Spent the evening with a bunch of girlfriends – everyone of them depressed over something else – but it’s really ageing and the politics. All of them spend Saturday nights demonstrating. Some are in their eighties and still marching in the streets, so I think that if we have to strength to march in the streets we have no reason to complain about our age. And if we’re still marching in the streets we have some hope for the future.
If you know a little Hebrew it’s worth trying to understand what Ehud Barak says here – that the demonstrations are what is making a difference in the temporary halting of the ‘reform’ of the judicial system. And the day the holidays are over, that reform will be pushed through. The President’s efforts to enable a compromise will fail within five minutes, he says, and I believe every word here.
go out and demonstrate – April 10, 2023 Read Post »
“Didn’t see you last night at the demonstration – What happened?” I explain that I didn’t feel well, but it’s clear that the demonstrations have become a form of social interaction. We used to meet at concerts, at parties, at restaurants. But it’s now like Friday night dinners with the family – you can’t skip without being noticed.
It’s not just Saturday nights, every few days there’s a facebook notice, a whatsapp or a message, that something is going on – maybe a protest in front of a neighboring knesset member, or a place where someone is speaking. But it’s like the old days growing up in the neighborhood when there’s a spontaneous meeting of friends on the corner.
I don’t mean to denigrate the significance of these demonstrations. They are incredibly important, and help us to feel some kind of empowerment in this helpless situation, where the country is being destroyed before our eyes by what has been looking like schizophrenics. Not that I have anything against schizophrenics – I just want to have control over my own fantasies.
custom – april 9, 2023 Read Post »
The fact that I wasn’t feeling well enough to demonstrate tonight really depressed me to the point of sickness, but when Dalia sent a film of the hundreds of thousands standing at attention with their flags lowered and singing the anthem, I was suddenly well.
Not that I love that anthem – I think it’s outdated and not inclusive. But I love the idea that all these people are singing their love of country together – and that Miri Aloni was leading the singing.
Miri Aloni, who sang with Yitzhak Rabin just before he was killed. She sat with me at Dalia Ravikovitz’s funeral and comforted me then. She comforted me tonight.
april 8, 2023 -demonstration Read Post »
All this was on Good Friday, Passover, and Ramadan. But what happened last night? At first, they said a terrorist fired and then ran over the tourists. But there were no bullet wounds treated at the hospital to my knowledge. Now the family of the terrorist says there’s no way he was a terrorist. It is so hard to tell what is going on.
It isn’t just this incident – it’s everything.
what happened? April 8, Read Post »
We come back from the supermarket and turn on the news and there’s another tragedy – 2 sisters killed and their mother critically wounded. On all the tv stations people are blaming each other’s politicians for laxity, but I think back to the supermarket which was replete with people of all races. In the housewares section, for example, five salesgirls were chatting in Arabic next to the knives. All I could think of was that they were hiding from the store manager, but I imagine Ben Gvir would have seen it differently. I didn’t hear the whole conversation but it had something to do with boys and planning for the evening. Maybe that would help – learning to understand each other a bit.
Remember the 30 people killed in the Park Hotel on Passover twenty years ago? Remember all those injuries? But
passover 2002, april 6, 2023 Read Post »
“We have to get going to open the shelter,” I tell Ezi, especially when we’re responsible for all the 18 units in our building, and most are old, infirm, or hysterical. We have this shelter in our basement, but the floor was never finished and although the room is very big, the furniture is dusty and there are only chemical facilities.
I was almost out the door and on my way down with a vacuum cleaner, toilet paper and water, but Ezi remained relaxed, assuring me with his indifference that we’re nowhere near that.
Nevertheless, I really want to finish that floor.
preparation – april 6, 2023 Read Post »
