come to the end of an era. That is not exactly the case.

Older Israelis know Yavin as the newscaster who brought the world into their homes when the government started the country's first television channel in 1968. Prime Minister Olmert told a farewell event for the veteran news anchor: "We went through all the experiences of our lives ... with one person," news presenter Yavin.

Younger Israelis, on the other hand, may be strangers to the government channel. Some know Yavin mainly as an object of jokes on satire programs of the commercial channels, which have long since surpassed the government channel in ratings. Yavin has been called a dinosaur, and even some of his admirers say he stayed too long.

Yavin is often likened to the U.S. newscaster Walter Cronkite, who was once voted the most trustworthy man in America. Cronkite's stint as CBS anchor lasted 19 years, which is not even one-half the length of Yavin's career at the anchor desk in Israel. Cronkite worked for a company with a mandatory retirement age of 65. Such restrictions do not apply to Yavin.

Now 75, Yavin is not leaving television work. Although he no longer will anchor the nightly news, he plans to continue making television documentaries. In 2005, his five-part series, "Land of the Settlers," shown on the commercial Channel 2, presented an unfavorable view of the Jewish presence in Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza. The series, Yavin has said, "annoyed them a lot, in just showing reality as it is." The Yesha Council tried to get the government channel to fire him.

Yavin shot much of that series himself with a camcorder over a two-year period. He has said he decided to make a documentary about the impact of settlements and occupation in the territories "so that I and those like me can’t say we didn’t see it, we didn’t hear it, we didn’t know.”

Now Yavin is working on "The Sector," a documentary series on Israeli Arabs to be broadcast later this year, also on commercial television. It, too, deals with material that is not ordinarily covered. Yavin told an interviewer last year that unequal treatment of Arabs in Israel "causes bitterness, second-class citizenship and creates talk of apartheid."

"Zionism needs redefining," Yavin said. "I'm not saying to give up on the Zionist state, but to find a fairer compromise for allocation of this land and its resources. And if not, things like the October 2000 riots will reemerge, but far worse."

Yavin's farewell to the "Mabat" news program was a media event. His final newscast attracted 9.6 percent of the Israel public, the highest rating which Channel 1 news has received in the past half-year. As Yavin signed off for the last time, the government channel segued into a live, 75-minute show in which he received tributes from colleagues, competitors, family and various public figures including the Prime Minister. This show drew the fourth highest rating of the evening, 14.6 percent, a rarity for the government channel. A game show had the highest rating that night (22 percent), followed by Channel 2 news (20.4 percent) and a mock-interview show (16.2 percent) starring Eli Yatzpan, a comedian whose impression of Hosni Mubarak brought a formal complaint from Egypt's foreign ministry a few years ago.

Although the tribute to Yavin had been publicized in newspapers' television schedules, the guest of honor seemed surprised to see the array of people who turned out. "Wow! What's happening here? What's happening here?" Yavin said as he spotted familiar faces. As the program got going, he reverted to his trademark reserved comportment, smiling in a restrained way and casting a quizzical look from time to time as ageism and cliches filled the air. Sometimes it seemed as if the guest of honor were being held captive by the very trivialization which he deplores in today's ratings-driven television.

Once, Yavin seemed to lose his cool briefly. This was when the master of ceremonies, Yigal Ravid, tried to ask an annoying personal question. Ravid wanted to inquire about Yavin's thick, dark hair. He accompanied his question with a little giggle. Yavin told Ravid to lay off. Yavin said the question annoyed him. Ravid kept asking anyway, until Yavin cut him off and changed the subject to the early days of television news in Israel.

Earlier in the show, Mordechai (Moti) Kirschenbaum, who was among the founders of television news in Israel, had commented on Yavin's role: "For 25 of those 40 years we were a monopoly, and you were the voice and face of television news. There were stormy events---not like in any other country---wars, intifadas, peace, you name it, politics of every type. Everyone saw and heard it through you."

Yavin, picking up on these comments, said Kirschenbaum, Dan Shilon and a few unnamed colleagues who were in at the start established the moral basis of Israel television: "It must report truth."

Yavin continued: "We didn't always report in a beautiful way, we didn't always report in an elegant way, there were others who surpassed us in the 'look' ...."

The master of ceremonies tried to interrupt: "Yes, and there were claims that we didn't always report the truth, you know."

Yavin ignored the interruption and kept talking: "And there were instances when we struggled for our right and our obligation to report the truth. These were not easy struggles. Some went to the High Court of Justice."

Yavin evidently was referring to Israel television's successful battle in the early 1980s to overturn official prohibitions against interviewing leaders of the outlawed Palestinian Liberation Organization. Instead of inviting Yavin to talk more about this journalistic issue, the master of ceremonies cut off the discussion and introduced a new segment in which Yavin received a facetious proposal from two politicians. They suggested he join the government as a representative of the pensioners' party. If Yavin took offense, he did not show it.

The next morning, a television review in Haaretz praised Yavin and heaped scorn on the televised tribute. The reviewer, Gideon Levy, referred to Yavin as "the last of the Zionists." Levy, himself a prominent voice from the left, wrote that Yavin was never a leftist but did have a world view and expressed it, "something that is so rare in today's television."

Yavin has said similar things about himself. He has said that he is of the center, not the left, and that he doesn't see himself as a prophet or historian. "I report as is," he has said. "In my blood, I'm a Zionist."

In interviews, Yavin has discussed differences between reporting news and voicing his own opinions. In 2005, after "Land of the Settlers" appeared, he stated: "It is now becoming acceptable to include personal opinions in the evening news. ... I'm against it. After all, everyone agrees there is no objectivity in news coverage; but there is an aspiration toward objectivity, and therefore when presenting the news there is no justification for taking a personal stand. I compare myself to a night editor who also writes editorials. In my opinion, it is legitimate to carry on a personal campaign that is subjective and balanced, and is written in the first person."

In 2007 he said, "There's no such thing as objectivity, but there is fairness. And you can seek to be objective. As an anchorman I always sought to be objective, but I've never hidden [in my documentary films] that this is my personal travelogue, in my name."

In the same interview, Yavin was quoted as saying that the media are naturally leftist because, "The press seeks out the irregularities and the distortions in the establishment. It is by definition anti-establishment."

In 2004, a foreign journalist asked Yavin whether he felt that government interference was a problem. Yavin responded: "The government cannot win. There's a constant battle between the government, the authorities, the establishment, and us, the media people, who consider ourselves free journalists. ... This country is a very free country, a very outspoken country. ... Everybody argues all the day about everything. So they cannot really stop us and all the efforts to do some sort of censorship against our broadcasts, against the press, fail because of this openness, because of the openness of the country."

The founders of Israel television expected to change the world for the better but didn't quite succeed, Yavin has said.

"Now TV is a jacuzzi," he told an interviewer last year, "an entertainment tool to titillate the viewers. One great porridge. People can't separate what matters from what doesn't. People want to be amused, to put their feet up and channel hop."

"The medium has become trivialized," he said. "It's all ratings. It's a competition for viewers. Multi-channels meant the end of the period of serious television. News today on Channels 2, 10 and 1 are ratings structured. Coverage isn't catastrophic, but there are whole shows, discussion shows, that are just shouting in the studio. They trivialize the debate."

Television came late to Israel, a full generation after it had become an influential medium elsewhere in the world. By the time Israel saw its first television broadcasts in 1968, the country had been through three wars and 20 years of intense nation-building including mass immigration amid economic shortages.

Yavin set a tone. Newscasters who came after him are influenced by standards he established---factual reporting, presented straightforwardly, in a calm manner, no shouting, no crying, no showing off. In this sense, younger Israeli newscasters are carrying on professional aspects of the Yavin era.

In a different sense, the Yavin era ended years ago. It was already on the way out as early as the 1991 Gulf War, when Israelis became aware that CNN was faster than their own media in reporting Scud missile attacks. The government channel still had its monopoly then, but its domination of the screen was breaking down. Commercial television received official approval in 1990, and by 1991 Channel 2 had begun experimental broadcasts. These included a satirical mock-news program, "The World Tonight," which brought comic relief into Israel homes on weeknights during the war. Its principal performers, Avri Gilad and Erez Tal, are now important personalities in commercial television.

***

As a news presenter, Yavin comes across as calm, measured, decent, friendly, even gentle. This can belie the toughness and sharpness of tongue he may reveal when going after a story.

Channel 1's Feb. 5 tribute to Yavin included excerpts of a confrontation five years earlier between Yavin and Olmert. The day after the 2003 elections, Yavin asked Olmert about the politics of forming a Likud-led government coalition. Olmert, who had managed the Likud campaign, didn't answer directly, and Yavin pressed him.

The following exchange took place, between two sharp-tongued adversaries.

YAVIN: [interrupting] Do you know what my lifelong dream is? Excuse me for interrupting you. Do you know what my dream is, Ehud Olmert? That once in my life when I put a simple question to a politician, to any politician---this isn't personally directed at you---that when I ask a question, I will get an answer to the question.

OLMERT: Haim, I will tell you something.

YAVIN: [interrupting] I asked why not...

OLMERT: Believe me...

YAVIN: [interrupting] Look...

OLMERT: Believe me...

YAVIN: [interrupting] I asked you a simple question:

OLMERT: Haim...

YAVIN: [interrupting] Why not a national government?

OLMERT: Haim, believe me---facing your biting wit, a person of ordinary intelligence is incapable of giving an answer as clever as your question. So I give up on the ability to compete with you on wit...

YAVIN: [interrupting] Well then...

OLMERT: ...and I will continue to respond to the question...

YAVIN: [interrupting] Nevertheless...

OLMERT: ...as I think I should respond...

YAVIN: [interrupting] Nevertheless...

OLMERT: ...and if you want to be sarcastic toward me...

YAVIN: [interrupting] I'm not being sarcastic.

OLMERT: I'll let you. It's okay. It's...

YAVIN: [interrupting] I asked you a question.

OLMERT: ...legitimate.

YAVIN: I asked you a question.

OLMERT: [trying a different tack] I imagine that since yesterday [election day] you aren't so happy. But I am.

Yavin did not let Olmert deflect him with this accusation of bias. Yavin continued to press Olmert, who recalled the other day that Yavin "was very aggressive to me."

In the Feb. 5 show, Olmert added, "The thought that Haim Yavin is leaving seems and sounds terribly strange, but at least it's possible to say one thing: how fortunate that you are doing this at an age when it's possible to begin everything anew."

Asked if he wanted to say anything to Olmert in return, Yavin echoed the Prime Minister's words. "Everything's already been said," Yavin replied for Olmert's benefit, "how fortunate that it's still possible to start again from scratch."

Yavin said nothing further on the subject, leaving others to wonder if he intended this improvised parting shot as a political barb. Various opponents have been calling for the Prime Minister to resign, and, unlike Yavin, Olmert has not agreed that it's time to give up his government job and do something else.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Snow in Jerusalem - IDF's latest recruit

2008-01-31T14:45:00.000+02:00

Snow in Jerusalem is always a memorable occasion. Below is a portrait of the IDFs newest recruit, at an army base in Jerusalem. The uniform is not regulation, and his enlistment will probably be very brief.

Tales of the Tel Aviv construction trade

2008-01-11T16:42:00.000+02:00

Two workers, a Jew and a young Arab, have come to repair the weatherbeaten walls of my front balcony. The sea is nearby, and the salt-laden wind that accompanies the winter rain creates pockmarks in these walls. Every few years they need repairing.

I offer the workers something to drink, and we talk. The Jew, who is in his 40s, says he learned construction work from the Arab's father. This Jew belongs to a Yemenite family that has lived in the country for seven generations. They arrived many years before the State of Israel existed. He says he served in a crack combat unit and later sought his fortune for a while in the United States. He says that he and the Arab are good friends. If fate had decreed differently, he says, they could have wound up trying to kill each other. He says this several times, and they both laugh each time.

Before the Jew leaves, he takes me aside and tells me not to let the Arab out of my sight. The Arab is a good worker, he says, but I shouldn't give him free run of my apartment because, who knows, he might feel tempted to steal something.

After the Jew departs, the Arab worker continues repairing the walls. Cleanshaven, with short-cropped hair, wearing modish clothing, he looks like your typical Tel Aviv secular Jew. He reminds me of one of my teenaged grandsons. He says he is 22, the fourth of 15 children, and his father has no life beyond toiling day and night to support the family. The young man adds that he will not let his own life wind up like this. He took engineering courses for a while and hopes to return to studies and qualify as a landscaper.

Over the next few weeks, the Arab is in the building almost every day as part of a crew that is renovating an apartment on the floor below. Although he clearly is competent at plastering and painting, he is the junior member of the crew, the one who gets the laborer tasks such as carrying bags of cement and buckets of sand up three flights of stairs.

One morning he returns to do more work at my place. I have to go out, so I ask him to pull the door shut behind him when he leaves. That afternoon, I am in a meeting across town when a neighbor telephones to say that the Arab worker has been waiting for me outside the building for a couple of hours. The worker wants to know what to do with a key which I had forgotten inside the door. He brings me the key the next day and politely refuses when I say I'll pay for the time he spent waiting. After a lecture from me about why he is entitled to reimbursement, he accepts the money.

In subsequent conversations, he tells more about his personal situation. One day he says that when the separation barrier is completed, it will be more difficult for him to get to work from his home on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Another time, he says he has an older brother who lives in the United States. He also had a girlfriend who moved to the states, but he doesn't know exactly where.

One day as we are drinking coffee he tells me we never will have peace here. Another time, he rolls down a sock to show a scar. A bullet hit him in the leg as he was watching a confrontation between Arabs and Jewish soldiers, he says. He wasn't part of it, he says, but the bullet hit him anyway. All of this is said with a smile.

This week as we were passing each other on the stairs, he took off his work glove and shook my hand. He smiled and said he has acquired the papers he needs to go to the United States. He rattled off a list of various sums he had to pay for airfare and various documents. Soon he will join his brother, he said.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Israeli law and the media

2007-12-29T12:33:00.000+02:00

A Knesset committee passed a law that is meant to protect the right of suspects against the inquisitorial functions of the media. According to this law, it is forbidden to publish the name of arrested suspects, or persons who are under investigation until they are brought to trial. This would supposedly spare the innocent from harmful leaks prior to their trial. The law was no doubt inspired by the spate of abortive investigations of public figures that ended in no conviction.

The most interesting and appalling of these was the investigation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over supposed favors that he had done to a friendly bank in its bid to buy the controlling share of a bank that was owned by the government. Police made dramatic raids. It was announced that the decision as to whether or not to prosecute Olmert would be published on the day he was leaving for the Annapolis conference. With some difficulty, authorities were persuaded that that was an inappropriate and inauspicious time. As it turns out, that was worse than not releasing the decision. Olmert went to Annapolis with the sword of investigation hanging over his neck. As it turned out, the government never had any legal basis at all, because the friendly bank that Olmert had supposedly helped did not participate in the government bidding, and never wanted to buy a part of the Israeli bank! There could not have been any crime. It was apparently all a malicious invention.

This law has other aspects however, that have not been considered by the Israeli press. Israeli immigrants from the only workers and peasants state, the now defunct workers' paradise, surely understand the consequences of forbidding the release of arrest information. The same enlightened legal regimen prevailed in Argentina for a while. One day you see Carlos or Ivan, one day you do not. One day he might be standing at the podium of the Supreme Soviet, extolling the virtues of the revolution, and then he is gone. Nobody, not even his wife or children, may learn his fate for years. Ordinary citizens might learn of his arrest when they received in the mail replacement pages for the Soviet Encyclopedia, which replace the article about Ivan Ivanovich, formerly a Hero of the Soviet People and substitute for it a lengthy description of the Ivanovitch Kolkhoz in Western Siberia.

If the Israel government is going to limit media freedom, perhaps they should investigate a different field. During the recent Lebanon war, the media played its part, not in raising public morale, but in spreading panic and demoralization. The same picture of a hysterical lady, crying as she entered a taxi with her baby to flee the north, was shown over and over. Nothing at all had happened to this lady or to her baby. They were both alive and well and unharmed. The fact that the footage was shown repeatedly indicates that the media did not have sufficient material to promote hysteria -- the hysteria didn't exist.

In a democracy, we cannot and should not force the media to show everyone as paragons of calm and national solidarity. However, media should have the common sense not to act as enemy agents and deliberately spread panic and despair where there are none.

On his weekly radio program, Yosef (Tomi) Lapid gave further examples of how the media try to make things even worse than they really are. Examples (not verbatim - but close):

Interview with the father of a fallen son:

Interviewer: How does it feel to lose a son in a superfluous war?

Subject: It was not superfluous. It was necessary to defend the state.

Interviewer: You have two other sons. Are you going to allow them to go to the army to get killed for nothing?

Subject: I believe they will be safe.

Interviewer: I wish I could believe you are right!

Interview with father of captive son:

Interviewer: Do you miss your son?

Subject: Of course.

Interviewer: Why do you miss your son?

Subject: Because he is my son.

Interviewer: And don't you feel neglected because the Minister of Defense is doing so little to get him back?

Subject: I am sure he is doing all he can.

Interviewer: And if it was his own son, wouldn't he do more?

Subject: I don't think so.

Can we imagine the parallel interview taking place in Gaza? Jihad Jihad of the Islamic Jihad has just had his Qassam rocket launching career cut short by a missile fired from a helicopter of the evil Zionists. Izzedin el Majnoun, a reporter of al Hayat al Jadida, is interviewing Umm Jihad (mother of Jihad):

Interviewer: How does it feel to lose a son in a superfluous war?

Umm Jihad: Alhamdillah (praise be to Allah), it is Fard (a religious duty) to fight the occupation. Jihad is a Shahid (martyr) in the Jihad! Surely he is getting his reward of 72 virgins in paradise.

Interviewer: With so many martyrs, are you sure there are enough virgins?

Umm Jihad: Allah Akbar (Allah is great) - he can provide virgins for all the martyrs, just as it is written in the Quran.

Interviewer: Do you have other sons?

Umm Jihad: Alhamdillah, I have 8 other sons.

Interviewer: And do you intend to allow them to join the resistance?

Umm Jihad: I am proud to give my sons to the cause of Filastin.

Interviewer: And if they die?

Umm Jihad: Then they will be safe with Allah!

Interviewer: Let's hope it is so!

Umm Jihad: What are you? A Yahudi bin kalb (Jewish son of a dog?)

We can imagine the fate of poor Mr. Majnoun if that interview were to be published.

Apart from the attempt to deliberately spread demoralization, there is something profoundly inhuman about intruding on the private grief of citizens who have sacrificed so much, belittling their sacrifice and implying that it was for naught.

I am all for freedom of all kinds. Even though we are fighting a war, we must not sacrifice basic freedoms. But if the press has the right to conduct interviews of that type, then private citizens should have the right to shoot interviewers of that type. After all, if freedom of the press is a higher value than morale, higher than respect for the private grief of parents and the security of the state, then surely the brave reporters will be willing to risk their lives for it.

Ami Isseroff

The Jews of Demopolis Alabama

2007-11-28T18:47:00.000+02:00

I had always heard that there were Jews throughout he deep south. It was only when I encountered it personally that I could really come to understand it. The kids and I were walking through Demopolis Alabama when we stumbled upon the Ben Jushran Synagogue. Turns that there was a thriving community for a long time there. Jews arrived with the French in the early 1800's and established a synagogue there. The original building was razed in 1954 to build the current one. It has since been named an Alabama Historic Site The old one was in the ancient "mosque" style. The new one is a simple brick building, rather plain and unadorned. It is no longer in use. In fact the care of the building has been turned over to the Episcopal Church, which is just across the street.

Curiosity overcoming my religious beliefs and aversions, we entered the church to inquire about the temple. The church was quite beautiful and we spent a few minutes admiring it and discussing the symbols. After a while the Reverend appeared. Rev. Dick was a very pleasant and jovial fellow. Well traveled, educated, and friendly he told us about his history, his church, and the temple. Seems that the local Jewish community had pretty much petered out and had given the Church the building for its use. In fact the next day, Wednesday, was the day that they distributed food to the local needy. I asked about the program, and told him I would like to participate in whatever little way I could. He said that they would be there at 8:00 am, and that I should find 'Rebecca'.

Eight o'clock Wednesday morning found me on my bicycle riding up to the old synagogue. There was a long line of people around the building and inside it as well. I took my backpack full of canned goods that Judy had dug out of the boat in to the people in the back to give away. I was stunned and amazed. There was food piled up in great mounds and a platoon of people packing bags, counting and carrying. I gave them my little bag of cans and rolled up my sleeves. We moved the donated food for about an hour to finish packing the over 200 bags of food that they give away weekly, then made room for the next 2 tons of food that was to be delivered later that week.

I told my story about why I was there and heard the tales of the locals. One of the volunteers told me he was good friends with Bert and Mary Louise Rosenbush, the last Jews living in Demopolis, and that he would like to hear from me. He gave me their number and address. I managed to make contact by telephone the next evening. Unfortunately, since we were scheduled to leave on Saturday we could not meet up due to our conflicting schedules. We did, however, have a long and interesting telephone conversation. The Rosenbush family were local merchants for 3 generations. Bert's granddad had started the furniture store in 1895. His daddy had run it for many years, and Bert had only closed it about 3 years previous. He also donated the building it had been in to the Demopolis Historical Society. They had been a long time and prominent members of Ben Jushran . As the congregation dwindled they took down the old building and built the one that stood now. Somehow as the remaining few members were unsure of what to do with the temple it was given to the Episcopal Church. Bert felt that it had been wrested unfairly from the hands of the rightful owners. "Railroaded" was the expression he used. I am sure there is a story there.

The people never had a rabbi as the leader of the temple, nor did any itinerant rabbis visit. The services were always led by a 'lay reader'. Since Judaism does not prescribe a clergy, any adult Jew can lead services. Still the meaning is greater if there is a very learned member of the congregation present. Someone with a great singing voice is a major bonus. Lacking these made the congregation look elsewhere for guidance. Today the Rosenbushs are members of a temple in Montgomery, Alabama. There was never anyone in Demopolis who could teach Hebrew, or give a Jewish education. Indeed when Bert, who is 79 now, went to Israel several years ago he wanted to read from the torah and become Bar-Mitzvah. Unfortunately he lacked the background to even do this.

Many people who wish to identify themselves as Jews seek community. Demopolis no longer has one. Though there was once a thriving population of Jews, and much evidence of their presence Bert and Mary Louise, who never had children, are the last Jews in town. All the others have moved to cities and towns where it was easier to surround themselves with members of their own faith.

During our visit to Demopolis I was struck by how pleasant the town was. Life was fairly easy, the people were very friendly, I had no problem getting things done. I found myself thinking about how it would be to live there. I could imagine having a very nice life in small-town America, a lifestyle that I had previously thought was long gone. Though I asked specifically, Bert said that he never felt bigotry directed at him. This in a part of the country long known for bigotry, and still obviously healing from the wounds inflicted by it.

I don't know whether or not to mourn the passing of the Jews of Demopolis. On the one hand there is the natural progression of things which includes migration of people of many groups. Usually from rural areas to more urban ones. The Jews tend to gather in larger cities where there is more community to share interests and understanding. On the other hand there is a simpler and older lifestyle that is past and can never be recovered nor can I ever achieve. Times change.......

Bill (Baruch) Mintz

Holocaust and Identity

2007-11-19T03:28:00.000+02:00

Guy Carmi made an assertion that is possibly true. If it is, it is very disturbing:

The Holocaust is an integral part of our Jewish and Israeli identity.

Think of it: "Holocaust R Us." Maybe he didn't mean it quite that way. He was arguing against a law that would limit freedom of expression by curtailing references to the Holocaust. But it seems that a lot of people really feel that the Holocaust is part of their identity. An annual survey in the United States found consistently that "the Holocaust" ranked first among the things that people said define Jewish identity. This embarrassing result was apparenty avoided in subsequent surveys by dropping that response possibility.

Many people will be sore at me for saying this, but the Holocaust is not part of my identity. It is not what makes me a Jew, a Zionist, an Israeli, an intellectual, a man, a nudnik - me. I don't have a number tatoo. I don't have nightmares about the Holocaust. I think about it. Family members I did not know personally died in the Holocaust. But it is not part of my identity or my Judaism. I don't define Jew as "a person who was a victim of the Holocaust or had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust." Judaism existed before the Holocaust, and I existed only after it. The Holocaust is part of the history of the Jewish people. As I am a Jew, it is part of my collective history. The Holocaust was part of Hitler's identity, not mine. He did it, and he thought it was a good idea, and his name will forever be associated with it. Hitler and Eichmann and the whole gang.

I am a lot of things as far as identity goes: Jew, Zionist, American, socialist, lover of women, of science and literature and of furry animals of all kinds, person with insatiable intellectual curiosity, son of the Middle East, Palestinian.... Yes I am a Palestinian and the son of American-Palestinians and the grandson of Palestinians and great-grandson of Palestinians, from before there was a place called Palestine. Our people were called Palestinians before 1948, not the Arabs. That is part of me. Humus and Barad (ices) and my grandfather's Turkish army uniform and the grusch with a hole and a house with walls a meter thick in Beit Yisrael are all things I know something about, along with a 1935 Ford automobile on blocks and hula hoops and "all the way with L.B.J." Likewise, the calm voice of the radio announcer saying, "This is an emergency. Israel is undergoing a missile attack. Please stay calm and enter your sealed rooms." These are all some part of me. But I am not a Holocaustist.

I am not a Holocaustist, because I don't see any value in dwelling on it and it is not a positive value. The Jews must not become the Holocaust people. Holocaust for Jews is like a disease or an affliction. A person or a people can do great things despite a disease or tragedy, but never because of it. There is no great spiritually uplifting message to be garnered from the Holocaust. It was a terrible event that must not be allowed to occur again. People really can do such things, and no god intervenes to stop them. There are special reasons why Jews are more vulnerable than others to such events, but in principle, human cruelty can apparently be unlimited. Those are the only messages.

To say that the Holocaust is part of Jewish identity or Israeli identity is declaring that we are a people who will have a persecution complex forever and ever. It is to say to everyone and ourselves, "This is who we are and this is what we have to offer: Auschwitz, Maidenek, Bergen Belsen, Treblinka. Naked people lining up and waiting to be gassed. If you choose to join us, then you are buying in to a big piece of misery." The revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto can be part of my Jewish identity and our collective identity perhaps, and Hanah Senesh lives in all our hearts as does Ann Frank, but not the Holocaust.

I am balding, but I was not always balding and I was always me. It is not part of my identity. The Jewish people did not always have the Holocaust history.

Imagine that your child is just growing up, and he or she says, "What are Jews?"

You say, "We are Jews."

Child says, "OK, but what are Jews?"

Would you say "Jews are the people who were victims of the Holocaust?"

What happened to "people of the book?" "Bnei Yisrael?" "Inventors of abstract theism?" "Scions of Abraham." "The people who produced the Bible," the people of Spinoza and Albert Einstein? Of Bar-Kochba and Judah Maccabee? The Holocaust cannot be "part" of an identity. If it gets a hold of a bit of your identity, it has to become all of it, like being the hunchback of Notre Dame -- that's who he was, or like Cyrano with his nose. People who survived the Holocaust can define themselves that way, and sometimes they must. For others to do so is wrong. Those people are a part of us. The Holocaust itself is not.

Poets, philosophers, princes and warriors, scientists and saints, all are to move over and eventually they must move out, because there is no longer room for anything else once the Holocaust moves in. This is the danger facing American Jews, who seem to overwhelmingly mention the Holocaust as the defining Jewish event. It got out of hand, because it is like an intellectual tapeworm or some virulent cancer. There is no half way with the Holocaust. It is not the sort of thing you can keep in a corner. Over three thousand years of magnificent intellectual achievement and astonishing bravery would be thrown away for ashes and bitterness. What normal person would define themselves that way and what normal people would base their national existence on the Holocaust? "I get incinerated, therefore I am?"

The Arabs of Palestine built their identity around the Nakba - their "disaster." Their national events all correspond to mini-disasters in the "Nakba" and their national heros are all people who helped to bring the Nakba upon themselves. There is no Palestinian Arab Albert Einstein and no Palestinian Spinoza, and no Palestinian Jonas Salk. This is a people that must cling to refugee camps and to distorted memories of their Nakba in order to be sure to retain its identity. And as long as they remain obsessed with the Nakba they will never produce any such heros and role models.

We are not a people who created ourselves or recreated ourselves in 1945 because of some crazy Germans led by a crazier Austrian. We are one of the oldest peoples in the world, with a special magic secret that allowed us to survive as a people throughout 2,000 years of history. Whatever that secret is, and whatever we have brought to the world, we must not throw it all away because of those lunatics and their criminal nightmare. If we do, if we make the Holocaust part of our identity, then they will have won.

We must not ever forget the Holocaust, but we must never make it part of our identity as a people or let it take over our identity. There were other holocausts in Jewish history. There was a holocaust following the rebellion of Bar Kochba. A very large proportion of our people were murdered or exiled and sold into slavery, as evidenced by ancient lore and backed by recent archeological findings. There was another holocaust at the time of the Crusades. A large part of European Jewry was apparently killed then as well. These events became part of our history, not part of our identity. The results and events of the Holocaust certainly shape who we are, and how we think about ourselves and even about god, but the Holocaust is not part of my identity. We are, perhaps, the people who survive holocausts, but if we make the holocausts part of our identity, we will not survive them as a people. That is an empty sort of identity, useful for nothing and attractive to no one.

Ami Isseroff

Please don't bring the children

2007-11-16T14:39:00.000+02:00

Some time ago, a person with whom I had once worked invited a group of news professionals to his home in Tel Aviv. He wanted to tell us about his research for a book he was writing.

He told us he was not seeking publicity. Rather, he explained, his aim in telling a bunch of colleagues about his book-in-progress was to put himself under pressure to finish it. With other people knowing about the book, he said, he would be embarrassed to leave it unfinished.

Not long after that, he was found dead.

Nothing suggested foul play. It was a natural death, people said. I found the sequence of events spooky in any case and continue to think about it. If there is such a thing as a curse on writers who blab about work which they haven't completed, this could be one form which the visitation would take.

That is prologue to the following confession: For years, I have failed to finish writing a children's story titled, "Please Don't Bring the Children."

The idea for this story came to me after someone I know in Israel received an invitation to a wedding in the United States, accompanied by a telephoned clarification: "Please don't bring the children."

This was an understandable request, according to a coworker. He and his young family had recently come back to Israel after a few years in the states, where he discovered much different attitudes toward children. Israelis in the United States tended to show up at social events with little children in tow, he said, while the local folk practiced segregation between children and grownups. It was only natural that someone inviting Israelis to an event might fear that the whole family would arrive, little kids and all.

What brings this to mind is an experience last night in a small Tel Aviv restaurant. Three of us entered and sat at a table for six. A server came over immediately and asked us to move to a table for four. I told her we were waiting for someone to join us, and there might be more than one person.

Her response was less than gracious. Instead of the-customer-is-always-right, she argued that if we took the smaller table we could still pull up an extra chair if needed.

Just then our fourth grownup arrived with her year-old baby in a stroller. It didn't take long before the restaurant staff were coming around to admire the baby. In a few minutes the baby was standing on the tabletop, smiling and doing a little dance. Our server, no longer grumpy, invited us to move to a bigger table. The baby continued to attract attention from the staff during the meal.

If you want to see an Israeli melt, bring a baby or small child along. It's acceptable here to show unabashed affection for little kids. Children sense that they are welcome to be seen and heard. The others at our table last night could testify to this Israeli trait. They had just arrived from New York after a sleepover in London, two cities where restaurants don't exactly welcome customers who let their babies dance on tabletops.

This reminder of the contrasting attitudes toward children encourages me to take another crack at rewriting "Please Don't Bring the Children." The first draft didn't work. A second version took a different direction, also unsatisfactory. Some day I'll probably try again to finish it. Meanwhile I hope that this post does not bring a curse down on anyone's head.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Violent death---updating the U.S.-Israel comparison

2007-11-10T02:14:00.000+02:00

People continue to ask if it's safe to visit Israel. Here is an update comparing deadly violence in Israel and the United States.

In 2006, Israel's ratio of death from all acts of violence---including murder, suicide bombings and the Second Lebanon War---was lower than the U.S. murder rate.

This is in line with earlier years. Despite being depicted in television shows and U.S. government travel warnings as a dangerous place, Israel customarily experiences a lower rate of deadly violence than the United States.

Here are the rates of violent death for both countries in 2006, the most recent year for which 12-month U.S. data are available:

Israel 2006:
5.4 deaths from crime, terror and war per 100,000 inhabitants

United States 2006:
5.7 deaths from murder and non-negligent manslaughter per 100,000 inhabitants

Various U.S. metropolitan areas report above-average deadly violence. Here are a few examples from among many. The numbers represent murders per 100,000 residents:

New York City, 7.3
Miami metro area, 7.6
Los Angeles metro area, 8.4
Houston metro area, 9.6
Atlantic City metro area, 11.1
Los Angeles, inside city limits, 12.4
Miami, inside city limits, 19.6
Atlanta, inside city limits, 22.6
Detroit-Dearborn metro area, 23.0
Philadelphia (AKA the City of Brotherly Love), 27.7
Washington, D.C., inside city limits, 29.1
Cincinnati, inside city limits, 29.9
New Orleans, inside city limits, 37.6
Baltimore, inside city limits, 43.3

The numbers come from data announced by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program. This program compiles data from local law enforcement agencies throughout the United States.

The FBI reported that 17,034 acts of murder and non-negligent manslaughter took place in the United States in 2006. This was at a rate of 5.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

By contrast, Israel's 188 conventional homicide victims plus 30 people killed by suicide bombings and other acts classified as terrorism represented a rate below 3.1 violent deaths per 100,000 residents. The Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 took the lives of 119 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians. This added 2.3 points to Israel's violent-death rate, raising it to about 5.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.

As a percentage of population, the deaths of 119 Israeli soldiers in a six-week war were more than six times as great as the entire U.S. military death toll in Iraq for all of 2006. Despite this, Israel's rate of deadly violence including the Lebanon war deaths was not only below the 2006 U.S. murder rate but was less than the lowest yearly homicide rate ever recorded in the United States (5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants).

Ami Isseroff has written about the phenomenon of U.S. residents saying it is dangerous to live in Israel yet telling their own stories of danger in the United States. I recall a briefing for editors arriving for a two-week seminar at Columbia University. The briefer told us to look out the windows at Morningside Park. We were pretty sure he was preparing to say that the place was unsafe at night. What he told us was that we should never enter the park during the day. That was quite a few years ago, and it's reported to be better now.

The FBI has taken to urging us not to rank or compare localities' crime rates without more information.

"Until data users examine all the variables that affect crime in a town, city, county, state, region, or college or university, they can make no meaningful comparisons," the FBI stated.

In this connection, it's worth repeating what I wrote in an earlier report on comparative homicide rates:

"[C]omparisons like this can be misleading. The numbers are general and cannot tell us important facts about the violence they reflect. They do not identify the neighborhoods where most violence takes place, nor do they show which elements of the population are most vulnerable. They do not show the relationship, if any, between the victim and killer. They do not show who is likely to commit violence. They do not tell us how many violent attacks the authorities succeeding in thwarting. They do not measure tension and fear among the living. Nor do they tell us what may happen tomorrow."

Even if comparisons are inexact, they can put some things in proportion. Take the accusations of the anti-Zionist teacher Ilan Pappe. He cites Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israel army in 2006 in support of his claim that "Israel is employing genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip." Palestinian sources put the 2006 Gaza death toll at 588. The non-governmental groups Amnesty and Btselem announced lower figures. Whichever number is correct, it reflects a death toll no more genocidal than the murder rate in Baltimore, a city whose tourist promotion bureau assures us that it is "a fun and accessible destination for all to enjoy!"

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

URLs in this article:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_922.html

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/offenses/violent_crime/murder_homicide.html

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_06.html

http://www.police.gov.il/pdf/douch/douch_2006/Annual_2006.pdf

http://tinyurl.com/22tgb6

http://icasualties.org/oif/DeathsByYear.aspx

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_01.html

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/?q=node/20351

http://israel-like-this-as-if.blogspot.com/2007/01/nice-place-to-visit-but-we-wouldnt-want.html

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/about/variables_affecting_crime.html

http://www.ilanpappe.org/Articles/Israeli%20Recipe%20for%202008.html

http://www.baltimore.org/

Rabin took responsibility for a failed mission

2007-10-24T23:12:00.000+02:00

Israel's media are busy reminiscing about Yitzhak Rabin. Today (Oct. 24) on our Hebrew lunar calendar is 12 Heshvan, the 12th anniversary of the assassinated Prime Minister's death. (On the Gregorian calendar, the assassination took place Nov. 4.)

One Rabin memory which stays with me is hearing the rumble of his deep voice in a television broadcast that echoed from open windows along the silent streets of Tel Aviv on Sabbath Eve, October 14, 1994.

Rabin had gone on the air to announce the failure of a rescue mission. A Sayeret Matcal commando force acting on precise intelligence had raided a house north of Jerusalem in an effort to free Nahshon Wachsman, a young Israeli soldier who was being held hostage by Hamas. The hostage died in the rescue attempt, which also took the life of the Israeli mission commander, Capt. Nir Poraz, 23.

Today in a radio interview one of his aides recalled that Rabin insisted that night on publicly taking responsibility for the failure of the mission. Ehud Barak, who was then the military chief of staff, was ready to go on the air with the announcement, the aide said, but Rabin emphasized, "I was responsible."

Rabin later said that approving this rescue operation was one of the most difficult decisions of his life.

Taking responsibility is a quality for which people remember Rabin. How many other heads of government can you recall going on national television to take responsibility for a mission that failed?

-- Joseph M. Hochstein

36 countries which Israelis are warned to stay out of

2007-10-16T16:08:00.000+02:00

Our recent post on visiting the Sinai noted that Israel's Counter-Terrorism Bureau warns Israelis against traveling in 20 Arab countries.

That's only part of the don't-visit picture.

In all, 36 countries are on the counter-terrorism bureau's current list of places which it warns Israelis to stay out of. The bureau, an arm of Israel's National Security Council, classifies these no-visit countries according to four levels of threat.

A - Threat is concrete and extremely high. Refrain from visiting. Leave immediately.

B - Threat is concrete and high. Refrain from visiting. Leave as soon as possible.

C - Threat is concrete and basic. Refrain from visiting.

D - Potential continuing threat. Defer non-essential visits.

The bureau warns all Israelis to stay out of parts or all of the following countries. The information is from a pre-holiday travel advisory dated Aug. 5.

I. Arab states
Level A Threat
1) Iraq
2) Egypt
3) Sudan
4) Jordan
5) Syria
6) Lebanon
7) Somalia
8) Yemen

Level B Threat
9) Algeria
10) Djibouti
11) Saudi Arabia

Level C Threat
12) Kuwait
13) United Arab Emirates
14) Tunisia
15) Qatar
16) Morocco
17) Chad
18) Bahrain

Level D Threat
19) Libya
20) Oman

II. Non-Arab states
Level A Threat
1) Iran
2) Afghanistan

Level B Threat
3) Indonesia
4) Malaysia
5) Pakistan

Level C Threat
6) Kenya

Level D Threat
7) Bangladesh
8) Nigeria
9) Tadzhikistan.

III. Specific areas of danger
Level A Threat
1) Kashmir district, India
2) Mindanao islands, southern Philippines
3) Chechen district, Russia

Level B Threat
4) northern Nigeria, above the 10th latitude
5) southern Thailand, from the Krabi-Thammarat line to the Malaysia border

Level C Threat
6) Khao San Road and vicinity in Bangkok
7) southeast Turkey along the Iraq and Iran borders

IV. Special travel warning: Israelis throughout the world face a serious potential threat of kidnapping by the Hezbollah.

V. Four countries where Israelis should be especially alert to dangers of general terror attacks:
1) Philippines
2) Turkey
3) Thailand
4) Uzbekistan

The bureau has issued a special, top-level alert for Colombia. This warning applies to Israelis working for Colombian authorities in security capacities. To avoid kidnapping or assassination, the bureau advises them to conceal their Israeli identity and to travel only in daylight on main roads.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Israeli tourists in the South Sinai

2007-10-12T16:43:00.000+02:00

Israelis go places in groups. Along with six family members and a friend, I was among the many thousands of Israelis who traveled to the Sinai in the Sukkot holidays.

The hold of the Sinai on its dedicated visitors can mystify people who don't feel the attraction. Accommodations are primitive, and there's not much to do.

The quiet attracts some of us. So does the beauty of the desert. So do the colored fish in the Red Sea, although these and the corals that shelter them seem to be dying off as a result of destructive local fishing practices. The big attraction, I think, is that the Sinai can function for Israelis as an alternate universe where pressure and tension don't exist. The local people are friendly, and there's no news.

Awad, a Bedouin who works at a nearby beach, offered to sell us hashish the first morning we were there. We turned him down. Awad returned every day to offer other services. One day our group hired him and his small truck to drive down the coast for snorkeling. On our final morning, Awad reserved a taxi to the border for us and took a commission from the driver.

Families with young children and some German tourists frequent the resort village where we stayed. Six U.S. dollars per person pays for a night's lodging in a straw hut known as a "hoosha." The price includes the use of communal showers and toilets, and a sumptuous buffet breakfast for which the place is known. The hut has mosquito netting but no bed. Air-conditioned cabins with toilets, showers and beds are available for $35 a night, which includes breakfasts for two or more people.

The food has to be trucked in from Cairo every day. Not much grows in the South Sinai except hashish.

We paid for everything in cash. Egyptian pounds, Israeli shekels and U.S. dollars were all accepted, and credit cards weren't. At one restaurant, we ran up a tab for several days. They repeatedly assured us that we could come back and pay another day. The night before we returned to Israel, we walked over to clear the debt. Mussa, in charge of the accounts, brought out a folio-sized ledger book in which was written every item we had ordered, down to the last falafel and soft drink. We shook hands after he accepted the money.

Our group stayed at Nuweiba, almost an hour's drive south of the Egypt-Israel border. We planned our trip with friends from Tel Aviv who were part of a different group at a nearby beach. One night we organized a dinner on the beach with about 25 Israelis taking part.

Unlike typical Sinai resorts where the workers are local Bedouin and the overseers are Egyptians from Cairo or other big cities, our beach had an all-Egyptian staff. A manager explained that this is because the local Bedouin work according to a different sense of time.

The Egyptian workers joined in soccer, volleyball and ping-pong with guests. These workers are mostly from one village and do not display the nasty anti-Israel attitudes of Egypt's intellectual and media elites, or the surliness of some of the white-uniformed officials who process tourists at the borders.

One guest expressed surprise that the cook who makes omelets and crepes at breakfast was not a Bedouin. Other workers started teasing the cook by calling him "The Bedouin." Later he offered facetiously to prepare his Israeli guest a good cup of Bedouin coffee.

It is evident that not a lot of love is lost between the Bedouin population of the Sinai and their johnny-come-lately Egyptian rulers. Egypt did not get control of the formerly Turkish-ruled area until after World War One. A recent report by the International Crisis Group criticizes the Cairo government as systematically favoring Egyptian settlers over the native Sinai Bedouin.

The Egyptian government rounded up hundreds of Bedouin after suicide bombings killed more than 30 people at the Taba Hilton hotel and on the Nuweiba coast the night of Oct. 7, 2004. More roundups followed bombings at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005 and at Dahab in 2006. The total of Bedouins arrested has been reported as high as 2,500.

No attacks have occurred in 2007, and Israelis have been returning to the Sinai.

Someone who may be in a position to know told us that the current calm in the South Sinai results from a deal which the government has made with the Bedouin tribes. According to this story, which lacks official confirmation, the Bedouin have committed themselves to inform on anything that smacks of terror activity, in return for which the Egyptian government will refrain from interfering with local drug trafficking.

The Sukkot visits of Israelis to the Sinai took place despite an Israel government warning to stay out of Egypt. Although we have had a peace treaty since 1979, Egypt ranks second only to Iraq among 20 Arab countries which our government's Counter Terrorism Bureau has declared as too dangerous for Israelis to enter.

News reports indicated that 40,000 Israelis visited the Sinai at Sukkot. As a percentage of Israel's population, this tourist traffic in a few days is more than the proportion of U.S. citizens who vacation in Jamaica or the Bahamas in an entire year.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

URLs in this post:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4635&l=1
http://www.nsc.gov.il/NSCWeb/TemplatesEnglish/CounterTerrorismActivitiesEN.aspx

A dispute over a black Labrador dog

2007-09-21T15:00:00.000+02:00

Here is a Tel Aviv story that is appropriate for Yom Kippur.

The story begins with an angry, violent confrontation in a local park one Sabbath morning this past spring. Passing through the park on my way to the beach, I saw one of my neighbors talking with a couple whom I didn't recognize.

Forty-five minutes later, on my way home, I noticed that they were still there, and two police officers had joined them. The strangers had a black Labrador retriever on a leash. My neighbor claimed the dog was her family's pet, Bobby, who had been missing for months.

Tempers were high. My neighbor's knees were skinned from having been dragged on the ground when she fought with the strangers over the leash. Each side was talking about bringing charges against the other.

By the time I got there, my neighbor was displaying photo albums containing pictures of the family with Bobby over the years. She had sent one of her children home to fetch the pictures.

My neighbor was in a fighting mood. She said she would file a complaint against one of the officers. She demanded his name and asked, "Why did you call me a crazy woman?"

"Because that's how you were behaving."

A dozen or so people sitting on benches in the park were minding their own business, apparently having tired of the dispute.

In the end, the police let the strangers leave with the dog. They told my neighbor they would file a report on the incident, and she could pursue the matter in court if she wished.

My neighbor went home angry. The next day, she went to police headquarters to get the report. The police would not give her the names of the couple. All they would give her was the strangers' identity numbers. Armed with this information, my neighbor went to the Interior Ministry's population registry and got their names and address. She learned that they live a few blocks away.

At this point, my neighbor sat down and wrote a letter to the strangers. She apologized for her angry behavior toward them.

After the letter was delivered, the man stranger telephoned. He, too, apologized.

The strangers agreed to discuss the matter. They said they had found their dog on a neighborhood street. If the dog turned out to be the real Bobby, the strangers wanted to be reimbursed for 2,000 shekels they had laid out for food and veterinary bills. My neighbor and her husband agreed.

The strangers agreed to take the dog to a veterinarian for an identity test. Bobby had a scar on his neck. When the disputed dog's collar came off, no scar was evident. My neighbors asked the veterinarian to shave the fur from the dog's neck. The scar was there.

Bobby came home. So ends the prelude.

Not long after that, the strangers got in touch with my neighbors and announced that they now have a black Labrador of their own, adopted from the local animal shelter.

The families have all become friends. They dogsit for each other. The former strangers went abroad for a few weeks, and their black Lab came to stay with Bobby and his family. When my neighbors went away for a long weekend, Bobby stayed with the former strangers.

The Yom Kippur connection? This is a time when much of the country is busy with rituals, prayers and theoretical discussion on themes of apologizing and seeking forgiveness. This little story is about what happened in real life when two people actually apologized.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

An official logo for Israel's 60th birthday

2007-09-08T08:09:00.001+03:00

Probably you have heard the definition of a camel---a horse designed by a committee.

Above is a work of graphic design chosen by a committee.

It is the official symbol for Israel's 60th-anniversary celebrations in 2008. A committee of five government ministers picked it this week from six competing entries.

At first glance, the winning logo seems to express the confusion that afflicts Israel in many ways today. Even the country's name is typographically ripped apart.

(UPDATE: They repaired the country's name in time for the May 8 independence celebrations.)

The logo is intended to express the theme that children are the future of the country.

A partner in a public-relations firm that made the logo explained:

"We chose a design that combines flow with innovation. It is an Israeli logo that expresses optimism which comes from hope and great faith. Our logo tells the story of the country. The loops of the blue ribbon that make the "60" are the symbol of the struggles and hardships of the country in its 60 years, but through optimistic eyes---with a movement of upward flight and growth. The Star of David stands as a stable, strong beacon. At the head of the camp and leading everyone, connecting it all, is the child---our future, our hope, our tomorrow, of all of us...."

The pr firm clearly understood what the government committee would buy, although one member, Yitzhak Cohen of the Shas Party, said the child needs a haircut.

The logo is a product of Arad Communications, whose president is Eyal Arad, a strategic advisor to present and past Israel prime ministers. Lior Chorev, who managed Prime Minister Olmert's election campaign, became managing director of the firm in April.

The firm lists among its clients the Jewish Agency, the Kadima party, the Egged bus cooperative, the Israel Electric Corp., the Herzlia Conference, the Haaretz newspaper, the country's Coca Cola bottler, Israel Weapon Industries, and fashion brands including Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani.

Before the ministerial committee made its choice, the Israeli web portal Walla asked its users to vote on the six competing logos.

With 1,173 Walla users voting, the official logo finished in fourth place. A less-complicated design won the Walla vote---60 small stars of David forming one big Star of David, above the slogan "Israel 60."

What the winning logos do not show is that Israel is bursting with talent in many creative fields. The government did not involve the public in the logo project. No competition took place among graphic-arts students, nor was any panel or jury of established Israeli designers set up.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Hebrew mail service: everywhere, for everyone

2007-09-04T12:48:00.000+03:00

Tel Aviv is the only place where I have received a registered letter while walking down the street.

I mention this by way of responding to a suggestion that local journalists write articles about their experiences with the mail. The suggestion came from a dissatisfied postal customer, who proposed the theme "Israel's shoddy postal service."

I don't have any horror stories to offer. Here, instead, are a few generally positive words about Hebrew mail service.

The Hebrew motto in the logo (above) claims that the postal service is "everywhere, for everyone." This is a characteristically Israeli boast. On the one hand, it is an overstatement. On the other hand, it expresses good intentions and some reality.

One day when our neighborhood mail carrier was on his appointed rounds, he spotted me on the other side of the street a few blocks from my home. He called out and waved me over. When I crossed the street, he presented me with a registered letter.

This personal touch makes Tel Aviv different from other places where I have received mail, including Manhattan and Washington.

In Tel Aviv, clerks at the counter of the local branch post office know me, too.

The clerks have to do more than sell stamps and handle mail. Other services of the branch include foreign currency exchange, money transfers, fax transmission, and a savings bank. The branch sells international telephone calling cards and local electronic parking cards. The languages heard across the counter include not only Hebrew and English but Russian, Spanish and French.

In the main, these clerks are efficient and remarkably patient.

When decisions aren't up to the clerks, it is a different story. Seldom does a supervisor show up if a customer with a problem becomes loud or disruptive. Waiting lines are sometimes longer than necessary. The coin-operated photocopy machine at the branch seldom works. A broken venetian blind went neglected and unrepaired for years.

Generally the shortcomings at this branch post office show that management is weak and consumerism isn't strong. Like much else in Israel, the good side of the service is determined by the people who actually perform the work and not by their bosses or customers.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

A neighborhood gan moves on

2007-08-15T10:16:00.000+03:00

The woman in the golden cape that says "WOW" is my daughter, orchestrating a Purim party at a local playschool which she founded.

My daughter is known to hundreds of Tel Aviv children and their families by her nicknames of My, or Mymy. Her official name is Michal.

For more than a dozen years, My's playschool (in Hebrew, gan, which is short for gan yeladim, or kindergarten) has been a fixture in its central Tel Aviv neighborhood. Families are attracted by her sensitive and successful approach to early-childhood education. Her pupils have included children and grandchildren of various Israeli personalities in the arts, politics and the media.

This week the gan made a forced move to new quarters, after vacating its original location.

Leaving the gan's original home was not a happy departure. Hard work had gone into transforming the original quarters into a pleasant, cheerful place for children. Before My and the children arrived, it was a dark, gloomy space with crooked floors on a neglected, weed-infested site.

It was inevitable that the gan would have to move some day, but the manner in which the property-owner has chosen to bring this about is deplorable. The move comes as part of a nasty and totally unnecessary eviction process, including some harassment.

We can expect some interesting developments if the case continues in court.

--- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Back again, with a meat-counter dialogue

2007-08-14T22:16:00.000+03:00

After an unavoidable hiatus, posts to this blog are resuming. We'll begin with an item from our storehouse of overheard conversations. It is a discussion that took place not long ago at a supermarket meat counter.

They call the butcher Sergio. He is a handsome man in his 30s, with a prominent black mustache. From his appearance and the name Sergio, he could pass for an immigrant from Italy. One day he shouted something in Russian, and it turned out his name is really Sergei.

Here is a translation of some dialogue recorded while Sergio filled an order for a grouchy customer.

SERGIO (to his customer, a woman about his age): Steak today?

CUSTOMER: Yes. Only three slices.

SERGIO: Why?

CUSTOMER: Don't start that.

SERGIO: Start what?

CUSTOMER: Questions. You mustn't ask me why.

SERGIO: Why not?

CUSTOMER: Don't be like all the Israelis. There's no privacy here. In Europe a person couldn't ask such a question. Here everyone asks you personal questions.

SERGIO: Did I offend you?

CUSTOMER: Of course not. Everyone asks personal questions here.

SERGIO: So why are you angry at me?

CUSTOMER: I'm not angry. I don't like to see you learning the bad things.

SERGIO: There's a saying that the bad things are the fastest to be learned.

CUSTOMER: Believe me, in other countries they don't ask questions like this. They don't ask you why you want three slices of steak.

SERGIO: But we don't only ask questions. We give recommendations, we give advice.

CUSTOMER: I'm not saying it's so bad.

(By now Sergio has noticed that he has an audience, a few people waiting in line. He steps up his performance.)

SERGIO: This is a bad day. It started bad. And that's how it is. I've had two complaints already about the steak.

CUSTOMER: What's wrong with the steak? Did you taste it?

SERGIO: I'm a vegetarian.

(He says it deadpan, with a little shrug. No way to tell if he's serious.)

CUSTOMER: So what's wrong with the steak? What were the complaints about?

SERGIO: About me asking questions.

The grumpy customer cracks a smile. Chalk up another victory for Sergio at the meat counter.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Thank God it's Thursday

2007-06-28T17:17:00.000+03:00

Today is the last Thursday in June, which means another White Night in Tel Aviv.

Like Paris, Rome, Madrid and a few other European capitals, our little Tel Aviv mounts a White Night festival once a year. Many of the city's cultural institutions and entertainment places will stay open all or most of the night. Among events scheduled for my neighborhood are dancing, jazz performances, and a post-midnight field trip to places connected with the unsolved 1933 murder of Zionist leader Haim Arlosoroff.

Tel Aviv's White Night festival began as a celebration of the city's selection in 2004 as a World Heritage Site of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Actually, UNESCO didn't select all of Tel Aviv but only the socalled "White City" of 1930s Bauhaus architecture.

To make the White Night festival legal, the city government amended its laws and allowed places of business to stay open beyond regular closing hours. This put the White Night festival on the same footing as Israel's two big celebration holidays, Independence Eve and Purim.

In its wisdom, the city government determined that the White Night festival will always take place on a Thursday night. The choice of Thursday night reflects a change that has come over the Israeli workplace in the last couple of decades. For many Israelis, there is no longer a need to get up for work on Friday morning. Friday, which used to be a day for working until early afternoon, has become the first half of the weekend for many, and an errand-running time for others.

With notable exceptions, such as people who work in stores and essential public services, Israel's work week ends on Thursday. Even the army went on a Sunday-to-Thursday work week years ago for many of its components. Thursday night has become a time for going out, or even for going away for the weekend. It is Israel's counterpart of Friday night in the western workplace.

The Sunday-Thursday week does not please everyone, and it puts Israel out of synch with other countries. A bill to make Sunday a full day of rest, giving Israel a western-style Monday-Friday workweek, has passed its first reading in the Knesset. To become law, it would have to pass second and third readings.

Powerful interests oppose a Monday-Friday week. Eli Yishai, the leader of the Shas party, says it would be better to make Friday a full day off for everyone. Heads of business organizations say the economy can't afford a Monday-Friday week. They say a five-day week would actually be more like a four-day or four-and-one-half-day week.

This is reminiscent of a joke that used to be heard when the Israel economy was on the six-day week. There were proposals to go to a five-day workweek. Someone said that a five-day week would be too drastic a change for the Israeli worker, and that this should be approached gradually -- first, Israelis should try working one day a week, then two days a week, then three days etc. etc.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

A question remembered from 1967

2007-06-22T14:01:00.001+03:00

Another analysis of the Six Day War? Not at all. Now that the flood of 40th-anniversary analyses by just about everyone else has abated, here is something entirely different --- a little recollection of a comment which someone uttered one night in Washington, D.C., not long before the fighting started. Although this post starts with a 1967 event, it is mainly about attitudes that endure today.

The 1967 event: With tension growing from day to day, hundreds of local Jews gathered in one of Washington's largest synagogues to hear a briefing on the situation in the Middle East. Egypt had expelled United Nations peacekeepers from the Sinai and closed the Tiran Straits. An analyst just back from Israel brought a chilling report to the assembled crowd: War seemed inevitable, and this meant that Israelis would soon be dying in a struggle for national survival.

A member of the audience stood up and asked a question that probably was on others' minds.

Why, she wanted to know, can't we solve everything by bringing "them" (the Jews of Israel) to live in the United States? Then they would be safe.

Attitudes: The notion that Jews would be better off somewhere other than here is as old as the Bible. See the majority report of the 12 spies in Numbers 13-14.

Nonetheless, despite all claims that Israel was a mistake or isn't necessary, more than five million Jews are making our lives here in this land that is said to devour its inhabitants.

M.J. Rosenberg, who directs the Washington office of the Israel Policy Forum, reminisced in his June 8 column about a great-aunt, a Holocaust survivor. Many years ago, she surprised her only living relatives by refusing to give up life in Israel to join them in the United States. Tel Aviv was her home.

Rosenberg contends that a Diaspora view of Israel as "always on the brink of destruction, all pain and tears, is a myth calculated for direct mail organizational fund-raising and to rally 'support' from the masses and from Congress."

"Don't cry for Israel," he advises. "Celebrate it."

Amen, but here are two Israel-centered comments.

1) Life in Israel impels us to do both. Crying and celebrating are both essential. Problems abound here, and complaining is a national pastime. A survey released this week by the Israel Democracy Institute, titled "Cohesiveness in a Divided Society," found that 79 percent of us are troubled by the country's current situation and almost the same number are proud to be Israeli citizens. A survey last week from the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that more than four in five of us are satisfied with our lives.

Currently, some Israelis are gnashing their teeth over comments by Avraham Burg, a former chairman of the Jewish Agency. Burg is promoting a book he wrote and has caused a small sensation by stating that Israelis should get foreign passports if they can. The other night at a ceremony at the Kibbutz Seminar College, a speaker denounced this advice while making a point of refusing to mention Burg's name. The speaker could be pretty sure the audience knew whom he had in mind.

Over the years, while we have been busy alternating between shedding tears and celebrating the miracle that is Israel, hundreds of thousands of our friends and families have left the country. Israelis leave for many reasons. Generally, they seek economic or social opportunity, or both. No one knows the exact count. It has been estimated at 10 to 15 percent of the country's population. For all we know, this Jewish emigration comes close to the United Nations' estimate of 711,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled or were expelled in 1947-49.

Last week some neighbors moved out. The family comprises a six-year-old boy, his mother, and her mother. For the past seven years, they rented an apartment in the Tel Aviv building where I live. The mother and son are off to a new life in Eilat, Israel's Red Sea resort city. The grandmother is returning to Russia. She never learned Hebrew, and she sees no future here.

2) The other comment is that we in Israel cannot ignore the question of our vulnerability. The columnist Richard Reeves put the question bluntly last year: "Speaking the Unspeakable: Can Israel Survive?" Reeves quoted another distinguished U.S. journalist, Peter Osnos, on the Israel-Palestinian conflict: "Aside from more catastrophic violence, no one can any longer say what the outcome of the struggle will be or which side will prevail."

Is it really that bad? If so, this does not necessarily mean that the danger of living here as a Jew is greater today than it was in 1967 or 1948 or 1929 or 1921. It does mean that security remains essential.

Daily life in Israel cannot be led according to apocalyptic analyses. You have to cope with the here-and-now. This creates a bias in favor of taking small steps, improvising, and living with interim solutions. A lot of the time this seems to work, and we are still here.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Loneliness, religion and the Central Bureau of Statistics

2007-06-13T16:38:00.000+03:00

Thirty percent of Israelis say they feel lonely sometimes. This includes 59 percent of widowed Israelis, 49 percent of divorced Israelis, 38 percent of Arab Israelis, and 29 percent of Jewish Israelis.

Sixty-nine percent of Israelis who don't live with their families see their families at least once a week.

Thirteen percent of Israelis say they have no friends, and 11 percent don't have anyone on whom they can depend in a crisis.

These are among highlights of a survey which Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics released June 12.

A couple of months ago this weblog cited a polling firm's survey which found that 50 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as secular, 30 percent as traditional and 20 percent as religious or haredi.

The newly released government survey shows that 69 percent of the Jews in Israel identify themselves as nonreligious vs. 31 percent religious. The survey refines the definitions by breaking the "traditional" category into religious and nonreligious. Here are some highlights.

How Jews in Israel identify themselves religiously
haredi (ultra-orthodox), 7 percent
religious, 10 percent
traditional, religious, 14 percent
[total Jews identifying themselves as religious, 31 percent]

traditional, non-religious, 25 percent
secular, 44 percent.
[total Jews identifying themselves as non-religious, 69 percent].

How Arabs in Israel identify themselves religiously
very religious, 6 percent
religious, 44 percent
not so religious, 25 percent
nonreligious, 25 percent.

Satisfaction with life
(percent satisfied or very satisfied)
haredi Jews, 97 percent
religious Jews, 86 percent
secular Jews, 85 percent
all Jews, 85 percent
traditional Jews, 83 percent

very religious Arabs, 83 percent
religious Arabs, 79 percent
all Arabs, 78 percent
nonreligious Arabs, 74 percent

all Israelis, 83 percent satisfied or very satisfied with life.

Army service
religious Jewish men, 87 percent
traditional Jewish men, 85 percent
secular Jewish men, 80 percent
all Jewish men, 76 percent
haredi Jewish men, 32 percent

secular Jewish women, 59 percent
all Jewish women, 40 percent
traditional Jewish women, 38 percent
religious Jewish women, 17 percent
haredi Jewish women, 7 percent.

National service in lieu of army
religious Jewish women, 36 percent
haredi Jewish women, 10 percent
traditional Jewish women, 8 percent
all Jewish women, 7 percent
secular Jewish women, 3 percent.

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics. The bureau surveyed 7,300 people representing 4.4 million Israelis aged 20 and above. The study is known as the 2006 Social Survey. The bureau did not announce a margin of error.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Talking about war with Syria

2007-06-06T23:00:00.000+03:00

The cartoon above, from the June 5 Haaretz editorial page, is Israel-style black humor.

It is a parody of the standard question that Israelis ask one another before Passover and before the New Year: "Where will you spend the holidays?"

In this cartoon, three couples are enjoying drinks and food in someone's home, and one of them asks, "So, where will you spend the war?"

Israelis in many walks of life are talking about the possibilities that we will have a war with Syria this summer. A day after this cartoon appeared, the main front-page headline of Yedioth Ahronoth, the country's largest-circulation newspaper, was citing the Prime Minister's admonition to cabinet ministers and defense officials: "Olmert: Stop talking about war."

Military and political analyses are available elsewhere. The purpose of this post is to note that the same Israelis who are talking about war are also engrossed in ordinary life---exams, vacation plans, the weather, day-to-day problems of making a living, how to get tickets for Jackson Browne's sunrise performance at Masada with David Broza, who will win the Labor Party runoff, and who will do what to whom in the telenovella Alufa when it returns to the air next week.

A friend who excels at military-political analysis says this concern about small stuff as we stroll through the valley of the shadow of death is a good thing. The possibility of a terrible missile war will not go away, he says, and it is essential that we not let the threat divert us from leading our daily lives.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

The hidden tragedy: the Jews of the CIS (former Soviet Union)

2007-06-03T03:57:00.000+03:00

An article in Ha'aretz draws attention to an all but forgotten corner and neglected tragedy of Jewish history. It is history that is happening right now, history that we can change. It is, in my opinion, as a largely ignorant bystander, a failure of the Zionist movement, the Israeli government, and the Jews of the United States and Western Europe.

The Jewish community of Greater Russia, which became the USSR and is now the C.I.S. (Confederation of (not-very) Independent States) was once the heart of the Jewish world, and the original mainspring of Zionism. At one time, it numbered over 5 million. Its people were the engine of the Zionist revival. Achad Ha'am, Ben-Gurion, Bialik, A.D. Gordon, Jabotinsky, Pinsker, Weizmann... the list is endless. This is the world that my grandparents and my great grand-parents, and those of many other Israelis left behind to come to "Eretz Yisroel" as it was known before 1917. These were the people who clamored most insistently for a Jewish National Home, and who were most insistent that that home had to be the land of Israel. Unlike the Jews of Germany or France, they had few illusions about a rosy future for Jews in the Diaspora, except for the communists among them. Confined to the pale of settlement, living in abject poverty, they knew that time was running out for them. Large numbers emigrated to the United States and a smaller number to Palestine, but most of the Jews of Russia were trapped inside the Soviet Union soon after 1917.

Constant persecution, successively under Tsarism and Communism, with a big assist from Nazism, reduced the numbers of the Jewish community. By the eve of World War II, there were about 3.5 million Jews left in the Soviet Union, and about 2.6 million remained after World War II (See here ). By 1959, the Jewish community there numbered only about 2,300,000 and by 1989, there were supposedly less than 1.5 million Jews in the Soviet Union, apparently counting only "Halachic" Jews, whose mothers were Jewish. Of these about a million emigrated. Actually, about 1.5 million Jews emigrated, including those who were not halachically Jewish. 1.5 million minus 1.5 million should be zero, yet there are still Jews in Greater Russia, because the statistics always under-estimate the actual number of Jews. That is perhaps the most hopeful sign. Scattered communities remain throughout the former Soviet Union. In Tadjikistan there are 900 Jews ,12,000 aged Jews in the Stalinist fiasco Birobidjan Jewish republic, 112,000 to 500,000 in the Ukraine, 25,000 to 50,000 in Belarus, 16,000 in the three Baltic states, 275,000 to 650,000 in Russia (figures are from here and here). . The larger estimates count those who hide their nationality and those who have only a Jewish father and are not halachically Jewish, and there may be even more counting those who remember that a great grandfather was Jewish. Former Soviet Union is just part of the story. In Hungary for example, there are about 100,000 Jews or maybe as many as 500,000. In Poland, there are perhaps 10,000 Jews.

The article in Haaretz describes a Chabad movement teachers' training college in Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine, one of many such efforts that sends its female students all across Russia. The school, supported by the Jewish agency and the State of Israel, accepts students who are not formally Jewish. The once great Russian Jewish community, almost destroyed by Nazism and Communism, is flickering to life, but what we see may just be embers. The school itself is a tiny effort. It was founded in 1995. In the twelve years of its existence, three hundred students in all have completed the course of studies. A drop in the bucket. But it is one of the more successful efforts.

Rabbi Stambler, who heads the school, explains:

... "The Zionists argued that all the Jews should be taken to Israel. However, we understand that the Jews will remain in the Diaspora until the Messiah comes, and hence it is necessary to invest in infrastructures here, to see to the existing community and to nurture it, for example though schools and the teachers college." Even if it remains unofficial, some of the Jewish Agency people have now adopted this outlook as well. "In recent years we have had a paradigm change in policy," says the Jewish Agency education emissary in the city, Haim Levitzky, "a transition from educational activities for purposes of immigration to Israel, to education for its own sake. We are supporting local development and the community does not relate to us as though we are 'stealing' the children."

Until the Messiah does come (don't hold your breath) along with "Yiddishkeit" of course, the Chabad school is also teaching Chabadism. Chabad is not a Zionist movement, and has some strange beliefs. Among other things, at least some of its members believe that their late Rabbi was the Messiah, and the Rabbi himself believed that the Holocaust was a just punishment of the Jews. If God did it, according to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, He knew what He was doing.

But Chabad nonetheless does excellent practical work, and, at least, Chabad is doing something and so are some others. They have produced a bit of hope for Jewish life in the FSU. The revival is usually described in somewhat hyperbolic terms. For example:

Jewish life is, once again, on the upswing. Since 1993, the Jewish population has expanded its organizational numbers to roughly 250 organizations, located in more than 80 cities. Some of these organizations include the Ukrainian Jewish Congress, the Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Ukraine, the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, the Jewish Council of Ukraine, and the Chabad Lubavitch movement. The state now recognizes Jewish cultural and religious institutions, including 14 Jewish day schools, 10 Yeshivot, and 70 Hebrew and Sunday schools.

And from here:

These FSU countries have seen an enormous influx of manpower and financial resources in the attempt to rebuild Russian Jewry. An astonishing number of Jewish organizations, religious and secular, have participated in this effort and continue to do so.   Some organizations, like Chabad (Feori) and Keroor (the umbrella body for non-Chabad communities), have engaged in local community building, while others, like Migdal Ohr, have until recently engaged in interesting Russians in their Judaism and then getting them to schools and yeshivas elsewhere as quickly as possible. As of 2001, Keroor, the umbrella of communities related to REK (the Russian Jewish Congress), registered 71 communities, while FJC (FEOR of Chabad) registered 73 communities. The Reform registered 30 communities. (However, some of these communities are registered more than once). In Moscow alone, there are 2 Jewish universities, 3 yeshivas, 2 girls seminaries and 2 kollelim. Besides Moscow and St Petersburg, there are several cities which, together with their satellite towns, number Jewish populations between 5 and 20 thousand. Amongst these are Yekaternburg, Saratov, Samara, Novosibirsk, Rostov and Tchelabinsk.

      The Hillel organization has, for the past four years, trained hundreds of Jewish students in the FSU to lead Pesach seders in far-flung communities, often in partnership with visiting Hillel students from North America and Israel. The Conservative movement has virtually no presence in Russia.

      The Reform movement has a training program to train para-professional leaders to work in Reform congregations throughout the FSU, as does Migdal Ohr, an Orthodox organization together with the Joint...

It sounds impressive, but is it really enough? Look closely. "Hundreds" trained to lead Pesach seders in four years, schools that may graduate 25 students a year like the Chabad college, do not seem to me so much, compared to the huge work that is needed to save the remnants of these communities.

The article in Ha'aretz describes one exceptional young lady at the Chabad college, whose great grand-parent was Jewish, and who opted to study in the college, to convert and to become orthodox. The article tells us:

Moreover, at the college, they prefer to downplay the fact, perhaps for fear of how it would be greeted in Israel, that under rabbinical law, some of the students are not Jewish at all. According to some of the teachers, the extent of this phenomenon amounts to about 20 percent.

How, indeed is it greeted with Israel? With horror, to be sure, but not for the reasons that Chabad may fear. Statistically, most of the Russian Jews may not be halachically Jewish by now. Yet this school, and others like it, may reach only a small percent of them.

In fifty years, there may be nothing left at all of Russian Jewry. If that was because all the Jews of the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel or found new lives in the United States, it would not be a cause for sorrow. But what if they are all lost because of our negligence? Our children and grandchildren will be wondering, "What were they thinking? How did Zionism fail the Jews of Greater Russia? How did American Judaism fail them?

The effort should be reaching out not only to those who are Jewish, and to those who "know" they are Jewish, but to those who hardly know, those who are afraid to know, and those who do not want to know. Somehow, the Zionist movement in Israel, and the Jews of the United States, Zionist and otherwise, have to understand the magnitude of the tragedy that befell the Jews of the FSU as a community. Because it was so very hard, almost impossible, to be Jewish for so long, it must now be made easy to be Jewish and easy to become Jewish again.

With all due respect to the work of Chabad and of the reform movement, we have to understand that many of the Jews of Russia may see themselves as members of the Jewish people, but do not necessarily identify with the Jewish religion. Many come to Israel, only to find that they are ostracized because they are Jewish only because of their father. "In Russia I was Jewish, here I am Russian," one complained to me. One complained, many others are silent, and many leave in frustration. We must give the forgotten Jews of the C.I.S. a road back to secular Judaism. Are we going to abandon all of these Jews because most of them, like Ben-Gurion, Berdichevsky and Borochov before them, have little or no use for religion?

Ami Isseroff

West side story comes to us

2007-06-02T12:00:00.000+03:00

Gang wars on our door step. A teen age kid was stabbed in a brawl a couple of blocks away from our apartment, in a "good" neighborhood. This is not Netanya or Yaffo. It was apparently a racial fight. This was once more or less unthinkable in Israel. Someone should be thinking about the implications....

Last update - 12:09 02/06/2007

17-year-old Rehovot teen stabbed to death in brawl

By Roni Singer-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondent

A 17-year-old Rehovot teen was stabbed to death overnight Saturday in a brawl between two groups of youths in the city.

Police have arrested three suspects in connection with the murder, and said they expect more arrests to follow.

At approximately 3:00 A.M., police received reports of a brawl that had broken out at Ben Yehuda street in Rehovot.

A Magen David Adom emergency medical services team arrived on the scene to find the 17-year-old, Adama Teriko, seriously injured from stab wounds in the chest.

He was taken to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot where he underwent an operation, but the teen succumbed to his wounds Saturday morning.

Police said an initial investigation has found that the brawl was part of an ongoing conflict between the two groups, which had met in order to settle accounts.

Guest blog: A letter to bubbe (grandma) Gittel

2007-05-30T01:05:00.000+03:00

‏27/05/07

A letter to Bubbe (Grandma) Gittel, May Her Soul Rest in Peace – M.H.S.R.I.P (The peace that was denied to her bodily remains)

Dear Bubbe

You certainly remember that when I was still a youngster, with my cousin Shalom (M.H.S.also R.I.P) we hiked to the village of Neve Yaakov, north of Jerusalem, to visit our cousins. Our hike took us across the Jewish cemetery in the Mount of Olives, and by chance (and what a chance!) we came to the gravestone of our grandfather Yaakov. When we came back and told you about it, you inquired whether there is an open grave beside. When we answered in the affirmative, you smiled and said, "Well these fellows from the Hevra Kaddisha (Burial Society) have kept their word". You then told us that this is your place and when your time will come, your dream to be buried on the Mount of Olives, facing Jerusalem, the Holy City, will be fulfilled.

You then told us that with our grandfather and six children, you left your home in Lithuania, towards the end of the 19^th century, because of the pogroms, which spread all over the Russian Empire. First you went to Liverpool in England, where your three sisters, married to three brothers, were living. But after some time staying there, you decided that it is not a place for you to live. You took your six children and sailed to Eretz Isrooel (as you pronounced it). Grandpa stayed for a while as he was a rabbi, teaching Hebrew, and had to fulfill his term.

The reasons you gave us for your decision to leave England and emigrate to a forlorn place like Palestine under Turkish Government at that time were, as I remember the following:

You did not like the wet-cold drizzly English climate.
You came to the conclusion that the English do not differ much from the Lithuanians in their love for the Jews, and if they wiould have the opportunity they would launch a pogrom against the Jews, but would come up with an original English way to do it.
You wanted to be buried on the Mount of Olives, so when the Messiah will come on his white donkey and blow his horn and there will be resurrection of the dead, there will be no need for grandpa's and your body to roll from the tomb in the land of exile to Jerusalem in order to rise up from the dead, but you will just get up and join the Messiah, watching how the temple comes down from heaven.

Well, Bubbe Gittel (M. Y. S. R. I. P) I have some news for you:

The climate in England is changing as the globe becomes warmer. They claim that they grow grapes in Southern England and produce wine, which competes with French wine. Well, I guess that compared to English food and drunk with it, it may be the right wine, but I prefer to stay with Israeli wines, especially those from the Golan Heights.
You were right about their love for the Jews. Indeed they demonstrate it once and again. Just lately, they seized the opportunity to demonstrate this love through the organizations of British academicians, which boycott Israeli academics in protest against the occupation of Palestinian land.
(As you remember, in your time, they demonstrated their love to us during World War II when they avoided bombing the railways transporting Jews to the gas chambers and prevented ships carrying Jewish refugees from reaching our land. Later, during our War of Independence, British soldiers collaborated with the Arab gangs)

Now, the boycott by the English academicians is claimed to be a gesture of demonstration of sympathy with the poor Palestinians, living under Israeli occupation. With all due honor to this humane gesture, did you hear of British professors boycotting Chinese academicians because the democratic Peoples' Republic of China occupied Tibet and erases Tibetan culture? Or did you hear them threatening to boycott Russia (another democratic republic) because of the occupation and destruction the Russian Army inflicts on the Moslem Inhabitants of Chechnya? and what about the occupation of Iraq by American and British forces?
Now, I have some sad news about your grave. I would have come to your place to read this letter to you, but after the Six Day War, after we conquered the Mount of Olives (which is still under Israeli jurisdiction), I tried to find your grave and all the family's graves, but discovered that all the cemeteries of your "Kolel" (community), have been destroyed. During the Jordanian-Arab occupation of the mountain, after the War of Independence, a hotel was built on the cemetery of your "Kolel." I do not know what they did with the bones. I only know that they used the gravestones for pavements and new buildings.

So Bubbe Gittel, you were right about the love of the English for the Jews, which brings me to thank you for having the courage, to get up, about hundred and twenty years ago, and travel with six children over the seas to this wonderful land of Israel. Were it not for your strong 'Jewish Mother' character, I could now be a British Jewish professor who is afraid to stand up and tell his fellow non-Jewish professors what he thinks about their boycott.

Your grandson

Prof. Emeritus Arie S. Issar

Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Israel

P.S. As a geologist I have to disagree with the theory that when the Messiah comes and blows his horn, the Jews buried abroad will roll in subterranean caverns to reach the Mount of Olives to be resurrected.

Arie Issar is a leading authority on hydro-geology, and the author of several books. His latest book is "Climate Change - Environment and History of the Near East" by Arie S. Issar and Mattanyah Zohar. He lives in Jerusalem.

Update: Hawking video wins prizes

2007-05-27T19:09:00.000+03:00

Earlier this year, we called your attention to a 35-second public-service video in which Stephen Hawking appears on behalf of Access Israel.

This modest production has just won our local advertising industry's top award, the Golden Cactus, as Israel's best advertising campaign of the past year. It also won a separate award as the best advertising idea of the year.

Hawking volunteered his time, and a local advertising agency wrote the script. The filming took one-half hour at the British ambassador's home in Givatayim, a Tel Aviv suburb.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Inertia: The last Jew in Afghanistan

2007-05-12T14:35:00.000+03:00

It always amazes me, that so many Jews want to live anywhere but Israel. I can understand why someone might prefer to live in San Francisco, or Los Angeles or Paris or London or Florence, or in the beautiful countryside of Vermont, especially if they are famous, or rich or doing important work in science and academia.

It seems to make rational sense not to sacrifice a career, a secure future for your children, a language and culture you know, to go off to the unknown in the untamed wilds of Dizengoff center and the dangerous Ramat Gan jungle or to return to them. I can even sympathize with the tragic Vienna Jews, who would not give up the "safety" and "culture" of their Austrian homeland to be launched on dangerous adventures in Palestine.

Israelis go abroad too. Sometimes they stay many years: until the wife gets her degree, and then until they have enough money to buy a house in Israel, but then the children must finish university, and then the grandchildren must finish university... My parents and paternal grandparents were Israelis (or rather Palestinians) of that sort.

But I have always suspected that there is something more to this reluctance to move than material comfort and familiarity. After all, the Jews of the Russian Pale lived in abject poverty, in miserable conditions, and yet many of them were not interested in coming to Palestine.

In Armenia and Iran, Jews persist, sometimes in the most miserable conditions, isolated from their communities or with no community, surrounded by Jew-hate Some might be rich, and some might be too old to move or have no contacts abroad.

Still, this phenomenon raises the suspicion that the real problem is some fundamental force of human or Jewish character, a force that is not rational in any way and that is beyond rational considerations. Here is a report that seems to bear out the suspicions. As I recall, Marcel Proust, who was a homosexual and a Jew, wrote that if the Sodomites ever establish their own homeland in Sodom, they would not want to live there. They might visit from time to time, or perhaps send money to relatives, but they had such fundamental self-contempt and insecurity, that they would not want to really live in their own homeland, among their own kind. That summarized the relation of many Jews to Palestine and Zionism 80 years ago.

The last Jew living in Aghanistan does not want to leave, even though his wife and family are in Holon. Holon is not the best place in Israel, but the worst place in Israel is arguably better than Kabul, especially now, especially if your wife and family are living in Holon. Nonetheless, he persists, the quintessential Diaspora Jew to the very end.

Tzur Sheizaf reports:

"Shalom aleichem," I said. Hebrew in Afghanistan. "Shalom alaichem," he said... Zevulun Simantov is his name. He wore a white undershirt and looked to be a little over 60. He looked at me with suspicion; perhaps he was calculating what he would get out of me.

...I climbed the dark, broken stairs after him to the single room where he lives, in what was once the building of the Jewish school.

...

"What do you want?"

"To speak to you."

"And how much are you paying?"

"Paying?"

"You'll go to your country, write an article, and get money. I want money too."

...He wanted $500. I explained to him that I am a freelance journalist and that we are not funded by the authorities. He agreed to take less. A hundred dollars to sit with the last member of my tribe in Kabul.

After receiving the money (he held it up to the sunlight to make sure it was genuine), he went out and brought me what every Afghan serves his guests, even if they don't pay: a tray with sunflower seeds and pistachios and raisins and almonds. Local hospitality. On the wall were verses and photos of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

"I have family in Holon," he said, "a wife and children."

"And are you going to see them?"

"I went once."

"And why do you not go to see them?"

"I live here."

Clearly.

"Will you write in your newspaper that I need help from the government, from the Jews in America, England, and the whole world? That I need money?"

"I'll tell them."

"So come and I'll show you the synagogue."

Simantov has received a great deal of help, from even more generous Jews who have come to Kabul on various occasions. But the man will not give up his profession in his old age.

We went out to the balcony that surrounded the neglected inner courtyard. The building was in the process of falling apart. Simantov opened the synagogue's locked door. The hall was deserted. He pointed to the glass cabinets broken by the Taliban and the Torah scrolls that were taken. On the surrounding walls were notices in Hebrew thanking the person who donated a lamp.

This man has a career, you see, and a profession. He is doing important work that he cannot leave. He is the last Jew in Afghanistan - a full time job that keeps him abroad...

Ami Isseroff

Sitting shiva for Ezra

2007-05-11T00:11:00.000+03:00

Maybe you remember Ezra (not his real name). He was the subject of a post at this weblog earlier this year. Since 1985 he had washed the stairs and tended the greenery every week at the small Tel Aviv apartment building where I live.

Ezra has died. He was 80. They buried him Sunday, and his family is sitting shiva.

Two neighbors and I hire a taxi to go pay a shiva call on the family. On the way, the neighbors talk about the army. One neighbor is the wife of a reserve officer. Her husband cannot join us because he had to go to reserve duty. He commands an infantry battalion that fought in Lebanon last summer. The other neighbor in the taxi is a veteran of an elite commando unit. He and the officer's wife chat about prospects for another war this summer, while she nurses her four-month-old son who is along for the ride.

A black-bordered poster announcing Ezra's death marks the entrance to the house of mourning. Someone has placed stacks of white plastic garden chairs in the courtyard to accommodate overflow visitors.

The family greet us warmly. The religious son sits on a cushion on the floor, Everyone else sits on chairs. Soon we are telling the mourners our stories about Ezra, his dedication to work, his concern for his family, his toughness and tenacity, his austerity, his fierce pride. At each anecdote, they smile and agree that this was typical of Ezra.

I tell them about a telephone conversation with a Galilee Arab who used to live in Tel Aviv. Informed of Ezra's death, he recalled him as a good person who gave him water. That was our father, one of the sons says. Ezra gave water to many people, they say.

Ezra's widow, who smiles too, despite her painful joint disease, tells us that children are a treasure. She and Ezra had six children, who gave them 26 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She keeps all of their names and birthdates in her head, she tells us.

An old photo on a wall shows a handsome couple, the young Ezra and his even younger wife. His hair and mustache are black. A portrait from later in life shows Ezra looking as if he might be a diplomat or prime minister. His hair and mustache have turned gray and he has a distinguished look. He is impeccably groomed, as he is in all of the photos on the wall. Another photo shows Ezra dancing at a family celebration. Children and grandchildren have formed a circle around him. Head tilted back, arms flung outward, he dances by himself and smiles.

This house of bereavement is filled with smiling people.

On the way back to Tel Aviv, one of the neighbors expresses surprise that Ezra had a nice, well-appointed house with a modern kitchen. At our place, he did menial work. At his place, he was the head of a strong family who remember him fondly and with smiles.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Notes from the May 3 rally in Rabin Square

2007-05-06T15:23:00.000+03:00

Here are some impressions from the big May 3 anti-Olmert demonstration in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square.

1) The program began one hour later than the announced starting time of 7 p.m.

According to media reports, the organizers decided on the delay because people from outlying areas were arriving slowly. At previous Rabin Square events, whether of the Left or the Right, large numbers of demonstrators arrived in fleets of buses. Fewer buses were evident at this rally, which billed itself as a grassroots, non-political event.

2) People who arrived before the late start heard loudspeakers playing recorded music, interspersed with a live voice declaring repeatedly that the program would begin at 8 p.m.

The gathering crowd heard a recording of Bob Dylan performing his 1962 protest song "Blowin' in the Wind."

Other mood music included a recorded song by Shalom Hanoch, a great Israeli rocker who has performed live at peace rallies in the past. This evening they played one of his old songs, about a messiah who doesn't come and also doesn't telephone.

3) One reason a song like "Blowin' in the Wind" endures is that it doesn't purport to supply the answer. Such songs leave the answer up to the beliefs and imagination of the listener. So it was with the central message of the rally, that Prime Minister Olmert should resign. No speaker proposed an alternative to Olmert.

4) What made this demonstration different from others was the crowd's diversity. Members of opposing political factions shared the square. Young men wearing National Religious knitted skullcaps prayed in groups alongside secular Tel Aviv residents.

Also unlike some other Rabin Square crowds, this throng lacked the intensity that can come with commitment to a political cause. The one theme around which the crowd rallied---that Olmert failed in the Second Lebanon War and should resign---was not enough to keep people energized through two hours of standing and listening to speeches on the same message.

The only time the crowd seemed genuinely in unison was during a minute of silence for the dead of the Second Lebanon War.

5) Bereaved parents and army reservists did much of the speaking. They spoke pointedly and sometimes eloquently.

Speakers did elicit cheers and applause, but these came from parts of the audience at various times, and never from the entire crowd at once.

The closest the audience came to a display of vocal unanimity was when Eliad Shraga, a reserve paratroop officer who heads the Movement for Quality Government, exhorted them to act as judge and jury and answer whether Olmert was guilty. They found the Prime Minister guilty, of course, but the performance lacked spontaneity. It was nothing like what sports fans show when they disagree with a football referee's decision.

Cheerleading aside, the only words that seemed to evoke a genuinely spontaneous reaction were uttered by Meir Shalev, the novelist. He mentioned 40 years of occupation in a disparaging way, and some people in the northwest part of the square started booing. Later, the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria (Yesha) commented that Shalev's remark showed "his hate of settlers."

6) Someone I know refused to attend the demonstration. He said he did not want to help Benjamin Netanyahu become Prime Minister.

His meaning became clear from the scene at Rabin Square.

Dark-blue signs calling for "Elections now" were everywhere. They competed against the red-and-black logo that displayed the demonstration organizers' motto, "Bunglers, go home." Many members of the crowd wore dark-blue "Elections now" stickers on hats and shirts. Young demonstrators displaying "Elections now" signs took over the top of a Holocaust monument that dominates the southern part of the square. "Elections now" was clearly a message from the organized political Right.

7) Despite the "Elections now" infiltration, people did seem to be making a real effort to keep the non-partisan spirit of the demonstration.

Political parties refrained from displaying party signs, and few people in the crowd wore t-shirts with party slogans or symbols. No partisan politicians were invited to speak (unless you include Uzi Dayan, the demonstration organizer, whose Tafnit movement failed to win a Knesset seat in the last election).

8) It has become a tradition at Rabin Square to claim attendance figures that would make Pinocchio blush. As this rally began, the organizers announced that 100,000 people had arrived. Less than an hour later, an update doubled the number to 200,000. As the rally was ending at 10 p.m., they announced that the crowd had swelled to 250,000.

News reports set the total at no bigger than 120,000.

A walk through the crowd made it evident that the square did not contain more people than attended the big anti-disengagement rally in August 2005. At that event, Pinhas Wallerstein of the Yesha Council claimed 350,000 people were there but bumped the total up to what sounded like 600,000 as the program ended. A more realistic estimate set that total at no more than 120,000.

9) Ari Shavit of Haaretz wrote that "it doesn't really matter" whether 100,000, 150,000 or 200,000 people attended. He termed the May 3 event Israel's "first inter-tribal demonstration."

"It was the start of the uprising of the Israeli public against the unworthy elites," he wrote. By the time his article appeared, aides to the Prime Minister had already characterized the rally as irrelevant.

10) Before the program ended with the national anthem Hatikvah, pop singer Aviv Geffen performed his "Shir Hatikvah" (Song of Hope), a traditional closing number at big leftwing events. Its lyrics include an exhortation to "conquer peace and not the territories."

As the crowd dispersed, recorded music took over, with John Lennon singing "Imagine," his vision of a world at peace, without war and without religion.

If these songs offended National Religious members of the audience, they objected quietly. No booing was heard.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Links in this post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUz2OulZ-q4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyAfzTecYoI
http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-rally.html
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/125819
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafnit
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000369.htm
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/855778.html

Tel Aviv can be expensive

2007-05-03T12:28:00.000+03:00

Another survey showing that Tel Aviv is more expensive than some of the world's other great cities has come out.

This survey is different from your ordinary Tel-Aviv-Costs-Too-Much analysis. The standard surveys measure the cost of hotels, restaurants and dry cleaning to business travelers who move around the globe on expense accounts.

The new survey, which appeared in a Hebrew newspaper's business section, deals with local people who pay their own way. It covers some ordinary expenditures and shows that Tel Aviv is difficult for two reasons --- high prices, and lower incomes.

The survey finds that Tel Aviv is more expensive than Stockholm, Chicago, Toronto, Prague, Madrid and Berlin. This puts Tel Aviv in sixth place among 12 cities surveyed. The most expensive cities surveyed are London, Geneva, Oslo, New York and Shanghai, in that order.

When it comes to money to pay the bills, Tel Aviv is in last place. The survey ranked after-tax income, from high to low, as follows: Geneva, Oslo, New York, London, Chicago, Berlin, Toronto, Stockholm, Madrid, Prague, Shanghai, Tel Aviv. These rankings do not show amounts of after-tax income. In Israel, median personal income is below $2,000 a month, before taxes.

According to the survey, people in Tel Aviv pay:

- $850 monthly rent for a two-room apartment in the heart of the city (vs. $3,200 in London, $1,300 in Oslo or Geneva, and $680 in Berlin)

- $75 a month per-person for food (vs. $200 in Berlin and $95 in London)

- $3,000 for one year of college tuition (vs. free tuition in Europe)

- $6 for a beer in a neighborhood pub (vs. $2.60 in London and $2.50 in Berlin)

- $1.50 for a cup of coffee (vs. $2.50 in Berlin and $1.80 in Geneva).

A popular Israeli radio commentator took issue with the finding that a cup of coffee in Tel Aviv can be had for $1.50. The typical price is twice as high, he said. (Personal research: I paid a little more than $4 for a large iced coffee in Tel Aviv the other day.)

A conclusion of the survey is that middle-income Israelis find it increasingly difficult to hold their own. Discussing this on the radio, a newspaper analyst attributed Tel Aviv's high prices to geography, lack of competition, small market size, and lack of assertiveness on the part of consumers.

The survey attributed its cost data to Mercer, a consulting firm, and its income rankings to UBS investment bank, a Swiss concern.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

More people getting married in Israel

2007-04-16T23:42:00.000+03:00

More people from abroad are getting married in Israel it seems.

In recent years an increasing number of Jewish couples from abroad looking for an alternative to a formal wedding at home or a more typical remote destination in the Caribbean or Tuscany have decided on Israel as the place to break the glass and officially start their lives together.

"We are very casual and would not have had a black-tie wedding," said Gena Bresgi, 23, of New York City, who was married last year in a large glass hall amid the lush gardens of a kibbutz. "Our wedding had a nice feel, very relaxed. There was not that high pressure."

It was her husband's first visit to Israel, and together the two families toured the country. Close friends and relatives who came used the wedding as part of an Israeli vacation, too.

With relatives around the world, Israel proved to be an ideal place to gather, Bresgi said.

"I have a lot of family in Israel and all over the world," she said. "This was a more central meeting place for everyone."

Beyond the dramatic settings, gourmet food, guaranteed good weather between May and late September and more informal feel, Israeli weddings tend to run just a fraction of the cost of a wedding in the United States, Europe or Australia.

The next time you get married, think of us!

Holocaust memorial sirens = normality

2007-04-16T13:39:00.000+03:00

Holocaust Remembrance Day is in progress at the moment. Yom HaShaoah, as it is called in Hebrew, is a unique part of Israeli life.

At mid-morning, sirens sound throughout the country for two minutes. When the sirens begin, people stop what they are doing and stand silently in memory of six million Jews murdered in the Nazi-led Holocaust. When the sirens stop, daily life picks up where it left off.

Today I was on Ben Yehuda Street when the sirens went off at 10 a.m. As usual, pedestrians halted on the sidewalk. Motorists got out of their cars and stood in the street.

While the sirens were still sounding, a big, expensive automobile drove past.

One seldom sees such a disrespectful act on this day in Tel Aviv. I won't try to comment further on it. Instead here is something I wrote in a diary three years ago.

=======
Holocaust remembrance day (Monday, April 19, 2004)

A few minutes after 9 a.m. the screen goes dark and the computer shuts down. The radios are suddenly silent, and the emergency lantern is lit. A power failure.

Going down into the stairwell to check the circuit-breakers, I encounter a downstairs neighbor. His apartment is also without electricity.

I telephone the electric company. A computer voice answers. As of 9 a.m., it says, no power outages are scheduled. The voices advises me to check that the problem isn't in my circuit breaker. Next, the voice asks me to key in my area code and telephone number. The computer does a quick lookup, and the voice tells me the problem is in Tel Aviv, on my street, in my building. It tells me which key to press if other apartments in the building lack power. I do it.

After I hang up, the thought starts occurring to me that something bigger may be wrong. Power outages where I live are rare, and the electric company usually restores service quickly. I listen to the 9:30 news update on a battery-powered radio which I keep in the apartment for emergencies. Nothing unusual on the radio. Just the usual tensions. The radio devotes its main discussion to the Holocaust, which is being remembered today in memorial ceremonies throughout the country.

Ten minutes later I hear a woman's voice, shouting: "Hello! Hello! Down there! Do you have electricity?"

From my kitchen windows, I see the shouting is coming from the penthouse of the building next door. This neighbor has never spoken to me before. I spoke to her husband once, a former city official, when he came in to vote where I was a poll-watcher in the last national elections and I had to verify that he was who he said he was. Apart from that, we have had no other contact. Now she is asking a question, and I hear anxiety in her tone.

"We don't have electricity in this building," I tell her. "I reported it a half-hour ago."

"Has there been an attack?" (We are speaking Hebrew, and she uses the word pih-goo-'ah, which denotes an act of sabotage and has come to connote terrorism.) "Like in the United States?" I understand this as an allusion to 9/11.

"There was nothing on the radio," I tell her.

I go out onto the front balcony. I see that a woman is cleaning the sliding glass doors in a third-floor apartment across the way. I want to believe that all is normal in Tel Aviv. But the thought that something sinister may be behind the power failure won't go away.

Then I hear the sirens.

It is 10 a.m., and the sirens are sounding around the country, as they do every year on Israel's Holocaust memorial day. The sirens reassure me. Everything is okay, I tell myself. If there had been an attack big enough to knock out electricity in Tel Aviv, the sirens wouldn't be working, would they? The reasoning is false, but this doesn't occur to me until later. At the moment, the woman across the way has stopped wiping the glass doors and is standing at semi-attention on a balcony, looking out at the street. I see no other sign of life.

After two minutes, the sirens stop. Immediately, an automobile noisily turns a corner into my street and two men in work clothes stride purposefully into a building entrance. They had been standing out of my line of sight during the sirens.

A few minutes later the electricity comes back on. On this memorial day that has become part of our life, all seems normal.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Cultural Exchange: Matzo - Shukran wa Sahten!

2007-04-06T12:50:00.000+03:00

Passover is a favorite holiday for Israelis because of its Zionist content, and it is celebrated by an overwhelming number of Israeli Jews. Israel's Arabs have been a part of the Passover tradition, in a sense, for many years. It is they who symbolically "buy" all the 'Hametz' (not kosher for Passover) foods so that Jews can say they have no Hametz in their houses or businesses.

Less discussed, but nonetheless important, is a widespread cultural phenomenon. During the holiday, numerous not too observant Jews flock to Arab towns to buy non-kosher pita bread, beer and other items that have vanished from Israeli stores. These are generally those who do not have the foresight to buy two cases of beer and three or four loaves of bread a week in advance, and to freeze the bread. We won't get into the whole issue of Jewish religious observance at Passover or Israeli Jewish religious observance here. Suffice it say that Arabs do a fairly brisk business in non-kosher for Passover items in this season.

Now, some people may be very sorry to hear about such practices, and unhappy that I discuss what everyone knows (see the flame comment for an article that criticized Israeli candy), but that's the way it is, and that's the way we have to tell it, though some people may write angry comments reminding me that I am not Ephraim Kishon or Moses or whatever, and I wasn't in Israel during the riots of 1929 and I was not even present at the first Zionist congress, and therefore, according to them, I am not entitled to comment. I freely admit that I was not around at the parting of the Red Sea, but nonetheless I have to write what I know to be true.

Israeli Arabs, as we have long known, are collaborators in the celebration of Passover in Israel, and play a very important role in it.

What we didn't know perhaps, and what is most interesting, is that the exchange works both ways. While the Jews are busy buying pita bread, humus and other forbidden goodies, the Arabs are busy munching matzo!

So Sahten (hearty appetite in Arabic, Bete'avon (hearty appetite in Hebrew), Shukran (thanks in Arabic) and Toda (thanks in Hebrew) to everyone for their respective cultural contributions.

Ami Isseroff

Matza's secret fans - Arabs

By Yoav Stern Haaretz 6 April 2007

The first swallow of spring is usually found in the heaps of Matza boxes that fill supermarket aisles all over Israel. It certainly applies to supermarkets in the Jewish towns and cities, and apparently is also true in Arab communities.

Gadaban Supermarket, located at the entrance to Umm al-Fahm, generally stocks up on Matza for Passover. Moreover, the supermarket has to replenish its stock before the end of the holiday, due to keen demand by locals.

Apparently, the Arab public regularly consumes large quantities of Matza.

Iyad Sharbaji, the manager of Gadaban, told Haaretz yesterday that his Matza is consumed entirely by local Arabs. "The Jews passing by here already have enough Matza. The customers are all from the local Arab community," he said.

His competitor down the road, The Market, opened this year. The demand for Matza therefore caught the store by surprise. "People told us ahead of time that they wanted Matza, so we bought five crates. Now we have only two left," he said.

It turns out the avid consumption of Matza is not a new trend in Arab towns and villages, whose inhabitants view the traditional Jewish food as a welcome and refreshing change in the menu. "It's not a religious issue, and certainly not a political one," Sharbaji explains.

A journalist associated with the Islamic Movement in Israel told Haaretz that he also bought Matza. "The kids can't get enough of it," he gleefully reported. "They eat it like crackers. But it also represents a sense of folklore for us. Maybe we like it more than Jews do because no one's forcing us to eat nothing but Matza all day long," he said in explanation.

Another happy customer from Baka al-Garbiyeh said his children and wife were "packing the Matza away," adding that they preferred to eat their Matza with a spread of jam or chocolate.

In fact, it seems Matza is particularly popular with Arab children, and most consumers report their sons and daughters especially relish the seasonal offering.

Since the demand for Matza in the Arab public is naturally unconnected to Passover, the residents of towns like Baka al-Garbiyeh begin consuming it well before the holiday.

Meanwhile, bakeries in Arab towns have reported a substantial increase in sales during Passover, as Jewish customers stock up on bread and pita, which are hard to find in Jewish towns over the holiday.

What secular and religious Israelis say about being Jewish

2007-04-04T20:52:00.000+03:00

Earlier this week, in a post about preparing food for Passover, I wrote: "We can only guess what percentage of attachment to Judaic tradition lives inside your typical secular Israeli."

The next day, the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth printed an educated guess.

Yedioth, which is the country's biggest daily newspaper, reported on results of a survey conducted for it by Dr. Mina Zemach's Dahaf institute.

The survey found that adult Israeli Jews define themselves as follows:

Secular--50 percent
Traditional--30 percent
Religious--12 percent
Haredi ("ultra-orthodox")--8 percent.

Of those who identify as secular, 55 percent believe in the existence of God and an additional 16 percent believe in a supreme force. Aside from belief, 61 percent observe the religious prohibition against consuming meat and dairy products at the same meal, and 47 percent don't eat leavened bread at Passover. Some 34 percent eat only kosher food at home, and 39 percent would recommend a religious wedding for their children.

On the other hand, the survey found secular behaviors and ideology among the non-secular. Thus, 62 percent of the "traditional" Jews drive automobiles on the sabbath, and only 48 percent say that religion is what defines them as Jews. A majority of "traditional" Jews attribute their Jewish identity to nationality.

Taking everyone into account, the survey found that what defined the respondents as Jews was as follows:

Jewish religion -- 40 percent
Israeli nationality -- 33 percent
Jewish nationality -- 26 percent.

Some other findings about the entire Jewish population follow.

--77 percent believe in God (vs. 70 percent of U.S. Jews) and an additional 8 percent believe in the existence of a supreme force.

--65 percent eat only kosher at home.

--62 percent eat in non-kosher restaurants.

--62 percent of married women light sabbath candles.

--44 percent kiss the mezuzzah on a doorpost.

--25 percent of men pray daily in a synagogue.

--23 percent of men wear a skullcap.

--14 percent of men pray in synagogue only on sabbath and holy days.

The Dahaf institute, which conducted this survey, is known for political polling. Its director appears regularly in a televised political discussion show on Israel's Knesset channel.

A Hebrew report of this survey appeared on pages 12-15 of a pre-Passsover supplement in Yedioth's April 2 printed edition. The report stated that the polling sample was 1,000 adult Israeli Jews. It did not indicate the margin of error nor when the survey took place.

The author of Yedioth's report on the poll was Sever Plocker, who later commented on the survey in a column which is translated into English and available online. It is titled, "The new Israeli Jew."

"Survey conclusions are optimistic," he wrote. "The religious-secular gap is being bridged, and the risk of it[s] creating a rift is becoming more remote. The walls are being torn down, the borders distinguishing between the holy and the profane are being divided both ways, and there is a symbiotic relationship and mutual benefit between religious-traditional Judaism and secular Judaism."

He concluded: " Some will view this as the failure of Zionism, which sought to create a new type of Jew detached from his past and ghetto-like characteristics. This type of interpretation is erroneous: The more the nationalist elements of Judaism are strengthened the more Zionism will thrive, because it serves as the Jews' national freedom movement."

You can read the whole article at YnetNews, Yedioth's English-language site.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3384538,00.html

A note on terminology: The survey's four-way division of Israeli Jews (into secular, traditional, religious and haredi) reflects a blind spot of Israeli pollsters and Israeli society in general. It makes no allowance for the Reform and Conservative denominations, which are active in Israel despite lack of official recognition. These denominations represent a majority of religiously affiliated U.S. Jews. The pollsters' terms "secular" and "traditional" represent 80 percent of Israeli Jews but do not necessarily correspond to Reform and Conservative. In an Israeli poll, "religious" does not embrace Reform or Conservative. The pollsters' "religious" corresponds to "orthodox" in U.S. English. "Haredi" is usually translated as "ultra-orthodox."

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Keeping kosher at an Israeli seder table

2007-04-01T23:09:00.000+03:00

"Where are you for the seder?" is a question Israelis have been asking one another for weeks. The answer can tear apart an entire family. Many couples have to choose between being with one set of inlaws or the other for the Passover seder. Parents of adult children can face the same dilemma in reverse, torn between their various offspring.

Our family is lucky this year. All sides are invited to my son's place.

My son's housemate telephones. She asks me to prepare two vegetarian appetizers for 30 people, and one vegetarian main dish.

The question of kashrut arises. There will be meat on the table, and most of the vegetarian recipes in my repertoire call for cheese or cream or some other dairy product.

Ordinarily, meat and dairy on the same table would not be a big issue with this group. Some of the people who will be at the seder keep kosher by their own lights, regardless of what is on the table. If they eat meat, they don't have ice cream for desert. This principle would not get anyone a certificate of approval from the official rabbinate, of course, but it can satisfy the inner Jew in an Israeli who feels attached to tradition yet not bound by it.

The kosher status of the seder is an issue because the guests include a couple who have been becoming more religiously observant. Translated from the Hebrew, what they are doing is called "returning to repentance." This is sometimes likened to the born-again phenomenon among certain Christians, but the processes are not the same. For Jews, it is not a matter of salvation through belief. Returning to repentance means observing rules of behavior including keeping kosher.

We don't know if meat and dairy on the same table will offend this couple. Nor do we know how they might react. One religiously observant friend used to bring her own plate to meals at our apartment because we didn't have separate sets of dishes for meat and dairy meals.

In time, word arrives through family channels that the newly observant couple will be ok with the seder as planned.

In Tel Aviv, which some people denounce as a hotbed of rampant secularism and non-kosher abominations, a survey found recently that more than 30 percent of the restaurants are certified kosher. Years ago, in response to data showing that a certain percentage of Israel's Jewish population was religious, someone commented that this percentage was actually the proportion of religion that lives in each Israeli.

We can only guess what percentage of attachment to Judaic tradition lives inside your typical secular Israeli. Whatever the percentage is, it seems to get bigger at Passover, when Jews in Israel gather to retell their versions of the story.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

The whole world wasn't watching

2007-03-25T17:38:00.000+02:00

It is Sunday morning in Tel Aviv, and the Union Jack is still flying at Banana Beach to welcome British soccer fans. The visitors are not in sight. For the past few nights they have been out drinking, and no doubt they are sleeping it off.

Several thousand British soccer fans are in town. They came here to watch the England and Israel national football teams compete Saturday night at the national stadium in Ramat Gan. The game ended in a 0-0 tie.

Before, during, and after the game, the country's television channels broadcast scenes of jovial visitors drinking and singing. The fans praised the local Goldstar beer, the friendliness of Israelis and the beauty of the women. They said "shalom" and learned some other Hebrew words.

One post-game interview had a scripted quality. A British fan told the camera he thought one of the Israeli players was named Ben Zonah, because he heard the Hebrew fans behind him shouting "ben-zonah" throughout the game. Ben-zonah is a Hebrew curse term, literally "son of a whore." People in Israel use it the way English-speakers say "son-of-a-bitch," sometimes as an epithet and other times to say that something is ineffably good.

The game dominated the conversations and consciousness of many Israelis for days, like some monster giant trampling everything in its path. If you weren't a security person or foreign-policy wonk, you may not have known that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was arriving on the day of the game. It was his first visit to Israel.

Many Israelis saw the 0-0 tie as cause for rejoicing. Never mind that the England team was having its worst season in 26 years. Holding a superior European team to a tie is a national victory of sorts. It appeals to a simple, childlike pride which the Israel public displays sometimes when we see ourselves as part of a bigger world. This is what causes Israelis to get excited when the country wins an Olympic gold medal for windsurfing, or when our tennis players make it almost to the finals in foreign tournaments, or when a movie star visits here, or when Israeli performers appear at Eurovision. These events put us on the map, which is something that not all Middle Eastern mapmakers are prepared to do.

In the post-tie glow, a television presenter said Sunday morning that it was too bad that the two teams hadn't put the competition aside for a moment. The whole world was watching, she said, and this presented a special chance to focus on what unites us and what we share in common. Her co-presenter changed the subject.

Actually, the whole world wasn't watching.

Had the world been watching, it probably wouldn't have known that last week's good-natured invasion by the British soccer fans is in striking contrast to what once went on here. At the height of the British presence, 60 years ago, some 100,000 of King George VI's soldiers were stationed here---one for every three Jewish males. They didn't call it an occupation. It was part of the British Mandate, granted by the League of Nations after World War I. Enough blood was shed in 1947 to persuade the British to leave. They turned the problem over to the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The rest is history---or rather two histories, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs.

The only times when the whole world watches now are when something horrendous happens. Most of the time, the whole world can't see what's going on here.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

More flowers: Anemones, with helicopter

2007-03-23T14:08:00.000+02:00

A friend sent me this photo, made from a second helicopter. The pilots were flying over southern Israel, between Lahav and Amatsia, during the first week in March.

The wildflowers are anemones, and it's illegal to pick them.

The Hebrew name for anemone is calanit. The plural is calaniot, and this is the title of a song that became an unofficial Israeli anthem.

Shoshana Damari, who was referred to as the queen of Israeli song and compared to Edith Piaf, started performing "Calaniot" in 1954. Damari died last year at 83, and now the song is played mainly to evoke nostalgia.

If YouTube doesn't disable this link, you can hear Damari singing "Calaniot" and see some Jerusalem calaniot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaL7mllWVG4

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Of course it is OK to criticize Israel

2007-03-21T01:27:00.001+02:00

A poll shows Israeli Jews think it is OK for Diaspora Jews to criticize Israel. Well of course, they are going to do it anyhow, and Israeli Jews criticize Israel too. The poll did not ask if anyone in Israel is obligated to pay attention to this criticism, or which criticism we should listen to. Norman Finkelstein and the Satmar Hassidim want us to disband and go home and the Jewish Voice for Peace think it's OK for us to stay here as long as we are ruled by Arabs. The Lubavitcher Rebbe and Mort Klein want us to conquer Jordan and Western Iraq. The Progressive Jews want to allow women to pray at the Wailing Wall, and the Orthodox US Jews want us to prohibit women from travelling on buses with men.

Which Jews should we listen to?

An old woman who lived alone is buried at a kibbutz

2007-03-17T19:12:00.000+02:00

Above: Towing a glider to takeoff at the Hill of Moreh. (Megiddo Gliding Club archive)

We are visiting at a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, and a friend says he has to go up to the cemetery for a funeral at 2 p.m. He wonders if other people will show up.

The person they are burying is an old woman who lived alone for many years, and Friday at 2 p.m. is not prime time for any event at the kibbutz except maybe a nap.

Younger members may not have known the woman who died, although she had been active in kibbutz affairs.

Talking about her, we learn that her father was Max Beer. Our kibbutz friend mentions the family connection with the kind of esteem that others may attach to names of celebrities or rich people.

Beer was a prominent member of the Social Democratic movement in Europe. He wrote books.

Beer found it necessary to change countries a number of times. Born in Galicia in 1864, he emigrated in 1889 to Germany, where he was imprisoned in 1893-94 under the imperial press law. He moved to England, which 20 years later sent him back to Germany as a World War I enemy alien. He worked at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in 1927-29. In 1933, with the rise of the Nazis, he emigrated from Germany to England, this time for keeps. He died in London in 1943.

Beer wrote histories of socialism, and biographies of Jean Jaures and Karl Marx. He wrote a foreword to an edition of Rosa Luxemburg's letters from prison. You can still buy his works. At this writing in mid-March 2007, Amazon offers 10 of his titles for sale. Amazon lists five other titles as currently unavailable.

The friend who tells us the story of Beer's daughter does not know what first brought her to the kibbutz. By the early 1940s, her lifetime connection with the place was already sealed.

She became the lover of a kibbutz member. In 1942, during clandestine military training, he died in a glider accident on the nearby Hill of Moreh. His death left her with their seven-month-old son. The son grew up and eventually moved away from the kibbutz. The mother stayed until her death the other day at age 94.

The past can seem especially close in the Jezreel Valley. This area, also known as the Plain of Esdraelon, is where the biblical Gideon and his 300 warriors defeated an entire Midianite army, and where Orde Wingate taught Jews to emulate Gideon's tactics in the 1930s. The Hill of Moreh, where the fatal 1942 glider accident took place, is where the Philistines encamped before defeating King Saul. The Israel Gliding Club has long since stopped soaring from the Hill of Moreh. The club moved to Megiddo. This is where major battles have been fought over the centuries, and where some people believe the final battle of Armageddon will take place some day.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

The voice of the Turtle Dove

2007-03-14T17:18:00.001+02:00

A picture is worth a lot of words. Spring has sprung in Israel.

Under one Tel Aviv roof

2007-03-06T14:01:00.000+02:00

Apartment-owners in the four-story Tel Aviv building where I live are trying to form a house committee.

A house committee is an Israeli institution, authorized by law. It is empowered to collect money from residents to pay for common needs, big and small. These can include washing the stairs once a week, or renovating an entire building.

We meet to talk about it.

Until recently, I was the only apartment-owner in the building. The 10 other apartments were rental properties, owned by heirs of the person who put up the building in the 1930s. Last year the landlords started selling their property, apartment by apartment. Now we have new residents.

We go around the table, each neighbor taking a few minutes to state what they want or don't want.

It turns out that English is the group's only common language. A couple from Paris don't understand Hebrew, and most of us don't speak French.

The Parisians are part of a wave of newcomers from France. Anti-Jewish violence has been on the rise in recent years in the land of liberty, equality and fraternity. In our Tel Aviv neighborhood, the signs in some real estate agencies are only in French---no Hebrew, no English, no Russian, only French. You hear people speaking French on the streets and in the supermarket.

Almost everyone at our meeting seems to want something different.

One neighbor brings up the possibility of installing an elevator, as a way to raise the values of the apartments.

The youngest apartment-owner, who is in his final university semester, notes that the building facade needs fixing up.

Another neighbor is concerned about the structure's vulnerability to earthquakes. He wonders if we can take advantage of government aid that is available for reinforcing older buildings such as ours. Israel's location along the Syrian-African rift virtually assures another Big One in the future, like the deadly quakes of 1759, 1837 and 1927.

The French couple want to make the building look better from the street. This comes first, she says. He agrees.

Another apartment-owner's principal concern is that the front door doesn't lock and the intercom system doesn't work. She worries about personal security.

It looks like Israel in a nutshell. Even under the same roof, people have divergent priorities---money, security, outward appearance---and nothing will be achieved unless someone volunteers.

In the end, we agree that studio apartments will pay 25 shekels a month (almost $6 at current exchange rates) and larger apartments will pay 60 shekels (almost $14.30). This will give us enough to pay for weekly cleaning of the stairs and entrance. It will buy electricity to light the staircase and entry. Bigger plans will wait until we know each other more.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

A diplomat reacts to Israel's scandals

2007-02-22T14:54:00.000+02:00

Talk to an Israeli about our recent wave of scandals and official resignations and you will hear expressions of outrage or dismay.

A newspaper editorial-page cartoon, above, shows three deposed officials. The Hebrew sign on the empty chair states, "Reserved." The question is who will be next to fall.

The figures in the cartoon are, from left, former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, the highest official so far to resign in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war; former Justice Minister Haim Ramon, convicted of kissing a woman against her will; and former Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi, who stepped down only hours after an investigative commission reported on underworld penetration of law enforcement.

Various groups are demanding that others resign, including our prime minister, our defense minister and our president. Our president, accused of rape, refuses to resign. He faces a hearing May 2 to determine whether he is to be indicted. Meanwhile, he is on a three-month leave of absence.

Israelis have been saying that these cases embarrass and depress them. They express concern about how the revelations may be affecting the country's youth. Polls show the public is worried about corruption and dissatisfied with its leaders.

I have encountered only one person who has a good word to say about what has been going on. As you might expect, this person is not an Israeli. He is a diplomat in a western embassy, a professional analyst who has spent the past few years observing Israel. In conversation, he sums up what he has learned about us.

"I'm impressed," he says. What impresses him, he explains, is that Israel has shown that it is prepared to call its highest officials to account.

"Other countries don't do this," he adds. He mentions the investigations of former Prime Minister Sharon and his two sons. He cites other examples including the former justice minister's conviction on sex-offense charges as well as the case against the president.

Maybe some of the accused Israelis did what their accusers claim, I suggest.

"That's not the point," says the foreign analyst. "The point is that no one is above the law here."

This makes Israel different from other countries, he repeats.

Who sees our reality more clearly? Is it Israel's disgusted citizens, whose involvement makes them sensitive to corruption and failure? Or is it the embassy analyst? His emotional distance allows him to perceive Israel's strength in dealing with its officials' shortcomings.

The foreign analyst, who is heading to another Middle East posting, offers another observation about Israel. Things change fast here, he says.

He gives a non-political example of how this can affect what we think we see. A store will go out of business, and almost immediately a new shop with entirely different merchandise will open in the same place. No sign remains of what had been there only days before.

Israelis are used to a fast pace in public life, too. This may be one reason that few people take to the streets in protest while polls show that many harbor strong feelings. Israelis know that the problem of the day may have a short life, and that something new and surprising could happen tomorrow.

--- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Send Flowers- From Israel

2007-02-14T14:02:00.000+02:00

Israel is one of the leading exporters of flowers and related agricultural products - It is a fact: Israel is third in the world in exporting flowers to the EC countries. You can also order Israeli flowers in the USA. Israeli flower export is a $200 million annual business. It seems unlikely that our arid climate could be growing flowers to compete with Holland, but it is true. Hothouses, hi-tech innovation and ingenious irrigation schemes make up for lack of water and help take advantage of our long sunlit days to produce flowers in abundance in winter, in time for Valentine's day. Continued here

Pro-Palestinian groups are trying to boycott Israeli flower export, an evil Zionist plot, on the pretext that they are grown in "the territories." However, most Israeli produce, including flowers, is grown inside Israel proper. The Israeli flower export industry began in the late 1950s, when the West Bank was part of Jordan and Gaza was held by Egypt.

So if you support Israel but do not live here, make a point of asking for flowers imported from Israel. Check that the flowers have a bar code ending 7 290.

I confess to having played a tiny part in this Zionist conspiracy. My parents were anxious to make a special bar mitzvah celebration for me. Our family was not rich, but all the other kids at my Hebrew school had fancy bar mitzvot. Mine could not be quite as fancy, but it would be special. An uncle in Israel had a friend who wanted to see if it was possible to export flowers by air to the United States. My mother was a flower freak. With some difficulty, she arranged to have dozens of bouquets of gladiolii flown in from Israel.

The flowers were flown in by special air freight, and had to be picked up on the day of the event from a freight hangar at Idlewild airport, then undergoing extensive modifications to accomodate jet airliners. We set off for the airport in our little second hand green two tone Nash Rambler, a vehicle that had seen better days. On the way, my father had picked up a Yiddish comedian, who was also to appear at the Bar Mitzvah.

Searching for the obscure hangar, our route took us across several runways. Crossing one of them, an automatic gate went down ahead. My father tried to put the car in reverse and back out. The little Nash Rambler would not reverse. In fact, it would not move. A gate went down behind us. Presently, a DC-6 airliner came taxiing down the runway, headed for our car. This was a source of a certain amount of anxiety. The DC-6 was not large compared to today's jumbo jets, but it was more than a match for a little green Nash Rambler. The plane stopped, and just stood there impatiently, its propellors whirring about expectantly. Eventually, the rear gate was opened, the car was pushed off the runway and coaxed back to functionality. Naturally, the comedian had to repeat and embellish this story at the bar mitzvah banquet.

Happy Valentine's day. Don't forget to send flowers - From Israel.
Ami Isseroff

Hershl - A Jewish success story

2007-02-10T15:38:00.001+02:00

(How Jews who are vociferously against Israel appear from an Israeli perspective)

Harry Schweig, known in the Jewish faith as Tzvi or Hershl, was a failure at 33. He lived at home with his mother. He lectured in Political Science and Cultural Globalization at the University of Podunk on the Styx. He could talk for hours about Jungian themes in the post-structural analysis of the depletion of the ozone layer, and discourse at length about the metanarrative, without ever being able to define it. In brief, he was the modern day incarnation of the nerd, first immortalized perhaps by P.G. Wodehouse over 80 years ago in the timid person of Mr. Fink-Nottle. Instead of newts, Hershl had political science and cultural globalization.

Hershl's was a dull existence indeed. He was not the life of the party. He wasn't even the death of the party. When he entered or left a roomful of partygoers, it made no difference. He was transparent, invisible. Long haired coeds wearing tight jeans did not hang on his every word or stare admiringly at him with their large blue eyes. In fact, they shunned his company. He drifted from university to university, publishing desultory papers in obscure journals. Hershl longed for success, recognition, tenure, women, lecture invitations, but all these accolades went to other laborers in the vineyards of academia.

P.G. Wodehouse was the creator the memorable Bertram Wooster and his estimable valet, Jeeves. That pair were forever engaged in advancing the amatory and other careers of various people like Fink-Nottle and our unfortunate Mr. Schweig. For Schweig, there was no to be no Jeeves who would find a magic solution to his predicament. But Schweig rescued himself.

The Lord often helps those who are bereft of other hope, and sometimes inspiration comes from other quarters. Whatever the source, one day Hershl had an epiphany. Hershl's Jewishness was nominal. He knew less about Judaism than he did about Shintoism. Being Jewish was another bad card dealt him by the deck of fortune, like his thinning hair and his expanding waistline and receding chin. It was irksome. That Israel place kept coming up in the news and reminding him -- and others -- of his Jewishness. He became convinced that his Jewishness was a bothersome appendage that prevented his advancement. He toyed with the idea of changing his name to Harold Stanley, but decided on a better plan instead.

While reading the ancient book, "The Art of War," by the venerable Sun Tzu, it occurred to Hershl that a liability can be turned into an asset, a weakness into a strongpoint. He scrapped the fourth revision of "The politics of meaninglessness according to Lyotard and the post-structuralist metanarrative" and began writing:

"Israel is an apartheid state. As a Jew I must disociate myself from the evil policies of the well-poisoning and blood drinking Zionists. Israel is a historical mistake. Zionism is racism. Plan Daled was a Zionist plot for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine..."

And so on, in that vein. Hershl was not overburdened with any knowledge of the Middle East or Israel, but he had an abundant supply of periodicals containing politically correct articles that summarized the work of authors who had summarized the work of other authors, who sumarized the work of others who had invented history. These served as a never-failing source of inspiration.

When the work was done, Hershl spiced it up with references to globalization, metanarrative, colonialism and neo-conservatives, added a few war criminals here and there, and sent it off to a prominent journal. Hershl's article was published with the following lede:

A prominent Jewish intellectual, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, speaks out against Israeli policies and the oppressive colonialist warmonger Zionist occupation...

Hershl's article became a classic, reprinted in anthologies entitled "Jews speak out against Israel" and "Jews for Justice in the Middle East," posted on the Web and linked from Web sites such as Radioislam, Stormfront and other bastions of liberal thought.

By reading reams of fashionable review articles, Hershl became a "Middle East Expert." He could explain to you why, if Hamas kill Fatah, that is the fault of Israel, and why, if Fatah steal from Palestinians, that is likewise Israel's fault. He could expound on colonialist themes in the Talmud, and he was a past-master at inventing quotes of David Ben-Gurion and Ariel Sharon. "David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary, 'We will grind the bones of the Arabs of Palestine to make our bread.' Ariel Sharon said 'We will drink the blood of the Palestinian Arabs.'" Hershl could explain that suicide bombings were due to Israeli policy and the 9-11 attacks were a plot by the Mossad. Hershl could explain that the Duvdevani unit of the IDF was worse than the Tottenkopf SS. He had read it in a Counterpunch article, so it must be true. "Not in my name!" exclaimed Hershl.

Hershl expanded his article into a book, "How the Zionist conspiracy accomplished the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," and then another book, "Son of How the Zionist conspiracy accomplished the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" and "How the Zionist conspiracy accomplished the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Returns." Zionist organizations branded him a traitor and an apostate, increasing his cachet among the connoisseurs of anti-Zionism. The Guardian and the New York Times defended him as a "Liberal."

Hershl visited Beirut and was photographed shaking hands with Hassan Nasrallah. He travelled to Iran and kissed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on both cheeks, declaring that the Holocaust never happened, and was all an invention of the Zionist conspiracy.

Success was his at last. The telephone did not stop ringing. Hershl's lecture calendar was full. Everywhere he went, Hershl told about the difficulties experienced by a Jew who speaks out against Israel. He explained that the Zionist establishment would not let him speak. He explained it in the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. He appeared on television and expatiated on the attempts of the Israel Lobby to ban him to oblivion. He was featured on the BBC, on 60 minutes and PBS. Thanks to Hershl, everyone, everywhere in the English speaking world, got to know that the Zionist lobby quashed dissent.

Lissome females in jeans willingly removed those garments and others in the service of intellectual inspiration for the courageous anti-Zionist don of Podunk on the Styx. He was offered tenure, but turned it down for a post at a more prestigious university.

You are looking for a moral? Comeuppance? Forget it. Look in the book of Job. Hershl the anti-Israel Jew lived happily ever after, enjoying the accolades of the wise and the fruits of his endeavors.

Ami Isseroff

Robert F. Drinan, 1920-2007

2007-02-04T23:38:00.000+02:00

At this weblog devoted to life in Israel, it's appropriate to note the passing of Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit priest who died Jan. 28 at age 86 in Washington, D.C.

He was a friend of Israel and the Jewish people.

Drinan's obituaries have emphasized other aspects of his extraordinary career. In 1970, Drinan became the first priest elected as a voting member of the U.S. Congress. He is remembered as an early critic of the U.S. war in Vietnam, and as the first member of Congress to file a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.

Almost none of the media coverage after his death mentioned that he was a leading voice in the human-rights campaign on behalf of Jews in the former Soviet Union. In 1972 he co-founded the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. He chaired an international committee for the release of Natan (then Anatoly) Sharansky.

Drinan also served on the advisory board of the activist Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. This was a self-styled "grassroots" movement that favored direct action over the cautious approach taken by the Jewish establishment. This group which Drinan chose to support could be described as militant, in the meaning which "militant" had before it became a post-9/11 euphemism for violence and terror.

Also generally unmentioned in Drinan's obituaries is his 1997 book, Honor The Promise: America’s Commitment to Israel. The journal Foreign Affairs described it as a "passionate pro-Zionist essay by the Massachusetts Congressman and Catholic priest. Father Drinan argues that anti-Semitism has been transformed in the Third World and the United Nations into anti-Zionism."

Drinan took stands on principle, at times in conflict with the teachings of his church. He opposed constitutional amendments to outlaw abortion and permit prayer in public schools. He once called himself a "moral architect" who helped shape policy. Critics referred to him as "the mad monk."

Drinan won five elections for Congress. He was undefeated until Pope John Paul II ordered him in 1980 to abandon politics or give up the priesthood.

After Drinan announced that he would be leaving Congress, "with regret and pain," friends in the Washington Jewish community organized a simple luncheon in his honor. Genuine affection filled the room. It was not a happy farewell. The speaker from the Jewish community had tears in his eyes.

On leaving Congress, Drinan returned to academic life. He taught human rights, legal ethics and constitutional law at Georgetown University. He continued to write books.

From left: Professor J. David Bleich of Yeshiva University's law school, Father Drinan, and Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl of UCLA School of Law, at a program on "Tolerance from the Religious Perspective."

Colman McCarthy, director of the Center for Teaching Peace, wrote in The Washington Post that Drinan "saved his most fiery writing for the National Catholic Reporter, the progressive weekly to which he contributed a regular column."

Drinan commented on Catholic-Jewish relations in his National Catholic Reporter column Feb. 28, 2003:

"John Paul II has demonstrated more understanding for the Jewish community than any pope in history. He has seldom, if ever, publicly recalled his personal reactions to what happened [in the Holocaust]. But he has recognized the state of Israel after all his predecessors, going back to 1948, refused to do so. He has tried to implement the Vatican II decree on Christian-Jewish relations published in 1965. He has taken several other initiatives.

"But at the end of his pontificate, the residue of anti-Semitism, accumulated in centuries of disdain for Jews by Christians, still remains. It is sometimes not directly articulated, but expressed covertly. It is a sort of ethnic, tribal, class animosity that is more a vaguely inherited bias or prejudice, transmitted silently by an unseen, unspoken and odorless feeling."

Drinan ended that column by quoting from a 1977 “Declaration of Repentance” issued by the Catholic bishops of France:

“We confess this sin. We beg God’s pardon, and we call upon the Jewish people to hear our words of repentance.”

Drinan wrote that those words "are still painfully true."

The Georgetown University Law Center has set up an electronic memorial for remembrances of Father Drinan.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Guest blogger: Eilat (II)

2007-02-03T21:07:00.001+02:00

by Ernest Stock

I came back from a long weekend in Eilat the day before the explosive charge went off that killed three of its citizens. All reports emphasized that the tourist sites were a good distance away from the blast and were not affected. But there was a connection. The victims operated the bakery which supplied the fresh bread and rolls to the hotels for their guests' breakfast.

And there's reason to fear that Monday's suicide bomber shattered more than the storefront in a placid neighborhood at Israel's southern resort, and the lives of the men who worked in it.

What had brought me and my wife to Eilat that Friday morning was the Israel Chamber Orchestra's annual classical chamber music festival that took place at the Royal Beach Hotel. The place was fully booked, and its spacious banquet hall reverberated to exquisite sounds three times a day. In between concerts, musicians, soloists and music lovers mingled on the beach or at the poolside; the January sun was warm enough for the hardier ones among us to test the water.

Saturday evening's performance concluded with a dazzling rendition of Johann Strauss waltzes, which the Hungarian guest conductor, Gabor Hollerung, prefaced with some remarks. The waltzes, he said, expressed the composer's nostalgia for the dream that was late 19th century Vienna; he was already full of foreboding that it would not last. Then the conductor told the Israeli audience that for him Eilat was also a dream, a peaceable idyll in a strife-torn part of the world. It was his prayer that it would last for many more years to come. Then he mounted the podium.

Less than two days later, the bomber struck.

Let's hear it for Israeli parrots

2007-02-02T17:46:00.000+02:00

Parrots, Jews and Israel show up together on the Internet largely in two contexts. They figure prominently in Jewish jokes ("Wait 'til you see the odds we get on Simchat Torah ..." "Bird, what bird? Oh, that bird! It was delicious") and in highly negative and hackneyed op-eds:
Continued here (with parrot picture)

Western media parrots narrative on Massacre...

Dhimmi Carter defends his hate book, parrots jihadist propaganda...

Carter has gradually come to parrot their anti-Israel political agenda...

Every time Condoleezza Rice or another of Bush's parrots talks...

Parrots are real birds though, and they are visible in large numbers, outside our apartment, along with more pedestrian swallows and pigeons. The last like to nest in the window sills.

These are not joke parrots, or White House parrots, or Zionist warmonger parrots. They are beautiful green birds. They are Olim Hadashim (new immigrants) from India it seems. Parrots were once apparently native to the land. However, this variety are Drara parrots introduced from India, according to those who know.

All is not bliss however, as some claim the parrots are not Zionist parrots, and do not recognize the right of Israel to exist. There are parrot hawks and parrot doves. Parroting the usual hard line, the hawks proclaim:

The beautiful green Indian parrot called “Drara” has undergone an “incredible multiplication” during the last few years as its predators have rapidly decreased in numbers, Dr Yossi Lasham, an ornithologist, was quoted in the daily, “Yediot Ahronot.” The rich and natural food available all over northern Israel has aided its growth and they have wreaked havoc on the date plantations in Amakim, necessitating authorities to issue directives to adopt measures to control or even reduce their numbers, Dr Lasham told the paper. “Large Drara parrot causes great damage to the cultivators of dates, apples and other fruits,” a senior cultivator, Glozner, from the Beit Shean valley said...“We have identified it as our real enemy. Following the declaration, it would be possible to make a thinning process in places where the bird was causing great damage”, the farmer said.

Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of Strategic Threats, will soon issue a strategic threat, directing the Israel military industries to find a solution for the airborne menace.

But before Mr Peretz decides to send the IAF after the enemy, he should hear from the doves too. Tamar Giat, who had a pet parrot, told Yediot Ahronot:

"The Drara parrot is harmless and the only fruit it eats are those given to it.

"The parrots can be easily traced ("followed" in the original, no doubt) flying joyfully in the national parks in Tel Aviv, where there is an ongoing dialogue between those living as pets and those who managed to flee, narrating the sweet life outside the cage,"

Ms Giat does not explain how she believes the parrots existed before people fed them. Perhaps they ate mahn (manna) from heaven. We see them eating little red berries from the trees that surround our building, so they must have adapted fairly rapidly to life in the wild.

The Rabbinate has not yet decided if Drara parrots are Jewish yet. If they are Jewish, they must tithe the fruits and refrain from eating in Jewish fields during shmita years.

The Palestinian authority is considering protesting the incursion of these real Zionist parrots, taking over the airspace of the Palestinian people. They will tolerate only the imaginary ones that infest the pages of Al-Hayyat al Jadida and similar journals.

They are nice looking birds, aren't they?

Ami Isseroff

Ramon: A pretty girl that gets a kiss

2007-02-02T11:42:00.000+02:00

Haaretz takes issue (below) with the verdict in the case of Haim Ramon. What happened here is that a man lost his career because he kissed a girl. That is the bottom line apparently. President Katsav, accused of rape, has yet to be tried. Consensual or not, this was just a kiss.

The punishment does not fit the crime, does it?

Quoth Haaretz:

The verdict in the trial of Haim Ramon marks the beginning of a new age,
and not necessarily a better one, regarding the attitude of the justice
system to sexual offenses.

Actually, the verdict heralds the dawn of a new age in far more than the attitude of the justice system to "offenders." The victim is known only as "Heh" - a letter of the alphabet. Such letters are becoming popular Hebrew names apparently, since there is also an "Aleph" who complains she was raped by the President of Israel. Don't call your little girls by such names, as such females are liable to sexual harassment it seems. Choose different names for your daughters.

Continued

Kidding aside, the use of a letter for the plaintiff's name is the protection afforded to victims of sex crimes, so that they are not stigmatized by society. It is appropriate for rape cases, and similar judicial procedings. But a kiss, was after all, just a kiss, and not indecent assault, at least in popular understanding. A kiss is now categorized, according to Israeli law, as a crime worse than bribery or violent assault or murder. The names of murder victims are published. The names of kiss victims are not.

Kiss victims, like rape victims, appear on Israeli television with their faces blurred over and their voices distorted beyond recognition, their words rendered in subtitles.

"Gvi zvesthem yom sheshmhi," says the victim. And the subtitle reads, "This is a great day for me." Why do they bother giving the voice? She could be saying "I made the whole thing up" for all we can tell.

Daughters may now sue their fathers for indecent assault. Consider the case of Bet, a young lady aged 25, daughter of Hayim from Holon, who will appear on Israeli TV next year with her face blurred over, and give her version of long past events, rendered by subtitles:

Last year I saw home videos of me as an infant. I was totally shocked. My father kissed me without my permission when I was two years old. He kissed me on the belly too. He tickled me and said "Metuka Sheli" (my sweet one). All this was done without my consent. I was a helpless infant. Can't you see me crying in the video? I demand justice! The old goat has to be locked up.

The case will hinge on the question, considered by the learned justices, of whether "Metuka Sheli" was a fatherly term of endearment or not. The victim will swear on oath that at the time she believed "Metuka Sheli" was dangerous libidinous innuendo with sexual overtones. Neighbors will testify that the defendant called his wife by the same term. Poor old Hayim will get 3-5 in Maasiyahu prison with no conjugal visits. Conjugal visits are not for sex perverts. They are only for people like Yigal Amir, who murder Prime Ministers.

Those who are worried about the demographic problem in Israel, should consider the effect of this verdict, which makes kissing a crime.

Ramon should have been defended by the great, though fictional attorney, Horace Rumpole. Some legal references for the consideration of the learned justices of the appeals court:

A pretty girl that gets a kiss,
And goes and tells her mother;
Has done a very naughty thing,
And don't deserve another.

And, from the bard himself:

"Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt." - W. Shakespeare.

Ami Isseroff

Strictness bordering on harassment

By Haaretz Editorial
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/820163.html

The verdict in the trial of Haim Ramon marks the beginning of a new age, and not necessarily a better one, regarding the attitude of the justice system to sexual offenses. On the one hand, the Ramon verdict will make it easier for a woman to lodge a complaint in cases that until now were considered borderline. On the other hand, defining Haim Ramon as a sex offender and a non-consensual kiss as a sexual crime opens too wide a door and may blur the boundaries between real sexual crimes and inappropriate behavior. To a great extent, detached from the sexual permissiveness and freedom in society, the judges ruled that "a kiss on the mouth with the tongue that is non-consensual is clearly a sexual offense that needs no proof. We are not dealing with sexual harassment, not with a gray area... but rather with an intrusive, damaging and humiliating act... a kiss that is non-consensual arouses repulsion, disgust, revulsion." These statements appear detached from the times and cultural context, as if they were written in a different society.

Ramon's conduct as described in the verdict is the vulgar and unacceptable behavior of a man in authority, who according to the judges did not think he needed the soldier's consent for the kiss. The fact that he lied in court is itself serious. However, it is a long road from this to criminal conviction. It seems that from the moment the soldier was persuaded to register a complaint, and the appropriate clause in the law was found, and from the moment the attorney general decided to issue the indictment, the road to conviction was paved, perhaps too smoothly.

The question is not whether Haim Ramon kissed the soldier against her will and whether this behavior is to be tolerated when it comes to a government minister, but rather whether the court is the appropriate place to discuss behavioral norms and whether the ease with which Ramon is defined as a sexual offender does not hold some risk of confusion between real criminals and those whose behavior is intolerable.

Israeli society seems to have come a long way from the total disparagement of cases of sexual harassment to strictness in this regard, which sometimes, as in this case, itself borders on harassment.

The offenses of which President Moshe Katsav is suspected are clearly sexual, and have components of long-term coercion, aggression and humiliation, and secretiveness, while the case of Ramon touches more on relationships between men and women, on a misunderstanding, on the boundaries of flirtation, matters that it is difficult for the court to rule on, if at all. The strict attitude taken with Ramon and the defining him as a sex offender might engender a sense of persecution and contempt for the concepts of sexual attack in general.

Criminal law should have absented itself from this case, and bringing it to court involves treatment by the investigative and prosecutory authorities that is too energetic and pressured, even in the opinion of the judges. This is another aspect of the transformation of Israeli society into a litigious one ad nauseum, and the giving over of issues of morals and behavior to judges, as if their opinion on the question of what is disgusting and repulsive is more important than that of any other person.

Anti-Zionist, not non-Zionist

2007-02-01T18:36:00.000+02:00

In a post about a suicide bombing that killed three Israeli Jews in Eilat on Jan. 29, I referred to Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv as "anti-Zionist." The post appeared at ZioNation, and at Israel: Like This, As If.

A reader has taken me to task for referring to Rabbi Eliashiv as "anti-Zionist."
This reader writes:

"I am neither a supporter nor a follower of Rabbi Eliashiv, but I think your dig at him was somewhat unjustified.

"Firstly, he is not a Zionist, but neither is he an anti-Zionist, as you state. He is not Neturei Karta, but the spiritual leader of part of Agudat Yisrael, a party which has members in the Knesset and supports (sort of) the government."

No dig was intended. I would like to explain the use of the term "anti-Zionist."

Zionism, reduced to its essence, is the assertion that Jews have national rights.

A Jew who does not agree with this assertion is, by definition, an anti-Zionist.

This definition may seem harsh, or arbitrary. It is both.

It reflects the harshness and the arbitrariness of the world in which Jews have lived, either as a minority without the rights of others, or as a nation battling enemies who reject these rights.

"Non-Zionist" is not a label to apply to a Jew. Jews cannot credibly profess to be agnostic on the question of whether they should be entitled to rights.

It can be added that Zionism is what provokes the question and sets its terms.

If no one claimed that Jews have national rights, there might be no question to debate. The claim has been put, though, and only two answers are possible: Yes, or no.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Eilat: No longer the end of the world

2007-01-29T22:39:00.000+02:00

Until today, Israel's southernmost city of Eilat seemed like a world apart. To Israelis, it was mainly a holiday getaway, or the last Jewish outpost on a trip to the Sinai. It had a nightclub called "The end of the world" and a street bearing the same name. It was a place separate from the tensions and dangers that can interfere with ordinary life elsewhere in the country.

What changed today is that a suicide bomber killed three people in Eilat. It was the Red Sea resort's first suicide bombing.

More than 99 percent of Israelis don't live in Eilat. Their homes are in the center and north of Israel, beyond the rugged hills and desert that separate Eilat from the rest of the country. To them, the bombing is a message that this remote city is no longer a refuge where you can get away from it all.

The fact that the bombing took place in a neighborhood away from Eilat's hotel district is not much comfort for the local tourist industry. Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog is rushing from one media outlet to another to assure the world that Eilat is a safe place to visit.

Only last week some Israelis received an e-mail alert noting that Rabbi Josef Shalom Eliashiv, a leading anti-Zionist rabbinic authority, has ruled that under Jewish law Eilat is not part of the Land of Israel. This ruling has implications for the observance of holy days and festivals in Eilat. A blogger who noted this offers the opinion today's attack was a divinely directed event, aided by terrorists, to remind us that Eilat "is just as much Israel as Jerusalem, Sderot, Tel Aviv, Haifa and everywhere else."

"Sometimes we need our enemies to remind us of who we are," he wrote.

Whether or not anyone's god was a partner in the murders today, three anti-Israel groups are claiming joint responsibility. One of these three, the Islamic Jihad, is said to have been planning this attack for the past year.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

President Katzav speaks in code. We get it.

2007-01-28T00:37:00.000+02:00

Haaretz's editorial-page cartoon this weekend shows Attorney General Menahem Mazuz in his office with a sign on his desk stating, "I am a Mizrahi."

If this seems obscure, it is because the message is in code, Israel-style. Ordinary Israelis understand this code, which is based on words that don't need to be spoken because everyone knows what the speaker is trying to tell us.

Israelis understand that this cartoon refers to an aspect of the scandal surrounding President Moshe Katzav.

International media have reported on the political and judicial aspects of the case. The president faces indictment on charges of rape, sexual harassment and other crimes.

The aspect on which the Haaretz cartoon is commenting has been absent from major international coverage so far.

The cartoon alludes to Katzav's assertion, also in Israeli code, that an ethnically motivated conspiracy is conducting a witch-hunt against him.

On Jan. 24, in a 40-minute monologue on television, Katzav charged that those who have been conspiring against him include the news media, the prosecution, the police, unnamed elites, and people born with silver spoons in their mouths. Katsav said the reason for this is that media people could not accept his election as president six and one-half years ago.

Decoded, this means that Katzav wants Israelis to believe that the cause of his being investigated is his Mizrahi origin, and that that therefore he is a victim of Ashkenazi prejudice.

"Mizrahi" denotes Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. It literally means "eastern" or "oriental." It distinguishes them from Ashkenazi Jews, who are of western origin. "Ashkenazi" literally means German, but it applies to Jews from elsewhere in Europe too.

Katzav did not need to use these terms in his televised presentation to the nation. It was enough to remind us that he began life in Israel in an immigrant camp, and to blame an elitist clique and the media.

Avirama Golan of Haaretz picked up on the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi angle. At the center of Katzav's speech, she wrote, was the good versus the bad and "the light-skinned versus the dark-skinned, the elite versus the undesirable others."

"Unfortunately," Golan wrote, "the latent message of Katsav's speech was that he is nothing but an innocent boy from the Kastina transit camp, whom no one wants to see in the President's Residence."

Daniel Ben-Simon quoted Zion Amir, one of Katzav's lawyers: "Ask anyone who was in a ma'abara [an immigrant camp], and he'll tell you that the president is right. That he really is a victim of those elites who don't want people like him anywhere. Today it's him. Tomorrow it's you or someone else. Think about it."

Ben-Simon, who is of Moroccan origin, evidently thought about it. A few nights later he said on television that after Katzav 's speech he had almost the same bad feeling he would feel after a terrorist bombing. Katzav, he said, was playing on the emotions of a couple of million Israelis at the bottom of the economic ladder, and the television speech was like a call to civil war. Ben-Simon likened Katzav to a suicide bomber carrying an explosive belt.

Ben Caspit, a Maariv columnist, commented that it didn't bother the president to let the evil genie of ethnic rivalry out of the bottle.

Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, the Hungarian-born former justice minister, said Katzav has added sin to crime by fostering ethnic antagonism. Lapid said he would not want to live in a country ruled by the prejudices that Katsav was attributing to Israel.

Mazuz, the attorney general who is bringing the case against Katzav, was born in Tunisia. In noting Mazuz's Mizrahi identity, the cartoon in Haaretz points out the hollowness of the president's suggestion that ethnic prejudice is the only reason he is being investigated.

Katzav is on leave of absence now. The acting president of the country is Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, who is of Iraqi heritage.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv
cross-posted at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000564.htm

Hawking helps out

2007-01-24T14:57:00.000+02:00

Stephen Hawking, holder of the Cambridge mathematics chair that once was Isaac Newton's, visited Israel last month.

In a program organized by the British Council, Hawking met with students, scientists and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He lectured in Jerusalem and answered questions on a popular Israeli television interview show. He talked with Palestinian students and spoke in Ramallah.

One item that does not appear on the official schedule released by the British Council is Hawking's starring role in a public-service television announcement aimed at raising awareness of efforts to help disabled people in Israel.

Hawking delivers the message in his familiar synthesized voice:

"In 20 years, Man may be able to live on the moon.

"In 40 years, we may get to Mars.

"During the next 400 years we may be able to leave the solar system and head for the stars.

"But meanwhile ---

"---meanwhile, we would like to be able to go to the supermarket, the cinema, and restaurants."

Short and to the point, less than 40 seconds, it began appearing on Israeli television channels last week.

You can watch it at YouTube or via the site of Access Israel, the non-profit group for which Hawking made the video.

The video results from an initiative of Geller-Nessis Leo Burnett, a Tel Aviv agency which approached Hawking and asked him to help out on behalf of Access Israel.

Tali Milchberg, art director of the project, said Hawking's script was Israeli-written. A local photographer made the still pictures of Hawking that appear in the video.

After the taping, the agency published a newspaper advertisement stating, "Thank you, Professor Hawking."

"One need not lose hope," Hawking has written on his own website. He has lived for more than 40 years with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disabling disease which so far has no cure.

He discussed this and other personal matters in a television interview with Yair Lapid on Israel Channel 2, also available on YouTube.

-- Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

LINKS in this post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X40Z3RskgAA
http://www.arcmedia.co.il/Negishut/Hoking/
http://www.hawking.org.uk/disable/dindex.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaiPw6xuPE
http://www.hawking.org.uk/

A friend in need

2007-01-17T23:29:00.000+02:00

Veterans of an Israel paratroop company that fought in Lebanon more than two decades ago received an urgent appeal for help yesterday.

The appeal came from the former company clerk, now a suburban working mother. She sent e-mails to the entire unit about the plight of one of their 1980s comrades-in-arms who recently encountered disastrous business reverses.

To keep from losing everything including his home, this ex-fighter needs to come up with lots of money in the next few days. He seeks loans, not gifts.

Soldiers who have learned to trust each other with their lives can make requests like this. He will pay back the loans after he gets back on his feet, the company clerk wrote.

A local business operator who was also a paratrooper in Lebanon in the mid-1980s expressed hope that by now some of the people from that unit have made enough money to bail out their buddy. This is probably not the case, though. The amounts needed approach $90,000.

This story has a particular poignancy.

What happened is this. The soldier who is in trouble today did not return to private life after Lebanon. While others from that company were making their way in the civilian world, he stayed in the army. He served in an elite covert unit where he laid his life on the line many times.

After 20 years in the army, he took his pension and went into business, supplying doors and windows for buildings. He invested his pension and everything else he had in the business. It prospered.

Not long ago a major customer declared bankruptcy and disappeared. This set in motion a classic sequence. Now he cannot fill orders or buy new merchandise, and the banks are closing in. He owes money to four Israeli banks. These banks have lately been spending handsomely on advertising to convince us that they are friendly and helpful to customers, but this will not lessen their insistence on putting him out of business next week.

Declaring bankruptcy is not an option for him. He intends to stay in his community and raise his children there.

That's the problem, in a nutshell. So, dear reader, if you think you have any part of the solution, feel free to ask me how to get in touch with this brave soldier to whom all Israelis owe a lot.

---Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

A nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live there

2007-01-17T16:18:00.000+02:00

A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there

When I left the USA to live in Israel, I left behind loving and concerned relatives. Every time they hear of terror attacks here, or wars, they are worried for my safety, and the safety of our family. They call, they write. They remind us all diplomatically, but insistently that we have a place of refuge in the great United States.

Many years ago, my friend and room mate, who was from Detroit, was serving in the Suez Canal, during the war of attrition. It was not pleasant or safe. Every time he came home on leave, he had war stories, told from the viewpoint of a laid-back pacifist who did not relish the idea that people were shooting at him, nor the idea that he was shooting at other people. Then one day we saw news about the rate of violent homicide in Detroit. Some quick calculations showed that he was at least twice as likely to get murdered walking down the street in Detroit, as he was likely to meet death from the efforts of our Egyptian neighbors on the Suez Canal.

Many years ago I visited the US for some professional training. We were housed in the dormitories of a most respected American University, hospital and medical schools, in a great American city. We debated the reasons why were told not to leave the grounds unaccompanied under any circumstances, and considered the possibility of a foray to the local entertainment establishment.

"Just formal regulations," offered one of our members. "Nothing to worry about. "

He had almost convinced us, but our deliberations were interrupted by the unmistakeable sound of a gunshot, from which we drew the necessary conclusion.

I remember a visit not long ago to a relative in Queens, N.Y., quite a peaceful place really. This relative lived in a protected "estate" - with a wall, as in medieval times, and a gate, and guard and a checkpoint. The guard at the checkpoint was not an IDF soldier of course, but there is no doubt he served the same function. We were cautioned not to go outside of this compound at night. We were cautioned not to walk around Central Park at night. When we met people in New York, many offered their favorite mugging stories, and some offered stories about anti-Semitic inicidents. Almost all observed that it is very dangerous to live in Israel.

Everyone has their own stories, to be sure, and some of them are not pleasant, but at least we know why we suffer the various dangers of life in Israel.

When the occasion arises, as it frequently does unfortunately, we have gotten many of these telephone calls and letters importuning us to escape the missiles of Saddam Hussein or the bombs of the Hamas or the rockets of the Hezbolla by fleeing to safety in the United States. My sons were reminded of the excellence of institutions of higher learning in the United States as well. All of these offers are politely, if insistently and firmly declined. America is a nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live there. Too dangerous, you see.

Ami Isseroff

Guest blogger: Tel Aviv's taxis

2007-01-17T07:53:00.000+02:00

by Ernest Stock
I gave up driving when I turned 80, and have since been using taxis a good deal. They will get you anywhere in Tel Aviv within 15 minutes or less, are not expensive, and there's no parking problem.

I must have taken about 200 taxis these last two years, and I don't think I've come across the same driver more than once; there's so many of them. And they're somehow all different types and from different backgrounds; there's no single mold that fits the lot.

And yet there are some common characteristics. The minute you enter a cab in Tel Aviv you're in the presence of a proud and vocal individual who feels himself the equal of his passenger. He is not shy in letting you know his views on politics or other subjects, or in drawing you out on yours. But he does this without being obtrusive or aggressive. If you indicate you prefer silence, he'll respect that too. But he'll keep the radio on, for his pleasure, feeling evidently that he has much right to being entertained as his passenger.

Nor is the radio the only voice you will hear during the ride. There is incessant chatter from the company's dispatcher on another speaker, and above it all the driver may, often as not, carry on a private conversation on his cell phone. Actually, "private" is not the right word, because you'll hear about anything from the man's marital problems to how he plans to spend the next weekend. Just yesterday, during a somewhat longer ride from a suburb, I heard my driver give instructions to his wife on how to fend off a persistent caller trying to get the parents to pay their son's debts.

Some drivers are expert players on the stock exchange and during the ride call their brokers. I sometimes try to make mental notes which I forget by the time I get home. The sums involved may be considerable. Indeed, I've heard a driver talk on the phone about a real estate deal in the hundreds of thousands (shekels or dollars, I don't recall which). Still, he thanked me politely when I added a small tip to the fare shown on the meter. (Unlike the New York cabby who some years ago handed me back the quarter I gave him, with a contemptuous, "You need it more than I do, mister.")

In general, one sometimes gets the impression that the man behind the wheel has other things on his mind and that for him driving a cab is not a full-time occupation. Only a woman driver told me she loves it because it relaxes her. On the other hand, a middle-aged male with a Russian accent told me last week that he spends half the year in Moscow doing business, and that during the half he spends here with his family he drives a cab because he is tired of staying home.

Another good thing about taxis in Tel Aviv, by the way, is that you can phone for one
from your home and it will come for you within five minutes.

Visiting Tel Aviv

2007-01-13T20:43:00.000+02:00

About 20 men and women in religious robes appeared on the beach in Tel Aviv the other day. They wore black from head to toe. For a few moments they stood at the water's edge and seemed to be conferring. Then one of the women took off her shoes, raised her skirts above ankle-height and tiptoed into the Mediterranean. The sea is chilly in January, and she entered hesitantly. Another woman followed her into the shallow water, and then two more. The men stayed on the sand, watching, talking among themselves.

Their clerical garments identified them as Christians. They wore the type of soft cap known as a skufia, with a Russian-style pointed top showing that they were from an Orthodox denomination.

A young man in non-religious dress accompanied them. He explained that he and they were part of a Ukrainian group of 52 tourists visiting Israel for one week. They came from Kiev, Odessa and even from places in Russia. They stayed in Jerusalem and traveled to Christian sites around the country. On their final day, they were exploring Tel Aviv.

Before leaving, the visitor responded to a question which locals may ask of tourists: How did he like it here?

"I would like to live here," he said.

By contrast with these Ukrainian Christians, a U.S. Jewish group that was visiting Israel did not make it to the beach in Tel Aviv. This group went to Jerusalem and other parts of the country where ancient Jewish history took place. Their itinerary ignored the first Hebrew city of the modern era.

Standard tourist itineraries treat Tel Aviv as a way station to or from the airport. For Jewish tourists, the Israel Ministry of Tourism suggests a sample 10-day itinerary which proposes Tel Aviv for sightseeing the day before the flight home. The itinerary advises, "See the dazzling New Opera House - part of the Golda Meir Center for the Performing Arts. Visit the Tel Aviv Museum. Admire the Art Deco and Bauhaus architecture of Rothschild Boulevard and revitalized Neve Tzedek. Visit Independence Hall where, in 1948, David Ben Gurion declared the State of Israel. And visit the beautifully restored 4,000-year-old city of Jaffa with its cobblestoned streets lined with artists' galleries and boutiques. Tonight, discover the bustling Tayelet promenade, abuzz with cafes, entertainment and crowds. Overnight in Tel Aviv."

A sample Tel Aviv itinerary for Catholics proposes only Jaffa and the beachfront Tayelet promenade. It recommends that the Catholic tourist visit St. Peter's Church and the House of Simon the Tanner in Jaffa.

For Protestants, the Tourism Ministry offers even less in Tel Aviv---only a quick visit to Jaffa after arriving at the airport: "Evening tour of Jaffa, an ancient port where Peter saw a vision atop the house of Simon the Tanner and from which Jonah the Prophet embarked. Rest from transatlantic flight."

One reason Tel Aviv does not get much play on tourist itineraries may be its Hebrew character. Its cultural, intellectual and business life are what make Tel Aviv an especially interesting city, and these take place almost entirely in Hebrew.

In 1997, the U.S. magazine Newsweek cited Tel Aviv as one of the ten best cities in the world for young Americans to advance their careers, experience new cultures and learn about the world.

Tel Aviv ordinarily does not receive media coverage. A big foreign news corps covers Israel, but most of its members are based in Jerusalem and don't know Hebrew. Some foreign journalists come to Tel Aviv for restaurants and entertainment, but few are likely to understand what is going on in the city's coffee houses, pubs, theaters, markets, shops, local weekly papers, night spots and business centers. Almost all of it happens in Hebrew.

Our life, according to Ezra

2007-01-06T17:57:00.000+02:00

Ezra the gardener did not wash the stairs Friday. He was in a hospital, recuperating from surgery.

Ezra (not his actual name) is almost 80. He has seldom missed work in the past 21 years. Since 1985 he has been the once-a-week gardener and janitor of the small Tel Aviv apartment building where I live. On Friday mornings, he cleans three flights of stairs and tends the plants along a path leading to the entrance. This makes the place more pleasant for the sabbath.

The work takes two hours, and Ezra has made it clear many times that this job is important to him.

His commuting takes more time than the work. To get to his two-hour job, Ezra travels for three hours roundtrip, with three different buses in each direction. Ezra used to take care of other buildings in the neighborhood, but one by one they laid him off, and only we remain.

Some people try to avoid Ezra. They know it is not easy to stop him once he starts talking. Like many Israelis, he has much to say. He talks about the stupidity of the government, the cruelties committed by criminals, the high cost of food, the security dangers that Israel faces, and a range of other subjects in the news.

To those who take the trouble to listen, Ezra talks of three personal sorrows.

One of Ezra's sons was off to a promising career in the security services when a crippling illness struck him. He cannot walk. His superiors arranged a job for him at a computer instead of in the field, and Israel's national insurance pays for the costly drugs he receives. His wife, a daughter of a kibbutz, is very supportive. It looks as if Ezra's son will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

"This is our life," Ezra says in summation when he tells of such problems. "Our fate."

Another son became an officer in the army and married a woman officer who served under his command. They returned to civilian life, and, influenced by a charismatic rabbi, joined a religious community. Now they have about a dozen children and very little income. Ezra bought food for them a few times, but they refused it because it did not have their rabbi's approval as kosher. One time, they persuaded Ezra and his wife to spend a weekend with the rabbi and his followers. Ezra and his wife never went back.

Ezra's wife suffers from an illness of the joints. She is in pain most of the time. Ezra takes care of her, cooks and does most of the housekeeping. His only help is a worker who comes once a week for three hours, paid for by Israel's national insurance. Ezra and his wife married when she was 17 and he 27. They have been together for more than one-half century. She is a wonderful and lovely woman, he says.

Over the years, Ezra has told bits of his own story. He came from Basra, the big port city in southern Iraq, and arrived in Israel as a young Zionist in the big immigration of the early 1950s. Unlike some immigrants from Iraq, he does not claim that life was better there.

One day, after some prying on my part, Ezra told about growing up in Iraq. When he was a boy his father, a moneychanger, went to another city to do a deal and never came home. People in the other city killed him and took his money.

Another time, Ezra talked about what happened to the most important Jew in his hometown. Shafiq Adas, who had a business in Basra, was said to be the richest and most influential Jew in Iraq. He had Muslim partners and highly placed connections in the government. His millions and his contacts did not save him after the authorities accused him of helping the Zionists. In 1948, the Iraq government took his money and hanged him in public.

Lately Ezra has been dealing with his own medical problems. He does not complain the way some people do. If asked about his health, he will give a grim report, followed by a shrug and a little smile. Then he adds his standard conclusion, the lesson he applies to other hardships he has witnessed: "This is our life."

Recalling Teddy Kollek

2007-01-06T16:46:00.000+02:00

Originally posted at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000552.htm.

Here are a few personal recollections of Teddy Kollek, the Vienna-born ex-kibbutznik who served as Jerusalem's mayor from 1965 until Ehud Olmert defeated him in 1993. Kollek died today (January 2, 2007) at 95.

In the 1970s, Kollek spoke at a breakfast meeting of journalists visiting from the United States. The organizers asked me to chair the program and introduce Kollek.

He arrived late, alone.

As I rose to make the introduction, he cut me off.

"So, what are your questions?" were his first words to the group. He took it from there. Everyone, Kollek included, knew he needed no introduction.

Some years later, Kollek gave a guided tour of his city to visitors attending an international conference on local government in Israel. I was there as a member of the conference staff. As before, Kollek came alone, without the typical entourage of aides who accompany mayors of important cities.

He walked briskly along a hillside, and not everyone in the group was keeping up. I saw a chance to speak privately with him and ask for an appointment to interview him for a book I was researching. He could shed light on Haganah activities in New York in 1947-48, before Israel's war of independence. He had headed the no-longer-secret Haganah mission.

"I'll give you five minutes," he said and kept striding toward a point overlooking his city.

I protested. He took a moment to explain. Speaking slower and with less impatience, almost like an exasperated parent, he explained that he wasn't going to devote more than five minutes to talking about the past. What mattered now was the present and the future, he said, and he was prepared to make time to discuss that.

Another time, when he was pushing 80 years of age, I ran into Kollek at the arrivals terminal at New York's JFK international airport. He was alone, and no security guards were in evidence. He was standing at a baggage carousel, waiting for his luggage. He stood there with no sign of impatience, and with no VIP treatment. He said hello, and when his luggage arrived he wrestled it off the carousel by himself and walked off alone. He was still the mayor of Jerusalem then, but he wasn't flaunting it.

Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv
January 2, 2007

Israel is the gift of the compiler

2007-01-06T02:33:00.000+02:00

"Egypt," wrote Herodotus, "is the gift of the Nile." The flood waters of the Nile renewed the top soil of the Nile valley and created an agricultural power house that was to feed the Roman Empire, as well as making Egypt one of the richest countries in antiquity.

In the early days of the state, Israel was the gift of the United Jewish Appeal and the printing press of the treasury.

For the first 35 or so years of Israel's existence, our main resources were sand, barchash flies and new immigrants. Add to this the Arab boycott, which was obeyed by numerous western firms. Add to this the demands of an outsized defense budget. Add to this our distance from European and American markets, and the expense of shipping heavy manufactured goods. Add to this a certain Israeli nonchalantness about "finish" in products, which ensured that a product with three holes for screws would usually have only two screws and one empty hole. Add to this periodic wars that scared off tourists.

Our main trading partners were countries that took pity on us. Our income came from subsidized agriculture, subsidized factories and subsidized subsidies. Our industrial products were things like automobiles that didn't quite work right, inedible candies, wine, oranges and diamonds. The candies could be exported abroad to be sold to Jews with strong digestive systems, who would give them as gifts to Jews with stronger digestive systems, who would smile and say "Thank You." If they were not yet acquainted with Israeli candy, they might try to eat them. Otherwise they would pass the gift on the next time they needed to bring a modest house gift to someone they didn't like too well.

This custom was observed in Israel as well, and is recorded in more than one story by the humorist Efraim Kishon. In Israel it was less widespread. While foreigners were sometimes unacquainted with the culinary properties of Israeli candies, Israelis were all too familiar with them. Israelis with weak digestive systems and poor judgement were eliminated by the benign and providential workings of the laws of natural selection. The rest adapted quickly. In consequence, all such gifts were passed on in Israel. As we are a small country, people would occasionally get back the same candy they had given as a gift to someone, many months or years before -- an embarrassing occasion for both parties.

Later it was discovered that we could also make brandy. Brandy is a much better gift than candies, because most people who consume alcohol seem to be able to get used to just about anything. I am not an expert on bad brandy, but ours was pretty bad. Your humble servant has a not immodest capacity for liquour. I have been properly inebriated on more than one occasion, thanks to sour mash whiskey, bourbon, beer, and scotch, and I can remember all of those times except one. Once I got drunk on a relatively modest quantity of Israeli brandy at an Independence day camp fire. I cannot remember anything much, but several friends would not speak to me for a long time. Israeli brandy is not meant to be drunk to excess. We are a sober people.

It could never pay to manufacture anything in quantity in Israel, because there was no market by international standards. Typically, a man who bought a machine that made lipstick tubes imagined that he would become a great industrialist. Instead, he found that if he ran this machine for one day a year, he could produce a year's supply of lipstick tubes for the entire consumption requirements of Israel. These could not be exported, as they could never compete with the tubes produced more cheaply by even bigger machines elsewhere, where raw materials were also available locally.

A socialist government oversaw a more or less equal division of the national debt. The shortages were divided among the peasants and clerks in an equitable fashion. Everyone was employed doing something, and had job security, even if what they produced had no value. Automobiles, refrigerators and similar items were luxuries for the very rich. A modern refrigerator was not just an appliance, but a decorative status symbol, to be polished and shown to admiring visitors. The opposition political parties blamed the poverty on socialist government policies, but in truth, the poverty was mostly due to lack of income, which is the source of most poverty.

An example of an Israeli industry was the detergent factory at a certain kibbutz. This detergent factory did not make any detergent. It imported detergent for say, $500 from Germany, paying the shipping of $50 or so. For another $400 it packaged the detergent, and for another $50 it shipped it back to Germany. It sold products costing $1,000 in total for $900, making a profit of $100. This was possible because the import dollar was exchanged at a different rate than the export dollar, and the difference was made up by a subsidy, which in turn was subsidized by printing money, which was subsidized by insufficient borrowing at relatively high interest and more printing of money. Our ministers of the treasury were depised by most of the citizens as agents of impoverishment and sources of draconian decrees. The truth is that they were financial wizards who made possible an economic perpetuum mobile. The Israeli economy of the early years ran on will power. It was the transposition, on a national scale, of what the Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem had long ago characterized as the main occupation of Jews - Luftgescheft - air business. In the 1960s, experts calculated that Israel would certainly be bankrupt in ten years, as it would be unable to service its national debt. Nobody was worried though. Experts are always announcing things like that about Israel. In the 1930s, British experts proved that it would never be economical to irrigate the land using water pumped from the sea of Galilee, and therefore the land could only support perhaps a million more people in total. But Israel built the national water carrier anyhow, and it pumps more water in a day than was consumed in all of Palestine in the year 1948, and the population is many times greater than was dreamt of in the philosophy of those experts.

Nonetheless, it is hard to walk on water without getting your feet wet. The laws of economics cannot be suspended as Joshua suspended the Sun in Geba and the Moon in the valley of Ayalon. Printing money leads to devaluation of currency. Devaluations were announced without warning, after the banks were closed. Often they were announced in the late evening hours. A man could go to sleep a millionaire and wake up a pauper. It happened. In consequence, every private transaction, savings account, labor contract and rent contract became tied to the dollar. The artificial exchange rates produced a "black" market that was a national institution. The Jerusalem Post published the price of the black market dollar regularly, as well as the going rates for commercial ladies, for the benefit of tourists.

The socialist government was replaced by a free enterprise one in 1977. Soon after, the different dollar rates and economic controls were abolished and taxes on luxury items were lowered. The Likud was going to show the people the benefits of free enterprise. The result was 500% annual inflation, which was licked eventually by firing the minister of finance, a hapless fellow named Aridor, and instituting draconian controls. That didn't solve the basic economic problems of Israel.

Israel's economic problems were solved in large part by the hi-tech and software industries. Software does not have to be produced in quantity. The shipping costs are minimal. The value is in the idea. In 2006 Israel had a favorable balance of trade for the first time in history. Israeli currency, once the butt of jokes, appreciated by about 15% in relation to the dollar.

In large part, twenty first century Israel is the gift of the software compiler. But that is only part of the story.

Ami Isseroff

Express your face to the ascender

2007-01-05T03:33:00.000+02:00

The title, "Express your face to the ascender" is the literal translation of a Hebrew propaganda slogan of bygone days - "Hasver Paneycha La'oleh" meaning "welcome the new immigrant." There is also "Hasver Paneycha latayar" - Welcome the tourist.

So welcome to the prospective new immigrant, tourist, and any other foreigners who might want to know about Israel, wherever you are and whatever your religious beliefs or nonbeliefs, and political beliefs or non-beliefs may be. More...

Just as it is hard to translate Hebrew to English literally, it is very hard to translate Israel into English for foreigners, but not because of language difficulties. Anyone viewing Israel from abroad may see it through several layers of distorting spectacles. It is the "Jewish State," (with a large Arab minority) and Jews after all, have a special and not always very honored place in the cultures of the world. It is also "the holy land" of Biblical times and the site of pilgrimages. It is the land where Jesus lived and preached. It is in the news because of wars. It is idealized by Christian Zionists and villified by anti-Zionists.

For many years, people came here expecting to find sand dunes, camels, penniless new immigrants, Holocaust survivors, picturesque ruins and continuous warfare. The newsreels and propaganda films of my early U.S. childhood that showed Israel, usually showed boatloads of immigrants in shoddy clothing carrying bundles of belongings; TV news reports showed Israel whenever there was a war or a terror attack -- or the Eichmann trial.

People living abroad acquired very strange ideas about our country.

In later years, all the news reports seem to show that Israel is populated by dangerous fanatics from Brooklyn. They give the impression that most of the vehicular traffic here consists of APCs, tanks and ambulances carting off victims from terror attacks. That footage is real enough usually, but it represents only a small portion of Israeli reality. Not so real are the cartoons in European journals that may show our leaders eating babies, and the imaginative descriptions of Jewish "settlers" putting on their Kippot (skullcaps) and perhaps saying a blessing before shooting Arabs. Our leaders eat regular food and not babies, and our soldiers wear regular military uniforms. Religious men must wear head covering at all times.

Begin by understanding that Israel is a country quite a bit like yours, assuming you live somewhere in the industrialized western world. That will give you a much better picture of Israeli reality than you can get from news footage of terror attacks and settlements and wars. We have the same shopping malls, the same glass and steel hi-tech skyscrapers, the same traffic jams, the same pollution problems etc. Israel is probably quite a bit like where you live, only smaller, very much smaller.

There are some important differences from most countries. In San Francisco, I went to a museum. They had some "very old" things there from 100 or 150 years ago. In Israeli museums, the exhibits are liable to be 3,000 years old and more. In Pennsylvania, you can visit the site of the battle of Gettysburg, which took place in 1863. In Israel, you can visit the sites of battles that took place in 863 BC. History is all around you here. It is even older than European history.

Every time I have visited cities like New York or London or Florence, I have found them very much the same, even after an absence of several years. Once you know the way, not much changes. Every time I have been away from Israel for any length of time and returned, there were new roads, new communities, new buildings, and important changes in municipal thoroughfares. Detours and route changes are often not very well marked, so getting in and out of cities like Tel Aviv can be an uncertain adventure for the unwary!

Not all the changes turn out to be good ideas. Israel drained the Huleh swamp in the 1950s, but subsequently it has been decided that this was not so good for the ecology and should be reversed. A great elevated mall was built in Tel Aviv to replace the quaint Dizengoff circle, with its coffee houses and air of pre-World War II European civilization. Probably it was a mistake that will eventually be reversed.

So Israel is an old country, that is also always new, a characteristic envisioned in the novel written by Theodor Herzl 100 years ago - Altneuland (Old New Land). This name did not translate well into Hebrew I suppose, so it was translated to a totally unrelated name - Tel Aviv, meaning Spring Hill. Tel Aviv became the name of the first new Hebrew city, founded a few years later, in 1909.

There is another big difference that Israelis take for granted. When I lived in the US, people were shocked by the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, which took place in a Queens courtyard in 1964 while 38 people looked on and did nothing. I like to think that it can't happen here. For better or worse, Israelis and Palestinians get involved whether they are Arabs or Jews. Many years ago, I helped a friend do a short film in Jerusalem. A girl went out to the middle of the street and fainted. This little charade was repeated several times, each time with the same result, a crowd gathered in seconds to protect her, attempt aid and get her off the street. The "charade" is repeated over and over in real life. Every emergency brings people running to help.

Ami Isseroff
(AKA News Service - 'cause that's how the blog works)

Coming soon

2007-01-02T00:32:00.000+02:00

A new weblog will appear here early in 2007.

Watch this space.