Cellphone education
You just know they're listening to music...(Image by © C. Devan/Corbis)
So I’m sitting and waiting for the bus yesterday morning, heading into town to cover an assignment, when I realize that the tinny music I’m hearing is coming from the cellphone of the teenage boy sitting two seats town. In between us is an older woman. I politely ask the boy to turn down his music, as he’s listening to it without an earphone (rude), and it’s just bad music. He does so without comment. At that point, the woman turns to me and says, “Why is it that these kids think we want to listen to their music? They should use earphones.” I nod in agreement because she’s absolutely right, and I can’t stand walking around and hearing someone else’s music blaring out of their cellphone.
She continues. Seems that three years ago – she remembers that it was three years because her mother, ‘ala hashalom’, died three years ago — she was on her way to visit her mother in Beersheva on an Egged intercity bus. And wouldn’t you know it, but as always, there was this one soldier having a loud conversation on his cellphone with someone named Ortal. Ortal, she tells me, is a name she will never forget. Now, as she and I both know, it is very annoying to always be privy to everyone’s private cellphone conversations in public places, such as the bus, the bank, the supermarket, the sidewalk. “I,” she says, “also have a cellphone. But I speak quietly, and briefly, I don’t tell my whole life on the phone.” I nodded.
Anyway, she — and the rest of the people on the bus — spent an hour and a half listening to this soldier tell Ortal how sorry he was for what he’d done, and that he’d do anything to make it up to her from the minute he arrived home. At some point, she reached her limit. Turning around, she snatched the phone out of his hand, and said, “Ortal, stop making him beg. There’s a hundred of you out there, and he can easily find someone else. Enough!”
And with that, she handed the phone back to him, as the rest of the bus passengers burst out laughing.
“It’s a great memory,” she told me. “And I can always do it again; these kids need to be educated.”
Teenagers on cellphones: Beware of my bus bench neighbor. She’s looking to educate you.
Picture of the week: Finding friendship in the ruins of war
Israel is a country of contradictions. While the world outside sees the conflict in the clean crisp black and white of headlines, here in Israel we tend to see things in myriad shades of grey.
Take these two kids for example. Maria Aman (in the wheelchair) is a Palestinian girl from Gaza who was hit by an Israeli rocket during operation Cast Lead. Orel Ilizrov, is an Israeli child from Beersheva who was left with severe brain damage after he was hit by a grad missile fired from Gaza in the same conflict.
Against all the odds, they are best friends.
Maria was left paralyzed when her house suffered a direct hit. Four of her family were killed. Orel, an only child, is lucky to be alive. His mother threw herself on top of him in an attempt to protect him from the missile.
The children were hospitalized at the Alin Rehabilitative Center in Jerusalem and were given neighboring beds. Despite the traumas that both suffered, they ignored the conflict – as kids so rightly do – and formed a deep friendship based on everything they have in common, and not everything that keeps them apart.
Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90
Welcome to Beersheva – Israel’s mall capital
A couple of months ago we were on our way back from Eilat with friends when the kids started to get hungry and fractious. We decided to stop in Beersheva.
My memories of Beersheva were of some hot dusty town with a dilapidated center, and a few basic restaurants that looked like they were decorated in the 1980s. Our friends, who had lived in the nearby army base of Hazerim for some years, took us on a short cut from the main road through a neighborhood and then out into the retail district of the city.
The sheer size of this area was flabbergasting. We drove from one power outlet or outdoor mall, to another – seven in total – all seemingly lined up one after the other. There were so many restaurants and cafes to choose from that we actually got confused. It went on and on for miles, and because it was a Saturday evening, the roads were heaving with people.
Hundreds of shops, restaurants, cinemas, bowling alleys. It was as if we had taken a wrong turn out of the barren and empty Negev desert straight into America. “It’s the biggest mall in Israel,” our friends told us, and we certainly weren’t going to argue that point.
Well not any more. Apparently the biggest mall in Israel is just about to be built. Where? In Beersheva, of course.
The Lahav Group has announced that it plans to build the Beersheva Mall over a stretch of about 100,000 sq. meters at a cost of $180.5m. The shopping center, 2km from the old city, and 3km from the central bus station, is due to be completed in 2012, and what makes this entirely different from all the other malls, apparently, is that it’s going to be the first green shopping center in the country. This means recycling rainwater, solar panels, and a few bike lanes.
What it also means is that the citizens of Beersheva and the environs will have yet another mall to shop at. How many stores can one town possibly need?
Maybe this is what happens to desert towns. Maybe in a boiling, often inhospitable climate, shopping is the only resort. But it seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong since I don’t live in Beersheva, that rather than create yet another out of town shopping area, this money might be best served by actually turning the still run down but potentially interesting center into a place where people might actually like to just hang out.
A new year
I was sitting this morning, checking out the status reports of my friends on Facebook, and thinking about the New Year, and the situation in the South.
The American friends were mostly writing about going to dinners, New Years resolutions, travelling, being cold, or referring to some other aspect of New Years and winter revelry. The Israeli friends were mostly alluding to the war in some fashion.
But that’s not to say that people here are fixated on Operation Cast Lead. My daughter reports that downtown Jerusalem was packed last night for ‘Sylvester’ celebrations, the endearingly nerdy way Israelis refer to New Years Eve, while thinking they’re being cool.
So we have a situation that, like the rest of the world, Israelis are out partying despite what’s going on in the south of the country. And when you stop to think about it, what’s going on in the south of the country is just mind-boggling. According to news reports last night, 600,000 Israeli citizens are within range of Hamas rockets and Kassams.
A Home Front commander was on TV advising residents of Beersheva, Sderot, Ashkelon and other southern communities not to gather for New Years Eve parties last night out of fear that a well placed rocket could cause major casualties. A couple that was getting married on New Years Ever in Beersheva changed the venue at the last minute for that very reason to the safer confines of Rehovot.
How long can we – meaning the people of the South and the country at large – endure this kind of situation? Well, for quite a while actually, as the Second Lebanon War in 2006 displayed. Israelis are quite resilient, and we realize that the pre-war situation, when it was just Hamas attacking us, is unacceptable.
But it would be nice if someone was telling us what’s going on, and providing the residents of the South with some encouragement and guidance during this unfathomable situation.
Why haven’t Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, or Ehud Barak or Tzipi Livni, given a ‘State of the Union’ address, particularly the residents of the South, and told them ‘listen, this is going to get bad, you’re going to get bombed and it’s going to be unpleasant and dangerous. But we’re doing this to disable Hamas from being able to fire rockets at you ever again.”
But no, nothing. It’s all implied that we – the government and the army – are going to do what’s neccessary, and you – the people – will only have to be told things on a need to know basis. We may be great fighters – although between the Lebanon War and our current inability to stop Hamas, that assumption is being challenged – but we’re terrible communicators.
Imagine the United States attacking Mexico in order to prevent a constant barrage of missiles from Tiajuana onto San Diego, and nobody from the government from the President on down addressing the people of San Diego and warning them that it’s going to be getting a little rough, but we have your backs covered.
Anyway, that’s what I get for checking status reports on Facebook. I guess if I was going to write a New Year’s wish for 2009 on my own status report, it would be that, instead of rockets, peace and quiet begin raining down on the South of Israel.
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