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The week that was

The pace of news events developing and exploding into headlines is always seemingly propelled by steroids here in Israel. There’s never a minute to rest, and the news addiction that most of the public suffers from isn’t helped any by half hour radio bulletins, that annoying beep beep beep of the hourly news reports and nightly hour-long TV newscasts that are holy in some households.

But even veteran observers are hard pressed to remember a week of news events – aside from wars and intifadas – that rolled in like a tsunami, pushing the previous one off the front page with an ease that is creepy and disconcerting.

First up at the beginning of the week was the disclosure that police had arrested an American immigrant – Yaakov Teitel – a resident of a West Bank outpost on suspicion of murdering two Palestinians in 1997 and carrying out a string of previously unsolved hate attacks against other targets, including planting a pipe bomb outside the home of prominent left-wing Israeli professor Zeev Sternhall which injured him, and sending a bomb package to a family of messianic Jews from Ariel, seriously wounding their 15-year-old son.

This was huge news and the media covered it from every angle, from settlements spawning extremism to questioning whether the Law of Return which enables all Jews to immigrate to Israel should be reconsidered, or at least more stringent.

But no sooner had we started to digest this horrific news, Israelis were presented with something even more uncomprehensible the next day. The police announced they had caught the suspect in the brutal murder of six members of a Russian immigrant family in Rishon Lezion last month. It was considered the worst murder case in Israel’s history, with many pundits speculating that it involved the Russian mafia and a hired killer.

However, police said that the suspect, Damian Karlik, 38, who was arrested with his wife, parents and two other female relatives, killed the Oshrenko family because he had been fired as a waiter a couple months earlier from the family’s restaurant.

Dmitry Oshrenko fired Karlik, who was headwaiter at the Oshrenkos’ high-end restaurant Premier, after accusing him of stealing a bottle of vodka. Karlik said he felt humiliated and began to nurture his hatred for his former boss. Expressing no remorse at the murders, which included two young children, Krilik allegedly bragged to the police that he was a “bad motherfu**er.”

Disoriented at the front pages of our newspapers being turned into True Crimes magazine, we felt things returning to ‘normal’ yesterday with the disclosure of a dramatic high seas capture by Israeli naval commandos off the coast of Cyprus of the “Francop”, an Antigua-flagged freighter packed with 3,000 Iranian rockets and shells headed for Hizbullah in Lebanon.
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If it had achieved reaching its destination, the shipment would have provided Hizbullah with almost the entire rocket arsenal they unleashed against Israel in the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Israeli sources say the shipment violates not only the UN Security Council resolutions from the 2006 war, but also those that forbid Iran from engaging in any arms exports. More importantly, it shows how Iran is attempting to incite the region, coming a day after Hamas in Gaza tested an Iranian-supplied rocket that has a range to reach Tel Aviv.

But hey, these are headlines that we’re familiar with -Iran, rockets, terror. However, by this morning, I found myself yearning for one of those days when the worst thing that could happen was The York Yankees winning the World Series, or narrow-minded citizens from my home state of Maine repealing same sex marriages. Both of those items are indeed reflections of a sorry state of affairs, but I’ll take them over the world gone crazy pace of news events we’ve had to put up with this week here in Israel.

Nostalgia Sunday – Gil Gibli Investigates Past Crimes

Artist Gil Gibli is perhaps best known in Israel for the pen and ink cross-hatched portraits of Israel’s business elite that illustrate the pages of business daily Globes each evening. But Gibli is also a noted police forensic sketch artist — whose work has been cited in international professional literature — and when he looks back at the past, he often does so as an investigator into crimes whose trails have gone cold.

On his website, Gibli describes several cases where his forensic art brought the truth to light: reconstructing a portrait of Warsaw Ghetto uprising leader Pavel Frankel (pictured left) based solely on eye-witness accounts, bringing together two Yom Kippur War compatriots after 35 years, and the most chilling case: identifying a man, a nameless drifter, killed in a terror attack. The story – and Gibli’s uncanny ability to elicit details from eye-witnesses – was documented in the award-winning documentary No. 17 is Anonymous.

More of Gibli’s work may be found at his virtual gallery. He’s also a jazz aficionado and portraits include a series of jazz greats - more nostalgia, but of a cooler, gentler kind.

Gibl’s YouTube channel has several videos (in Hebrew) about his work.

A dark day in Rishon Lezion

Sorry to be so gloomy lately, but the Israelity of Israel lately is getting a little too real for comfort. Back when buses were blowing up in the early 2000s, there was a real sense of alarm, but also a feeling that the situation could be resolved, whether through military or diplomatic means.

The security fence, for all its ugliness and negative implications, solved the problem for the short term. But the problem facing Israel today can’t be solved by a fence or wall – unless each Israeli builds their own and isolates themselves.

The news that greated people on Saturday, or Saturday night if they’re religiously observant, talked of police calling it the ‘worst crime’ in Israel’s history being committed. A day after her Revital Oshrenko celebrated her third birthday in her Rishon Lezion home with her family – grandfather and grandmother Edward and Ludmilla, both 56; parents Tattiana, 28, and Dimitry, 32; and 4-month-old brother Netanel – the whole family was stabbed to death and their apartment set on fire in an apparent effort to cover up the murders. Some of the victims were said to have been stabbed repeatedly.

Rescue services only discovered the bodies when they were called to the home after a report of a fire. While a gag order has been placed on the police investigation, family friends and acquaintances, including Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and the mayor of Rishon Lezion, said that the family members were model citizens.

Suspicions are rampant that the murders were ‘business’ related, pertaining to restaurants and clubs catering to Russian immigrants that Dimitry owned and operated. The murder is just the latest in a series of sensationalist killings that have taken place this year in the country, where non-terror murders were once considered a rare occurrence.

I would kind of prefer it going back to the old ways – at least then you knew who the enemy was. I still feel safe here, walking around at night, or sending my children unsupervised on buses. But slowly, with Israel’s social fabric in danger of being ripped asunder, there’s a growing sense of lawlessness – when I’m out jogging at night now, sometimes I think twice about running past a group of teens gathered at a street corner – it’s a feeling that a security fence will be powerless to prevent.

IDF chief of staff confined to quarters

When I was in basic training in the IDF many years ago, I had a leave cancelled because while cleaning my M-16 rifle, I lost a little internal pin. Apparently, I wasn’t the first, because the pin even had a name – the Shabbat pin – because if you lost it, it meant you stayed on the base for Shabbat.

I flashbacked to those days when I was reading last week that a revolver was stolen out of the Tel Aviv office of IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. The thief, a young soldier on guard inside Ashkenazi’s inner sanctum, also stole his credit card data which was used by a third party to purchase NIS 2,000 worth of items. The decorative handgun was a gift to Ashkenazi from a US military counterpart.

According to Ha’aretz, the investigation into the incident exposed serious lapses in the arrangements for protecting Ashkenazi. Along with the security provided by the General Staff Security Unit, a number of positions on the office’s security perimeter are still being carried out by regular troops assigned to guard duty. These troops are not required to go through rigorous combat training, nor are their backgrounds substantially screened. The Military Police’s investigation revealed that the suspect had been involved in fights and a stabbing, and had piled up debts to underworld figures.

So, I was wondering, what would be the appropriate punishment for Ashkenazi for the breach of security? If I got confined to the base for a weekend for losing my Shabbat pin, I think he should at least have to do a couple shifts of guard duty at the Kirya, the IDF headquarters where he sits. However unlikely that scenario is, it somehow makes me feel better about my army service.

Dudu Topaz, the King of comedy, ends his life

Waking up this morning to the news that disgraced entertainer Dudu Topaz had ended his life by hanging himself in his Ramle jail while awaiting trial was an inevitable end to his sorry saga.

Topaz was going to be tried for initiating a series of violent attacks on top Israeli TV executives who had spurned his ideas for TV vehicles for himself. It was a case of the worst of Israeli society, with Topaz hiring goons to bash in the execs. A judge at an initial hearing for the case today described Topaz as a public menace.

It was a huge fall from grace for the comic who dominated television in the 1990s when the Israeli cable industry was getting on its feet. His unsophisticated, often vulgar humor made him a ‘people’s’ entertainer, however he was never fully accepted by the the intelligentsia.

I remember soon after my aliya watching him host an Israeli version of The Dating Game. My wife and I would guffaw as Topaz blurted out non sequitors and insults – like a combination of Don Rickles and Howard Stern. But you could tell that there was something about his delivery that showed that it wasn’t all in good fun.

And his mean streak was noticeable long before attacks. In 1995 he publicly attacked a television critic and crushed his glasses following a bad review. In 2003 he was accused of sexual harassment and indecent acts, although the two cases collapsed for lack of evidence. That same year he bit a female Latin-American soap star on the arm for no apparent reason during a live broadcast.

Despite his knack for controversy, Topaz had all but disappeared from TV screens recently, as younger hosts and reality shows took over what was once his domain. I don’t know if there’s a uniquely Israeli angle to this story, as former celebrities missing the spotlight and resorting to crime can happen anywhere.

But because we’re such a small country, there’s a sense of familiarity here with celebrities – they’re not in some ivory tower – they still go to the same restaurants and makolets, and pay the same mortgages (albeit a little easier than the rest of us).

I don’t think any of the victim’s of Topaz’s unbalanced cruelty would have wanted to see this ending to the story. They would have preferred that he suffer in prison. However, now the country will be spared a long trial filled with gossipy details of the attacks and the personalities behind them. It may be the most compassionate thing Topaz ever did for his viewing audience.

A bloody summer in Israel – who’s to blame?

Murders take place everywhere, and thanks to Herzl’s wish that Israel develop a modern society like all other nations, we have our share of homocides. More than our share, if you’ve been reading the news the last couple of weeks.

Some of the lowlights – A 60-year-old man enjoying a walk near the beach in Tel Aviv with his family was accosted by a gang of youths from Jaljulya and beaten to death; Two dismembered female bodies have been found in seemingly separate incidents; and yesterday, a Jerusalem tenant who had been terrorizing his neighbors for weeks, stabbed and killed his landlord.

However, despite the gruesome horror that these murders evoke, and the increasing feeling that senseless, unmotivated murder is on the rise, the statistics show that there’s been no increase in murder this year over any other year.

According to the stats released by the Israel Police, who have been the targets of media scorn during the current murder spate, seventy-two people were murdered in Israel from the start of 2009 until August 15. During the same period in 2008, 73 murders were recorded, and 79 murders were recorded over the same period in 2007. In 2006, 92 people had been murdered by August 15.

In 2008, 122 people were murdered. While that represents a rise from 2007, during which 116 were murdered, 2006 saw 147 murders. In 2005, the total stood at 162, while in 2004, 168 murders were recorded by police.

So despite the sensational aspect of the August murders, we’re on par in 2009 for the decreasing annual rate of murders. What sets August 2009 apart, however, is that the media has chosen to focus on these hideous crimes because it’s a slow news month – not much happening on the Israeli-Palestinian front, either on the ground or at the negotiating table, impending conflict with Hizbullah is still on hold, and we’re not ready to attack Iranian nukes quite yet.

So what are you going to fill that air time and pages up with? According to the old newspaper adage, ‘if it bleeds it leads.’ What I find annoying besides the huge headlines and photos touting an escalation in violence, is the condescending attitude of the TV news broadcasters toward the police. ‘Why aren’t you doing more to prevent these murders,?” they accusingly ask top police officials, when the question is all wrong.

The real question is when Israeli society is going to change, and people are going to start educating their children to be non-violent. And when is the government going to allocate a budget to education that will prohibit the current norms of having 40 pupils in a classroom with one teacher? Those are the questions that should be asked, not what is the police doing about it? It’s time to take responsibility ourselves. And newspapers blowing things out of proportion with huge bloody photos doesn’t seem to be a helpful step in the right direction.

Israel offers solidarity after gay community center attack

A guest post from Yohay Elam, of Forex Crunch, who lives just two doors down from the gay center attacked last week.

Saturday night in the big city. A friend came to visit, and we went out for a drink. While we were sipping our beers, my girlfriend called me and asked where I am. I told her “Armadillo”, the local bar just one block away from our house.
She informed me that she heard shots fired, and that people are calling for help. The sound of sirens awaited us as we left the bar. Ambulances and police cars were quick to arrive on the scene. When we got closer, my friend asked me not to get close, and not to look. He argued “You don’t want to have those pictures in your mind”.
When we got back home, my girlfriend was still shaken. We live on Nachmani 24, two building away from the gay-lesbian community center, where the act of terror took place. From the first floor, and with an open window, she could hear everything.
After responding to many phone calls and text messages from worried family members and friends, we were exhausted and fell fast asleep. Only the next morning did we realize that something significant has changed.
I live in this apartment for almost 5 years. The neighborhood is packed with cafes, restaurants and bars. Many Bauhaus tours pass under my window. This busy corner in the city was always a fun place to be in, and it always felt safe.
Two building from my living room, in a building that looks just like the one I live in, a terrible murder took place. There is only a small sign on that building stating that it belongs to the gay-lesbian community center. The sign is colorful but modest, similar to those of dentists’ and lawyers’ operating in residential buildings. The possibility of a deliberate hate crime became imminent.
I feared that this vicious crime would drive the gay community back to the shadows, after years of struggles and notable achievements. It felt like a big blow to pluralism.
After more than a week, I must say I’m more optimistic. On the day following the murder, many people gathered around the building, lit candles, put flowers and gave interviews to the media. I thought that this was solely the initial reaction and an attraction to the interest of the press.
I’m glad to say that I was wrong. On the next few days, the media was gone, yet many people still visited the building, brought food and drinks for the mourners, lit candles and just stood in quiet solidarity.
More candles were lit on the following days. This truly warmed my heart each time I passed there. On Thursday, Prime Minister Netanyahu paid a visit. On Saturday night, a big rally with the participation of President Shimon Peres was held in Rabin Square.
This mass rally showed that Israelis care, and that the achievements of the gay community would not be shattered by the bullets of the murderer.
I hope that the murderer will be caught and brought to justice soon, and that the right to be different yet equal will continue to be exercised in Tel Aviv and throughout the country.

You can also see other posts on the attack here:

Rally in Tel Aviv.

Attack in the heart of Tel Aviv

Rally in Tel Aviv

It makes you proud to live here. Last night, over 20,000 people gathered at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to express solidarity with the gay community, a week after a gunman killed two people at a center for gay youth.

“The bullets that hit the gay community at the beginning of the week struck us all as people, as Jews, as Israelis … criminals will not set our agenda,” said President Shimon Peres from the podium. “The Creator of the world did not endow anyone with the power to murder his peer.”

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai also spoke at the rally, saying that “we thought that in Tel Aviv-Yafo… we had created an open and accepting society for our children.”

Police still have the case under a gag order, and have not revealed a motive for the shooting. Speculation ranges from it being a hate crime against gays to a personal attack, either by a father of one of the center’s patron’s or perhaps a scorned romantic involvement. Outspoken activists were quick to point fingers at conservative, religious legislators for creating an environment that would enable the attack to occur, but there’s been no evidence released tying in any religious aspects to the shooting.

Last Saturday, a masked gunman burst into a community centre for gay teenagers in Tel Aviv and shot dead Nir Katz, 26-year-old, and a 16-year-old Liz Trubeshi. Thirteen other people were wounded.

Vigils have been held at cities around the world for the victims, and last night, several musicians and entertainers appeared at the Tel Aviv rally, including Rita, Dana International, Ninette Tayeb, Amir Fay Guttman, Keren Peles, Corinne Alal and Ivri Lider.

Would it better if if turned out that the shooter was targeting gays out of hate, or if it was simply a random mass shooting, the kind that takes place in the US on a weekly basis, like last week’s ramapage at a fitness center in Pennsylvania? Both scenarios are kind of horrific, and neither bode well for Israeli society.

Attack in the heart of Tel Aviv

We always tout Israel’s – and specifically Tel Aviv’s – tolerant policies and attitudes toward alternative lifestyles. Which makes the horrible news about a masked gunman entering gay youth center in downtown Tel Aviv Saturday night and opening fire killing two and wounding 15 particularly difficult to digest.

According to the police, the masked gunman opened fire, then holstered his pistol and fled the scene by foot to the busy streets of Tel Aviv. The victims of the attack were named as Nir Katz, 26, of Givatayim, and Liz Troubishi, 17, of Holon. According to patrons, the center was not a club or disco, but just a place for teens from 14-21 to hang out in a non-threatening environment.

According to Ha’aretz, Gays and lesbians enjoy great freedom and liberties in Israel. Soldiers serve openly in the military, and openly gay musicians and actors like Ivry Lider are among the most popular in the country. Meretz MK Nitsan Horovitz is openly gay and ran for the current Knesset on a platform of gay rights.

Tel Aviv, one of the more liberal cities in the world, holds a festive annual gay parade, and the there is even a city-sponsored open house for the community. The media in Israel was full of speculation on Sunday whether this was the work of a crazed, lone gunman, or whether it was due to the cultivation of intolerance that certain segments of society have toward gays.

Israel is a place which, on the one hand has liberal laws, but on the other does not attempt to counter homophobia, claimed Danny Zak, a gay activist and journalist,

“The Shas party has the blood of two innocent kids on their hands,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “Shas has blamed gays for earthquakes and diseases. This is incitement, but no one is put on trial for it,” he said.

Shas released a statement following the shooting in which it called for the attacker “to be found and tried. Murder is of course against the Torah’s path and every attack is a contravention of the religion of Israel.”

All of the countries leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Deputy PM Silvan Shalom and Oppostion leader MK Tzippi Livni condemmed the attack. But MK Horovitz also raised the spectre of incitement from public leaders being behind the attack.

“There has been non-stop incitement,” he told the Post. “I very much hope this is not the result of comments made by public figures and Knesset members. They need to understand that some people will take action.”

He said the fact that the location of the center had been disclosed and that the murderer knew exactly where to go were serious blows to the gay community.

While the attack against the center was horrific, the public outcry against the attack and the unanimous condemnation across the board from public officials hopefully points to a future where an environment will not be allowed to develop where something like this could happen.

Saving a stitch in time

I’ve never felt the need to own a watch – between cell phones, car clocks and sun dials, I’ve pretty much got it covered. But some people are more enamored with time – and time pieces. People like Sir David Lionel Salomons, a former mayor of London in the 1800s, who amassed one of the most valuable collection of ornate clocks and accessories in the world.

Sir David’s daughter, Vera Bryce Salomons, donated the collection to the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem in 1974, the same year, she endowed the museum with funds to enable it to open.

The clock collection, including over 55 clocks by influential 18th-century French clockmaker Abraham Louis Breguet, featured the ‘Marie Antoinette.’ Commissioned, according to legend, for the French queen by a lover, the clock was considered the crown jewel of Breguet’s career and the highlight of the Salamons exhibit.

The collection became so popular that the staid museum near the President’s residence in Talbieh became known as the ‘Clock Museum.’

All that changed on April 15, 1983, when the biggest robbery in Israel’s history at that time took place. Overnight, between the museum’s closing on Friday night and Shabbat morning, thieves pried open the bars on a small window, climbed into the building and drove away with over 100 items from the clock collection, including the Marie Antoinette; another priceless Breguet table clock from 1819 known as the ‘Sympathique,’ which ran on a system in which a watch placed in a recess of the clock was automatically set and reset; and an 11 cm.-long, gold “pistol clock” created at the beginning of the 19th century in France.

Ever since the burglary, not a word has been heard or sight seen of the missing priceless clocks. That’s what makes tonight reopening of the exhibit ‘The Mystery of Lost Time’ – with almost all of the clocks restored and returned to their home even more remarkable.

Read the whole story on your own time here.

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  Israel is often seen as a place of conflict and strife. In reality there is much more: there's business and research; art and culture; community and family. At ISRAELITY, Israelis blog their daily thoughts, experiences and insights. It's the real Israel, not the media's Israel. It's people living ordinary lives in an extraordinary place.

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