Forecast Highs

The burning of hundreds of New Testaments by yeshiva students in Or Yehuda last week was regrettable and unplanned, the city’s deputy mayor, the man who spurred the students to act, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon of Shas used the opportunity of speaking to the Post, which publishes a monthly Christian Edition, to apologize to Christians worldwide, saying he hoped the incident would not inflame tensions between Jews and Christians.

Following the publication of the story on Tuesday, however, many messianic Jewish and other Christian groups expressed grave concern over the increasingly violent nature of anti-missionary activity in Israel.

Aharon had a very busy Tuesday. In the morning, Ma’ariv ran a story on how he organized to retrieve and burn hundreds of New Testaments given to Ethiopian Jews in his city by local messianic Jews. By 9 a.m. he was on an Army Radio news-talk show defending his actions, which he called “purging the evil among us.”

At 10:30 he was on Channel 2’s morning news show saying that Ethiopian immigrants in Or Yehuda were being encouraged to go against Judaism by messianic Jews. “We need to stop being ashamed of our Jewishness and to fight those who are breaking the law by missionizing against us,” he said.

But by the early afternoon he had already been interviewed by Russian, Italian and French TV, explaining to their highly offended audiences back home how he had not meant for the Bibles to be burned, and trying to undo the damage caused by the news [and photographs] of Jews burning New Testaments.

But then he also told The Associated Press that he didn’t condemn the Bible burning, calling it a “commandment.”

Aharon then told the Post that he was very sorry for the book burning and that it was not planned, and that he was aware that the incident may have caused damage to relations between Christians and Jews. The deputy mayor said he had organized, together with “three or four” yeshiva students from the city’s Michtav M’Eliahu Yeshiva to go to apartments in the city’s Neveh Rabin neighborhood, which has many Ethiopian immigrants, and round up packages given to them several days earlier by messianic Jews. The packages contained a New Testament and several pamphlets, which Aharon said “incited against against Judaism.”

“I wasn’t even on the scene when the boys rounded up all the Bibles and brought them all to one place [near the synagogue in Neveh Rabin]. They started burning them before I got there. Once I arrived the most I could do was pull a Bible out of the fire. I put it in nylon and its now in my car. I am really sorry for the book burning, but I did not organize it, it was a spontaneous thing by the yeshiva boys,” Aharon said.

“We respect all religions as we expect others to respect ours. I am very sorry that the New Testament was burned, we mean it no harm and I’m sorry that we hurt the feelings of others,” he said.

However, he added, Israel could not allow messianic Jews to “come into our homes and incite against our religion, and turn our children away from Judaism. That is against the law.”

Aharon said he had received phone calls from Neveh Rabin residents complaining about the packages. “They called me because they know I’ve been fighting missionaries for years,” he said.

Last Thursday, Aharon drove around the neighborhood with a loudspeaker asking residents to gather all the New Testaments that were given to them. The yeshiva boys then went from apartment to apartment and picked up the books.

Hundreds were burned in a scene that reminded some of past atrocities.

The incident in Or Yehuda is the latest sign of rising tension between segments of the modern Orthodox and haredi sectors and the messianic Jewish community. Two months ago, the son of a messianic Jew was seriously wounded by a parcel bomb left outside his home in Ariel. Earlier this year, haredim demonstrated outside messianic Jewish gatherings in Beersheba and Arad, and there were instances of violence.

And just before Independence Day, a group of religious Zionist rabbis called for a boycott of this year’s International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel, Bat-El Levi, an 11th-grader from Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, was a messianic Jew.

The rise in tensions is partly due to an increase in the number of messianic Jews in Israel over the past few years, with some estimates putting the community at 15,000, and partly due to increased fervor within haredi anti-missionary groups.

Sources familiar with the Falash Mura - whose Jewish ancestors converted to Christianity under duress in Ethiopia, and who made aliya under the understanding that they would return to Judaism - say that some continue to be Christians in Israel, and that this makes them amenable to messianic Jews. Several messianic Jews and at least one Christian group in Israel contacted by the Post on Tuesday expressed fear that if they spoke on the record, they would be attacked.

Some of the New Testaments burned in Or Yehuda were published by the Bible Society in Israel, part of a worldwide organization of 140 Bible societies that publishes in some 200 countries.

The society’s director in Israel, Victor Kalisher, the son of Holocaust survivors, spoke to the Post about his shock and dismay at the burnings. “As Jews we were raised and taught that were books are burned, worse things can happen. That’s what I think when I see the pictures of what happened in Or Yehuda. What worries me is that nobody has stood up against this. It seems there is a war against messianic Jews in Israel. Nobody cares about many, what I believe to be cults, in Israel. These cults, which are not based on the Bible, don’t pose a threat to the establishment. But God forbid a Jew learns about the messiah from the [Christian] Bible,” Kalisher said.

He said he did not know who paid for and distributed the New Testaments that were distributed in Or Yehuda, but that there was demand for the books from many quarters. “The Bibles are not forced on anybody and are not forced into any homes. The book has never harmed anyone, you can choose to read it or choose not to read it. If this happened to Jewish books overseas we would be screaming anti-Semitism. This sort of thing happens in some regimes around us that we don’t like,” he said.

Kalisher noted a recent increase in tension between the messianic community and their opponents. “Bombs have been sent [in Ariel] and now books have been burned. This cannot be allowed to happen here,” he said.

Michael Zinn, who heads a Christian organization called Beit Far Shalom, which “brings good news to people all over Israel,” said the book burning was “unacceptable behavior which reminds me of the Middle Ages.”

What happened in Or Yehuda, Zinn said, could spread to other parts of the country. What is important to watch now, Zinn said, was the reaction of the general Israeli public. “I expect Israeli society to put a large question mark on this incident,” he said.

According to Calev Myers, a lawyer representing messianic Jews in Israel, the incident in Or Yehuda was an “illegal act” committed by Aharon and his yeshiva charges. Myers added that there was growing institutionalized discrimination against messianic Jews in Israel.

Myers said that according to Criminal Code section 170 and 172 it was illegal to harm in any way a place, symbol or icon of religious importance to a community who imbues that icon with religious significance. Furthermore, it was illegal to speak publicly in a way that is offensive to people of any religion, he said.

Likewise, it was illegal to actively convince a minor to convert to another religion, or to pay someone to convert, he said.

Myers is waiting to see whether Or Yehuda police open an investigation into the incident, and if they don’t, he will petition, through the Jerusalem Institute for Justice that he runs, for Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz to order a probe.

“I expect the police to investigate everyone who was involved in the book burning, including those who incited the youths to the act, even if that includes Mr. Aharon,” Myers said. Myers said the book burning was tantamount to incitement to violence.

“Israelis have to understand something: Messianic Jews here have strong ties to American evangelical Christians, and there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who see the burning of the New Testament as a very serious issue. The New Testament is believed in by hundreds of millions of people. It is not in Israel’s national interest to allow the burning of their holy book,” Myers told the Post.

Myers is not worried about opening up a legal battle over missionary activities in Israel. “Messianic Jews distribute literature here and are very careful about it. Chabad is a much larger group that distributes material and literature,” he said.

[Aharon says it is okay for Jews to give material to Jews, but not for Christians to target Jews.]

“The messianic Jews in Israel are Jews like anyone else. They are registered with the Interior Ministry as Jews. So they are just as entitled to hand out pamphlets as anyone else, as long as it is from adults to adults and does not involve minors. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 there has never been one case of proven missionary work that has led to an indictment,” Myers said.

David Parsons of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem said the burnings “would be offensive to most Christians.”

“We need to understand that in the past some Christians burned many Jewish holy books, and so it seems that this is an outdated mode of dealing with these issues. In today’s world, the public burning of anyone’s books is considered unacceptable,” Parsons said.

By the evening, Or Yehuda’s deputy mayor said he had heard nothing but praise and thanks from residents of his city. Aharon said that he had never met or held a dialogue with any Jewish messianic group or person, but that he would welcome such a meeting.

Here’s an interesting twist to the non-enforcement of the no-smoking in public places law.

On Thursday night I was at the Foster’s Bar on the corner of Shlomo Hamelech and Frishman in Tel-Aviv, a small, intimate bar with an upmarket vibe. It was my housemate’s birthday party [about ten of us] and there were about 40 other people at the bar. Several of them were smoking [some of my friends who were there, being mostly Anglos, went outside to smoke - because they are civilized people]. I’d say about 7 or 8 people were smoking in the bar, and Foster’s was slowly starting to fill up with smoke.

I asked the barman if he wouldn’t mind telling the smokers to please go outside [I've learned the hard way not to approach smokers at bars myself]. This is the exchange that followed:

Me: Why are you letting people smoke in here? Its illegal. Can you please ask them to smoke outside.

Barman: I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Me: Yes you, can. The law is on your side.

Barman: No I can’t, and I have a really good reason too. But I don’t want to go into it, its complicated. Just trust me, I can’t. Can I get you another drink?

Me: What? You’re not serious.

Barman: I am. If I ask these people to go smoke outside the municipality will close this bar down at 12:30, and they’ll keep it closed.

Me: Because?

Barman: Because if more than five people smoke outside then they’re making a noise and the neighbors complain, and there is a law in the city that says you can’t make a big noise in a residential area after midnight. Trust me I suffer from the smokers here myself, but there is nothing I can do.

Me: Why don’t you tell them to go smoke outside and ask them to be quiet?

Barman: I can’t do that. People talk.

Me: So, you’re breaking the law in here, so that you won’t be breaking the law outside? How does that make any sense?

Barman: What can I do? If I don’t let people smoke in here they’ll close us down.

Six months after the government enacted the no-smoking in public places law, this barman was essentially saying that he could not abide by that law [as if anyone were actually enforcing it] because he would be breaking another, older city law: no noise in residential places after midnight.

Welcome to Absurdistan.

Just sat in on the final panel of President Shimon Peres’ ‘Facing Tomorrow’ Conference, where Mr. Television Haim Yavin hosted Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

All four politicians were asked by the moderator to give a speech, lasting ten minutes, about what Israel means to them. Needless to say, each one used the opportunity to present what amounted to his/ her own electoral platform. Perhaps they are smelling elections in the air.

The speeches were void of any real headlines or news; just the fact that all four of them were on the stage together was interesting in itself. What I found more interesting however was the crowd’s reactions to each of the speakers. There were at least several thousand conference -goers in attendance, and I think many of them were tired and restless at the end of a very busy three-day conference.

Instead of dissecting what the speakers said, I thought I’d give you an observation of the level of chatter and patter by the audience members during the speeches as an indication of who was charismatic and who was not, who held the audience’s attention and who meandered and lost the crowd, which messages were welcomed and which missed the mark. I call the it chatter-and-patter-o-meter, from 1 [audience chatted amongst themselves very little and were absorbed by what the speaker was saying] to 5 [audience basically ignored the speaker and chatted and pattered away freely]. Read more »

Here is the applause-o-meter from last night’s President’s Conference at the Jerusalem Convention Center honoring 60 years of American-Israeli friendship. There were several thousand people in the hall, many of whom were participants in the conference, as well as many Israelis with connections to American think tanks and organizations; and many American citizens.

The applause-o-meter is ranked in numbers from 1 to 10 with 1 being extreme dissatisfaction and 10 being extreme adulation.

Peres walks up to the stage: 9 out of 10 [Most Israelis feel here is at least one politician they can look up to, largely because he is no longer an actual politician but a real leader]

Olmert walks up to the stage: 5 out of 10 [Prime Minister embroiled in at least 4 police investigations; and is deeply unpopular] Read more »

Current plans for water conservation and existing desalination facilities are insufficient to meet the country’s growing water demands and rapidly decreasing supply, the Environmental Protection Ministry warned on Tuesday.

Due to the “serious threats to Israel’s water resources, there is a need for a visionary plan exceeding the one in place today,” Dr. Yeshayahu Bar-Or, the ministry’s chief scientist, wrote in a letter to Water Authority head Prof. Uri Shani. “Desalination plants operating even at the increased rate of 500-800 million cubic meters per year cannot provide an adequate response to the worsening shortage in water. Extra measures are needed.”

Currently, 60 percent of Israel’s sewage water is recycled. According to forecasts published in 2005, water produced at a string of desalination plants planned for the Mediterranean coast is expected to meet 15% of the country’s needs in 2008. Read more »

This week the spokesperson for the National Fraud Squad, the police unit investigating Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Moris Talansky, Uri Messer and Shula Zaken on suspicions of financial impropriety, told The Jerusalem Post that none of the media reports over the past two weeks had emanated from the highly secretive unit. “You have no idea how tight we’re keeping this investigation,” she said. Even State Prosecutor Moshe Lador thinks the press reports about the affair are largely inaccurate. Still, the main news outlets in Israel come up with daily scoops quoting anonymous law enforcement officials speculating about which direction the investigation is heading towards. On Monday, one of the main papers led with a story quoting an anonymous source saying police were focusing their probe on Olmert’s tenure as Industry and Trade Minister in 2005. By the time the ink dried on that story in the afternoon, police had raided the Jerusalem Municipality for evidence linking then Mayor Ehud Olmert [1993 to 2003] to Moris Talansky.

One constant that is running through all the media however is the image of Uri Messer, Olmert’s long-time associate and friend, as the prime minister’s ‘dirty laundry guy’, his accounting henchman if you will. Ask the average Israeli what association enters his mind when he hears the name Uri Messer, and you will likely hear negativity on par only with Olmert himself. The public trusts politicians about as much as they like lawyers. Read more »

I almost got swept away in all the nice things people were saying about Israel and the Israelis now that its our 60th birthday and all. But I just got out of the Ben Shemen Forest [a good mountain biking and hiking spot between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem] and this most beautiful of forests has pockets which are a total mess. Most of the forest is clean, but there are some campsites and picnic spots where people had left plates, kebabs, bottles, bongs [yes, even dope bongs], and assorted garbage all over. In some places it looks like the people had eaten, drunk, and smoked their fill, and literally just got up and left. The plates, bottles and garbage were all in place on the big wooden tables. They didn’t even bother gathering all the trash into one place.

Some of us act like children sometimes. For a while I’ve been looking for a tagline that would encapsulate Israel at 60. And I think I’ve found it: Ancient people, Young Nation.

I think that the Parks and Nature Authority and the KKL should post cameras at popular camp and picnic sites all over Israel’s forests and track down the people who leave serious trash and pollution in the area. These people should be fined and shamed. This is such a tiny country, and its green spaces are so scarce and vulnerable, that anyone caught polluting and damaging them should pay a very steep price. I don’t like the idea of cameras in forests, but this is just not getting any better, and no amount of government-funded radio ads begging people not to pollute are helping.

Seems like the message is finally starting to get through to the army, which has really let this thing go on for far too long. This is the first tangible thing to have happened since I published the original article exposing all this stuff.

A soldier serving in the IDF’s elite 8200 military intelligence unit was sentenced to 19 days in prison on Wednesday for uploading a picture onto the Facebook social networking site.

The IDF would not comment on the exact nature of the photograph, but said the punishment was in proportion to the committed offense. Military sources said an IDF directive prohibits photography on bases without official approval.

The sources said the soldier in question would be punished for taking pictures on a military base without permission. Read more »

Had too much time on my hands over Passover and was thinking about what my religious views were, and I’ve never really been able to pin them down, except for something I came up with a while back which I like to call ‘open source Judaism’.

The idea comes from open-source computer coding, where a basic codes exists, and to which everyone is free to tinker with, improve and update. According to the Open Source Initiative [non-religious software association], open source aims to “harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.” Which is pretty much how I feel about religion.

I put that on my Facebook account under religious views, but Facebook only lets you put in one religious view, which is interesting in itself, and forced me to make a clear-cut choice. Problem is I have a bunch of others, and the more I think about it the more they pop up. So here are some of the alternative religious views I would put on my Facebook profile if it let me:

What if God was one of us?

Goodness. Gracious. Me.

God would never kill a curious cat.

Dopamine for the masses.

Help God help us.

Soultime achievement award.

Modern ultra-Flexidox.

Some of my friends on Facebook have really interesting religious views:

Angels. [This person likes to fly a lot]

Moses was the dude. [Spends a lot of time in nature]

Jesus built my hotrod. [Mostly rides a bike]

Secular Socialist Chalutzik Zionist. [anti-Materialist]

Radical Infidel Jihadist. [This person is actually an observant Jew but has some issues]

skysophonicnewferklinker. [This person also has issues]

Jewish - Liberal Orthodox [One of the nicest, most spiritual people I know]

Jewish (see Berkovitz, Heschel) [?]

Eat me [This person would really say that to God and God would love him for it]

Kaleidoscopic. [Don't know this person so well]

Purely Karmic. [Musician]

Opposed to institutionalized religion [just married] Like all good things its complicated

I like God. [Beautiful person]

My personal laws of Kosher include shellfish. [Also likes hummus and chicken]

Nonreligesaurus, love and light [works with electricity].

Yoav Fisher from New Zionist just pointed out that I’m now the second fastest growing blog on WordPress.

There are close to 3 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com!!

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to visit, I’ll keep it going.

I’m blown away by the amount of material posted by Israelis during their service in the Israel Defense Forces, including Facebook and YouTube. I published the story below in today’s paper and on this blog, and since then several people have drawn my attention to more material out there, stuff I think should be classified. It seems that the most incriminating stuff has been posted by soldiers on reserve duty, pretty much wanting to show off to their friends and perhaps recapture some of the glory they felt when they were in their mandatory service. These guys are literally filming their tours of duty, including weapons training, going back home and uploading their videos onto YouTube. Some are even editing them and adding music and titles. I sincerely hope that somebody is starting to take a serious look at this problem.

Michael Freund pointed out some IDF training exercises he found on YouTube. This stuff is out in the open and anyone typing in Israel and military into YouTube will find this stuff, so I don’t feel like I’m revealing state secrets here. Read more »

Got this response from the IDF Spokesperson’s Office today for both the Facebook and YouTube stories:

Regulations stipulate that it is not permissible to film or take pictures inside any IDF facility or during an IDF operation unless the photographer has express permission. These regulations are designed to prevent people without proper security clearance from accessing classified information and the appearance of such materials in the press or on the internet. The IDF is working to raise awareness among soldiers and reservists about operational and security dangers that maybe caused by classified information carelessly uploaded to the internet. The IDF is taking a broad response to the problem, which includes education, monitoring and disciplinary enforcement.

And now, on to the story:

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of photographs of classified Israeli military information are available freely for perusal on the popular Facebook social networking Web site. [PICTURES AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST]. Read more »

The decorations on the Hyundai parked outside Bnei Akiva’s headquarters in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood tell you quite a lot about where Israel’s second largest youth movement came from, where it is now and where it’s headed. Stuck onto the rear window is a sticker reading: “Follow Me to the Paratroopers” - an iconic Israeli message borne of the famous Paratrooper captains’ battle cry in 1967. On the rear bumper is a more recent catch phrase - “No Soldier is Left Behind in the Field” - tied to kidnapped soldiers Gilad Schalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Hanging from the rearview mirror is an orange ribbon - the symbol of the campaign against the evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza and northern Samaria that constituted the 2005 disengagement.

The car belongs to Neriya Meir, Bnei Akiva’s Jerusalem District coordinator. Meir is a resident of Eli, a settlement north of Ramallah - an area Bnei Akiva teaches its kids is the Jewish heartland. The 26-year-old father-of-two (”They keep me up at night”), whose wife’s photo is his cell phone’s screensaver, is a combat soldier in the reserves. Even in civilian life, he carries a handgun with him at all times, however, because he and his family live deep in the West Bank. Read more »

The following story dramatizes how the Turning Point 2 preparedness drill unfolded at Ben-Gurion Elementary School on Rehov Poale Harakevet in Givatayim on Tuesday, April 8, between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m.

Amit powers past two defenders, passes the ball to Roei, who fakes, then takes a shot from inside the circle. The ball bounces off the rim, but Amit is there to pick up the rebound. Roei circles round as Doron blocks another defender.

Amit and Roei try the routine again: Again it doesn’t go in, and this time the opposing team picks up the rebound.

All around the six older boys, many of the school’s other 331 pupils are at play. Two girls, holding hands, skip past two others who are hugging and singing. Two other girls are tormenting a younger boy, taking his left leg, then his right leg, and teaching him how they think he should walk.

Some of the older girls, in their very early teens, are singing, and one even has the gall to ask another if she brushed her teeth this morning, “Oh my God, your breath stinks,” she chuckles, and all four girls giggle.

Four 10-year-old boys race each other from one end of the playground to the other. In the other direction, little Tomer outruns a girl twice his size.

Two scruffy-looking boys are playing a soccer penalty shootout with a small rock, but it hurts their feet too much for the game to go on for long. In any case, the bell rings and everyone rushes to class.

But before they can even catch their breath, a siren goes off. A few seconds go by, then Daphna the principal’s voice comes over the PA system: “This is not a drill, everyone has one minute to get to the bomb shelters. Go!”

A teacher in a class of six-year-olds says calmly: “Remember how we prepared for this? We’re ready. Now, like big children I want you to line up, hold hands and follow me. Remember to play the sweet music in your head that we talked about.” Read more »

Terribly sad story this.

A heart-wrenching struggle for the life of young South African Jewish youth leader ended sadly this weekend with the death of Gideon Prodgers, 20, from Cape Town.

Gideon passed away this Saturday at Rambam medical center in Haifa after an eight-month battle with leukemia. He will be buried in Cape Town later this week.

Gideon came to Israel on a gap-year program with the Habonim Dror youth movement. He spent his first three months at the Jewish Agency’s institute for training youth movement leaders in Jerusalem. He took ill and collapsed on one of the hikes organized by the institute in July and was taken to a Jerusalem hospital, where he was diagnosed with leukemia. According to his Habonim friends, Gideon’s doctors were very pessimistic about his chances. Read more »

I wrote this post yesterday, and since then another interesting Synagogue versus State case has come up today. A Haifa court ruled today that it was not going to interfere in a mother’s request to cremate the body of her daughter, who committed suicide over the weekend. Judaism prohibits cremation. During the court hearing on Monday, members of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox ZAKA [burial society] organization appealed to the High Court of Justice. So on Tuesday, Israel’s highest court will have to rule between laws of God as interpreted by the ultra-Orthodox and the wishes of a private citizen. This should be interesting.

Anyway, here is Sunday’s post:

What a weird and wonderful country we live in, where the religious and secular jostle daily over the character of the state. As Israel prepares to celebrate its 60th birthday, the country is clearly still a work in progress, with one of the main issues still to be decided is the balance between civil and religious laws. Read more »

It took over seven years, but the Foreign Ministry on Sunday opened up an office in the rocket – plagued city of Sderot so as better to coordinate foreign news coverage and facilitate fact-finding and solidarity missions of the city and other Gaza envelope communities under fire from the Gaza Strip.

“It took us a while to get the fax machine here today and the phone line hooked up, six or so years too late, but better late than never,” Hannan Godar, one of two Foreign Ministry officials who will be manning the office told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. The two officials, public diplomacy and media experts, who do not live in Sderot, will work in shifts during “normal times” – when there is no major barrage of the city – and will receive reinforcements during times of greater violence. The office, housed in the Peretz Bonei Hanagev complex is not fortified against Kassam rockets. “I’ve been advised not to close the office window completely so that if it shatters the glass won’t go flying everywhere,” Godar said.

Read more »

WordPress says this is one of the fastest growing blogs on its platform.

That’s worrying as it is very extreme. Besides for that I’m not going to make any comment about the blog itself, which argues that Canada has been taken over by Zionist agents, or something like that.

But I wonder what the author thinks of this: Hamas snipers shooting at a bunch of Canadians on a fact-finding mission of the Gaza border?

None of the Canadians were hurt, but Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter’s chief aide, Mati Gil, was moderately wounded. I work closely with Gil and wish him a speedy recovery.

The Canadians got a first-hand look at what life is like along the border with the Gaza Strip, which Israel evacuated in the summer of 2005.

A BBC poll released last week testing people’s attitudes towards Iran and Israel showed that Canadians were increasingly thinking of Israel in negative terms, a jump from 15% to 27% of Canadians viewed Israel negatively.

Tel-Aviv Municipality officials on Sunday evacuated and sealed off the Lewinsky Park bomb shelter in South Tel-Aviv that has served as refuge for dozens of African refugees. I wrote about this shelter a few weeks ago, and took pictures of the absolutely unacceptable and unsanitary conditions the African refugees living in the area had to endure while the government decided what to do with them.

Eyewitnesses said on Sunday they saw municipal officials throw mattresses and appliances taken from the underground bunker out of the shelter and onto the ground in the park. The same witnesses said that the officials also removed the 6 outdoor toilets adjacent to the shelter. The toilets have been unusable for weeks due to municipal neglect, and were a source of potential disease. Read more »

Channel 2 TV filmed us at Haviv Rettig’s bachelor party last week as part of its segment on alternative bachelor parties. Haviv’s friends took him to Beit Berl in Kfar Saba for a paintballing game, most of which he spent taking hits. I’m in the background in some parts of the video, mostly shooting at Haviv. Some of the guys we were playing with really knew what they were doing: one of them trains special forces in urban combat techniques and another one serves in a very elite combat intelligence unit. There was a paintball range down the road from the house I grew up in, so Haviv really didn’t stand a chance. That, plus the fact that the staff there put a bright yellow jacket on the groom-to-be…