this is the local highline, built on the old turkish rail line that went to Mecca….
and here’s the mosque the Turks built with the tax money they extricated from the locals. Hassan Bek = surrounded by cranes. not a good sign.
february 3, 2022 – Local Highline Read Post »
I usually find myself turning the page or changing the channel when the topic is sexual harassment. Not because I’m not interested, but because it makes me remember. Not one incident, but innumerable incidents I really don’t want to recall. Most were involved with bosses or people with power over my situation, doctors, editors, drivers, etc. Most were not overwhelming in their use of physical force. All of them were refused, but all of them creep into my nightmares.
But although I do not find it possible to join demonstrations and only once signed a declaration disapproving the rights of arts to total sexual freedom (which got me cut off my column in Ha’aretz ) I sympathize wherever possible with victims of sexual pressure, and I’ve interviewed about it in the past, but I’ve never been totally active against it. And in those days you did not complain.
january 5, 2022 – Harassment Read Post »
What a terrible day. Two funerals of people we loved, people who had nothing to do with each other – we were the only mutual connection. One funeral was at 1 and the other at 3. Ezi was still recovering from the vaccine, so when the first funeral finished, we decided to stay and have lunch at the new schnitzel stand at the entrance to the cemetery.
Yes, it is strange to have a cafe next to a cemetery. But as we sat there I began to realize the enormous number of people and cars on the roads before us. A new parking lot did little to contain the cars coming and going and the new cafe, albeit small, was also buzzing.
But the time between the two was very brief, and although we ate quickly, as we sat there with our mouths full of schnitzel, friends began to arrive for the funeral to come. That hunger for sustenance in the face of the death of our loved ones was so inappropriate and yet overwhelming.
We put our masks back on and went into the cemetery, and there was a crowd even bigger than the crowd in the morning.
But it was rushed. Hardly had the speakers finished their elegy before the noise of another funeral began. To speed us up, the hevre kadisha began to wheel out the cart with the body from the cemetery entrance towards the grave. That is when we collapsed.
Ezi said ‘enough’ and we started to head home. But it was turtles all the way. We crawled through traffic jams that made me almost miss my five o’clock zoom. I’m not sure how we will get through all the shiva calls this week – but, as Philip Roth said, at our age shivas are the continuation of cocktail parties.
Now none of these people died of Covid – but a friend has a theory that our situation hastens death – covid-related or not.
January 3, 2022 – Traffic Jam at the cemetery Read Post »
Have I told you already? Ezi received his fourth vaccine today. He had to drive into Tel Aviv and battle the traffic, but once there, there was almost no waiting and he was back home and drinking coffee within an hour and a half.
The rest of the country, it seems, was waiting in line for PCR tests. Not me, I was enjoying myself with a root canal – part 2. And for some reason, it left me totally wasted. Part 1 was the hard part, but as soon as it was over we went to visit a sick friend, but this time was murder. Two more to go.
My friend in Germany suggests that I was taking Ezi’s reaction on myself so that he would not feel the effects of his vaccine. I protest – I have enough troubles of my own.
It will take time before we know if this vaccine works on him, but there is a sense of relief.
And when I finish this teeth thing there will be a sense of relief – You’ll find me eating real food and carrying a much lighter wallet.
january 2, 2021 – 4th vaccine Read Post »
On the assumption that rockets don’t just fall out of the air, and that the rockets that fell next to Tel Aviv yesterday at 7 a.m. were a warning to the partying Tel Avivians groggily recovering from a drunken excuse to celebrate, we reacted by attacking the rocket factory. I hate the kindergarten mentality of this, but I don’t know the alternative. Silence is seen as weakness, not friendship. very sad.
january 2, 2022 – rockets response Read Post »
because everyone is in the country, because it is considered ‘safer’ here, there is no room to move. We went to the pool this morning – me and a granddaughter – no room to swim. we want to meet some friends in the afternoon – but we have to be very careful about the hours because of the traffic. The streets around us are all dug up in anticipation of the improved public transportation system, so the local cars are all lined up on our street trying to get out.
We couldn’t go to the park as a family because the puppy is still not totally vaccinated and not even leashed-trained, and the park had other families entertaining their dogs.
But of course, I exaggerate our complaints. We’re not in Tokyo, we don’t have tickets to Tokyo, and we personally don’t have any variants at the moment. Despite the dilapidated appearance of our building, it hasn’t fallen down, or been blown up. We haven’t contributed to the automobile pollution because we barely use our only car, and we Will find some way to help people in Lebanon.
And of course, since our news programs aren’t saying anything about all the crises in the world and here, we’re pretending things are fine – just fine.
july 8, 2021 – grandchildren and dog Read Post »
Years ago Ezi used to lecture in the army about saving people from fallen buildings. Ever since then when a building falls down he watches closely and kibbitzes. The Surfside tragedy is the worst. So much to kibbitz. Yes, as the Israelis are saying, there still may be pockets where people can be alive, but from the first moment he was giving me the proper plan of action. Of course he never tells anyone because he really has no avenues of communication, but I’m pretty sure he was right. He said it’s a layered operation and you have to lift off the ceilings layer by layer with forklifts, very carefully but with gread speed.
I don’t know anyone who lives there but I have not been able to take my eyes off the news for hours a day. This is not like me – today a soldier was stabbed here and I haven’t turned on the news. We’re usually used to ignoring terrible things so we can go on with our lives. I don’t think we’re nonchalant, but helpless. There are so many tragedies in daily life here that we note them, and go on. Not just political. One minor example: the streets of Tel Aviv have been ripped up for a few years now, part of the preparation for a subway that will probably be in use after I’m long dead. So I ignore the mess. Today they ripped up the beautiful green corner of our street – this time to widen the turn-off. We went to see it. The olive trees had disappeared, and the grassy arc where we used to sit was a hole. We have been listening to bulldozers for months, widening the avenue nearby to create a designated bicycle lane and a wide walkway (where NOONE ever walks) . They work at night – noisily and voraciously – and we just close all our windows and keep counter noise on. I doubt that any one of the neighbors who haven’t had their land confiscated by the government has said a word. We haven’t.
But the rescuing procedure in Florida has been too much to bear.
july 1, 2021 – when does one complain? Read Post »
today’s Jerusalem Post:
JUNE 30, 2021
I am sometimes accused of being an “Arab-lover.” I have to come clean: It is true, I cannot deny it. Is there something wrong with that? I have lived and worked with Arabs for more than 40 years. I live in Jerusalem, which is a binational Israeli-Palestinian Arab city. My wife comes from an Iraqi Jewish family. Certainly her family’s cultural roots are Arab. My mother-in-law’s cooking (before she fell ill) was among the best Arab food I have ever eaten.
I love the Arabic language and the more I study it the more I love it. I listen to a lot of Palestinian Arab radio stations while driving in my car. I have discovered hundreds of Arabic language films and series on Netflix, seriously expanding my world. In studying Arabic, I learn to appreciate and love the Hebrew language, too, even more than I already do. The two languages are so close to each other and share so much in common, it is such a huge loss that so few Hebrew and Arabic speakers in this world speak each other’s language.
I enjoy my frequent visits to Arab friends, in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. There are differences between the different Arab cultures. I feel most at home in Palestinian homes, both inside of Israel and in the occupied territories. In those homes and communities, I always enjoy the closeness and warmth between friends and family.
Arab hospitality is well known. I encountered it first when I lived in Kafr Qara from 1979 to 1981. Until you experience the generosity and openness, it is difficult to even describe it. I often felt uncomfortable because there were certainly times when I knew that the family was not very well off, but that was never expressed when serving guests. They would quietly send one of the children out to the nearby grocery store to buy some sweet drinks and other things to put on the table. I always felt bad because I didn’t want to drink those sweetened beverages, but knowing of their situation I would gulp them down anyway.
It took me a while to understand the whole Arab hospitality thing. For me it was difficult to grasp. Why are they spending so much time, so much money, and demonstrating such generosity? It seems so disproportionate to be treated that way when I would probably not come close to showing the same kind of hospitality. Then it dawned on me. It all has to do with the notion of “honor,” which is a key value in traditional Middle Eastern cultures.
In Western society, the honor is to be the guest. In Arab society, the honor is to be the host. You gain honor and you demonstrate your honor by hosting in the best way possible. Not only is this a foreign concept in the West, the relationship to “honor,” particularly to “personal honor” in the West is completely different from the way that Arab society relates to it. Honor is the core of one’s existence.
THE HONOR of the individual embodies the honor of the family, all of its members, especially the women and, even more so, the elders. The collective honor of the family is embodied in the honor of the tribe or the extended family. This goes from the local to the national, where the concept of national honor becomes a core element in the Israeli-Arab conflict. It all can be distilled down to something that Westerners and Easterners can easily understand: dignity. Arab dignity is expressed, among other things, by their hospitality. Even the Arabic word to extend hospitality is yehtarem, meaning to grant honor.
I have heard so many stories over the years of Israeli Palestinians who hosted Israeli Jews in their home and showed them the generosity of Arab hospitality. I heard from the Arab hosts how insulted they were when their Jewish guests invited them in return and took them to a restaurant instead of inviting them to their home. The Jewish side, of course, felt that they were showing respect and generosity by taking their guests to dine out, and it didn’t even dawn on them that this would be seen as an insult.
I heard many times from young Israeli Palestinians who participated in meetings with Israeli Jews within the framework of school. The first visit usually takes place in the Arab town or village and almost always includes a home visit, often for lunch. When the reciprocal visit takes place, most often the kids have lunch together in the school, and the Arab kids end up being insulted. They say, “Why didn’t they bring me to their home like we brought them to ours?”
Why am I bringing all of this up? Because of the renewal of the so-called “citizenship law” that is really the anti-love, anti-Arab, racist, and one of the most despicable and disgraceful laws in the Israeli legal system. I have good friends who are the victims of this law. Even in 2003 when it was first passed, it had nothing really to do with security, as was claimed. It has always been about demography, which is Israeli coded language for pure outright racism. It has always been about preventing Arabs from receiving citizenship in Israel.
It is beyond my human ability to understand how our lawmakers and politicians can see the validity of denying citizens of a democratic country the right to freely marry and live with their spouses as full citizens within their own country. I can only imagine what the reaction of Israel would be if some other country passed laws that prevented Jewish citizens of that country from allowing them to marry freely and bring their spouses to live with them as equal citizens.
I call on the new Israeli government to simply not bring the law’s extension to a vote. The law, which is a temporary order, will simply fade away. There are already more than enough safeguards within the Israeli legal system to prevent people who are genuine security risks from becoming citizens. All other applicants for family reunification should be immediately granted the right to love and to live in peace with their spouses and families as equal citizens of our democratic country. So yes, I am an Arab-lover. The question I ask is, why aren’t you also?
The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to the State of Israel and to peace between Israel and her neighbors. His latest book, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine, was published by Vanderbilt University Press.
june 30, 2021 – from Gershon baskin Read Post »
