israeli politics

simple red tape - 4.29.26

It should have been a simple transaction, transferring ownership of my old car (only4 years old with almost no mileage but some very nice memories).  You can do it online.

well maybe you can.  Ezi couldn’t, and I disappeared into a lovely ladies lunch all afternoon while he struggled to figure out the order and the forms.  

I know government forms.  Unless you know in advance what it expected of you, you might as well get a few tantrums prepared as well.  

So the guys who bought the battered car sent a representative from the garage in Teibe to go with us to the post office to sign everything personally.  

He couldn’t figure it out either.  But he kept searching for instructions online, and maybe it was easier to find in Arabic, but eventually he got it right.  And eventually the two of them filled out everything.  And I got up to sign over the car in front of the post office representative, and we all went home.

Me, I was exhausted, but Ezi came home and cooked lunch and filled out the insurance forms and took out the trash and kept going all day while I fiddled around with a poem I promised for a memorial for the town my parents lost – Lida. 

this was not a day I was proud of myself.

 

 

simple red tape – 4.29.26 Read Post »

israeli politics

make up for lost time - 4.28.26

There is an element of hysteria in our days, trying to get caught up – refixing dates, rescheduling social events, rescheduling lectures, catching up with school,  seeing lost friends, and remembering the whole time that the people up north, especially those close to the border, can’t do any of those things.  

 

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israeli politics

w

wiped out - 4.27.26

Even the promise of war can’t wake me up.  Hizballah has been teasing us into conflict and it was clear that they would have to be addressed.  I expect it within days. 

On the other hand, we are so in need of peace we do everything to make tentative plans for better things.

A facebook friend from Gaza asked me to support people there and send money, and I am frozen.  I haven’t even answered him all week.  The implications are too confusing for me.  Would money actually  help? Would it mean that I think they were right?  Would it be used against me the way other attempts in the past have been used to prove my guilt?  I don’t feel guilty at all.  And that is why I don’t even answer the accusation of genocide.  I believe most of the people of Gaza would have taken over Israel and killed the inhabitants if they could, and they were warned and sustained whenever possible.  

And yet I would not have destroyed Sodom.

 

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israeli politics

delivery -4.24.26

i’ve been ordering online for years now.  It started out because of my back  – the reaching down to the bottom shelves, the heavy bags – it was all too much for me until I got my hips replaced.

But I got into the habit.

And every week a guy rings my door and leaves me half of what I ordered, but usually on time.  But yesterday, as I began to tell you, was a particularly busy day.  So when the groceries hadn’t arrived well over an hour after the time, I left.  A few hours later the phone rang. “Where are you running around? I’m ringing and there’s no answer!”  Assuming this was the delivery boy, I responded, “I’m out, but my husband is home.  If he’s not answering he’s probably asleep – just leave the bags at the door.” “You’re running around, and your husband is home?  That’s not right!”  This conversation went on for a while and I realized I didn’t even know he spoke Hebrew, and here he was kidding around with me over the phone.  

 

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israeli politics

my day - 4.23.26

For a month we shut down, and then the ceasefire woke us up.  And then we realized that the ceasefire could stop at any minute and we better get things done before Trump announces the war and the rockets start again.

So we went and bought a car.  

Not a very smart thing to do when you’re about to be bombed.  

nevertheless.

so i met with my editor afterward and we made plans for our launch of the book on poets and their graves, even though there’s a backlog of events in the city that were postponed because of the rockets – at least 2 years of culture to catch up with…  But if we don’t catch up quick, we’ll be overrun by the kitsch that has taken over the media – if we survive the rockets of course.

 

my day – 4.23.26 Read Post »

israeli politics

the big Synagogue - 4.22.26

For Independence Day we went to visit the Great Synagogue that is finally being restored.  It’s been ugly for so long, its beauty defaced, on a street closed for renewal.  It was an amazing feeling to see the synagogue whose decline we’ve following for ages returning to its original function. I think it gives me a feeling that the country too can be restored to the place it was when Ezi’s grandfather built that dome in 1925.  The values were never completely pure, but they had a dream.

 

the big Synagogue – 4.22.26 Read Post »