IBA’s Close Up feeds news jones
Filed under: A New Reality, Politics, Pop Culture, War
Earlier this week, the relatively new free daily nationalist tabloid Yisrael Hayom (Hebrew-only informational website viewable here) reported that mainstream Israeli news websites have been experiencing around a 30% spike in traffic since the start of the current Gaza conflict – hardly a surprise, and hardly a trend relegated to the video-heavy, Hebrew-language outlets cited in their stats.
With the thirst for Zionist-friendly war-related information peaking even among English speakers, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has been wise to initiate the launch of a new English news program called Close Up. Airing Wednesdays at 5:25 PM on the IBA’s Channel 33, the live in-depth weekly analysis magazine Close Up premiered this week with a half hour’s worth of content headed by IBA talking heads Steve Leibowitz and Leah Zinder.
The program joins the growing stable of English-language IBA news reports, which includes the ten-minute weekday News Bulletin and the 20-minute daily IBA News, all of which streams over the web on-demand at the IBA’s video mini-site (like most Israeli websites, works best in the Explorer browser).
For the inaugural episode, Zinder and Leibowitz were joined at the news desk by panelists Effi Eitam, a controversial MK from the hawkish religious National Union, and left-of-center David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. Eitam remarked on the high levels of motivation among IDF, proclaiming that “The spirit of confidence will prevail amongst the soldiers, and, I might add, amongst the citizens.” Horovitz commented on pragmatic goals for ceasefire arrangements.
In other segments, Hebrew University’s Dr. Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, spoke about the ethical issues of the war, reporter Leah Stern gave over a timeline for how diplomacy breakdown led to the current battles, and a visit to opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s office yielded a predictably “I told you so”-style statement.
RepORTs from the teens
A network of high schools across Israel that emphasizes high-tech vocational training, ORT is an educational powerhouse, its 100,000-strong student body representing about one tenth of all Israeli high school students.
With six branches within rocket range in southern Israel, ORT estimates that 7000 of its pupils are currently under high risk of Hamas attacks.
ORT’s Ronson School in Ashkelon, which educates some 1800 students, has temporarily closed its doors due to this situation, necessitating special tutoring and commuting arrangements so that the 12th graders don’t fall too far behind.
In the meantime, the school’s Eye 2 Israel / Yama and student blogging (informational site in Hebrew only) projects have encouraged students to use their tech bent to help foment a positive image of Israelis in the blogosphere – a motivation close to Israelity’s heart.
One of their bloggers, 14-year-old Rebeca Mayer, is an immigrant from Cuba. Although her English isn’t the most polished, Mayer’s accounts of her day-to-day life are a poignant reminder that there are real people behind every headline. As she puts it in her blog, “I decided to open this blog so all of you out there will understand what we’re going threw here in Ashkelon.”
Writing from inside a bomb shelter, where she and her family have been spending lots of time lately, Mayer wrote on December 28:
I’m really board here cause there’s nothing to do, my little bro is playing with my grandma with a train.
….I wanted to go out today and buy some shoes, but I guess this plan would have to wait, it really sucks to live in this kind of reality I just hope everything will be ok.
More recently, this past Tuesday, she wrote about her feelings of personal connection to the IDF soldiers who had recently been killed in combat in Gaza:
I feel so responsible for there death, cause I know they died to defend me.
They were supposed to come home as heroes but they come back in a coffin.
Now nothing could change, I just hope they will be happy up there in heaven.
As of yesterday, Mayer was planning on going to Eilat for the weekend for some escape and fun. We hope she finds what she’s looking for.
Image Ashkelon courtesy Jason Turner from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
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.
The Quiet Within the Storm
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War
You have to give Israelis credit; when the chips are down, even the ones who aren’t necessarily suspected of idealism come shining through.
As Israel went to war against Hamas over the weekend, the leaders of the major political parties all decided to suspend their political campaigns for the duration of the operation – which, both Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak said could be lengthy. Barak, who leades the Labor Party, said that he had to concentrate on the operation and had no time for politics.
The Likud, too, suspended its campaign, and has put on hold a radio campaign featuring ads attacking Kadima chief and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni. Posters that bear the campaign’s tagline – “Tsipi, the job is too big for you” – that have already been put up will be taken down. In a statement Saturday night, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that “there is a time for debate and a time for unity, and today is a time for unity,” he said. “If our enemies thought we would not be united under rocket fire, they were wrong. The cannons roar, but we are united.”
With the elections coming just about a month from now – and the gap between the Likud and Kadima narrowing, according to the latest polls – the suspension of campaigning is really extraordinary. It wouldn’t be surprising for opposition politicians, for example, to accuse the government of timing its operation to cynically improve its standing in the polls, giving it a “January surprise” type of bounce that could sustain it until the elections. But no – politicians on the left and the right spontaneously announced (without any coordination, as far as I could tell) that they were holding off on the negative noise we are set to be subject to. Not that any Israeli, given the choice, wouldn’t opt for the noise if it meant that the south was secure. But it does show that our political leaders and would-be leaders are a better caliber than we usually give them credit for being.
(Photo courtesy One Family Fund)
Out With the Old, in With the New
Israel is full of villages – “k’farim,” in Hebrew. There’s Kfar Tabor, Kfar Vitkin, Kfar Shemaryahu, Kfar Habad – and my personal favorite, Kfar Saba. Most of these villages were established decades ago, usually as agricultural settlements.
And some of Israel’s many k’farim may still be largely involved in agriculture – probably the ones way up north or down south. But as the Tel Aviv-centered megalopolis expands ever outwards, and better highways and rail links bring the periphery closer to the center, many of the k’farim in the center of the country have found a new way to grow profits – with real estate, as developers buy up the old free-standing houses, many with large lots, and magically turn them into luxury apartment buildings, offices, malls, and all the other features of Israel’s increasingly urban/suburban landscape.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course; people gotta live, and as crowded as Israel is, there is still plenty of open space in the Galilee, and especially the Negev. While many farms and fields in the Sharon region, for example, have been turned into homes and stores, effective Israeli methods of land reclamation has turned large parts of the Negev into flourishing farmland, with everything from vegetables to fruit to grain growing nicely.
In Israel, as in much of Europe, the city centers are the most expensive places to live, and the further out you move, the cheaper the home. But when enough people move far enough out, that location gets an “upgrade,” and turns into a city, in and of itself. And that’s what’s been happening to almost all of the small towns, the k’farim, that once surrounded Tel Aviv. The villages are still there, in name – but now many of them are big cities.
Living as I do in a town not too far from Kfar Saba, I’ve seen the process unfold there over the past few years. First came the mall in the middle of town; then came the new luxury buildings and homes, with real estate shooting up in value by hundreds of percent within a couple of years. Then, they built the new park, a sure sign that Kfar Saba was no longer a “k’far,” which would have its own natural open spaces. Now, the developers have moved on to the edge of town; the funky industrial zone, which really was dedicated to industry (not shopping, like in a lot of other towns), is getting a huge 
combination office/mall space, which will take up about five big city blocks!
Thus the photos accompanying this piece: I may have come across some of the last “authentic” original agricultural-era homes in Kfar Saba. Someone still lives in the house with the sign in the top photo (there’s a satellite dish on the roof), but apparently they got an offer they couldn’t refuse, because it appears that a “luxury building” is going up on the site.
At least we’ll still have the shoemaker, (“sandlar”), whose little shack is seen in the bottom photo. This structure must have been built decades ago, but whoever owns it still has some principles, it seems – no “for sale” signs are up on this one, yet. Maybe the municipality should buy it out in order to preserve it – and let the next generation get a sample of “the way it was.”
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