An Israeli son comes home

October 19, 2011 - 9:37 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, News, Social Justice, Travel 

It was one of those surreal days, like during the World Cup when you can hear the games coming out of every window walking down the street. Except this time it wasn’t just a goal at stake, but a human life.

I watched the beginning of the events of the day that IDF soldier Gilad Schalit was released from Hamas imprisonment after almost five and a half years from the cozy confines of my bedroom TV with my wife and one of my sons at around 6:15 am. The three regular TV networks here – Channels 1,2 and 10 provided non-stop coverage and commentary.

Having some errands to do, I dragged myself away from the addicting scenes unfolding (when will Gilad cross from Gaza to Egypt, when will the first photos be shown?) and went to the local mall.

I arrived just in time to join about 30 people crowded in front of a TV at the ice cream parlor in the mall’s central expanse, as we watched that first footage of a pale, thin Schalit being escorted by Hamas and Egyptian handlers to his freedom. There weren’t many comments, aside from an occasional ‘wow’ or a gasp or sigh. We all knew it was a scene that would stick with us for the rest of our lives.

But I had banking to attend to. And when I finished my other errands and returned home, I joined my family (this being Hol Hamoed Succot after all) in driving to the grimy central city of Ramle for a short walkabout its Old City and a (very cool) rowboat ride in a giant Crusader-era giant water cistern.

Walking along the streets after heading back to a recommended hummous restaurant, we stopped at a sidewalk café and watched along with the other patrons the footage of Schalit walking off the helicopter at the Tel Nof Air Force base and being greeted by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who then brought Schalit to a reunion with his father. Again, all eyes riveted, without comment, watching something we hadn’t been convinced would ever happen.

By the time I got to work later in the afternoon, I was able to watch the last part of the journey – Schalit’s homecoming to Mitzpe Hila, where he and his family were greeted by throngs of supporters. It was even better than the World Cup – it was the day Gilad Schalit came home.

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Gilad Schalit’s brave new world

October 17, 2011 - 8:47 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, News, Social Justice, Technology 

Robert De Niro learns about the world in 'Awakenings'

One of my favorite films is Awakenings with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, in which De Niro’s character wakes up after many years in a catatonic state. During his temporary return to the present, he has to relearn all of the history and relationships that carried on while he was somewhere else.

I suppose that’s a little like what Gilad Schalit is going to go through beginning on Tuesday when he’s expected to return from five years of captivity in Gaza. While not in a catatonic state, it’s likely that Schalit also has no idea of any event – in the world or in his family – that has taken place during his imprisonment at the hands of Hamas (or that he’s even held a conversation with another person during those five years).

Jeff Barak, in his column in The Jerusalem Post, alluded to the Facebook campaign launched by Yediot Aharonot that’s urging readers to join and write a note/letter to Schalit welcoming him back. The irony being, he wrote, that Schalit doesn’t even know what Facebook is – five years ago, it was still a college dorm novelty.

Another paper, Ma’ariv, published a long story listing all of the events that have taken place during the long five years that have changed the complexion of Israel and the region – from the relatively recent Arab Spring, to the tent protests, the Moshe Katsav rape conviction, the resignation of prime minister Ehud Olmert, and a dozen other headlines.

Surely, in his first few days of freedom, the Schalits will be concerned with reconnecting with each other and creating a safe, warm environment for their son. But eventually, the history lesson will begin, and Gilad will learn not only of the events that went on around him – but also of the efforts made by his parents and the countless other people involved in the Campaign to Free Gilad Schalit. He’ll learn about the tent set up outside the Prime Minister’s residence where his parents spent most of the last two years in a tireless effort to keep his plight in the public – and government’s – eye.

While it won’t erase the five years in captivity, it might offer some solace to him, knowing that even though he thought he was all alone in a darkened room, he really wasn’t.

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Birds and planes coexist over Israeli skies

October 14, 2011 - 9:44 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Israeliness, Science, Social Justice, Technology, Travel 

When an Israel Air Force F-15 recently took off from the Tel Nof Air Base for a routine training flight, it was more than luck that enabled to land safely.

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Once airborne, according to a report in Yediot Aharonot, the crew spotted a flock of pelicans flying in their direction and changed their course so not to collide with the birds. Unfortunately, five pelicans still hit the aircraft, with some hitting the F-15′s engines directly. The jet’s right engine sustained some damage but remained operational, while its left engine caught on fire and malfunctioned. The crew was able to land safely at Tel Nof.

The crew’s awareness of the dangers of flock of pelicans represented was due to the lifelong research of Yossi Leshem – the ‘birdman of Israel.’ The 63-year-old Leshem – an award-winning Israeli ornithologist and Israel Air Force veteran – is a world-wide expert on the subject of reducing collisions between aircraft and birds

Armed with the slogan “Migrating birds know no boundaries,” Leshem decided to study migrating flocks for his PhD thesis at Tel Aviv University in 1980, focusing on the 500 million birds of 300 different species who fly through Israel on their way to and from Africa, Asia, and Europe.


Leshem later founded and still directs the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration – and his latest book – a children’s book titled The Man Who Flies describes how he helped the IAF sharply reduce its bird strikes, During his research,
Leshem discovered that the problem was especially severe in Israel because of the unusually high number of birds and planes sharing the country’s tiny airspace. Upon his advice, IAF bases have been using border collies for the past eight years to keep flocks away from airstrips. This and other tactics have reduced collisions by 75 percent – and saved an estimated $750 million – since 1984.

There are still going to be incidents like the pelican flock and the F-15, but thanks to Leshem’s work, coexistence between planes and birds over Israeli skies is now the norm.

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The best news in 5 years – Gilad Schalit coming home

October 12, 2011 - 8:27 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, War 

We had heard it so many times before, that this time it was hard to believe: a deal to release imprisoned IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, captured by Hamas almost 2,000 days ago, was about to be signed.

After more than five years of false alarms, the shuttle diplomacy of German and French mediators, inflated demands by Hamas of Palestinian prisoners to be released, and the heartwrenching images of Schalit’s parents – Noam and Aviva – sitting forlorn in their protest tent outside the Prime Minister’s residence, it didn’t seem likely that the early evening rumors Tuesday night of an imminent deal were likely to see fruition.

But they did! Within a couple hours, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a televised speech explaining that the cabinet was about to convene to approve the deal that would free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them murders serving life sentences, in a phased release for Schalit’s freedom. Unbelievable!

Of course, this being Israel, there’s no consensus about the deal that the government passed later that night by a 26-3 vote. Many citizens justifiably feel that the price for Schalit’s freedom is too high, that the released prisoners will return to terror and place Israel in unprecedented danger. And imagine how the families of terror victims must feel, with the deranged murderer who took the life of their loved ones, being set scot free.

But then think about Gilad Schalit, sitting in a room for more than five years, with his life precariously hanging on the line. There doesn’t seem to be much of a choice to me – the freedom of a young man versus the threat of potential terror.

Hamas and the other terror organizations haven’t been successful in kidnapping any other IDF soldiers since Schalit was captured, and there’s no reason to think they will be any more successful after his release.

And terror-wise, well, that’s why we had our security forces. With or without security fences, peace talks, rockets landing in Sderot and Ashkelon, and belligerent talk from the West Bank and Gaza, there have been attempts to carry out terror attacks on Israelis and they will continue. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life in the neighborhood, as long as we have neighbors like Hamas.

To use the specter of ‘more’ terror as an excuse to keep Schalit in prison just doesn’t pass the muster. The decision has been made, and Israelis should now band together and welcome Schalit home, knowing that the right decision was made – one that should make us all proud to call ourselves Israelis.

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Revealing the new Arab Israeli woman

October 11, 2011 - 9:36 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture 

Huda Naccache during her photo shoot for Lilac (AFP)

Seeing Israeli models in skimpy bikinis on the covers of magazines around the world is as old hat as… Bar Rephaeli. But there’s still a buzz that’s created when the magazine cover is in Israel and the model is an Israeli Arab.

22-year-old Christian Arab Haifa resident Huda Naccache made history recently when the Nazareth-based women’s magazine Lilac features her on the cover and inside dressed in a bikini.

According to the media reports that followed – in newspapers and on the nightly Channel 10 news – it was the first time an Arabic magazine here has put a model in a bikini on its cover, as well as the first time an Arab-Israeli model has been featured, um, so amply, on a cover.

Naccache, a geography and archaeology student who’s representing Israel in the Miss Earth competition in Thailand in December, told AFP that she was proud of her accomplishment and saw nothing wrong with it.

“I have a family that supports me very much and had no objections whatsoever to me appearing on the cover in a bikini,” she said. “My father was very pleased when he saw it for the first time. He said it was very beautiful and wished me good luck.”

Much of Israel’s Arab minority still holds deeply-traditional values, and some Israeli media suggested that Naccache’s photo shoot was aimed as a challenge to those conservative norms, even dubbing the cover the “Arab bikini revolution.”

Naccache dismissed the hoopla surrounding the cover and the claims that only because she’s a Christian Arab, and not a Muslim, were her photos allowed to be run without incident.

“I am the first Christian to wear a bikini on the front page, but there were two Muslim models who did it,” she said.

Yara Mashour, the editor of Lilac, which was founded in 2000, agreed that it’s a new, more open world for Arab women in Israel, regardless of their religion.

“It had nothing do with religion at all,” she told AFP. “And since her cover, Arab girls from all sorts of different backgrounds have been coming to me and offering to do something similar. The Arab community accepted it in a democratic fashion. I know there were debates about her appearing as she did, but it happened in a modern way: some were in favor and some were against, but there were no problems.”

For Naccache, can a visit to the pages of Sports Illustrated be far behind?

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