Foto Friday – Jacob Ackerman’s Birds of Prey
Filed under: Art, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Travel
Whether in Israel or abroad, Jacob “Yaki” Ackerman spends days and nights in the heart of nature, lying in wait to capture its magic and power.
Patient and alert, he spends long hours for that perfect split second in which to freeze the action of a body in motion. Perhaps that is why he relates so strongly to birds of prey.
Ackerman’s work will be part of a group art show about Israel’s predatory birds opening next week at the Man and the Living World Museum in Ramat Gan.
This unique museum, situated within the Ramat Gan National Park, features a variety of natural history exhibits as well as a center for educational activity and cultural events.
Ackerman’s extensive portfolio includes images from around the world but his passion is nature photography, and birds in particular. He’s participated in numerous wildlife photography exhibitions and his website contains some magnificent interactive photo albums that should not be missed. Enjoy.
Seeing stripes in Gaza
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General, coexistence
One of the painted donkeys at the Happy Land Zoo in Gaza.
Reports abounded last week about the goings on at Gaza’s Happy Land Zoo, where, with a little masking tape and women’s hair dye, two donkeys were transformed into striped zebras.
The reason? A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said owner Mohammed Bargouthi. “It would have cost me $30,000 to get a real one,” who added that his zoo charges an entrance fee of only $15 for a busload of school kids.
Due to Hamas being still in a state of war with Israel, the Israeli government has kept an embargo imposed on Gaza, which has decimated the zoo that Bargouthi opened last year.
Other than the would-be zebras, lion and two ostriches, there’s only a camel and some birds.
According to an AFP report, the animals are often sick and the medicine they need is unavailable in Gaza.
“If there was an animal protection group here, they would have us all arrested for mistreating the animals,” said Bargouthi. “I tell myself that it’s a sin not to take care of them properly, but I try to do my best.”
“The zoo is meant for children. When they come here, they are happy, they run, they have fun. They want to see the lion and the zebra — they believe it’s real,” Bargouthi told AFP.
Nidal Bargouthi, whose father owns the zoo, told Ynet that the initial attempts at painting the donkeys didn’t turn out so well.
“The first time we used paint but it didn’t look good,” he said. “The children don’t know so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new.”
When the mayor of Ramat Gan, Tzvi Bar, read about the zoo’s plight in the Ynet story, he said he was shocked. He called the director of the much more affluent Ramat Gan Safari and asked him to send two zebras to the Gaza zoo in hopes it will prevent similar occurrences in the future.
“The zebras will be transferred to Gaza under the official commitment of the Gazans, to take good care of the animals,” Bar told Ynet.
This week the Safari will begin the many arrangements involved in transporting the animals to Gaza, including permits from the Defense Ministry, IDF, Nature and Park Authority and the Palestinian Authority.
Whether the neighborly move will prompt Gazans to change their stripes in their attitude toward Israel remains to be seen.
Life at the zoo
I miss being lazy. I yearn for the days of sitting around doing nothing on Friday and Saturday. Catching up on TV, lounging around, eating leisurely meals, etc. However, those days are over and will only be available again about 20 years down the line or so. It was a bit easier when my daughter was younger and napping twice a day. That was a guaranteed 4 hours I had to chill. These days she’s napping once a day for only an hour and a half. When she’s awake she is a high octane ball of energy and she gets bored around the house pretty easily despite the dozens of toys. With this in mind we recently purchased a membership to the Ramat Gan safari/zoo. We’ve been going pretty much every weekend for the two months and the reasonable cost for yearly membership has already paid for itself. A good, sound investment, and only 20 minutes away. She already knows her way around. She know the “elephen” is to the left and the “monkey” is to the right. She doesn’t care much for the birds. But said “woah” when a giraffe almost licked her. Her favorite animal is still the “beebras” (zebras). Its amazing how much she retains from the few hours we spent at the zoo. Just yesterday, five days after we visited she jumped on my wife’s back and said “tzofie baby monkey.” She now requests “baby monkey” every five minutes. I love this kid.
Slow and steady gold
Despite the numerous European championships won by Maccabi Tel Aviv, Israelis aren’t exactly known for their athletic accomplishments. At the most recent summer Olympic games in Athens four years ago, windsurfer Gal Fridman won Israel his first gold medal after 52 years of attempts.
The Beijing games are set to kick off in a matter of days now, and we’re dead set on picking our battles. One blogger astutely points out that we dominated the celebrations at July’s Mathematics Olympics in Madrid.
And we can always look back fondly at the accomplishments of the Ramat Gan Safari’s Tortoise Olympics, where a new world Sudanese giant tortoise speed record of one kilometer per hour was set, triggering wild celebrations involving flowered wreaths and enthusiastic monkeys.
The old parable about the tortoise and the hare earns added poignancy in this context. And besides, let’s not forget that Israel is a place that has much love for turtles, operating a very special sanctuary dedicated to the creatures in Michmoret – just a few hours by turtleback from Gal Fridman’s hometown of Hadera.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts