israeli politics

I’ve probably written about street cats in Tel Aviv hundreds of times – because there is so much to say. but here is an outline that i will fill out in the coming days 1. cats in the ’70’s 2. cats in the ’80’s 3. cats and politics in the first decade of the milennium 4. cats and corona.

  1. When I first moved to Tel Aviv I was overwhelmed by the skinny cats peeking out of the garbage cans. Hundreds of thousands all over. Suspicious of humans, they tended to flee when someone passed by, or arch their backs and hiss. And they were ugly and dirty. I had lived in Ramat Hasharon before that and barely saw an animal on the street. it wasn’t even popular to have a pet. Who could afford it or waste time on a cat? My cousin had a dog, now that I think of it, but he had brought it from Italy, and seemed very sophisticated compared to the rest of my neighbors. Maybe it was just my neighborhood… we were pretty primitive – but i loved it. and didn’t even think about missing animals.
  2. we moved to the US in the 80’s. Ezi was sent by Israel and we went with. There we acquired a rescue dog. we wanted a small dog, so we picked a puppy with tiny paws. He grew to be enormous – so tall he could stand on all fours, rest his head on the table and point with his nose to the delicacy he wanted. But he had small paws. When we returned to Israel we had to take him with us because we couldn’t find anyone to adopt him. but he was too large for a cage. Eventually we found one and called El Al to ask if they would take him with us, and they said ‘sure, if there are no bodies in the cargo’ and i asked, how will i know, and they said ‘we don’t get advanced information on who will die’ … ah, but that’s another story. anyway this dog learned to fear cats – they would jump on his nose and cover his eyes with their tails… terrifying! Eventually we all learned to live with one another – they even began to demand food from me.
  3. in 2008 i was asked to join the municipal animal rights party and run in the local election. i was excited about it – particularly because we had 300000 cats in Tel Aviv and the only way to neuter them was to hold a flash campaign and neuter them all at once, and that needed organization and funding. Reuven Ladnianski was first on the ticket and I was asked to be second, but shied away and went down to number 4. We started our campaign and it was the real thing. I sat on a few municipal meetings and was just beginning to get the hang of it, and then Ezi got sick and I bowed out. Two people got into the municipality, and saw a number of regulations adopted. I think Tel Aviv was the only city in the world with a voting animal rights party! Eventually the party morphed into the Green party which continues today. Dogs learned to live on a leash, and owners learned to pick up after them. The cats became accustomed to being fed by kind inhabitants and became extremely people-friendly, and then attention got turned to the trees…

october 22, 2020 (and continued later)- street cats in Tel Aviv Read Post »

israeli politics

over forty years ago Benzion Tomer came to me to ask me to form an Association of Writers in English in Israel. I had absolutely no interested in this idea because I believed, as a relatively new Israeli citizen, that I would prefer somehow to integrate into the local culture and remain an individual. and besides, all those acquainted with me know that my organizational skills leave much to be desired. But he approached me a few times, promised help, funding, and swore to me i would be helping all the writers of the country. There were organizations forming in numerous language communities, Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish,… and so on. We would all join together in a Federation of Writers Associations – together with the Hebrew writers’ Assocation, and would work together for writers’ rights, social security, etc. It was a kind of socialist ideal, and all we had to do was get seven writers together, write a constitution, send it to the government applying to be a not for profit organization, and send in an annual chit stating we didn’t earn an enormous amount of money. Too much money was no problem – because we would only pay dues, and any expenses would be covered directly by the Federation.

it was a little dream. We were brought into annual weekend conferences in beautiful resorts in which we learned about each other, with lectures, readings, parties, and even funding for individual journals. But gradually the government funding disappeared, the cooperation became more secretive and the Federation evaporated. Most of the other writers’ organizations did as well. The Yiddish writers, who had been organized around their home, Beit Leyvik, had begun long before the Federation, and has continued, but, as the paperwork became more and more complicated, the other groups evaporated.

Today, for the fourth morning in the past few months, Ezi sat down with me to fill in the annual government forms. They don’t fool around. i have to get two signatures witnessed by a lawyer first, stamped at the post office, then get the receipts for the past year together with bank statements, to an accountant, who creates an annual report. Then I call the reviewers who have to approve the report officially on the website. then comes the annual meeting, in which our annual activities are recounted and approved, then translated to hebrew, copied to the online forms, signed, and then everything has to be uploaded at once to a complex and unforgiving government site.

Ezi and I never argue. But when he helps me with these forms, both of us tear out our hair. We go on, spend a few hours, and then discover that something hasn’t been signed by someone in the proper place and everything is invalid. Start over.

Anyway, because four and five years ago someone didn’t fill in the forms, we’re still not pure to apply for government funding.

All right, I’ve bored you enough. i’ll make another entry today about something more interesting.

october 22, 2020 – English writers in israel – a few notes about bureaucracy Read Post »

israeli politics


we have really learned to hate everyone else. they are all dangerous. even if you smile and say hello on the street, the other person is wearing a mask too and doesn’t see or hear you. and since we like to go out in daylight we’re wearing sunglasses so there is no facial recognition. this extends to neighborhoods in our country. the arabs seem to have behaved properly and have very few new cases, but the religious extremists have formed an antipathy to the government and are defiant in their determination to defeat the rules. So now we too hate each other. And then all the families stuck together can’t bear each other any more and the singles who can’t get together hate the world And then there are all the people in other countries who close their borders to other countries. I’m pretty sure that once all these obstacles to love are overcome we’re going to have a lot of loving to learn about.

october 17, 2020 – everyone else Read Post »

israeli politics

When i first came here in the sixties, I stayed at a kibbutz where my host took me past the chicken coop, and when I admired it, he told me about a group of European tourists who had just left. They asked him, in English, because he couldn’t bear to speak his native German and so pretended not to understand, why they kept the lights on in the coop for a few hours at night. He explained that it would fool the chickens into thinking it was daylight and they would sleep less and lay more eggs. “Ah,” one of the tourists said to the other in German, “the Jews don’t have any foreigners to fool, so they fool the chickens.”

Now this statement was insulting to the kibbutz guide, to the tourists, and to the chickens, but I often remember it. Of course, the Jews in Eastern Europe were often persecuted and often made to follow rules that went counter to the religion, and of course they took delight in finding ways around the rules, to reject the dominance of another culture. But for some communities that mentality has also been transferred to this country as well. When Naturei Karta communities view the State of Israel as their enemy, for example, it is not surprising that they would not trust the rules of keeping safe from Corona. Since the restrictions placed on their neighborhood are dependent on the percentage of infection, the way to reduce the restrictions is to send uninfected people for testing. It makes total sense, even though to us it is a totally self-destructive mode of thinking. It’s not that they don’t believe that the restrictions are wrong, or that masks and social distancing are not the way to save lives, but they cannot bear the dominance of a ‘foreign’ authority. It is a threat to their entire way of life.

october 21, 2020 – the chicken coop syndrome Read Post »

israeli politics

You know how much i write about the health clinic here and how everything is so easy around here. well, now i will let you in on a little secret. i also have another, secret, doctor. A few years ago our health clinic physician gathered her patients together and announced she was leaving the organization – in part because she wanted to devote herself more to the study of macrobes and stuff and in part because the health clinic was making serious restrictions on the time she was allowed to devote to an individual patient. She would instead take on private clients on an annual basis in an effort to keep them well. Ezi and I agreed that she had saved Ezi and me numerous times with keen diagnoses and careful selection of medications and we would subscribe. This arrangement keeps me comfortable. I know the national health doctors are overburdened with patients and the waiting room is always crowded, even though the doctor allots the required maximum of 10 minutes to each person, and i can go to the doctor in the system knowing what i need and how the problem can be solved. Because I’m about to publish a paper on the doctor who initiated antiseptic, Lord Joseph Lister, and the poet William Ernest Henley, I’m very interested in how diagnoses and treatment are achieved. Of course it’s the other way around: because the first doctor i can remember was such a thorough diagnostician, and my whole life has been devoted to looking at details in the context of the whole, I really admire doctors who think.

So today Ezi and I spent 3 hours with her reviewing his blood tests and his treatments and his physical and mental condition, at the present time and in relation to all the treatments he has received in the past 15 years and coming to conclusions about what to do, what to eat, how to take care, when to take what medicines and with what, etc. etc. i was really in awe of the process, of how every detail, every chart, every spot on his body, was included in the consideration.

october 20, 2020 – doctors, present and past Read Post »

israeli politics

every time i think i’m writing only about my isolated self, it always takes me a while before i get to the foreign news. and then i learn that everything happening in my house is happening all around the world. For example, the mistrust of government to handle the contagion. We’re all isolated, can’t even tell what other people are saying under their masks, much less in the newspapers. me, i’d like to get into a summer camp with my family and cordon the whole place off for a year, deciding for myself what enters. but at least if we cordon off Tel Aviv from the rest of the world and open everything off – we’d trust our mayor to watch out for us. This sounds crazy, but that’s me.

october 19, 2020 – intimate universality Read Post »

israeli politics

because Ezi had an early date at the hemotology ward, we got up very very early. and when that happens we don’t sleep the night before. so even though i told you i was going to have fun today – there wasn’t much of that. i went to the strip mall to the post office and saw that the place was overrun with happy people (well of course I couldn’t see if they were happy – they covered at least their mouths with masks) and decided to meet my friend at home.

and i can see that not only the extremists following the Rav Kanyevsky who have decided to end all rules considering the lockdown and break the law, but the rest of us are bending a bit too much. we’ll be back in lockdown before you know it

i hear the demonstration going on down the street and would be happy to join – but with a partner with no antibodies i can’t even get close to them. And despite the fact that i agree with the premise, i don’t like the idea of the negativity of the demonstrations. they follow one principle of simplicity i believe in. the signs say “GO!” but Bibi says “No!” And pro-Bibi crowd have started throwing things at the demonstrations – sometimes big things, sometimes causing serious damage. there is growing fear of a violent end. But i do believe it would be nice to have clear and positive alternatives.

october 18, 2020 Read Post »

israeli politics

Tomorrow the 1000 meter limitation will be eased and some of the children will be back in school.  We are all grateful the limitations are not necessary, but our own lockdown is extended a few days – Ezi goes in for treatment tomorrow.  he’ll be home in the afternoon but will stay put for a few days.  So my explorations will continue to be limited to the neighborhood.  I still am not allowed to accompany him to the hospital – which is sad – but suddenly I’m free to meet with a girlfriend.  We usually shop together but there are no stores open, so we will sit on the sidewalk and watch the masked population walk by.  Ah, freedom!

October 17, 2020 – almost out of lockdown Read Post »