My Israeli flag, love it or not

October 19, 2009 - 8:55 AM by David · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, coexistence 

The blue and white of the Israeli flag has never been more closely analyzed and inspected than in the documentary film My Flag by Toronto filmmaker Igal Hecht.

The 30-year-old, Israeli-born Hecht has made about 40 documentaries over the last decade, with most of them in recent years focusing on Israel, which he calls his “obsession.”

My Flag , which is having its Israeli debut on Thursday night at the Sixth Jewish Eye Film Festival in Ashkelon, finds Hecht traveling around the country during its 60th birthday year and asking those he encounters one question – ‘what does the Israeli flag mean to you?’

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36087766

The answers range from humorous to biting to reflective, accurately mirroring the fractures of Israeli society and the attempts by its citizens to understand the nature of their country amid their first identity crisis.

Hecht traveled to Sderot where a man whose wife was seriously injured in a Kassam attack angrily says, “This flag is nothing to me – if you weren’t here, I would burn it like the Arabs do.”

In Mea She’arim, he walked around with flag wrapped around him, like a more thoughtful Bruno, evoking residents to respond, “It’s a rag, I wouldn’t even wash the floors with it.”

“We don’t need a flag, we have Hashem,” another says.

But for every negative connotation, there’s patriotic responses, from singer Saraleh Sharon who says, “The flag of Israel is our home.” Or from a Druze Israeli in the North who says “I am proud to be a son of this nation.”

In a process similar to that in the US, where in recent years, the symbol of the flag has been coopted by a decidedly right-wing, nationalist viewpoint, the Israeli flag has also inadvertently become a symbol of the Right. My Flag is an attempt to return the flag, representing both the achievements and blemishes of an imperfect country, to the Center.

“I learned that there’s frustration in Israel,” Hecht told me. “I end the film with a speech Ezer Weizman gave in 1996 in Germany. He talked about the country standing at a crossroad and unsure of where it was going. Unfortunately, that’s the thesis of the film ultimately. There’s a lot of uncertainty and lack of vision for many Israelis. That can be still translated into love and appreciation of the flag, but it also provokes hesitancy and grasping at trying to understand what’s going on in the country. Is it Zionism, or post-Zionism? What is the new Israel?”

That’s the question we’re all trying to grapple with.

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British rapper raps Israeli security

March 5, 2009 - 10:06 AM by David · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Life, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel, War, coexistence 

Lowkey - unwelcome in Israel?

Lowkey - unwelcome in Israel?

Any visitor to Israel who’s entered or left the country via Ben-Gurion airport can tell you stories about the security there. Especially, if you don’t fall into the ‘Jewish visitor’ category.

For better or worse, we invented profiling – if you stray outside of their accepted categories of low risk visitor – for instance if you’re black, or Muslim – or if you’re a radical British rapper with ‘Long Live Palestine’ splashed across your Myspace page – you better be prepared for some grilling and some uncomfortable moments.

Justified? Well, yeah. The ultimate goal is to prevent people dying in a terror attack. Could we do it in a friendlier, gentler way that doesn’t create long-standing bitter feelings? Well, yeah.

But it’s still hard to swallow the sour grapes spewed by minor talent British rapper Lowkey, of the hip-hop/indie left-wing collective Mongrel who claimeed he was recently detained at the airport for nine hours.

According to the British New Musical Express, the rapper had been travelling to Tel Aviv to take part in a series of charity shows in the country, and in the Palestinian Authority to raise funds to help rebuild the Gaza Strip.

“As soon as I stepped off the plane with my AA guide to Israel tucked under my arm, I was pulled away to the side and interrogated as to why I was in Israel, by a man who wore no uniform identifying himself as any type of security but was clearly heavily armed,” Lowkey explained.

“After this I carried on through to passport control. After giving over my British passport it was confiscated. I was then detained for nine hours. During this time I was interrogated about many aspects of my life, what the purpose of my trip was, where my parents are from and where I planned to go in Israel.

“Eventually I was told my story was a lie and was subjected to a bout of the Israeli polices paranoid mind games. I was eventually released, knowing that no matter how frustrating what I just went through was, I knew that it was not even a miniscule fraction of the degradation Palestinian people are subjected to on a daily basis.”

Well, thanks for the soap box, Lowkey. I haven’t received an answer yet from the airport authority regarding the validity of the events as Lowkey related them. But as one commenter to the NME story responded:

Maybe it had something to do with the fact you have – LONG LIVE PALESTINE TOUR IN PALESTINE!!!!. across your MYSPACE page you d***… of course they are gonna watch your arse when you step foot off the plane…

It’s unclear whether Lowkey actually performed in Israel or raised any money to rebuild Gaza. But I would bet money that he didn’t visit Sderot or Ashkelon during his stay here.

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The reality of teenage life in the south

January 13, 2009 - 8:23 PM by Harry · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, War 

Last week I wrote about Eye 2 Israel, blogs authored by students of Ort which offered a rare glimpse into the real life of young people who are experiencing the onslaught of missile attacks in the south. Eye 2 Israel is not alone. There are several other initiatives as well, one of the most high profile being, Join My Life, an initiative started by Nir Kouris, founder of Ecamp.

In his own words:

The blog entries were initially in Hebrew only but several are being translated into English. Join My Life will also be donating free webcams to youth in the south to make it easier for them to tell their stories. Living in the center of the country, it’s hard to imagine what it is like down south right now – or what’s it’s been like for the past several years. Blog posts like one authored by a thirteen year old girl in Ashdod give perspective. When I was thirteen all I care about was ninjas.

Yesterday, around nine o’clock in the evening, imagine you’re having a quiet night. After a day without alarms and sirens, thinking you’re going for a long tiring day at school.

And then…you hear a siren, one that recently we hear once a day, not very frequently and usually a false alarm. You get in the shelter with mom, god knows where dad is now… waiting for the siren to end so that you can find out it fell in north Ashkelon… but then you hear a boom.

The first thing you think is- where’s dad, maybe one of my friends was hurt…was someone killed? You go on the internet and validate your suspicions and worries- someone was killed and as a mater of fact a Grad missile did fall in Ashdod…pretty much in the center, on a bus station.

The lines were down, we can’t locate dad.

Relatives barely managed to call…because the lines were down. Then we hear dad get home, he’s fine. But the fact that dad is fine doesn’t mean someone else is fine. Seven injured, one dead and many that are in shock. Just as you think it’s over, about half an hour after, when you’re on your seventh dream about winning the lottery, the siren goes off…while you’re sleeping.

That’s basically what a non-typical day in Ashdod sounds like.

You can read more entries here.

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RepORTs from the teens

January 9, 2009 - 12:32 PM by Harry · 2 Comments
Filed under: General 

AshkelonA network of high schools across Israel that emphasizes high-tech vocational training, ORT is an educational powerhouse, its 100,000-strong student body representing about one tenth of all Israeli high school students.

With six branches within rocket range in southern Israel, ORT estimates that 7000 of its pupils are currently under high risk of Hamas attacks.

ORT’s Ronson School in Ashkelon, which educates some 1800 students, has temporarily closed its doors due to this situation, necessitating special tutoring and commuting arrangements so that the 12th graders don’t fall too far behind.

In the meantime, the school’s Eye 2 Israel / Yama and student blogging (informational site in Hebrew only) projects have encouraged students to use their tech bent to help foment a positive image of Israelis in the blogosphere – a motivation close to Israelity’s heart.

One of their bloggers, 14-year-old Rebeca Mayer, is an immigrant from Cuba. Although her English isn’t the most polished, Mayer’s accounts of her day-to-day life are a poignant reminder that there are real people behind every headline. As she puts it in her blog, “I decided to open this blog so all of you out there will understand what we’re going threw here in Ashkelon.”

Writing from inside a bomb shelter, where she and her family have been spending lots of time lately, Mayer wrote on December 28:

I’m really board here cause there’s nothing to do, my little bro is playing with my grandma with a train.

….I wanted to go out today and buy some shoes, but I guess this plan would have to wait, it really sucks to live in this kind of reality I just hope everything will be ok.

More recently, this past Tuesday, she wrote about her feelings of personal connection to the IDF soldiers who had recently been killed in combat in Gaza:

I feel so responsible for there death, cause I know they died to defend me.

They were supposed to come home as heroes but they come back in a coffin.

Now nothing could change, I just hope they will be happy up there in heaven.

As of yesterday, Mayer was planning on going to Eilat for the weekend for some escape and fun. We hope she finds what she’s looking for.

Image Ashkelon courtesy Jason Turner from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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The reality of life in Ashkelon

January 6, 2009 - 1:56 PM by Harry · 1 Comment
Filed under: General 

ofir-pinesFor the past few days I have felt that there is way too much internet “noise” in regard to the current conflict in southern Israel and Gaza. I can’t keep my head straight. I can’t keep up with all of the emails, tweets, news sites and blogs. I am being inundated with so much information that I am finding it virtually impossible to focus – on anything. I feel like I am sitting in a lecture hall with ten professors lecturing simultaneously and I’m expected to pay attention to all. Time to focus. To filter. The first thing to go was the google alerts. Secondly, I temporarily disabled several of the blogs I read daily. While I enjoy punditry, too much of it can be a very bad thing. Especially in the massive volumes that I have been digesting. At this point, I’m far more interested in the blogs that are not blogging about the conflict, but are IN the conflict.

One such blog is Focus on Ashkelon. Authored by Sigal Ariely, Director of the Ashkelon-Baltimore Partnership in Israel, Sigal describes in great detail the experience of living in a city currently threatened by daily missile strikes. She also writes about other Ashkelon’s resident’s experiences. Such as this one describing a grad attack that occurred yesterday:

Ashkelon: 19:04 There we were, a sunny Monday morning, averaging maybe one grad/hour from about 10:30 the morning. And once again, the siren wails, we run downstairs under a hallway in my mother-in-law’s house. My neice and one of my sons were with here and just as this parade of Dorots gets to the hall, this enormous “BOOM!” shakes the house. “It’s here!” my son and husband yell together. “Nobody move!” We waited for less than a minute (although you have to wait 5 but we couldn’t) and ran outside, noticing that the window over the kitchen sink had a huge hole in it and what was left was all cracked. Smoke was coming from the houses across the street and at first, we thought it was there. Then we thought it had landed around our friends’ house behind those houses and knowing Miki was alone and on the hysterical side, ran over to her house. By the time we got to the corner, sirens, ambulance, police, Home Front Command, t.v., cameramen, neighbors I hadn’t seen for years and neighbors I had never seen in my life, you name it, were already there and the police were taping the site with red tape, like the kind they use at a crime scene (well, it is a crime…). We ran across the street to Miki’s and by the time we got there, not more than 5 minutes after the grad had landed, teams of Home Front Command were already going door to door to see if everyone was okay. Amazing! After making sure our friend was okay (her husband had to leave his car 2 blocks away and walk because the street was full of service vehicles) we made our way back home but of course, I had to see what was going on. The grad had landed only a few feet from the last house on the street, one owned by a rabbi and his wife (daughter of the city rabbi) and I kept staring and repeating “It’s a miracle” because it was.

You can listen to an interview with Sigal where she talks about what life is like in Ashkelon here.

Photo of MK Ophir Pines taking cover in Ashkelon by Zev Yanai from flickr under a creative commons license.

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