israeli politics

End of year - 12.31.25

how did we get through this one?  I can’t imagine last year at this time predicting what would happen this year.  Heck I can’t imagine at the millenium predicting anything in the new century.  25 years ago a Canadian radio program called “As it Happens” called me and asked me to do a live program documenting what happens in Tel Aviv on the Millenium.  I said there was no point because nothing happens – it was a Friday night, raining, and we don’t celebrate new year.  Then Shlomzion suggested to me that we might check out the lion on Anonymous Alley that was facing Bethlehem St.  After all, the lion may well be the ‘rough beast’ in Yeats’ poem.  The poem seemed eerily relevant, although we didn’t know exactly why:

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.
 
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
 
What rough beast indeed?  We arranged a group of people to watch the lion slouch to Bethlehem.  But as we stood there, reporting to “As it Happens,” a couple appeared, climbed onto the lion, and began to make love.  “What is happening?” they asked, “Is the lion getting up and slouching to Bethlehem?”  “He’s trying to,” I shouted into the phone, “But the couple is too heavy!”  
So we never had a chance to see if the lion would slouch to Bethlehem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBA7qrkmRTA
But we did discover that the usual Friday night in the neighborhood was ignoring the potential apocalypse.
 who could have imagine how true the poem was?
 

End of year – 12.31.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Rain rain - 12.29.25

your package is in Jaffa.

So our first day out is to find the package store, a simple and quick procedure.  But the day kept changing – from beautiful to terrifyingly stormy, and we were driving along the angry sea. and whoops we were not totally recovered so we kept going off in different directions.  Until we realized the shop is much closer and convenient than we thought.  

Perhaps because we were driving for minutes in unbelievable storms, and then is such sun that it was impossible not to admire the beauty of it, more likely because our flu hasn’t totally passed, and has left us confused,  we didn’t even stop to photograph the absolutely beauty of the surfers in the powerful sea in the storm, we didn’t bask in the sun. i managed a few shots but nothing like what was there.

and now back to bed.

 

 

rain rain – 12.29.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

quick note - 12.28.25

just a little promise that I’ll be better very soon, will finish my book on Gerron, will figure out how to set up my computer, will get my version of the news to you, and won’t keep posting computer errors.

 

quick note – 12.28.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Flu fading - 12.26.25

Because the fever is passing, even though my heart seems to be giving me a warning I need to slow down, I peeked back into what i’d written in the past few days – something i never do – and i was horrified.  i thought fonts and facts were second nature with me, that the writing is automatic and authentic.  But it isn’t.  So I apologize.  

It’s not only the flu, it’s the admissions this week on tv.  First Eli Feldstein talking about his role in the dirty tricks of the Prime Minister’s office, and then Romy Gonen, talking about the sexual and other abuse as a hostage in Gaza.  

Romy – I have said – is the granddaughter of an old and dear friend, one of the first translators of my poetry, Giora Leshem.  He translated some of my most intimate poems, and I translated his.  Here are 3: 

giora Leshem, Poems

the concept of coming home in coming to Israel was always so strong in him, and the sense of desertion in Romy’s relation of her tale was so strong… I actually felt that my heart is giving out.

 

 

Flu fading – 12.26.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

news - 12.25.25

I’m just watching the news and an interview.  I just started antibiotics so finally I’m beginning to feel better and can take it.

So first I watched an interview in Barcelona of  Queens for Palestine and they were all talking about how they were happy that Spain had pulled out of the Eurovision contest because the genocide killers of Israel are still in it.  And Queens for Palestine had no idea that homosexuality in Gaza is punishable by death.

And then there was an interview with Romy Gonen who was a hostage for almost a year and a half in Gaza, wounded, raped and otherwise molested repeatedly, and then used as a human shield. 

One world knows nothing of the other.

I don’t know why the information on Gaza never got out.  I don’t know how the reality could be so hidden.

I started to feel better this afternoon, but from what my friends say – that’s only a temporary remission.  I’ll try to keep you up to date…

news – 12.25.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

Add Your Heading Text Here

beginning My flu doesn't let me clean up. It's not just the politics - over whyich we can barely understand because it's so complicated and deceptive. The added elements of multiple government deceptions and su

The End and the Beginning
The poem explains it.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52955/the-end-and-the-beginning

My flu doesn’t let me clean up. It’s not just that I can’t figure out the politics -which is normal because it’s so complicated and deceptive. i can’t figure out my email, my messages, the appointments I am missing one after the other, how I messed up my research.  That is, even daily life for someone who was only tangentially affected by the war, has to clear the rubble from his path.

the poem’s what we are going through -12.24.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

did you miss me? 12.23.25

we’ve been ill for over a week, and still need more time and maybe some medical attention in order to undo the damage.  

but in the meantime Fergus sent me the poem he promised and in my condition, and the condition of my friends and family, it is excruciatingly relevant.  

The End and the Beginning

By Wisława Szymborska

Translated By Joanna Trzeciak

 

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won’t

straighten themselves up, after all.

 

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.

 

Someone has to get mired

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs,

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

 

Someone has to drag in a girder

to prop up a wall.

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

 

Photogenic it’s not,

and takes years.

All the cameras have left

for another war.

 

We’ll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

 

Someone, broom in hand,

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about

who will find it dull.

 

From out of the bushes

sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

 

Those who knew

what was going on here

must make way for

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

 

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52955/the-end-and-the-beginning

 

did you miss me? 12.23.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

blame it on the army - 12.21.25

that’s the way this trial is going to go.  The government in charge of this country since long before October 7 is going to investigate the causes of the massacre.  So we’re going to blame the army.  Not the orders given to have the army guard the West Bank, not the Gaza Envelope.  Not the policy to bribe Hamas into keeping relatively quiet.  Not the policy to leave the negotiation of the hostages for later, not the continued neglect of the half a million displaced in the border towns.

And then they’ll blame the soldiers for bombing the unprotected civilians in Gaza, while Hamas hid underground with their food stores.  

I myself blame the government.

And for me there is an additional blame that I can’t forgive.  I find it impossible to feel the same sympathy for the Gazan people I feel for the Israelis.  

blame the army Read Post »