israeli politics

Doctors - 4.19.24

A far-away friend asked me today why I don’t talk about doctors.  After all, I’m at that age.  And I’ve been overwhelmed with aches and pains, so here goues this week.  1. hemotologist – just checking 2. otolaryngologist (ENT) to discover it’s not that I’m allergic to Jerusalem that my ear aches dreadfully when we go up there.  It’s that I’m really allergic. 3. dental hygienist – routine 4. pressure room exam.  No, I don’t qualify – because I have to cure my ear problem first.  

There were some other things that happened this week – what were they?  Oh yes, we were threatened with extinction again, the kidnapped hostages weren’t returned and the families are going for desperate measures to bring this to our government’s attention, and we’re still getting rockets – here and there in the south, but heavily in the north.   So every visit to the doctor seems like a luxury.

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israeli politics

Metula - 4.18.24

Metula – the most bombed town in Israel.  I have been following the damage, the pain, the refugees, through one of my most favorite places in the world.  For months the town has been constantly bombarded from the three borders of Lebanon, and it is in ruins.  Remember the Good Fence?  I must have written about it many times – For me it was a hope for peace, and now the tv is showing what it really looks like now, how Hizballah watches everything, calls people up and threatens them, ticks them off  once in a while, and this government doesn’t even try to protect them.  They’re in it on their own.  A brave mayor, a few devoted citizens – that’s all they have,  and no brave cowboy, no Alan Ladd, or Cheyenne, to ride into town and save the population.   Oh boy, have we got to change the government.

 

Metula – 4.18. Read Post »

israeli politics

Arab al-Aramshe - 4.17.24

18 people injured in the community center. I thought the town had been evacuated because it is so close to the Lebanese border, and there are no shelters there.  But I was wrong.

My kids don’t have shelters either, but they’re not on the border.  

Why are people just talking about what we’re going to do with Iran when we’re still not protecting our citizens from Hizballah and Hamas.  

I just unpacked the bag that I arranged for the shelter in our building for the Iranian ‘retribution’ – lots of water and figs and chocolate.  And now we’re going to have to pay Hizballah back for the UAV s and Iran for those 330 rockets.  I’ll have to pack up again.

 

 

 

Arab al-Aramshe – 4.17.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Traffic - 4.16.23

I forgot.  What can I say? I should have known there was no way to get from one place to another when the Passover vacation begins.  I should have written a nice letter of consolation and stayed home.  But something drove me to make the trip that should have taken 30 minutes but took an hour, each way.  Most of the time we didn’t move, but we must have moved some of the time because we made to the museum just in time for a lecture about Sebba.

We raced past the tents and exhibits of the hostages, rebuffed the ladies to invited us to make matzos with them, and ran to the museum library just in time. 

It was liking exiting the crazy real world to enter the sane make believe world of art in a different time zone.

 

traffic – 4.16.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

home -4.15.24

Tablet Magazine has an essay contest that got me thinking – even though I’m not eligible to enter. Here’s their pitch:

Where do you feel at home—or no longer at home—physically, spiritually, or culturally? How do you find community, or a sense that you’re a part of something larger than yourself? Are there places where you feel a sense of belonging, or alienation—or both? Tablet is seeking personal essays that wrestle with these questions.

We are looking for previously unpublished work by writers living in North America who have never published in Tablet before.

Years ago, when my daughter lived in New York and was making movies, she interviewed people for a film she wanted to make about the idea of home.  The one I remember most was a woman who said, “Home is a place you can defend with a gun.”  

She was a Palestinian lady, as I recall, and so surprised my daughter that she never made the film.  That was a period in which I thought that peace was around the corner and we’d be next door neighbors exchanging recipes and babysitters.  

I cannot forget the moment I first stepped foot on the ground here.  The argument I had had years ago with the rabbi my mother thoguht would be my perfect shiddach about why I wasn’t going to go to a religious college for girls.  I told him I believed in being part of the world,  and not only was I going to find a way to pay for tuition for a good university, but I was going to see the world.  But somehow a ticket to Israel appeared, and although I thought I’d escape to Athens and parts unknown, I stepped on the soil of the Holy Land and was hooked.   That was it.  I was home.

 

 

 

Elementor #17101 Read Post »

israeli politics

I’m about to get to bed at 9 p.m. because we were up too much last night, but I have to answer the question every one keeps asking.  How did we get through the night?

It was easy – I went to sleep at 11 when Danny Adari said the long range missiles would take 6 hours to get to us.  But Ezi woke me at 1 to tell me that rockets were falling.  He wanted me to look outside the window but everything was clearer on TV.  At 4 or 5 I fell asleep and woke up to discover that the whole thing was over.

May all battles end while everyone is asleep. 

 

Getting through the night – 4.14.24

getting through the night – 4.14.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

Drowning in Drones - 4.14.24

It was Star Wars at home last night.  All around us we were diverting and dropping missiles, guarding us, guarding the Mosque of Omar, guarding everyone but the Bedouin in the desert who don’t have houses much less shelters.  330 rockets.  

But this is a chess game and we made the opening move by killing a Palestinian terrorist in the Iranian embassy.  So their response was to try to flatten our half of the chess board.  We had the amazing fortune of friends like the US, Jordan, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, France, etc.  As they say in Hebrew – more luck than wisdom.

Thank goodness for Biden.  And if we can build on his amazing help and organization, we can rearrange the order of the Middle East, create a Palestinian State. help alter the Iranian government,  and make this entire area blossom.


Drowning in Drones – 4.14.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

We're Waiting 4.13.24

The big bombs are on their way – slowly.  That should give us a few hours before the sirens, but there is also the possibility that they’re drop faster stuff on us while we’re waiting for the slower ones.  So it’s going to be a long night.  Let’s hope I’m back in the morning to tell you how things are.

 

Elementor #17069 Read Post »