Peace or aliens: Israel in 2018 and 2111
Filed under: coexistence, Movies, Politics, War
How will Israel look in 2018 or 2111? Will there be peace…or aliens? Two ambitious projects culminated last week with a film and a Facebook campaign, both intended to drive home the future consequences of inattention to the problems of today.
Of the two, One Voice was the more serious. The non-profit organization, unabashedly in favor of a two-state solution to peace in the region, sent out messages via Facebook to politicians and media celebrities – from Defense Minister Ehud Barak to musician Yoni Bloch – informing them they would soon be receiving a package.
The package consisted of a fake newspaper called “Israel Tomorrow” (designed to look like the popular “Israel Today” publication), dated January 1, 2018 and proclaiming that the end of the conflict had finally been achieved.
Tal Harris, the director general of One Voice Israel, told Haaretz that the purpose of the campaign was two-fold: “To acknowledge and thank those who are really working toward a two-state solution (and) to remind…conservatives (that) they could one day get a prize for helping Israel achieve peace, if they only stood for what they know Israel needs.”
One Voice is now launching a film competition calling on movie makers to share their vision of the region on Israel’s 70th birthday in 2018. But cinematic depictions of the nation’s future have already been tackled, in particular, by the just concluded “Jerusalem 2111” project where the winning flick received a $10,000 prize.
The contest, which sported some big name judges including Avatar producer Jon Landau and German director Wim Wenders, awarded top honors to a two-minute film called “Secular Quarter” by U.S.-based cinema student David Gidali.
In his vision, Jerusalem is divided by huge cages sealing off neighborhoods with different political and religious worldviews. When UFOs arrive to remove the cages (which presumably these unexplained extraterrestrials put in place after some calamitous event), religious and secular meet for the first time in years. Cut to black.
It’s a cheeky approach, but ultimately optimistic. Compare that with two other entries, one of which shows a nuclear explosion set off in the city and rippling out to rupture the entire world, and another depicting a battle which unites Jewish and Arab forces against a horde of flesh eating zombies.
Good thing the delivery packages didn’t get mixed up. I’m not sure I want to know how Ehud Barak would react to the peace through zombie message.
No need to plug these leaks
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, General, Israeliness, News, Politics, Technology
Israeli officials were quivering in their chairs on Sunday in anticipation of WikiLeak’s release of the trove of diplomatic cables it had obtained. The weekend papers warned that there would be much embarrassment on both the Israeli side over revealed US government assessments of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and former PMs Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.
Netanyahu went so far to remind reporters on Sunday, before the documents were published on news websites around the world, that Israel was not expected to be the focus of the documents.
“Israel is not the center of international attention,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the southern border with Egypt. “Normally, there’s a gap between what is said publicly and what is said privately, but in this case, the gap is not large.”
It turned out that he was right. While the documents released Sunday night included some titillating tidbits about other public figures – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was referred to as “Hitler,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a “naked emperor,” the German chancellor was called Angela “Teflon” Merkel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “driven by paranoia,” Vladimir Putin was referred to as “Alpha Male,” while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is “afraid, hesitant,” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s full-time nurse is a “hot blond,” and Berlusconi loves “wild parties,” – the material pertaining to Israel is serious and to the point.
• Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who stepped down as head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence last week, said in a meeting in 2009 with US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) that Israel was not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the United States was on 9/11.
• Mossad director Meir Dagan told Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in 2007 that Israel and the United States need to do more to create regime change in Iran.
• Dagan also told Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the US president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in the summer of 2007 that IDF operations against Hamas in the West Bank were preventing the terrorist group from taking over the Fatah-controlled territory, according to a cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department.
• According to another cable sent from the embassy in Tel Aviv, Barak revealed to a congressional delegation in 2009 that Israel tried to coordinate Operation Cast Lead with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
According to an analysis by The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz, “while there were some comments made by Mossad director Meir Dagan regarding leaders in the Middle East – the emir of Qatar is “annoying,” and the king of Morocco is not interested in governing – that are slightly embarrassing, Israeli politicians were spared the more embarrassing analyses of their personalities that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi received.”
Not even a mention of Bibi’s comb over. And Katz also surmised that from an Israeli perspective, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the WikiLeaks documents may have helped Israel.
By presenting the Arab leaders as more extreme in their remarks than Israeli leaders, the cables show the dissonance in the region and the danger involved in allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear program.
So, our initial pre-embarassment over the release of the classified documents has turned into satisfaction. At least until the more damning ones come out.
Foto Friday – Post-Election Fun
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture
This just in: President Shimon Peres has tasked Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the government. And so, the coalition-building process begins. Against the background of political posturing, jockeying for positions and a moment before disillusionment sets in, Tomeriko, photographer, photo editor and informal archivist of Israeli press photographers, has posted a new series of images on his Israel Press Flickr photostream. Entitled Elections 2009, it provides a humorous behind-the-scenes peek at the recent elections.
Photo by Koko, courtesy of Israel Press
The series, contributed by any number of Israeli press photographers working for various media outlets, deals with the run-up to election day, including things that people living outside Israel might not have known about.
Photo by Koko, courtesy of Israel Press
For example, Kadima party head Tzipi Livni on the cover of womens magazine La’Isha. When she was a little girl, could she ever have imagined this day would come?
Photo by Idan Kenan, courtesy of Israel Press
Inevitably, there are instances of campaign poster abuse…
Photo by Aviad Herman, courtesy of Israel Press
With some enthusiastic party workers perhaps taking the “green” message a tad to far…
Photo by Tamar Matsafi, courtesy of Israel Press
There are those who use election day to promote their own personal agenda…
Photo by Adi Yisrael, courtesy of Israel Press
And some who just tag along…
Photo by Alex Kolomoisky, courtesy of Israel Press
But the big question remains: do we know which way we’re actually going?
Photo by Adi Yisrael, courtesy of Israel Press
New Knesset elected, coalition talks underway
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Politics
The results are in. The election is finally over. Even though the Bibi Netanyahu-led Likud party was well ahead in the polls a few weeks ago, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima garnered one more seat than Likud in a stunning photo finish, explained by Haaretz thusly:
Livni forced Netanyahu to treat her as an equal, despite his negative ads claiming the job is “too big for her.” From that point, he lost the advantage of experience. Livni proved to be an expert campaigner who saved enough energy for the final and decisive round.
Several fascinating statistical and graphical breakdowns of the results can be seen here, while a breakdown of the number of seats per party, along with plenty of analysis and victory speech soundbytes, can be seen here.
Perhaps because the left has splintered into several newer and smaller parties, many of which did not garner enough votes for even one Knesset seat, the mainstream left-wing Labor, led by Ehud Barak, will only hold 14 seats, leaving its leadership disillusioned and vowing to sit out of coalition talks.
Avigdor Lieberman’s hardcore right-wing Israel Beiteinu managed to crystallize Israel’s right-of-center undecided, which, in essence, ended up detracting from Likud’s support among hard-liners, which, in turn, gave the relatively centrist (but Ariel Sharon-founded) Kadima a proportionate edge (causing the world to wonder where this leaves us in terms of options for diplomacy with the Palestinians).
However, it’s Israel Beiteinu that’s going to make or break any coalition which Livni has already hit the ground running trying to form, so Lieberman’s agenda hasn’t backfired completely. Let’s not forget that this is Livni’s second chance to try and form a coalition, with the first time around, this past fall, not yielding any results at all.
So yes, it does seem that public opinion here has moved towards the right, and it’s parties which sit decidedly on the right which have the power to make or break a government. But at the same time, the Likud’s failure to seal the deal says quite a bit about the strength of the middle ground (whatever that may or may not mean).
Image courtesy tzipilivni2009 from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Knesset poster decay
Filed under: Art, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture
Meet the news boss, same as the old boss.
Little by little, the campaign posters for the 613 parties running (ok, it’s only ???) are starting to appear on busses and billboards, and the media moguls and spin doctors are gearing up for the always entertaining TV ads which begin airing later this month.
But if you’re waiting for it all to be done and finished, at least one political observer is on your side. Rafi Mann, a veteran journalist for Hebrew paper Ma’ariv, and currently their oped page editor, loves to take photographs of campaign posters – but months and years after they’ve been posted, when they’ve been torn, faded, and petrified by the elements and grafitti artists.
Mann’s been shooting these pieces of ‘art’ for over 12 years, and now, ahead of the February 10th elections, he’s putting on a photography exhibit of some of the best posters – called appropriately ‘Poster Mortem’.
“Sometime after the 1996 elections, I saw some election posters that were still on billboards, pasted one on top of each other, and it was fascinating what happened to them, how they deteriorated and blended together,” Mann told me this week.
“I took some photos, and since then I carry a small camera around and when I’m traveling around the country, whenever I see an interesting old poster still up, I take a picture.”
Poster Mortem promises to be a fascinating look at the political culture in Israel – where Ehud Barak’s face on one poster blends into Bibi Netanyahu’s on the poster beneath it to create a kind of Bela Lugosi hybrid only someone like Tim Burton could think up.
“My sense is that the way the posters look after the elements and time have gotten to them is kind of a metaphor of what happens during elections and the promises that are made,” said Mann.
Let’s hope this year it’s different. But don’t bet on it.
Poster Mortem opens on Thursday evening at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv, and will be on display through the elections.
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