Nostalgia Sunday – Netanyahu’s fixer upper

February 22, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics 

The members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet went on a little trip today up to visit historic Tel Hai in the Galilee. Going on tiyul is quite common this season — dozens of people are hiking Shvil Yisrael, the Israel National Trail this month — but it’s unusual for members of Knesset to move en masse out of their comfort zone and into the periphery.

However, this was a special occasion. Today being the 90th anniversary of the battle at the Tel Hai compound — itself refurbished thanks to the efforts of The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS) — it was selected as an appropriate time and place for a cabinet meeting to approve a comprehensive plan, the largest ever, to “strengthen the national heritage infrastructures of the State of Israel”.

What is a national heritage infrastructure? As set out in Netanyahu’s plan (called TAMAR which in Hebrew is the acronym for “national heritage infrastructure”) it consists of about 150 “tangible/material cultural resources” (archaeological and historic sites) and “intangible/nonmaterial cultural resources” (archives and collections of literature, poetry, philosophy, arts, crafts, music and song, dance, theater, film, traditions, holidays, festivals, ceremonies, etc.) all in need of rehabilitation and/or enrichment. TAMAR will cost almost NIS 400 million, and will be funded by private donations to be matched by allocations from the budgets of 16 government ministries.

The list of sites — which is not yet finalized — includes 37 archaeological sites, 39 museums and collections, and 62 sites relating to Israel’s Jewish and Zionist heritage — many literally crumbling to bits, such as the magnificent painted ceiling in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim Yeshiva. There are also 13 projects in the “intangible/nonmaterial” category that would restore cultural resources like the backlog of yet-uncatalogued movies still in cartons at the Israel Film Archive – as well as upgrade the archive building itself.

Two additional trails will be created in addition to Shvil Yisrael, promised Netanyahu, one a historic trail of archaeological sites from the biblical, Second Temple and other eras in the history of the Land of Israel, the other a trail tracing the places and events that gave rise to the modern-day State of Israel.

Netanyahu couldn’t have given a better example than this one: dowdy, dingy Independence Hall in Tel Aviv. “It is good that the city is open to the world and good that the city is alive and moving forward. But at 16 Rothschild Boulevard, there is a small auditorium in which the State of Israel was declared. There, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, declared the State of Israel.

“The hall is run-down. I am not saying that it is about to fall over but as far as the many young people and others, who flock to the street, to Rothschild Boulevard, are concerned, they do not know it. They do not visit it at all. And therefore, we will rehabilitate Independence Hall.”

The long-term payoff for TAMAR, say the plan’s authors, will be NIS 630 million in annual tourism revenue, job creation in the amount of 3,500 permanent positions plus 800 more during the 5-year period of the plan’s execution, and development of tourism to the Negev and Galilee regions. Later this week, the cabinet is due to approve the national transportation plan joining the Galilee and other regions to an accessible national transportation grid.

The cabinet also made a separate decision today on a new building for Israel’s National Library, funded by a donation from Yad Hanadiv (the Rothschild Foundation).

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A moral dilemma on King David Street

February 21, 2010 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice, Sports 

I’m not sure if I was taken in by a 3-Card-Monty sidewalk scam or callous in not fully helping someone in need.

I left Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on Friday with my tennis partner Calev after our weekly doubles game (Why we get to play at the venerable hotel’s outside court situated in it’s beautiful poolside courtyard is another story worth telling some day).

As we were walking to Calev’s car, a neatly dressed woman holding two young girls – aged maybe six and four, dressed in their Friday finest approached us.

“Excuse me,” she said in an accented English that revealed her Arab origins. She was tall and thin, and wearing a fashionable black pant suit.

“I’m from Haifa, and I had to come to Jerusalem to take one of my girls to the hospital for an appointment. But I lost my pocket book, and now we have no way of getting back to Haifa. Do you have any money you can give so we can go home?”

What would you do?

Calev, who grew up in New York, immediately scoped out the situation as a classic tourist scam, aimed at bilking the high-scale King David clientele out of their money.

I looked at the little girls, and took NIS 20 out of my pocket and handed it to the woman.

“This will get you to the Central Bus Station,” I said. “You can ask Egged (the bus company) to help you get home.”

The woman wasn’t happy with that offering.

“But I need NIS 150 to get home,” she insisted.

Claiming that the money I gave her was all I had, we continued walking to the car. Calev said, “I’m sure she’s from east Jerusalem and does this every week.”

As we drove onto King David Street, he suggested we look for the woman and offer her a ride to Haifa. If she declined, then we’d know that I had been taken. If she accepted, then it was going to be a long afternoon driving two hours each way to Haifa.

Alas, we couldn’t find them on the street anymore, and we were left to speculate. Ultimately, I didn’t feel bad at my NIS 20 contribution to the woman. Even if she was a clever scam artist, the money would hopefully go to feeding her children. But we may never find out who she was… unless she’s there again next Friday when we finish our tennis game.

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Coke does it

February 21, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, tv 

Could the world’s soft drink giant be ripping off Israeli chocolate milk maker Yotvata?

Very possibly. It seems that Coca-Cola had a Super Bowl commercial last Sunday titled “Sleepwalker,” and it showed a guy getting up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a fridge with bottles of Coke in it. Let me say that the two ads are extremely similar, from the music, plot to even the placement of the moon in the background.

A Coca-Cola spokeswoman told “Advertising Age” that any similarities to the Yotvata Dairy ad were coincidental.

“Advertising Age” quotes Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling as saying, “When we created the Coca-Cola ‘Sleepwalker’ commercial, we and our agency were unaware of this other ad. Now that we’ve seen the ad, we think both commercials are equally entertaining. While the two share a few common elements, any similarities are coincidental and unintended.”

Until now, Yotvata hasn’t made any complaints about the Coke ad, and according to a Globes articles, Israeli analysts said that the “near-imitation” could be considered flattery by Israel’s marketing industry. Which, of course, is just hilarious. But not unheard of. I’ve experienced more than one instance of Israeli copycat flattery. I’ve had articles published in the New York Times that were then translated and copied, word for word, in the Israeli press. When it was about the secondary mortgage market in Israel, the article in Yediot Achronot read, “The New York Times says…” blah blah blah.

Nice workaround, no? But alas, I, the writer, never got any credit. Ditto for Yotvata.

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Remember who the victim was

February 19, 2010 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War 

Johnny Depp playing Hunter Thompson playing me...

With all the backlash surrounding the use of the names of British immigrants to Israel for part of the hit squad that offed Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel last month, it got me to thinking a bit.

Sure, it’s undoubtedly a jolt to find out that your identity was absconded with, without permission, to perpetrate an act of murder. On the other hand, look at the victim.

Mabhouh helped found Hamas’s armed wing Izzadin Kassam in the 1980s and was perhaps most infamous for being behind the kidnapping and murder in the first intifada of IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa’adon. According to Liat Collins in The Jerusalem Post, Hamas held out against revealing the location of their bodies, neither of whose last minutes were spent in anything like a luxury hotel. Sasportas’s body was discovered after three months, while it took seven years to find the remains of Sa’adon and offer his family closure.

Mabhouh was also reportedly behind the weapons convoy that, foreign reports claim, was bombed by Israel in the Sudanese desert during Operation Cast Lead a year ago.

If any of the Israelis whose names were utilized in the operation were asked beforehand if they would contribute in the effort to remove Mahbouh from the world terror active list, how do you think they would have responded?

Probably they would have said yes. If any of them served – or are serving in the IDF – then they’ve likely taken part in some aspect of protecting Israel from threats. And they were probably proud of it.

I’d like to think that if my name had been stolen from me temporarily to rid the world of a terrorist aimed at Israel’s destruction, I might be a little dumbstruck at first, but soon after I would feel only pride that I had been able to contribute to the effort in some small way.

I’d only hope that Steven Spielberg would allow me to choose the actor to portray my doppleganger in the film adaption of the operation. I’m thinking maybe Johnny Depp in his Hunter Thompson haircut mode?

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Great deals or hidden scam?

February 19, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Technology 

The courts have ruled that the service is legal, but it still leaves a muddled taste in my mouth. I’m talking about Free.co.il, a popular Israeli auction site that works more like the Lotto than eBay.

You can’t help but be drawn in by Free.co.il’s home page which promises a Sony Playstation for NIS 99, a MacBook Air for NIS 299, and even a brand new Mazda 3 for a steal at only NIS 899. Who wouldn’t want to play with deals like these?

At first, it would be hard to distinguish Free.co.il from a traditional eBay-style auction site: you place your bids on items for sale and the highest bidder within the auction’s time frame wins. Unlike eBay, though, you have to pay for your bids. The cost of each bid varies; for the MacBook, it’s NIS 20 (about $5). It’s higher for bigger ticket items.

So, let’s say you bid 20 times to win that MacBook. You’ll pay NIS 20 x 20 or NIS 400 ($105). Then you pay the price of the unit (NIS 299 or $80), plus shipping of NIS 75 ($20) written in tiny letters on a separate page you have to click to see). Your total cost: NIS 774 ($206). That’s still way less than the retail price of NIS 8,899 ($2,400) at Apple’s Tel Aviv outlet, but it’s not the NIS 299 that was initially advertised.

And what if you don’t win? Then you lose the NIS 400 entirely. That’s how Free.co.il can offer such low prices.

Still, if you place your bids right (and there is a whole section on “bidding strategies” on the site), and you’re willing to stick with it and spend hours aggressively placing last minute bets, you will win eventually (hopefully for an item you actually want). So, even if you wind up spending NIS 2,000 bidding on several items before winning one that’s valued at NIS 10,000, you’re still getting the product at an 80% discount.

There’s one other trick Free.co.il has up its digital sleeve. If two people bid the same amount, both bids are canceled. That means that the highest “unique” bid wins. You can see who’s placing what bids, their initials and even where they live, but not the amount they’re spending. So you never really know if your bid is being burned or not.

Free.co.il is entirely in Hebrew, but there’s a thriving market of overseas competitors. Is this a good business? Investors seem to think so. One of Free.co.il’s rivals, Swoopo, has raised an astonishing $14 million.

It’s certainly compelling – who wouldn’t want an iPhone at a tenth of the retail price – though I don’t think I’d have the stomach for it (I usually chicken out and click the “Buy it Now” button on eBay). And it peeves me that Free.co.il buries those hefty shipping fees in hard-to-find small print – it makes me wonder what else are they hiding.

But if you’re willing to play by the rules, and you enjoy the thrill of the game, Free.co.il could the 21st century version of “The Price is Right.” All we need now is our own Israeli version of Bob Barker.

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