blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

People talk about 200,000 refugees in Israel, but numbers never mean much to me.  Even when I see the tents of evacuees from the south covering the entire plaza between the courts, the library and the museum, it doesn’t mean as much to me as a single old friend caught in the dreadful situation.  

In this case it is a friend of almost 60 years who lives next to what was once called “the good fence” up north, but has been evacuated and has been living in hotels for the past three months because of rocketfire up north.  She is not only old – like me – but she has Parkinson’s and has undergone 2 cataract operations since her exile.  Her house in Metula is booklined but until now hasn’t been able to read, but now she has no books.  So we went up to Tiberias with 3 bags of books donated by a wonderful Tel Aviv friend and left her with no room to move in that small room with all that reading. 

What else is there to do?

  

refugees – Jan 4, 2024 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

I was watching the long rows of refugees from Gaza city trudging down south to an uncertain future,  carrying all they own. 

Then I remembered.  My parents were refugees.  They managed to get out of the international city of Danzig where they had been refugees from Lithuania for 4 years – and arrived in England the night before Hitler’s invasion of Poland.  Their visas were temporary, and from the moment they arrived, their sponsors were looking for a way to get them out of England.  That’s why I grew up in America. 

But my parents never would have been able to return to their homes.  The whole neighborhood was bulldozed. We found new homes in America, and I never thought of myself as a refugees.  Even though the only clothes I had were in a tiny bag, and what I wore was a jumpsuit made down from British army blankets. 

I hope these people have intact homes to go back to when this is over.  But I have said goodbye to a number of homes and entered bare rooms and started over again and again, and apart from a few neuroses, managed.

 

 

 

refugees – nov 21, 2023 Read Post »