Flood chasing
It’s pouring rain today, and while I was considering going home to bake bread, my niece is out there chasing flash floods.
Rainy days become something of an event around here, particularly in a winter as dry as this one has been. And in the Negev Desert, where intense rains can quickly cause flooding and, sometimes, disasters for drivers and passengers, the flip side is watching this awe-inspiring act of nature.
Which is why my niece and her friends were heading south today for some storm chasing, accompanied, of course, by experienced storm chasers, or so she told us. It’s a popular pasttime for some, as explained in this very helpful slideshow produced by one Guy Shachar. Or check out the video; they’re both worth watching.
Balancing the heroic and the profane
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Pop Culture, Social Justice
With the death toll due to last week’s earthquake in Haiti rising to unprecedented numbers, there’s been a lot of coverage in the Israeli media – and resultant pride – about our rescue operations and field hospital which has been finding trapped victims, treating them, and even helping a woman give birth to a baby, which she subsequently named ‘Israel.’
But just like in other countries like the US, where coverage of the tragedy is competing for space with the Jay Leno – Conan O’Brien NBC fiasco, there are other less noble stories here which remind us that we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back as higher developed forms of life too hard.
Goel Ratzon in court last week.
Near the end of last week, the police disclosed the results of a year-long investigation culminating in the arrest of Tel Aviv resident Goel Ratzon, a self-professed cult leader accused of enslavement and rape of some of the 32 women who lived with him as his ‘wives,’ along with almost 90 children their unions produced. He is also suspected of extortion, incitement to arson and solicitation to commit suicide.
According to Ha’aretz, police suspect that Ratzon imposed a harsh and unforgiving regime on his household, which had a rule book complete with punishments. Prohibitions in the book include interrupting Ratzon, idling, arguing with him or with each other, and laughing indoors.
The arrest followed a long investigation involving hundreds of police and Labor and Social Welfare personnel, who originally began probing Ratzon back in 2006. They evidently handled the investigation with kid gloves out of the fear that Ratzon had forged a suicide pact with his ‘wives’ in the event the apartments they lived in were ever raided.
While not as horrifying, but still given ample space in Israel’s leading daily paper Yediot Aharonot, was the disclosure last week that a former housekeeper for Sara Netanyahu, the wife of our prime minister, was suing her for a basket of grievances including mental abuse, humiliation and exploitation.
The 44-year-old woman – Lillian – claimed that her relationship with Sara involved constant humiliation and an overall hostile atmosphere. According to the paper’s report on the lawsuit, Netanyahu expected Lillian to be on call 24 hours a day, and once even phoned her at 2 a.m. to reprimand her for failing to properly cover a pillow.
She also charged that Sara forced her other employees to call her “Mrs. Sara Netanyahu” and would often boast that she had a beautiful house, telling her housekeeping staff how lucky they were to be working for the Netanyahu family and saying she was the “mother of the State of Israel.”
The Prime Minister’s Office responded by saying that the lawsuit was full of “lies and slander,” and that extensive coverage of the story in Yediot Aharonot was part of a “tendentious media campaign lacking any journalistic ethics.”
“In total contrast to what is written in the lawsuit, the plaintiff Lillian received warm and affection treatment from Mrs. Netanyahu. It is this treatment that led her to stay six years with the Netanyahu family,” the statement read.
Whether the claims are true or not is for the court to decide – but many are claiming that the ‘scoop’ by Yediot was part of a business vendetta against competitor Yisrael Hayom, which is owned by Bibi-friendly American mogul Sheldon Edelson.
Given away daily as a handout at train and bus stations, Yisrael Hayom is rapidly overtaking Yediot as the most-read paper in Israel. So true or not, the case against Sara – whom the Israeli public always loves to read about – was a savvy business move by the tabloid, which managed to squeeze in on its front page something about dozens of thousands being killed in an earthquake somewhere.
Second seasons
Last week’s heavily anticipated start of the second season of “Srugim,” the Israeli TV show about religiously observant singles living in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem hasn’t been without its own stops and starts.
Fans — myself included — had to wait many months to find out the fates of Yifat and Amir, Hodaya, Nati and Reut. It was hard. We were impatient. Would Yifat and Amir get married? Would Hodaya, the show’s datlash (acronym for dati leumi lesheavar, that is, a formerly religiously observant person), finally lose her virginity? Would Nati, the selfish med student, come to grips with his ego? Would Reut, the successful accountant, find herself in India? At this point, one show in, some questions have been answered and I’m eagerly awaiting last night’s second episode. (Didn’t get to it last night and non-Yes satellite TV subscribers can watch Srugim online at Walla!)
But what’s also been hilarious about this surprisingly popular show is how it has caught the attention of some unusual groupies. One Arab blogger, Mohamed, writes that he can identify with many of the show’s issues, from attempting to date someone from a different background to equating love and marriage. Surprisingly, Mohamed likes Srugim.
Of course, not everyone feels the same. A group of ultra Orthodox rabbis have complained about the Srugim billboards which have been plastered throughout the country, because they use religious scriptures as part of the advertising campaign, a play on words whose irony was lost on this particular special interest group. Supposedly the billboards are now going to have to be buried in a geniza, because they contain holy words.
To edify, the billboard says “Paamayim ki tov Srugim, back for a second season.” “Paamayim ki tov” is translated as “Twice, because it is good,” referring to the words spoken by God on the third day of creation. Clever, but not acceptable to some. Maybe they’re just afraid of the buzz generated from a television show about religious singles.
Nostalgia Sunday – Pressed Wildflowers
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel
Last week’s freakishly warm weather sent the almond trees into bloom. Although it was a false spring, residents of the entire country went out for their annual wildflower trek.
Yes, Israelis love their wildflowers. Well, at least they know not to pick wildflowers. In fact the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) did such a good job of brainwashing the past few generations of schoolchildren that you will never catch an Israeli picking a wildflower. They’ll throw garbage on it, pee on it, build an ugly edifice next to it, but pick it?! Never.
When I was a child, a bookmark with pressed wildflowers was one of the more charming tourist trinkets you could pick up (hard to find but still charming today).
Back in the pre-TV days, before the ban on picking wildflowers took hold, Israeli schoolchildren were encouraged to not only to pick but also to collect and study the different kinds of flora native to this land, and press them between the pages of a book.
Later on, commerce got into the act and albums were made available as promotional items like this one from margarine manufacturer Telma Gold Band.
And of course, the Israel Postal Authority (today’s Israel Post), did its part by issuing stamps of our most popular wildflowers.
Competing margarine manufacturer Blue Band also took on the cause as part of an advertising campaign bossily entitled (in the command form) “Know Our Country’s Flowers”. This ad is for the caper (Capparis spinosa L.). I’m not sure why all these margarine makers were so interested in educating the young people about wildflowers but I’m guessing it had something to do with safflower oil.
Today, you’re more likely to find cultivated flowers, rather than wild ones, pressed and waxed or laminated into bookmarks, candles and jewelry. I’m not sure, however, what the SPNI would make of this set of nails, but you’ve got to admire the work put into these tiny purple petals, lacquered and bonded onto synthetic tips, the handiwork of manicurist Ronit!
Israelis do their part in Haiti
Filed under: A New Reality, General, health, Israeliness, Social Justice
Members of the Israeli rescue team free a man trapped in rubble in Haiti.
An El Al Boeing 777 and an IDF plane landed on Friday with 250 Israeli medical officers and nurses for a 90-bed field hospital, which includes a full surgical unit and is able to treat 100 patients at a time. The team includes 40 doctors, including a psychiatrist, 20 nurses, 20 paramedics and medics, 20 lab and X-ray technicians and administrators.
The large field hospital established by the IDF Medical Corps on Saturday was already treating dozens of patients four hours later, according to its commander, Lt.-Col. Dr. Itzik Reiss.
He told Israeli media in a conference call on Saturday night that
children with severe fractures set only with cardboard arrived at the hospital for treatment. Some young patients had been freed from rubble but had to have limbs amputated due to severe gangrene, he said. Within a few hours, operations were performed.
The hospital has an emergency room, pediatric, orthopedic, internal medicine, obstetrics and surgery departments, clinics and other facilities. The Israeli facility has enough equipment to function for about two weeks.
The IDF’s Medical and Rescue Team were also part of the delegation, with two teams from the Oketz canine unit pressed into action, including at the UN headquarters in the capital where there was hope of locating and extricating survivors.
In addition, four members of the ZAKA rescue unit arrived in Haiti at the end of the week with two Mexican rescue specialists aboard a Mexican Air Force Hercules cargo plane, immediately after completing their work in recovery and identification last week in the Mexico City helicopter crash that killed philanthropist Moshe Saba and four others.
More known in Israel for being first on the scene at terror attacks for the thankless task of identifying and retrieving body parts, the team, deployed at a collapsed multi-story university building, managed to extricate eight students from the rubble over the weekend.
“You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension,” said Mati Goldstein, the head of the delegation wrote in an email to ZAKA headquarters in Jerusalem.
Goldstein called the weekend a “Shabbat from hell. Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It’s just like the stories we are told of the Holocaust – thousands of bodies everywhere.”
AP reported that when 19-year-old Josyanne Petidelle was pulled out of the rubble after being buried for three days, among the first to check her was an Israeli.
Doctors and nurses flocked to the woman to drip water into her mouth and intubate her. Dov Maisel, a doctor who had just arrived from Israel, said she appeared to have internal injuries. Her condition would be assessed at Port-au-Prince’s main hospital, he said, “But I think she’ll live.”
Readers who would like to contribue to Haiti relief efforts can go here.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts