Picture of the week: The Ethiopian journey comes to an end
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Picture of the Week, Religion
It’s been a long journey for Israel’s Ethiopian Jews, airlifted out of Ethiopia to Israel in 1984 and 1991, but this week, many must have felt their travels were really and truly over.
Thousands of Ethiopian Jews descended on Jerusalem on Monday to take part in the prayer of the Sigd on a hill overlooking the Mount of Olives.
Ethiopians Jews, who are thought to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, celebrate this holiday every year. Back in Ethiopia, they would climb a mountain called Amburver to pray and beg God to bring them to the Holy Land.
Now in Israel the 80,000 strong population continue to celebrate the holiday. This year, however, the whole of Israel celebrated with them. The holiday of Sigd has been declared a national holiday and mandatory educational programs will be initiated to teach children about the celebration.
It’s a significant step forward for a people who haven’t always found it easy to adapt to their new life, and who still face prejudice from some quarters. Keep an eye out on ISRAEL21c for our video on the holiday.
Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90.
A year with CNN
Filed under: Environment, General, coexistence, health
Late last year, ISRAEL21c began working with CNN to produce video material for its highly successful and long-running program, CNN World Report.
Since our first video went up at the start of this year, we’ve had 10 feature stories appearing on the thrice-weekly program hosted by Guillermo Aduino and on the CNN website.
We don’t often toot our horn – in fact we’re so busy we barely even raise our heads long enough to chart our achievements – but, sometimes we really have to stop and say “wow”.
Ten of our stories showing the other side of Israel – the innovation, creativity, and culture – have gone out through CNN, to millions of viewers worldwide. This is a vital step in showing people everywhere about the unique value that Israel brings to the world.
In our last video feature for CNN, about Windows of Peace – a coexistence project bringing Jewish and Palestinian teenagers together to make a music video – CNN made a special effort to interview Nitsana, the reporter, about the project and about what it means to her and to the children taking part.
Nitsana makes some interesting comments about peace, not least that what surprised her the most was how she couldn’t tell these children apart. Something I’ve thought about often since moving here goodness knows how many years ago.
Below, you can also find some of our other CNN videos. They’re well worth watching. You can also see more on our YouTube site.
Fat is fabulous – re-educating the fashion industry.
Saving the bees.
And the birds too.
Picture of the week: The long goodbye to Rabin
Filed under: History and Culture, Life, Picture of the Week
There can’t be many people on the left or the right in Israel who don’t still wonder what would have happened if former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t died the night he was shot by religious fanatic Yigal Amir.
Would we have peace now? Would the second intifada have been avoided? Or would everything have unfolded in much the same way? We’ll obviously never know.
What amazes me most is that it was 14 years ago, but the memories are still painful for so much of Israeli society. It’s an open-wound that as David so rightfully pointed out in his post, Have any lessons been learned , hasn’t yet been resolved.
I was at the rally the night Rabin was assassinated. We didn’t know about the shooting until after we left, when we visited friends on our way home and found them glued to the television. Even then it was clear, history had just taken a completely different route.
Israel’s president Shimon Peres addressing the crowd on Saturday at the 14th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv. Photo by Liron Almog/Flash90.
ISRAEL21c Start-up Nation giveaway
Here in Israel, it’s no secret that the country is an economic success story. It’s been a topic of conversation for a couple of decades now. During the 1990s, and 2000s, the country’s high-tech industry blossomed, pulling virtually everything with it.
With so much to do, and so little time to do it in, no one bothered to chronicle this success story. They were too busy keeping up with the pace of development.
Now Saul Singer and Dan Senor have taken time out to explore the phenomenon in their new book Start-up Nation, the Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle . It makes a fascinating read for anyone who has ever wondered what exactly it is that makes Israel one of the world’s leaders in innovation.
The army, immigration, and a healthy dose of chutzpah have all come together in a heady mix to transform Israel – a tiny little nation of 7.1 million people surrounded by enemies and with no natural resources (not even water) – into an economic and technological powerhouse that has more companies on NASDAQ than those of Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore, India and China combined.
ISRAEL21c is now running a competition, offering six copies of Start-Up Nation to readers. Click on our Start-up Nation competition page to find out more.
Israel gets its newest celebrity visitor
Filed under: General, Life, Pop Culture, Travel
We get a lot of celebrity visitors to Israel. Bill Clinton, George Bush, the Dalai Lama, Madonna
, Leonardo DiCaprio, Grover from Sesame Street – you name it, the great and glorious come here. It’s a field day for the press, who follow their every move in Israel, trying to get that one great shot of Madonna at the Western Wall, or the Dalai Lama at Temple Mount.
The newest celebrity visitor to our shores, however, crept in without the slightest bit of press hoo ha, making surprise visits to a number of top Israeli hot spots without causing any kind of media stir or even extra security. It’s Alpha Rex, the Lego Mindstorms robot. Yes, you heard it here first.
As part of Lego’s 10th anniversary for its Mindstorms robot line, the company sent out two of its Alpha Rex humanoid robots to cross the globe.
The sturdy little robots left the FIRST World Championship in Atlanta in the US in April 2008 and have been travelling every since. One headed off to tour the US, and the other – clearly more adventurous – headed west to Japan, taking in Europe, Australia, Canada, Egypt, India, China, the South Pole, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Iceland etc. etc. etc. along the way.
They aren’t alone of course. Lego employees, fans and business associates have guided them on their long, difficult and sometimes lonely journeys, taking snaps of them at their destinations.
Now it’s the turn of Israel, where Alpha Rex along with his human guide, David Schilling, got to visit Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee, enjoying some occasionally autumnal weather on the way
It’s not the end of Alpha Rex’s global endeavor. He’s still got quite a few countries to go – including Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (hope the Israeli authorities didn’t stamp his passport), and Argentina to name a few.
At the end of it, the Lego team plan to make a screensaver showing all the places he visited. They should also consider setting it to music and putting it on Youtube. It worked for Matt Harding after all.
So what did Alpha Rex think of Israel? Wasn’t it the best place he visited? Does he plan to come here again? He declined to answer.
Picture of the week: Finding friendship in the ruins of war
Israel is a country of contradictions. While the world outside sees the conflict in the clean crisp black and white of headlines, here in Israel we tend to see things in myriad shades of grey.
Take these two kids for example. Maria Aman (in the wheelchair) is a Palestinian girl from Gaza who was hit by an Israeli rocket during operation Cast Lead. Orel Ilizrov, is an Israeli child from Beersheva who was left with severe brain damage after he was hit by a grad missile fired from Gaza in the same conflict.
Against all the odds, they are best friends.
Maria was left paralyzed when her house suffered a direct hit. Four of her family were killed. Orel, an only child, is lucky to be alive. His mother threw herself on top of him in an attempt to protect him from the missile.
The children were hospitalized at the Alin Rehabilitative Center in Jerusalem and were given neighboring beds. Despite the traumas that both suffered, they ignored the conflict – as kids so rightly do – and formed a deep friendship based on everything they have in common, and not everything that keeps them apart.
Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90
Ghosts in Israel? Not likely
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Pop Culture
Israel may be an ancient land, with an ancient, not to mention, bloody history, but despite this, it doesn’t seem to be a land of ghosts.
What with Halloween coming up, I thought I’d do a story on the top 10 hauntings in Israel, expecting to find some fascinating material dating back to biblical times that would scare the pants off even veteran ghost observer Melinda Gordon, AKA Jennifer Love Hewitt. I scoured the web. Then scoured it again. There were many references to ghosts and hauntings – but only the living kind.
“There isn’t a culture of ghosts in Israel,” said an American friend who’d done similar research just a few years ago and also drawn a blank. “They just don’t have a history of it.”
I asked my sabra husband. “Ghosts!” he said, looking baffled. “We don’t have ghosts in Israel!”
But wait a minute. This is the country that spawned Paranormal Activity – supposedly the scariest movie about ghosts around today.
I carried on my research and discovered an article from Ynet last year. Apparently, the research by the German Bertelsmann Foundation showed, only 16 percent of Israelis believe in ghosts and spirits. A pretty low figure that could explain the absence of ghost stories. Compare that to the US, for example, where 48 percent of the population say they believe in ghosts , and a sizable 22 percent say they’ve actually seen or felt a ghost.
Interestingly enough, however, in the same Israeli poll, 45% of participants said they believed in angels.
It would make an interesting research paper to examine why Israelis don’t believe in ghosts. I’m sure it reveals much about the society, since ghost stories are an essential part of most cultures around the world.
Is it because they are well-grounded people with a surprisingly strong sense of optimism (angels!)? Is it because a country that has so many living enemies doesn’t have time to waste thinking about spectral enemies? Or could it be that the country, founded as it is in the wake of the Holocaust, is haunted enough by the very real loss of six million people?
I did come across one haunting – on a base in Israel. See above. Speculation runs from a speck of dust on the screen, to an energy orb, or a dead motorcyclist haunting the road.
And I’d love to hear your ghost stories too. Come on, there must be one or two stories of troubled spirits in Israel.
Picture of the week: October in the Old City
It’s October.
The evenings are getting cooler and Jerusalem is one of the first places in the country to feel the change in seasons.
In the evenings, the Old City walls are lit up, creating interesting shadows. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90.
Pants off to Israel’s motorcycle protestors
Maybe it’s the hot weather, but protesters in Israel seem to like to get naked. The latest group to strip down to their underpants were the motorcyclists, hundreds of whom took to the streets of Tel Aviv late last week protesting against a hike in their insurance fees.
This is the fourth demo by the motorcycle community, who are getting increasingly incensed by the thought of the insurance rise, which is due to take place in November. In the last protest they snarled up route 2 causing heavy traffic jams.
Their motto this time was “They are leaving us without coverage”, which in Hebrew is a play on words that also means “without clothes/covers”. Hence the absolute necessity to whip off their clothes.
Walla covered the protest with lots of snaps and a video – naked people make good news obviously.
The demonstration comes just a few months after the Israel Bicycle Association and the Tel Aviv Rollers staged another protest ride to oppose the lack of government support for urban bike riding – in their thongs.
David reported on the bike protest here in Israelity. From a purely visceral point of view, it probably made better viewing, as bike riders and roller-bladers tend to be in much better shape than bikers.
But as Stephanie pointed out in her nude demo post a couple of years back – shape isn’t what counts in a naked protest.
Pic by Liron Almog/Flash 90. The sign at the back, by the way, reads: “The insurance companies strip us naked.”
Afraid to go to sleep – Paranormal Activity hits US cinemas
It’s the surprise hit of the year. Audiences across the US are afraid to go to sleep after watching a horror film made by Israeli filmmaker Oren Peli. The low budget movie reportedly cost just $11,000 to produce, but reviewers are calling it the most scary film ever made. Think Blair Witch Project, only worse.
The movie, Paranormal Activity , was filmed in 2006 over a seven-day period. It was set in Peli’s own suburban tract home with a crew of just three including his then-girlfriend Toni Taylor, and best friend (also Israeli) Amir Zbeda.
The film was released in fewer than 200 theaters, but raked in $7.1 million in one weekend – a record for a limited release film.
The film, about a couple who think their house is haunted, has now been picked up by Paramount Pictures . It bills itself as “the first-ever major film release demanded by you.”
Peli is not your usual blockbuster movie type director. He dropped out of school at 16, to set up his own software company. Three years later he immigrated to the US with Zbeda and began work developing animation and video game programs.
He got the idea for the film when he moved into a new home and found the sudden quiet of suburbia disturbing. The house was new and still settling, and at night he could hear the house shifting and groaning.
He wrote a script, fixed up his house a bit, held a casting session in Hollywood, and hey presto, shot a movie. He edited it on his own home PC, and then submitted it to Screamfest – a boutique festival for cult horror in LA.
The film was released in September with limited late-night showings at just 13 college towns, but the ball started rolling and the film became a web sensation on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Critics also jumped on board giving excellent reviews.
Originally Paramount planned to reshoot the film with better-known actors, but studio heads – including Steven Spielberg – decided it could stand as it was, with only a few tweaks.
Peli is now onto his next movie, a thriller called Area 51, but in the meantime Paramount Pictures releases Paranormal Activity at cinemas across the US on Friday. Get ready for some sleepless nights.
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