Tel Aviv Diary - December 23-27, 2008 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
December 23, 2008
Robert and Sylvia Rosenberg, z"l, two wonderful people who lived well, but much too briefly.
I think it's a good time to donate blood - we'll be needing it very soon in large quantities.
This is the cat who doesn't care that the news is so scary,
but doesn't like being disturbed.
I would have written more, but we had a flat tire in Kfar Shmariyahu on our way home from a Hannukah party. It was about 9:20 at night and we were on a main street - a white-haired man and an awkward woman. Ezi of course handled everything in twenty minutes, but in that 20 minutes not a single person stopped to ask if we need help. I find that strange for Israel. And I'm cold and tired now.
December 24, 2008
Orit Kruglanski is revitalizing the classic poetry reading series, Kippod, on Monday night at 70 Hayarkon Street, at 9:30. I'll be there too.
Hamas is really giving us a bright holiday, isn't it? Thirty people in the hospital just for shock. Rockets all over the place, raining down on Ashkelon. And they're using the language of Nasrallah. Not a pleasant Hannukah or Christmas eve or Adha. Puts even the Madoff affair in perspective.
December 25, 2008
So after a day of 60 rockets, we only got 8 today. And now that we've announced we're going to do something drastic, Hamas is hiding. This is a neverending game. They shot the rockets, they said, because we killed 3 Palestinians. But they were getting rockets ready to shoot on Israel. As my dear late mother-in-law used to say about kindergarteners, "It all started when he hit me back."
Today I thought it would be a good idea to visit Sylvia's mourners at Petach Tikva. It was, but my timing was awful. It took us over an hour each way because the traffic crawled. We came home exhausted, and now have a tenants meeting to go to. But I do have a wonderful piece of news - Ezi's petscan today was perfect.
December 26, 2008
I pretty much didn't do anything I was supposed to do today. We were going up to Acre to see the opening of the paintings of the late Azriel Kaufman, but went to bed instead. In fact I can't remember anything from the run we did this morning (in my new Mtb's) until dinner this evening at Pappa's (which was so crowded there were people in a line out in the street).
One of the things I didn't do was read the paper. It seems more and moe evident to me that we are suffering from a bad case of believing the corrupted foreign news reports about us, even though we know they are wrong. Like how the current rocket barrage began. We know the Israeli army killed three guys setting of rocket launchers against Israel, but when we keep hearing from the foreign press that the Israelis killed three men digging a tunnel over and over, we begin to believe it. Amazing how we are so into post modernism we really allow ourselves to not believe our own eyes.
December 27, 2008
We've been glued to the television since Israel began the effort to stop the Kassams today. Everyone was surprised, but we've been saying that unless the Grads and Kassams stop raining on this country, we'll do something massive, as soon as the rain is over. So we gave the time and the warnings over the last few days - Olmert said "please - we don't want war and you don't want this either. Stop the rockets." I think that was a reasonable request. But I know we're going to get hell all around the world for striking Gaza.
There's a demonstration tonight: TODAY WE STOP THE WAR CINEMATEQUE SQUARE, TEL AVIV 18:00 - PUBLIC EMERGENCY MEETING, OPEN TO ALL ACTIVISTS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC 19:30 - PROTEST MARCH AND DEMONSTRATION.
Do I agree? How can anyone agree to the death of people? And yet, how can we talk to people who will not
