A defiant Israel in the face of rocket attacks
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, War
A policeman protects a young girl as warning sirens go off in Ashkelon during the current barrage of rockets from Gaza. (Yediot Aharonot)
So the rockets are raining down on Israel again, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are being forced to duck for cover.
It’s certainly an absurd, surreal existence we have here – living a modern life in one of the most progressive, advanced societies in the world, and at the same time engaging in life-threatening battle with an elusive enemy.
On Saturday night, when most of the South was hunkered down in their homes or in shelters, I was out and about in Jerusalem – attending the opening of my son’s senior year art exhibition, replete with wine and cheese and student jazz band accompanying the magnificent art work and proud parents.
Right after that, my soldier daughter – home from the Egyptian border – and I drove around the corner to the Zappa Jerusalem nightspot for an all-acoustic show by Assaf Avidan, likely Israel’s most talented singer/songwriter. The spacious and beautifully designed club was packed with mostly young Jerusalemites out for a good time – and Avidan provided it in spades.
The situation in the South wasn’t mentioned by either the performer or the members of the audience – as if by ignoring what was happening only a couple hours away and insisting on whooping it up, he and they were sending a big FU to the Palestinian heavies wreaking the havoc.
My daughter and joined in the celebration, but we were also slightly cautious. That’s because the next morning at 7 am, she was headed back down to the also hot-as-fire Egyptian border. In Israel, every party has its price.
Holy land hasbara from Maccabi TA star
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Travel
One of the things I love about Israel is its people. Sure the joke is ‘I love Israel, I just hate Israelis’ but the truth of the matter is that you can probably find more interesting, entertaining and eccentric people per capita here than just about anywhere
else in the world.
Case in point is former Maccabbi Tel Aviv basketball player LayZ Gordon – born in America, raised in Herzliya, one foot in each door. He’s white and Jewish, but because he spent so much time with black, American players both in Israel and when he returned to the US for part of high school and college, he’s got in his own words, “a black soul.”
Gordon’s also a musician, and it’s been a close call over the years which he’s been more passionate about – playing music or playing sports. Since his pro basketball days ended in 1997, he’s done some of both – coaching, working as a motivational speaker and song writing and performing.
Recently, he added another label to his job description – Israel advocate. It came about as a result of writing a song that he hopes speaks to the hearts of American Christians lovers of Israel – called “Oh My Holy Land.?”
The catchy, gospel-influenced tune is on The Tourism Ministry’s radar, and they may pick it up to be a part of an ad campaign to bring the US non-Jewish supporters of Israel on visits here.
Here’s a new video clip of the song based on a live performance Gordon and some musical friends gave at the Einav Center in Tel Aviv last month.
Even if it doesn’t become of the anthem of tourism to Israel, you have to admit Layz does lay down an awesome groove.
Shimon Peres, superstar
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Technology
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with youngster Shimon Peres.
At age 88, Peres is a new media star and has spent this week, after holding a face to face with President Barack Obama and addressing the AIPAC conference, touring California hi-tech hotbeds as the toast of Silicon Valley, with heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg and Serge Brin clamoring to pose next to him like he was a rock star.
Zuckerberg helped Peres launch his official Facebook page, which is aimed at creating a dialogue with Arab users. The president repeatedly praised the social networking site as a way for people to bypass failed efforts of governments to seek peace.
And if that’s not enough for you to press like, Peres’s people recruited celebrated Israeli DJ Noy Alooshe to put together a techno mash-up of a Peres speech to promote the page. Alooshe, a member of the techno group Chovevei Tzion, was propelled to international success after his parody last year of former Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, which included excerpts from one of his speeches during the early stages of the Libyan civil war.
Accompanied by a pulsing techno beat, the Peres clip features Peres rapping his way through a “be my friend, for peace” riff in his endearing Old World English acent. Visually, we see the presidentin various scenes, from scrolling through his page on a Tablet to meeting international leaders and celebrities like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and the Pope.
The clip appears, of course, on Peres’s own YouTube channel. The man’s a modern marvel. Meanwhile I’m still trying to figure out what Twitter is all about.
Antigone Rising raves about Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel
Kristen Henderson, second from left, Nini Camps, second from right, and Cathy Henderson, right, all of Antigone Rising pose with two Arab students after their performance in Beersheba.
Well, the quartet was here and gone, and they were fantastic. Not only that, they had a great time, as they themselves pointed out in blog postings on the site After Ellen.
Let’s take a peek at singer/rhythm guitarist Nini Camps’ observations after only a few days in Israel for the first time.
Today we played at Eshkol Ha Pais in Beer Sheva for about 250 Bedouin and Jewish students from local high schools.
Throughout our careers we’ve played tons of shows for high school and college students. Sometimes even in remote towns in the nooks and crannies of the U.S., but it’s safe to say that we have never played for kids that have never heard American music — at all.
I look around the town and it is developed as much as many American cities. But here, unlike in the U.S., there is such a diverse mix of cultures that a girl in jeans and uggs is walking next to a girl in full cover. I can’t think of anywhere in the U.S. that has such polar cultural diversity within such a tiny radius. We’ve been told the entire country of Israel is the size on New Jersey.
And then here we come blazing in. Ha, culture shock indeed!
We played for about an hour and it was hard to read some of the faces. Some were visibly interested and clapping, swaying, but some looked away or looked down and you couldn’t help but wonder if they were bored, shy or just not comfortable with what was happening onstage. Or all of the above, for that matter.
After the show we sat along the edge of the stage. It took a few brave souls to break the ice but once they did it was like a torrent rushing the stage. They all came up to say hello, teach us how to say hello, tell us their names, take pictures and some just came up to stare at us.
One boy couldn’t wait to tell me he loved Eric Clapton! One girl, pretty well covered up and with great English skills came up quickly to say how lucky she felt to have been at the show. Before I realized it she was gone and I was left wanting to tell her it was the other way around — that we were the lucky ones.
And here’s bass player and band founder Kristen Henderson’s take on the show in Beesheba.
We just played our first show in Beer Sheva for a mixed group of high school students, both Israeli Jews and Arabs. All of the Arab female students were covered from head to toe, a few only had their eyes showing.
One of our hosts from the U.S. Embassy told us that this would be a very culturally diverse group of students. That in most cases, these kids would never be in the same room with one another, but part of the U.S. State Department’s initiative was to bring them together from time to time in an effort to create peace and understanding between the cultures.
As the room filled, it was very clear who belonged to which group. The Israeli Jewish kids filtered down to the front rows. The boys stuck with the boys and girls with girls, but they were “Westernized” in the sense that some wore Adidas sweat jackets and carried iPhones. You didn’t get the sense they were intentionally divided by gender, but it was obvious they were divided by culture.
The Bedouins (or Israeli Arabs), on the other hand, sat further back – boys in the middle of the room and the girls fully covered from head to toe in the back of the room. At one point Nini came over to show me that two of the girls were cautiously clapping along during our set, unsure if they should be visibly enjoying the show.
After we performed, an Arab girl approached us accompanied by her teacher. She thanked us for sharing our culture with her and told us that our show, seeing four women on stage playing music, “empowered her” (her words; she spoke impeccable English).
A U.S. Embassy worker later told us the girl comes from a village with no running water or electricity. Her mother recently passed away and she is the oldest of six siblings. She is one of the brightest students in her school and hoped to go on to study science and technology, but due to her family’s situation she is now responsible for bringing up her siblings. The Embassy worker went on to say that seeing us perform today gave her hope that she can still have more for her life.
Here’s a short video montage of the band’s visit to Israel.
Meet the Mossad
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, Profiles, War
It’s not every day that you get to meet the one-time top spy in Israel. If you’re expecting Efraim Halevy to walk out of the pages of a John Le Carre novel or a James Bond movie, then you’ve got the wrong impression of the former head of the Mossad and a career spook since 1961.
The British-born Halevy is an unassuming, mild-mannered gentleman, evoking the cultured tones of Abba Eban and the appearance of an uncle you look forward to visiting with.
I was honored to introduce Halevy when he spoke to a rapt audience in Jerusalem this week as part of a lecture series at Kehilat Moreshet Avraham, a Conservative synagogue. Halevy spoke on the subject of “Are We The Victims of our own Biases?” – a title I didn’t really understand until he explained it.
According to Halevy – and he’s been involved with events in the region whose details will likely go to the grave with him – the Palestinians and the Arab world aren’t the only ones who’ve intentionally or not, prevented the normalization of relations between Israel and everyone else in the neighborhood. We’re also to blame.
Halevy, who led the Mossad from 1998 to 2002, doesn’t think Israel needs to insist on the Palestinians or anyone else for that matter recognizing Israel as a Jewish state or approving its right to exist. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, he said that Israel is a Jewish state and that any treaty or agreement signed with Israel by any other state or entity is tantamount to recognition, and it’s one of our biases based on insecurity that we insist on that extra step.
After reaching a peace agreement with Egypt, which had been Israel’s “most formidable enemy,” Israel should have surely gained an enormous injection of self-confidence, because in this achievement, Israel had broken the Arab anti-Israel alliance of solidarity, said Halevy.
Although Israel has many near miraculous achievements to its credit, Halevy believes that Israelis have not overcome an inherent Jewish perception of being the victim. After 2,000 years of suffering, being despised among the nations and victims of anti-Semitic actions that resulted in massive loss of life, Israelis still have difficulty in being self-confident when it comes to personal and national security. Israelis always labor under threat despite the fact that “we have the most efficient, most capable and most brutal defense capability in the region.”
Halevy also ruffled some feathers in the crowd when he said that Israel is wrong to always focus on and end to the conflict.
. “There will never be an end to the conflict. We need to translate conflict into something you live with in different terms, he said, citing several conflicts in which the adversaries have found a way to live together without peace treaties or final borders. “So why should we demand a final border?” he asked. “Why should we always want the ultimate?”
It was food for thought from someone who’s been in the trenches of diplomacy and espionage for decades. And thankfully, at the end of the evening, he hadn’t disclosed any secrets that would have necessitated disposing of the entire audience.
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