A striking coincidence
Haaretz visits the airport
One of the things I’ve never quite gotten used to in the 16 years I’ve lived in Israel is strikes. When I was growing up in the U.S., work stoppages were a relatively rare occurrence. My father worked for the San Francisco Examiner for 35 years; when the newspaper struck in the late 1960s, it was a major trauma for the entire Bay Area.
In Israel, however, strikes are as common as shwarma in the summer. The latest: the airport. Workers shut down Ben Gurion International on Monday to protest an improper use of pension funds. During that time, planes already en-route were allowed to land, but flights couldn’t take off and baggage wasn’t offloaded.
While the airport strike was resolved later the same day, it stirred memories of a previous airport strike in 1998. I was the CEO of an Internet startup at the time and I had to be in California for an important presentation in front of 1,000 people. The airport had already been closed for several days and I was at my wit’s end.
I thought of driving to Jordan and flying out of Amman, but the borders were sealed there too. Then, suddenly, one airline – El Al – was allowed to fly out one plane – remarkably, the very one I was on!
I arrived early to a nearly deserted airport. A few of us straggled in line while the El Al counter crew begrudgingly shuffled in. I made it to the conference on schedule and by the time I had to return, the strike had ended. I was even upgraded to business class (ah, those were the days).
The airport workers tend to strike every year or two, and in bad years, once every several months. In most cases I side with the workers – messing with pensions is not cool – but the inconvenience and stress seems unfathomable to me in a 21st Century western country. Can’t they just work it out – maybe a friendly negotiating session in Sharm El-Sheikh. I hear Hillary Clinton is in town.
Boycott called for against pro-coexistence group
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Social Justice
Here’s an example of the illogical element surrounding environment between Israelis and Palestinians – when top is bottom, left is right, and boycotts are everywhere.
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is probably the most idealistic and praiseworthy organization in the country. Founded in 1996, the institute’s mission is to prepare future Arab and Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region’s environmental challenges.
Located around 20 miles north of Eilat on Kibbutz Ketura, the institute has graduated over 600 students, including Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians. It’s a great place, I’ve been there. The people there are dedicated and their aim is true.
The Friends of the Arava Institute are putting on With Earth and Each Other – A Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East, to be broadcast online on November 14, in an effort to raise support and visibility for the institute.
The hour-long show will be hosted by American stage and film actor Mandy Patinkin, and is slated to feature online performances by legendary American folk singer Pete Seeger, and Jethro Tull front man Ian Anderson, who recently donated his proceeds from three Israeli performances to three organizations working toward Israeli-Arab coexistence.
In addition to highlighting various examples of cooperation between the people of the region under the auspices of the institute, the show will ask viewers around the world to join together at the event’s conclusion to sing “Salaam (Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu),” the well-known song of peace in Hebrew and Arabic.
What could be a more positive, non-political message of coexistence than that, right? Not according to over 40 organizations, led by Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, which published a letter thisd week calling on Seeger to “join the growing list of artists who have respected the Palestinian boycott call,” referring to cancellations this summer by the likes of Elvis Costello and the Pixies.
The letter cited recent events in the Beduin village of Al-Arakib, where illegal structures have been torn down four times this year by the Israel Police. The letter also focused on the participation of the Jewish National Fund as a partner in the online presentation.
“The JNF, a partner organization in ‘With Earth and Each Other,’ has been engaged in the ‘Judaization’ of Palestine for more than 100 years. After the 1948 expulsion of two thirds of the Palestinian people from their lands, the JNF planted fast-growing non-native trees on the ruins of Palestinian villages in a deliberate attempt to prevent refugees from returning to their land.”
In a separate letter to Seeger, Jeff Halper, chairman of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) wrote: “I hope that you will decide to join these artists of conscience and once again make a bold stand for justice.
Seeger, long sympathetic with Left-wing causes, has been donating some his royalties for the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” to the ICAHD for over ten years.
Halper noted that one of the JNF’s most recent activities has been “the planting of a forest to cover a Beduin village [Al- Arakib] in the Negev from which the residents have been forcibly removed.”
In response, the Friends of the Arava Institute issued a statement saying that the JNF is but one of 30 partner organizations involved in putting on the show. “The Jewish National Fund is not, as it has been described in some letters and articles, ‘the leading partner’ or ‘the sponsor’ of WEAEO,” the statement read.
According to the Arava Institute’s director, David Lehrer, those who are calling for Seeger to boycott the event are shooting themselves in the foot.
“It’s through dialoguing and that’s what the Arava Institute is all about. That’s what the program we’re running is doing and it’s what With Earth and Each Other is all about – bringing people together through dialogue. And you can’t do that if you’re staging a boycott.”
As a friend noted when she heard about the calls for the boycott, “You know we’re in trouble around here when a place like the Arava Institute is being boycotted.”
Enough of this madness already.
Save summer hours
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Religion
Not my kid, but you get the idea
The mornings have actually been getting better, as one of my almost-two-year-old twins is ‘sleeping in’ until 5:20, even 5:30. And I’ve figured out that breakfast — be it French toast, yogurt or eggs — needs to happen at 6, not later, in order to assuage the hunger pangs that hit them at the usual 7 am, now 6 am.
But while I did my part in signing the petition to keep summer hours until the end of October, I didn’t really boycott it. That would have meant missing an hour of mishpachton each day, and pretty much living in a bubble from the rest of my particular society. Local high-tech firms, however, are delaying moving their clocks back for the time being. According to an article in yesterday’s Ha’aretz, telecom firm 102 Smile is staying with summer hours until late October, as are venture capital firms IHCV and Walden Israel. Good on them, I say, although it’s gotta be a pain for their employees to live part of their life on summer hours, and the other part in winter hours.
Interior Minister and Shas politician Eli Yishai had a great reaction to the boycott, comical really. He feels the public debate over daylight savings time “targets the religious public”, given the reasoning for the change, which is make the upcoming Yom Kippur fast easier. I will be fasting, and trust me, I’d rather be fasting into the evening hours and not have to see darkness fall at 5:30 pm in September. He suggested changing the clock for the fast, and then bringing the summer clock back two weeks later.
Clearly Mr. Yishai has never been the one in his family dealing with the effect of the clock change on his own kids.
Hmm, they don’t look Israeli
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture
You can find them anywhere. I’m talking about Israelis. And sometimes you might not even be aware that they are Israelis.
Take the success story of the klezmer-meets-hip hop electronica of Balkan Beat Box, the traveling musical carnival that has enraptured American and European audiences with their energetic brand of mayhem.
They even won over a Lady Gaga audience this summer at the Lolapalooza festival. I wonder how many of the concert-goers knew that the trio at the front of the stage – saxophonist Ori Kaplan, drummer Tamir Muskat and rapper/percussionist/resident wild man Tomer Yosef, are tried and true Israelis, who all migrated to New York over a decade ago and met in Brooklyn?
According to Kaplan, the group’s Israeliness is an integral part of who they are and how they identify themselves.
“I very much still feel Israeli, even though I’ve been in New York for 16 years. Sometimes I fell quite submerged in the local culture, but I reconnected with the Israeli culture, especially in the last six years. We’re always jiving around in Hebrew, and we’re frequently in Israel performing,” said Kaplan.
“Everybody knows where we come from – we talk about it all the time in interviews. It’s part of who we are as a band – we’re not just an American trio playing music that’s ethnic flavored, it would be kind of weird if we were from Michigan and doing that.”
BBB was recently in Jerusalem for an end-of-summer Friday afternoon rave up in Sacher Park and will be returning during Succot to perform at the Tamar Festival at the Dead Sea with Matisyahu.
According to Kaplan, the exuberance of the Jerusalem crowd caught him and his colleagues off guard.
“It was fantastic, seeing secular Jerusalem come out – there was a spring break vibe and everybody was on fire,” he said. “I had always thought that Jerusalem was all Orthodox, and there was a heaviness there, like the atmosphere weighed 1,000 pounds. But this was so positive and fun.”
Positive and fun – those are some nice attributes to pin onto Israelis.
Nostalgia Sunday – Class photos
Filed under: A New Reality, design, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, War
For decades, the class photo-collage — tmunat mahzor — was the way Israelis marked school graduations. It still is. Unlike the US with is pricey yearbooks, (which have their own historical reasons for coming into being), by grouping them together. the Israeli class photo was a relatively inexpensive way to derive maximum impact from small-sized individual portraits.
In the early days, the graphics were lovingly, if amateurishly, hand-drawn, as in this class photo of the 1929 graduating class of Tel Aviv’s legendary Herzliya Gymnasium.
The collage also documented historical events. The Ramat Gan elementary school’s grade 8-II honored its graduation in 1948 with the words “The first in the State of Israel”.
As the tradition entered its second generation, layout was handed over to the professionals as in this photo-collage of the Acre Naval Academy’s 1957 graduating class.
And mid-century modern was the graphic style of choice.
Even today, there are still photographers in Israel who specialize in creating this style of class photo-collage. Of course, the cameras are digital and the layout (and airbrushing!) is done with Photoshop or similar programs. But the spirit of the thing persists. Here’s the Herzliya Gymnasium senior class, circa 2004.
This last one doesn’t have a lot going for it graphically but it’s very special to me because it’s my eighth grade class photo from 1973-4, marking our graduation from primary school. (You can click on it to get a better look).
Each child was given the large group photo-collage, plus a small white paper packet that contained the individual passport-sized portraits.
1973-4 was of course, the year of the Yom Kippur War. But it was also the year my family spent in Israel; a significant year for me at the end of which I decided Israel was a pretty good place to live. And, as Yom Kippur rolls around again, with this week as time to reflect, perhaps even reconsider, I have to say: I still think so.
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