Obama’s inauguration enraptures Israelis

January 21, 2009 - 6:08 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Politics, War 

Obama-themed celebrationsWith the Gaza ceasefire apparently taking hold, Israelis have been happy to have something new upon which to fixate our attentions in the news. Something hopeful. US President Barack Obama’s inauguration yesterday and the festivities surrounding it this whole week have kept Israelis enraptured.

The one exception to this trend might be American immigrants to Israel, who tend to be a Republican-leaning crowd, often because of the popular perception that the American Right is more friendly to Israel than the Left. This perception might or might not be true, but Americans living in Israel are certainly wary of Obama’s alleged lack of Zionism.

So despite citing nightlife-themed parties surrounding the inauguration which took place in Tel Aviv as well as Jerusalem, a Haaretz piece from earlier this week points out that mainstream American organizations were shying away from the event:

Neither the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel nor the American Israeli Action Coalition – two non-partisan groups – have planned any special activities to mark the swearing-in of the new president. A spokesman for Israelis for Obama, a small group that was formed before the elections and operated mainly online, told Haaretz the group had dissolved after completing it’s only goal of seeing Obama elected.

But even though George Bush is considered by the people here to have been a great friend to the country, most Israelis are optimistic about new blood inhabiting the White House. The Associated Press even hints at some more literal connections between the Israeli appetite for inauguration news coverage and the Gaza ceasefire:

Obama’s inauguration became the lead story in Israeli media, which had been dominated by coverage of the Gaza offensive that began with a massive air bombardment on Dec. 27.

The front page of Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s biggest daily newspaper, featured the smiling Obama and his wife over an English headline: “Good luck.”

Seemingly timing its withdrawal to Tuesday’s inauguration, Israel had already pulled most of its troops out of the ravaged Gaza Strip after a deadly three-week offensive aimed at halting years of militant rocket fire. But the crisis is not over, with reports of shooting along the Israel-Gaza border, and with Israeli soldiers poised to resume the assault if Gaza militants break a fragile cease-fire.

Maybe it’s simply a matter of the incoming president’s rock star-like status, but Obama buzz is not relegated to Democrats – even when it comes to Americans living here. Summing up the feelings at last night’s parties, today Haaretz quotes a young reveler named Guy Simen:

“Even people who did not support Obama are excited, because they know the whole world is watching this event – and they feel close to home. They know that now we’ve elected a man who is supposed to change the world and many people are proud to be Americans.”

Image courtesy lostintransitzine from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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Nostalgia Sunday – 50 Years of Israeli Club Culture

January 11, 2009 - 5:37 PM by · 6 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, War 

Anhedonia is “an inability to experience pleasure from normally pleasurable life events” and in addition to being the working title for Wood Allen’s “Annie Hall” – it also describes a feeling Israelis wrestle with on a daily basis.

Nissan Shor, is the author of the new book “Dancing With Tears in Their Eyes,” a history of fifty years of dance clubs in Israel. In it, Shor – a music writer turned cable show host – makes a case for the tension between Israel’s often grim security situation, and just wanting to have fun, as unique. clubbing_book_jacket_lg

The book (available only in Hebrew but with lots of pictures that, because of copyright issues, can’t be posted) deals with places that played recorded music only, from so-called Salon Parties held in living rooms in the late 1950s to Dance Nation clubs such as Jerusalem’s Haoman 17 in the late 1990s. It does not, notes Shor, deal with “night clubs or variety clubs where there were performances, like magicians, jugglers or live music.” Over the decades, he says, “In Israel there has always been a de-legitimization of people who want to dance and have a good time, because of our national situation.”

“Throughout, we see people whose desire to have fun becomes an antiestablishment act. And a young person who dances isn’t necessarily protesting the establishment but the ideological hegemony is so strong, that people who deviate for the purposes of pleasure become, whether consciously or unconsciously, anti-nationalistic. You can’t just dance and be normal.”

Shor touches on the non-conformist bohemia of the early Yishuv pre-State settlement – whose Foxtrotting tea-dances were condemned by the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, who wrote, “What emptiness! What tastelessness!… Degeneration and hollow soullessness!”

But the book really gets started with the introduction of Rock ‘n Roll and the noar salon (literally, “living room youngsters) Israeli-style Greasers later immortalized in the movie Eskimo Limon (Lemon Popsicle). Says Shor: “They didn’t go to Zionist youth movements because the framework – uniforms, hierarchy – wasn’t their style. They wanted to be like the other young people all over the world, wear jeans and leather jackets, listen to Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. And by the way, there were noar salon who went to both youth movement and dance parties.”

clubbing_ta_salon_party_fritz_cohenPhoto by Fritz Cohen

The summer of 1965 marked a milestone in the history of Israeli clubbing, when the first discotheque opened on the veranda of the Hammam nightclub in old Jaffa. The venue, owned by author Dan Ben Amotz and poet Haim Hefer, was leased out to entrepreneur Rafi Shauli – a key figure in the creation of a new paradigm in Israeli nightlife. Shauli really deserves a full column devoted to his accomplishments, but it should be noted that in addition to the many clubs he opened in the 1960s and 70s, (Mandy’s, Mandy’s Cherry and Mandy’s Singing Bamboo – all in honor of then-wife, the glamorous and scandalous Mandy Rice-Davies), he also opened HaMoadon in 1977, a members-only discotheque that raised the bar for all clubs in the Jewish State.
clubbing_flamengo_1967_moshe_milner

The phenomenon “gave rise to serious debates in the Knesset from all ends of the spectrum about the deterioration of Zionism and all sorts of dangers to the nation’s future. And this discussion comes up every few years. When the Coliseum club opened in 1982, around when the [first] Lebanon war broke out, the national debate was ‘how can people dance when others are dying?’, and [state-run] Channel One called it ‘the last days of Pompeii.’ The 80s New wave clubs – Penguin, Sirocco, Liquid, Kolnoa Dan – said rock had to be sung in English,” leading to another outcry. “And when the second intifiada broke out, the national debate was about the ‘Tel Aviv bubble’. It’s constant.”

Photo by Moshe Milner

In the early Nineties, euphoria over the Oslo Accords and the promise of a New Middle East, dovetailed perfectly with the introduction of muti-channel television and increased Western cultural influence in Israel. “The Israeli electronic dance music revolution came in with the consumer revolution, chains stores, cable TV – and Ecstasy. By 1997-98, it dominated youth culture.” That euphoric balloon, he adds, “burst with the second Intifada.”

Given that clubs have become a target for terrorists, Shor says that going clubbing during times of high alert has evolved into a form of national pride for some young people. “For example, right before the first Gulf War, there were ‘End of the World’ parties. After the suicide bomber attack at the Dolfi-Disco, the club re-opened and the kids kept on coming. It wasn’t heartlessness. It was saying, ‘No, you won’t stop me living my life.’”

Shor worked on the book for four years, inspired by his own love of nightlife, and the lack of an authoritative source on the subject. “I saw there was this genre of literature in other countries. I think that the conflict, that the subject deviates from the conventional, is one reason why no such book had been written. And this book tries to analyze that convention and introduce it into the Israeli discourse. It seemed right from an Israeli point of view.”

The generations of accidental rebels, he adds, “Weren’t trying to be political protesters. It was a rebellion only because of their actions, trying to live a western life in Israel. I think this is true Zionism – to live as every other nation. I think Herzl would have preferred endless partying to endless war.”

Video: Haoman 17 Jerusalem closes

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Them’s the (Data Line) Breaks

December 10, 2008 - 1:15 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, General, Politics, Technology 

Israel, being the high-tech powerhouse that it is, should be able to handle something as simple as a computerized primary election. But for two weeks in a row, in two different primary contests, the computers seemingly caused more problems than they solved.

All three major parties – Labor, Likud and Kadima – had decided to dispense with traditional paper balloting in their primaries this year. A paper ballot election run by party insiders almost guarantees allegations of corruption – and past scandals have proven that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In order to remove from party functionaries the temptation to, say, “lose” some ballot boxes (as has happened several times in the past) and to head off accusations of corruption, even if they were untrue, the parties decided to computerize the process.

Last week, the computer system crashed on Labor primary day, forcing the party to cancel the whole thing and reschedule for two days later. In Monday’s Likud primary, the system more or less worked, but it was slow – so slow that voting hours had to be extended for three hours, while party members spent hours waiting on line for their chance to choose. As a result of their rivals’ experiences, Kadima, which has its primary next week, has begged off using computers, and will instead go back to paper ballots, despite the problems.

Network experts still haven’t figured out what caused the Labor system crash, but in the case of the Likud slowdown, at least part of the problem was attributed to – a tractor. While digging the foundation for a structure outside Jerusalem, a tractor apparently damaged a fiber-optic communications cable, shutting down communications in the Jerusalem area (and beyond) for several hours, a delay from which the Jerusalem area Likud polls apparently never recovered.

Could a similar communications line cut have been responsible for Labor’s computer problems too? It’s very possible – because it happens far more often than people realize. Erez Ronen in Yediot Achronot tells the story of his trip to the mall to buy a computer – and how he couldn’t check how well it surfed the internet, because a tractor doing construction in the area had broken the data line. Clearly, it happens more often than we realize. It’s the digital age’s equivalent of a water main break (those still happen a lot, too).

It’s not just tractors that can break data cables – ships at sea do their share of damage. Earlier this year, in fact, most of the Middle East – except Israel – was off the net for several days, and in some cases for weeks, because a ship’s anchor had spliced through one of the main underwater communication cables running from Egypt to Europe. Most of the Arab countries, Iran, and India, used the line for their internet and e-mail connections to the rest of the world. Israel, which uses a separate cable (the MedNautilus cable, pictured), wasn’t affected – leading to accusations that somehow Israel had engineered the shutdown of the internet, in preparation for a war against Iran! Eventually the break was discovered, but countries affected, including Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and India said they lost billions of dollars. Losing our net connection is annoying, whether you’re running an election or just surfing. But for communication companies – like the ones that ran the Labor and Likud primaries – there’s a bright spot: You can always find someone to blame for the fashla!

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