Tourists flocking to Israel

July 15, 2010 - 8:40 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Holidays, Life, Travel 

Despite the tensions with Hizbullah in the North, Hamas in the South, and flotillas, boycotts and the World Cup, tourists are once again flocking to Israel.

According to figures released by the Tourism Ministry this week, some 1.6 million people visited Israel between January and July, – an increase of 39 percent over the same period in 2009, and 10% more than in 2008, the country’s previous record year.

The ministry figures also showed record-breaking numbers for June, with 259,000 tourists visiting in that month, an increase of 24% over June 2009 and 8% over 2008.

According to Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov, it’s an aggressive marketing campaign by his ministry which is prompting travellers to choose Israel as a vacation destination. That effort has also increased the number of users of the ministry’s Web site – in the first half of 2010, more than 2.7 million users from over 220 countries entered the Web site – an increase of 30% over the same period last year and double the number for January-June 2008.

Travel professionals are also taking note of the treasures Israel has to offer. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv topped tourism magazine Travel and Leisure’s recent readers’ poll of the ten best cities in Africa and the Middle East. Jerusalem ranked as the best city and Tel Aviv was in third place, with only Cape Town, South Africa between them.

It’s likely that the combination of incoming tourists and the fact that Turkey has more or less dried up entirely as a vacation destination for Israelis has resulted in soaring hotel rates and few vacancies anywhere in the country this summer. It was so much more pleasant when we were ostracized.

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Haman rears his ugly head

February 28, 2010 - 10:55 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Politics, War 

Ahamadinajad, Assad and Nasrallah - a summit of the villains with humous. (Photo: AP)

Maybe because it’s Purim, and we Jews are obsessing with bad guys trying to annihilate us, but didn’t the photographs of Syrian President Bashir Assad, Iranian President Ahmadinajad and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah sitting around a goodies-laden table at the end of the week in Damascus evoke a shiver down your spine?

It was like one of those scenes Batman or Austin Powers where the idiosynchratic but well-costumed villains stage an evil summit to hatch new plans for world domination. There’s some eerie synchronicity going on – we’re gathering to hear the Megilla reading in Israel and around the world, being reminded of Haman’s plan to wipe out the Jews. And generations later, these anti-Israel professionals – one, Nasrallah, actually in his best Penguin meets The Joker garb – are gathering around humous and eggplant salad to discuss the very same thing.

We’ve sat down at the peace table with some unsavory folks in the past – Yasser Arafat anyone? But even that was within the realm of possibility, as he talked about making peace with Israel and living side by side, even if his actions didn’t resemble his words. And King Hussein and Anwar Sadat always seemed like level-headed leaders, even when they were our enemies, so it was no great leap to find commond ground with them when the time came.

But what about the terrible trio of Assad, Ahamadinajad and Nasrallah? Are we ever going to be able to sit around the humous table with them? Or is it going to play out like a Purim story, where one side has to triumph over the other? Stay tuned, same Bat time, same Bat channel.

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A new front in Lebanon?

January 8, 2009 - 1:38 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: coexistence, Life, Politics, War 

I must admit, when I went to buy milk this morning and saw the TV in our tiny village makolet (corner shop), tuned to the news and a picture of the Lebanon and Israeli border, I felt a deep sense of foreboding.

I think it’s what we’ve all been frightened of. That the battle in the south, will lead to a new front in the north. As we are all aware, those four or five Katuysha missiles fired at Nahariya this morning, wounding two people, could be a one-off protest, or they could be the opening salvo of a much worse conflict.

A katyusha attack on Israel.

A katyusha attack on Israel.


I’m one of those people living in the center of the country who have managed to be untouched by either the last Lebanon war, when missiles rained down on the north, or the Gaza crisis, when missiles rain down on the south. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard, however.

This morning I felt it acutely – a kind of moral and emotional exhaustion at the thought of what has been, and what is still to come – with Hizbullah, if not now (with elections in Lebanon in May), then later; and with Iran, looming.

I’m not alone. This morning Larry Rich, the director of development and PR at Emek Medical Center (EMC) in Afula, sent out one of his periodic postings. Every month or so, Rich sends out a report from his hospital, and I always read them with interest. Sometimes it’s about something he overhead, or witnessed at the hospital, often its heart-warming tales about Israeli Arabs and Jews who find that in the face of illness and sometimes death, they share an awful lot more in common than they thought.
This morning, Rich – like me – was in somber mood.

“Two hours ago four Katyusha missiles slammed into the northern Galilee, having been fired from southern Lebanon. It seems that the Iranian forces of darkness are eager to continue their relentless provocation of little Israel. Nobody knows, as these words are being written, just how far this latest act of unprovoked aggression will escalate.”

He goes on to report that EMC is now on high alert.

“An urgent meeting of our emergency preparedness staff led by CEO Dr. Orna Blondheim (still grieving from the tragic death of her nephew, Dagan Vertman, cut down in Gaza) took place as the debris in the Galilee was being cleared. Having unfortunate knowledge stemming from previous wars, EMC is preparing for the worst while hoping that sanity will prevail.
We have opened our bomb shelters and already designated a large shelter adjacent to several empty rooms that will be used (should we need it) by the children of our staff while they are working.

The rooms will be for games & activities while in the event of a missile assault, the children will be only steps away from a large bomb shelter. Our emergency medical supply stores are fully stocked and ready. Our physicians and nurses carry on with their healing, hoping that they will not be, once again, launched into harm’s way.

Adrenalin is rushing, anxiety sets in and we resign ourselves to an indefinite fate.”

A few days ago, the husband of a friend of mine volunteered for the reserves. He’s in his ’40s, and the father of four children. He was sent to the Lebanon border, where troops have been on alert since the start of the conflict with Gaza. “At least he’s miles from the fighting,” she told me then. I saw her briefly this morning. She looked worried.

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