Picture of the week – first rains
Jerusalem, Rosh hashana 2009. Two months of rain fall in just two days.
Israel was surprised this week by unusually heavy first rains. Accustomed to short, light showers that kick off the winter season, Israel got a soaking instead.
The storms over the Rosh Hashana holiday, brought in by a band of cold weather from Turkey and the Black sea, actually set a new rainfall record – what fell in just two days equaled the average total for both September and October, according to the Water Authority.
The storms were greeted with much pleasure. With five drought years behind us, Israelis are resorting to increasingly creative ways to reuse gray water and conserve fresh water (from short showers to inventive flushing systems for the loo) in the wake of the worst drought in Israel’s history.
In Kfar Saba, for instance, the municipality is now introducing a new biofilter that will clean urban rain water runoff to recharge old and out of service water wells. It’s a pilot project in the country’s first environmentally friendly urban housing project. Watch out for the story in the coming weeks in ISRAEL21c .
As far as rainfall goes, we now have to wait and see what comes next. As we enter an El Nino year, some people are anticipating a wet winter as rainfall patterns across the world respond to the warmer seas.
The Water Authority is warning us not to get too excited, however. In a recent
Jpost article, Water Authority spokesman, Uri Schor announced that El Nino could also cause an even more severe drought year than the last five.
“We’re on the rim of the El Nino effect and no one knows what it will bring. It could conceivably bring a lot of rain, but it could also bring about a severe drought year. It’s clear what we’re all hoping for,” he said.
Given that the last time we had a rainy winter, the Israeli government slowed work on its desalination projects, setting us back several years, it’s probably not surprising he’s so cautious.
For most Israelis, however, this sudden unexpected downfall was a welcome diversion from the heat, and a chance to enjoy that fresh, clean scent that follows the rain.
Reserved revelry of the times
Filed under: Crime, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Travel, War, coexistence
With a population of around 67,100 and proximity to both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Modiin is one of the larger suburbs of Israel. The city is located very close to the Green Line, though, making for some awkward situations for Israeli-Arab relations in the neighborhood – especially along the 443 highway, a major commuter thoroughfare. This isn’t a band of fringe settlers butting heads with nationalist Arab elements. Like the Kfar Saba-Qalqilya juxtaposition, it’s mainstream Israel in close quarters with villages.
Terror-resembling hate crimes have taken place in the area many times over the years (including these four incidents from 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, during the Second Intifada). This past March, long before the wave of violence that kicked off last month, the high court defended arrangements which basically ban Palestinians from using the 443 in order to minimize its exposure to terror. And since the war in the south has escalated, there have been stoning incidents, Molotov cocktails and even a stabbing.
Anyone reading this blog knows that in times like these, life goes on. In general, incidents like the aforementioned don’t keep Israelis from going about their business, much like the way that regular shootings and muggings in American inner cities don’t keep Americans from going about theirs. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t take precautions. We do.
A friend of mine who lives close to me in Modiin attended a party last night in Jerusalem, and while he didn’t drink, so as to maximize safety on the journey home, his sister did. Quite inebriated, her head was spinning from the drive, which, as we all know, has the potential to cause vomiting. Cruising along the 443, my friend found himself in a bind. He did not want his car to get all vomited out, and he wanted to comply with his sister’s wishes for a break in the motion, but on the other hand, it was the middle of the night and he was within rock-throwing range of more than one Arab village.
So yes, in times like these, we keep working, living and even sometimes partying as if there were no conflict. But that doesn’t mean the conflict doesn’t color our judgment and impact our actions. And in case you were wondering, the way he tells it, my friend’s solution was to pull over for his sister to vomit out the car door for two minutes at a time, and only when she really really needed him to. She used a plastic bag the rest of the time.
Photo of the 443 highway courtesy Michaeli via Wiki Commons.
Game On!
Intense, heated arguments, where opponents vociferously defend their preferred choice; hats, t-shirts, stickers, and buttons announcing to the world whose side you’re on; anthems, loyalty oaths, and in-depth analyses in the paper, on TV, the web, and “talking heads” who get paid to blather on incessantly, trying to figure out who’s going to win. And, finally, the big showdown, the final battle in which one contender tastes the thrill of victory – or the agony of the feet (I m
ean defeat!).
It could be only one of two things: Sports – or politics. Both inspire feelings of glory, contempt, anger, and, of course, hope. The correlation between the two is an interesting example of how opposites meet. Politics are in the front of the newspaper and sports in the back, so you could essentially read the paper from right to left and get the same information – which is good for us Hebrew readers. But that’s another subject.
Here’s another example of the correlation between sports and politics – with a Hebrew (Israeli) connection, no less. On election night, a hologram of CNN political correspondent Jessica Yellin was beamed into the network’s New York newsroom, making it seem as if she were standing there giving her report. But she wasn’t in New York – she was in Chicago covering the celebration of Barack Obama’s election by residents of his hometown. And the technology that made this possible was developed by a company based in Kfar Saba, called SportVU – which designed the technology for broadcasters of sporting events!
According to CNN, network officials saw the system in action at soccer games in Europe, and decided it would work for them on election night. SportVu has been used extensively in Germany, Spain and Italy, company marketing director Shimon Katzubes told me in a recent interview. It’s easy to run, too, Katzubes says. “All we need are three stationary cameras – no panning is necessary – to take in the live action, and the SportVU applications do the rest.” The fact that a system developed for sporting events could be deployed so easily to broadcast an election may just be coincidental – technology is supposed to be multitaskable. But what does the correlation between sports and politics mean for voters? That we should be looking at elections as spectator sports? Something to think about for 2012, I guess.
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