Flower hunt
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
After several weeks of putting my nose to the proverbial grindstone, my working partners and I decided it was high time for a day off, one that would help us find new material for our latest project (more later on that), and that would get us out of the city.
We had grand plans for hitting the Yoav Yehuda region and then getting to Tel Aviv as well, to check out end-of-winter sales and breath in the urban air, but once we reached the fairly wide open and green spaces of Routes 3 and 44, we were settled on hanging in the country.
It’s truly astonishing how heavy rains can transform the look of this country. Route 3, if taken from the Latrun exit off Highway 1 from Jerusalem, gets you close to Ashdod and all the way to Ashkelon. We were making stops in the yeshuvim, a.k.a. small suburban communities, around the Nachshon intersection, and the views around us were of rolling green fields, dotted with yellow flowers and the occasional clump of red anemones. But one of our best stops — besides a textile designer in Karmei Yosef and a goat cheese farm and cafe in Moshav Tel Shachar — was in the Defenders’ Forest, a JNF park of pine, cypress, olive and carob trees, with monuments of all shapes and sizes erected throughout the park in memory of ‘defenders’ of all kinds, from Holocaust victims and fallen soldiers to people who have died in terrorist attacks or tragedies of the more mundane type.
We were seeking flowers, winter/spring wildflowers to be exact, and it was amusing to watch ourselves drive through the park, looking for the clumps of purple cyclamen and red anemones. We found them, in abundance, carpeting the forest, from clumps surrounding trees to wild beds of cyclamens dotted with bunches of anemones. And even though we were on a mission (to write a piece about finding wildflowers in the Israeli springtime), it was such a lark to actually get out there in the forest, search and seek flowers, and find and photograph them.
Here are a few samples of what we found, now go see them for yourself…
My Israeli flag, love it or not
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies
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=36087766The 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.
British rapper raps Israeli security
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Life, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel, War
Lowkey - unwelcome in Israel?
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.
The reality of teenage life in the south
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.
RepORTs from the teens
A 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.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts