Power, one of the most respected indie rockers over the last 15 years, was scheduled to perform for the first time in Israel on Sunday night at Reading 3 in Tel Aviv. However, on Thursday, the singer, whose real name is Chan Marshall, posted a message on her Facebook account expressing a change of heart.

“Due to much confusion in my soul, playing for my Israeli fans w/such unrest between Israel and Palestine I can’t play, as I feel sick in my spirit. XX,” she wrote.
She also tweeted: “Music is healing and it is not humane if all cannot have the choice, the right, to attend,” apparently referring to Palestinians who would not be able to travel to Tel Aviv to see the show. The announcement came after Power had tweeted earlier in the week asking her fans to “find a show in Ramallah… for the people of Palestine”.

So what’s wrong with this picture? Does Cat Power actually think there are Palestinians in Ramallah – or anywhere else – who would come out to see her in concert? Even Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen realized that there’s not enough of an audience for Western music among our neighbors, and they found other ways to show their solidarity for the plight of the innocent members of Palestinian society affected by the situation, whether you believe it’s caused by Israel or by their own leadership. McCartney visited a Palestinian music school and Cohen donated the proceeds from his concert to a fund for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

With a little thought, Cat Power could have come up with something to ease her pained conscience. Ironically, as a friend pointed out on Facebook, the night before her decision to cancel, she performed in Turkey, the same day that Turkish troops killed 13 Kurdish rebels who have been fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast since 1984.

I guess Elton John wasn’t right when he defiantly roared from the stage at Ramat Gan Stadium in 2010 that musicians “don’t cherry pick our conscience” over where to perform. Cat Power seems to do it just fine.

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Madonna performing in Tel Aviv in 2009 with an Israeli flag draped over her.

The Material Girl, who provided a spectacle-filled half time show for attendees and viewers of the Super Bowl on Sunday night, scored her own Hebrew touchdown this week when she announced that her mega-tour to promote her new album MDNA would kick off on May 29 at Ramat Gan Stadium.

In a press conference, Israeli promoter Shuki Weiss disclosed that the 54-year-old cultural icon will arrive in Israel two weeks before the concert, accompanied by an entourage of more than 300 people, to carry out intensive rehearsals for the show.

And since debuts of world tours of someone of Madonna’s caliber are international news events, hundreds of foreign entertainment journalists are expected to descend on the country.

This provides an amazing PR opportunity for Israel to gain worldwide exposure for a news event that has nothing to do with the things we’re usually in the news for: Iran, Palestinians, Hezbollah, separate seating for men and women, or any other of the issues that the foreign media tends to focus on when Israel is the topic.

How cool is it that instead of more of the same, this time we’re going to be seen hand in hand with the world debut of Madonna’s show that is going to travel to over 50 other cities in the world and probably one of the biggest-grossing tours of the year. While it may be a coincidence that the tour is starting in Israel, Madonna’s past indicates that she’s developed a real affinity for the country and its people ever since she performed here for the first time in 1999 at Hayarkon Park.

Since then, she’s returned a number of times for event as the Kabbala Center in Tel Aviv, and in September, 2009, she closed her Sticky & Sweet tour back at Hayarkon Park with two shows.

“It isn’t even a regular visit anymore when she comes,” Weiss said at the press conference on Tuesday. “It’s as if she is the process of making aliya.”

What he probably meant was that Madonna likely feels comfortable with the country and its lifestyle to the extent that she decided to use it as a base for two weeks ahead of the tour’s opening.

“Every time I come here, I get so supercharged with energy,” she said onstage in 2009. “I truly believe that Israel is the energy center of the world. And I also believe that if we can all live together in harmony in this place, then we can live in peace all over the world.”

By choosing to open her tour here and bringing the world’s focus to our small country, Madonna is doing a great service in promoting the above ideals and spreading the word that what we have here is indeed the energy center of the world, and proving that in addition to whatever other monikors that she’s had hoisted upon her, there’s one more that fits her to a T: Zionist.

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That’s the case anyway with the current TV ad campaign by cable provider HOT, which is promoting its ‘on-demand’ epidsodes of the popular spy-comedy show ‘Asfur’ by offering a free Samsung Galaxy tablet as enticement for prospective customers to sign up for the on-demand package.

In the ad, a bored Mossad agent stationed in Iran, apparently to monitor Iran’s nuclear development, meets up with three characters from the show who are also clandestinely in the country dressed as women. Sitting in a café, the agent shows off the Samsung Galaxy, explaining that he used his downtime to use the on-demand option to watch episodes of ‘Asfur.’

At the end of the clip, one of the three Asfur accidentally pushes an application on the tablet over the frantic efforts of the agent, and a nuclear reactor is detonated in the background.

Typical Israeli sophomoric, whistling in the dark, hilarious humor. But evidently neither Iran nor Samsung are seeing the levity in it. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post sourcing Iran’s Press TV, Arsalan Fat’hipour, who heads the Iranian parliament’s energy committee, said over the weekend that Tehran was considering imposing a complete ban on buying all Samsung products. And, of course, they’ll probably aim their first operational nuke at the HOT corporate offices.

Meanwhile Samsung issued a statement saying, “Samsung Electronics is aware of a recent news report in Iranian media regarding an advertisement aired by HOT cable network of Israel. This advertisement was produced by HOT cable network without Samsung’s knowledge or participation… As a member of the global community, Samsung is committed to demonstrating respect for all people and cultures around the globe.”

The question is, how did Iran know that HOT was even airing the ads? Do they have spy here who subscribes to the company’s ‘Three-in-one” cable/Internet/phone service? If so, I hope they’re just as frustrated as the rest of us at having ‘You, Me & Dupree’ screening a million times a month on its movie channels. But I also hope he doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger.

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Eretz Nehederet actors portraying American-Jewish participants of a Birthright trip in ecstacy over learning they're going to visit Yad Vashem.

Only a few months ago, there was the controversy over the video campaign by the Ministry of Absorption to convince expatriate Israelis to come home. Whether due to lack of understanding by the makers of the videos (claim critics) or over sensitivity by those offended by the videos (claim advocates), the results proved that we don’t really see each other in the same we see ourselves.

That’s why it’s good for someone to come along once in a while and flatten the playing field by being so offensive that you can’t help but laugh. And that someone this time is Eretz Nehederet, the irreverent Channel 2 comedy/satire series poking fun at current events, national leaders, and in this case of the premiere of its ninth season last week, the Birthright/Taglit program.

As Haaretz put it, “In a rare jab at visiting Diaspora Jews, Israel’s premier satirical television show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), took on Taglit-Birthright Israel during its Monday night season premier.”

The skit in question follows a Birthright group as they travel by bus through the country accompanied by an Israeli guide.
You’ve got all the Diaspora Jewish stereotypes, as seen through Israeli eyes – the Jewish American Princesses, the partying, vulgar frat boys and the drug and the sex-addled South American participants.

Cynical to the nth degree, the skit – conducted in a mixture of Hebrew and English -manages to make fun of American Jewish allegiance to Israel, Birthright’s use of Holocaust guilt to encourage the participants to hit up their parents for contributions, and the cocky Israeli mentality as portrayed by the tour guide whose bravado gets him blown up by a land mine.

The skit (available here at least temporarily) loses steam half way through, but it’s still worth searching for in Hebrew on YouTube for its first few minutes for the setup, which provides some of the sharpest parody the show has created.

If American Jewish-Israeli ties were tenuous before this, I shudder to think where they’ll go after the sensitive American Jewish community views this.

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Only a couple weeks after Tel Aviv was named by the website Gay Cities as the Best Gay City of 2011, The Washington Post has published an AP feature touting the fact that Israel is one of the world’s most progressive countries for gay rights.
Among the points the story makes are that gays serve openly in the IDF and the Knesset, and the Supreme Court has granted gays a variety of family rights such as inheritance and survivors’ benefits.

The story relates to the government efforts to promote gay tourism to Israel, and finds a Tel Aviv University law professor, Aeyal Gross, to accuse authorities of “co-opting the gay community to deflect attention away from violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and African migrants who seek refuge in the Jewish state.”

“The more Israel brands itself as a liberal democracy, the less pressure will be on it internationally,” Gross said. “If you care about gay rights, then you should also care when the rights of others are abused.”

The story then goes on to admit that on the beaches and wild nightclubs of Tel Aviv, not many people are thinking about a ‘spin’ to the lifestyle that – according to The Tourism Ministry – attracted almost 100,000 gay men and women from Europe to vacation in the country in 2011.

Dennis Muller, a 22-year-old tourist from Berlin, gave AP an eyewitness account.

“You enter Tel Aviv and you are in the gay dream,” Muller said on a recent weeknight inside the packed Dreck nightclub. “It’s like entering a bubble of peace for homosexuals or LGBT people in the Middle East.”

So, why shouldn’t Israel be promoting itself as a prime destination for gay travelers, and what in the world does it have to do with the problems the country faces in so many other spheres? I say, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

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New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning wasn't thinking about Sudanese refugees on the field Sunday against Green Bay. (AP)

Near the end of the wonderful game (for us Giants fans), I heard the SMS bell on my cell phone go off – curious, since I didn’t know any other Giants fans, or anyone else, who was still awake at 2:30 am.

The message was from my daughter, serving in the IDF along the border with Egypt. It read: “I just caught 38 Sudanese coming across the border, 25 men, 11 women and two babies. It was horrible.”

Sudanese refugees inside Israel - definitely not thinking about the NFL playoffs.

That sort of snapped me back into the reality that, no – I wasn’t sitting in an American den, watching football. I was in the country where nothing is taken for granted – where some people can be sitting comfortably in a warm house with a flat screen TV, eating the worst imaginable junk food that Mahane Yehuda sells, and at the same time, our children are out on patrols all night in the freezing cold, putting their lives on the line, and being forced into situations where they are ‘catching’ women and babies who are fleeing for their lives in the hopes of finding a new life in Israel.

I left the living room and called her to see how she was, and she sounded fine, explaining that it wasn’t so ‘horrible’ as she had written. They had given the refugees food, and helped the mothers with the crying babies. But from hearing her past experiences, I know that she had to be a soldier – not a welcome wagon – and that she had been forced to act tough in front of the refugees.

Talk about mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m elated that the Giants are headed for certain victory in the final minutes of the game. And on the other hand, my heart is breaking that my daughter and her rifle are herding Sudanese refugees into a makeshift prison called by the soldiers “the Sudaniya.’

Somehow, I just don’t think Giants fans in suburban Jersey were experiencing anything similar.

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To bring things back to perspective, just go to ISRAEL21c or look at the website Gay Cities, and their ‘best of ‘11’ awards, a poll sponsored by American Airlines. Their readers named Tel Aviv as the ‘best Gay city’ in the world – and it wasn’t just by a thin margin.

Tel Aviv with its 43% of the votes bested the nearest competitor, a little-known backwater hole called New York City which garnered 14%. Other cities with smaller percentages of the votes include Toronto, Sao Paulo and Madrid.

“The gay capital of the Middle East is exotic and welcoming with a Mediterranean c’est la vie attitude,” the website wrote about our national place of pride, an opinion shared by many others.

While Tel Aviv has long been a favorite destination of gay tourists due to the above attributes, great nightclubs and beaches, and an up-all-night’ liberal attitude, the award is the result of efforts by government initiatives to specifically market Tel Aviv for gay tourism.

“The win is the highlight of six years of work and proof that the Tourism Ministry and the Municipality of Tel Aviv made the right decision to invest in gay tourism,” Shai Doitsh, brand manager of the Tel Aviv Gay Vibe tourism campaign, told Ynet.

The fact that we can be having fights about separate seating on buses and hearing women’s voices at army ceremonies on the one hand, and going wild on the beaches and in the clubs on the other hand, is part of the reason that as much as you can try to explain what Israel is, there’s just no way to do it. So you might as well just come and see it for yourself.

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Residents of Beit Shemesh, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, have been stigmatized recently by the behavior towards women of certain haredi elements within certain neighborhoods of the city.

In recent weeks, an ultra-Orthodox man spat on an 8-year-old girl for “immodest” dress, and a subsequent protest for women’s rights drew national attention, featuring speeches from national political leaders. Beit Shemesh has an unorthodox makeup (no pun intended), in that the older, main area is a largely mixed, working class community of Sephardic old timers and their offspring. However, new suburbs of the city have become magnets for a different population – one area is filled with national religious English-speaking immigrants, and another is one of the most haredi in the country, outside of Mea She’arim.

Dance organizer Miri Shalem, who works for the city’s community center, decided to organize a women’s flash mob to protest of the violent extremist actions of “the group of crazies,” and to show that there is another side to Beit Shemesh.

So, last Friday morning in the city square, more than 250 women of all sizes, ages and religious identification got down with Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” in an impressive display of organization, rhythm and fun.

“Today the women and girls demonstrated our unity in public and I hope we will continue to do this in the future in order to improve our city,” Shalem said.

Bring on more flash mobs!

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The papers, both local and international, reported on her passing — she was indeed the symbol of the War of Independence generation and a singer of some of Israel’s most beloved songs.

But she was also loved for being a fixture on the Israel Song Festival and Children’s Song Festival circuits, in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.

For many years, she was an unofficial cultural ambassador for Israel, who charmed visiting international celebrities like Sean Connery, Cliff Richard and Sammy Davis Junior.

Like many women performers with a strong personality and powerful stage presence she, like fellow diva Shoshana Damari, inspired a generation of local drag queens.

Most of all, Yarkoni was a dyed-in-the-wool performer who was born to be onstage. In later years, she came out strongly as a member of Israel’s peace camp. In this interview, she covers topics ranging from cataloging her gowns, (so that she would never wear the same dress twice to a given venue), to face lifts (she didn’t have one and shows the back of her ears to prove it). She also describes the time she went down to Sinai to perform for the troops and ended up giving an impromptu performance to an onlooker who happened to be an Egyptian soldier on the other side of the line. “On the way back, I said to myself, ya allah, maybe we can end this war simply with song?”

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The Nevo brothers with their debating trophy.

Tel Aviv University students and brothers Omer and Sella Nevo finished as the first-place team and the first and second-place English as Second Language speakers, respectively at the World University Debating Championships held this week in Manila. It’s the second time in three years that Israel has come out on top in those categories, and this year the two mathematics and computer science students beat out teams from as far afield as Malaysia, Berlin, and the Netherlands.

Last year, debaters Michael Shapira and Meir Yarom of the University of Haifa won the top ESL at the World Championships in Botswana – impressive considering that the Israeli Debate Society- Siah Vasig- was founded just 20 years ago.

Ha’aretz interviewed the team’s coach, former ESL world champion Yoni Cohen-Idov, who explained that as an Israeli, there’s a special feeling to winning a competition centered on intellect.

“As an Israeli, you’re used to getting wary looks, to seeing hostility, to feeling the need to apologize and justify yourself anywhere you go,” said Cohen-Idov. “Winning in a sport that’s all about dialogue is a phenomenal sensation, because we feel we represent more than ourselves or our institution. We feel that we show the world another side of Israel, a cultured, witty, amiable, peaceful side,”

“Having students from Pakistan or Malaysia and Jordan congratulate you, and being able to waive the flag and receive cheers from students who usually demonstrate against Israel – we feel we’re truly doing something important for our country and for international understanding.”

Cohen-Idov told Ha’aretz that he attributes the country’s success in the field to its culture. “We love to talk, discuss, argue and debate. Israelis do it all the time regardless of competitions.”

It’s a wonder more corner grocers and taxi drivers aren’t in the competition.

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