israeli politics

Every time I have to get a heart monitor I call the central number of my health clinic and they send me to a different branch.  I have to arrive at 8 in the morning and get connected, and then return it the next day at the same time.  This should not be a problem – I get to see new areas of the country, right?  And every place has a different population – Muslim, Druze, Religious Jewish, etc.  So I don’t mind the drive. 

Today, however, I screwed up in Herzlia.  Because the address was so similar to my dentist’s, I figured I’d park in their underground parking and go up.  But I arrived just a bit too early and the clinic wasn’t open.  So I picked up a few things at the supermarket and then went back, where I was informed that I had the wrong clinic.  The right one was up the street.  But as I walked up the street I noticed that the numbers were going up, and I needed a lower number.  So I went down – and the numbers disappeared.  That’s when I turned on the map and discovered it was way up the street – four minutes – And I began walking.  But as I continued to walk and seemed to get no closer,  I looked again at the map and finally noticed that the time indicated was for driving, not walking.  But I was more than a third of the way, so I kept going.

That’s when I ran into another problem.  Once I got there – only half an hour late – the address was a group of cute little shopping centers with no signs and I wound up climbing stair after stair before I found the nurses’ station.  

Strangely enough, because I was wet (it was raining) and a bit exhausted from the uphill walk and the stair marathon, I looked a little worn out, so the nurses decided to check me out before they gave me the monitor.  

I was fine – just very low blood pressure,  A liter of water took care of that and I was on my way back to the car.  

The monitor, however, is for 24 hours and tomorrow is a holiday, so I have to take off the monitor tomorrow and be back at 8 the next day to return it.  

I will be purchasing a monitor of my own in the future.

 

 

messed-up Monitor – april 11, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

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.

april 11, 2023 Read Post »

israeli politics

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 »

israeli politics

“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 »

israeli politics

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 »

israeli politics

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 »

israeli politics

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.

   

supermarket – Read Post »