vivid inclinations

Shabbat dinner

2011-04-01T15:40:00.001+03:00

First course:
Rye bread (3 round loaves, 2 baguettes) with various toppings: olives, zataar, garlic salt, sesame and poppyseed

Tahini with miso

Red cabbage, rocket, water chestnuts and sprouts in sesame mustard dressing

Shredded carrot salad with cashews and almonds, dressed with olive oil, lemon and black pepper

Zucchini and bell pepper salad with soy sauce, ginger and garlic

Second course:
Wakame salad with cucumber, capers, steamed cauliflower and red onion

Steamed sea bass in a lemongrass ginger broth, with mushrooms, white and green onions, and tomato

Rice noodles with basil and fried ginger

Dessert:
Chocolate pie topped with strawberries, fruit salad

A meal

2011-03-25T19:22:00.003+02:00

Start with

Whole wheat oatmeal bread

Squash seed butter mixed with tahini

Moving on

Warm mushroom and sprout salad with basil

Bell pepper and summer squash of various colors, sweet red onion, soy sauce, ginger, garlic and onion

Seaweed and sprouts, with arugula, cucumber, red onion, avocado, and capers

Drink some wine

Have a smoke, or a conversation.

Drink more wine

Main course

Sea bass, marinated in balsamic vinegar, mustard, garlic, ginger and paprika

Blackened cauliflower with spinach and caramelized onions, red pepper flakes and garlic powder

Roasted potatoes and tomatoes in olive oil, oregano, rosemary and garlic

And for desert
Pumpkiny pie

subject

2011-02-05T01:18:00.000+02:00

Intimate details
personal trills
bubbles
and
bursting
and
bravery
swells
Inconsequential
meaning
and
rhyme
instinct is brewing
in blossom and time

yeah, food again, but hey - it's shabbat!

2010-07-16T18:43:00.003+03:00

Look, I've got a lot of things to blog about besides food, but you know what? I really like my food. It's tasty, it's colorful, it's healthy, it would make any nutritionist happy except my own (America should eat like me and I should eat like America... read into that what you will...)

So what's on the menu tonight? Well, I'm going to Rifka and Nadav's and they made lasagna, so I tried to coordinate with an Italian theme, though the Japanese roots I sprouted out of nowhere always seem to manifest.

Got me:

Roasted squash (1/2 kilo) zucchini (3) red cabbage (about a cup) and a whole onion
I mixed the whole thing with garlic powder, rosemary, oregano and a tsp of olive oil

Tempeh (80g), long bean sprouts (cup), asparagus (4 stalks) quarter of red pepper, quarter of green, 1/2 cup of peas, 3 garlic cloves, onion
mixed that with ginger, paprika, garlic, put it in the oven uncovered, mixed it every 15 minutes for 45, until it was crispy (no oil)

steamed spinach with mushrooms
now here's the thing with mushrooms. They have a ton of water, so pour a tbs of balsamic vinegar into a hot pan, add your spices, then some water, spread the whole things about (no need for oil)

then add the onion, then the mushrooms, cover it all, and let it cook for 10 minutes
Put the mushrooms over the spinach and let it chill.

If Rifka wasn't allergic to avocado, I would have added that, but alas. lentil or fenugreek sprouts add a nice crunch, and lemon is a must.

Aliyana made me do it

2010-04-14T01:11:00.005+03:00

So, I've decided to make a comeback, a return to the blogging world, for my one reader, and frankly, because I live alone now.

...

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, two minutes ago, when I typed blogspit, and then blogspot, into my browser and found myself on this page.

So why do I live alone now, the sole remaining resident of Camp Shirley, the proprietor, chef and chief patron of the Alchemy Cafe? Mostly, because it's time.

We all fall into these ruts, where the good and the comfortable get confused, and then, like blue and green, end up making some sort of murky yellow where vibrant colors once thrived.

That muddy tone starts to disappear if you scrub it, one morning before you've had breakfast or a chance to reconsider, and well before your evening aperitif and digestif.

The blue and the green, when left alone, stay blue and green, respectively. Neither wants to be yellow. Each has a plethora of tones to explore: the blue has its navy seal, its summery sky, and glistens when green tickles it affectionately, lightly; green is inquisitive, a curious hunter, placid but down to earth, controlling, but soft. It likes tickling blue, too.

And then there's yellow, that optimistic hue that brightens everything, makes you squint. Blue and green can do that too, together, but only when each is at its best.

So I live alone now, and I've already taken the opportunity to scrub the floors, and the showers, and made the vow to do it often and thoroughly. Now I've got to paint myself vibrant.

Whole wheat potato bread

2010-02-11T12:46:00.003+02:00

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup potato flour
1 cup water (plus a pitcher nearby)
1 and 1/2 tbs yeast
pinch of salt, pepper

Directions:

1. Stir yeast well in cup of water
Let it sit for 15 minutes

2.Put 1 cup whole wheat flour into mixing bowl
Pour water over flour and mix well

3. Let sit for 45 minutes

4. Add 1 more cup wheat, 1 cup potato flour, pinch of salt

(I like to add spices like garlic powder, pepper and such here)

5. Mix well with spoon, add water until you have a dough-like consistency that you can pick up with your hands

6. Roll dough around in bowl until you can pick it up. Should not be sticky, runny or dry.

7. Knead for at least five minutes, until all the air bubbles are gone. You may need to powder the board you're kneading on, if the dough is to sticky.

8. Shape the dough so that the top is round and smooth (rises best this way - this is not the final shaping).

9. Let it sit covered with a cloth for about an hour (longer if cold out) - you could put it in the oven. to rise, but make sure not to turn on the heat.

10. After it's risen, it should be twice the size of when you started.
Shape the dough as you want it to look once it is baked - this could make two large loaves, or between 6-8 rolls.

You can add sesame seeds, poppy seeds, garlic, ginger, onions or any other seasoning if you want to dress it up. If you use fried onions, be aware that it will add liquid to the dough.

11. Let it sit for another 45 minutes

12. Grease pan lightly with olive oil. Spread the loaves out so they don't touch each other.

13. Bake on high heat for about 10-15 minutes. You'll know it's ready if you tap it and it sounds hollow. Outside will be slightly crispy, inside moist.

Demilitarized Palestine? Just sign this non-aggression pact first

2009-06-15T18:01:00.001+03:00

It will go down in history, along with the Oslo Accord and the Camp David treaty, another historic speech of vague validations and vows to break. Cowering to U.S. pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said just about nothing in his much awaited foreign policy speech at Bar Ilan University on Sunday evening, when he called for immediate peace talks without preconditions and a Palestinian state stripped of military capabilities.

No preconditions from the Palestinians, Netanyahu meant to say. Israel, on the other hand, is free to scold its neighbor for starting this conflict and delaying a viable final settlement by refusing to recognize it as a Jewish state. No preconditions, but the Palestinian Authority must first topple Hamas or at least cut off all contact. No preconditions, except these conditions.

It is impossible to hold peace negotiations without preconditions. Such diplomacy is subversive procrastination. Both sides of this conflict have demands, but rather than open up negotiations with these conditions in mind, they deny their respective red lines and allow the peace process to roll in infinite still motion.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority both have preconditions; they need to lay them down and abide by them to get the peace process started again.

The Palestinian Authority must concede to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and in return, Israel needs a concrete plan of withdrawal from parts of the West Bank – it wouldn't hurt to include the Golan Heights on a side draft either, to keep that track busy.

Israel should leave Fatah to engage with Hamas in reconciliatory talks, but the Palestinian Authority must agree to hold off elections for a unity government until a final settlement is reached on the West Bank.

The Old City of Jerusalem (and then later with Syria, parts of the Golan) must be divided accordingly, but with free access to citizens of each country. West Jerusalem and the Jewish Quarter would remain under Israeli control, as its capital, and East Jerusalem and the Muslim Quarter would be Palestinian, as their capital. The rest would be annexed to international supervision, with United Nations troops standing guard.

Following these steps comes the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu declared that he would endorse such an entity if the international community could guarantee its demilitarization. There are a handful of countries out there without an offensive army – Japan and Costa Rica, for instance; Palestine would not be the first.

Should a demilitarized Palestine be established, then Israel would have to compromise for denying a sovereign democracy the right of defense. Israel and Palestine must therefore sign a pact of non-aggression as a concession for a demilitarized state.

The Palestinian Authority has thrown the ball into Barack Obama's court, lambasting Netanyahu for “sabotaging” the peace process. Well, the game has not even started yet because neither team is ready to play. Both Israel and the Palestinians need to get out there, spell the rules of the game, and let the referee blow the whistle.

If you've gotta eat, you gotta eat

2009-05-15T12:34:00.008+03:00

Just because one friend asked me to, and because another chided me for never updating my blog, I'm going to toss out some of my culinary experiments here, for better or worse.

Tonight I'm making beet tartar; spicy chickpeas with broccoli, mushrooms and bamboo shoots; roasted cabbage with fennel and garlic; dill pesto; chopped green salad; and of course (because what meal of mine would be complete without) a seaweed salad. Oh, and for desert, I already made the rye/oat/dried fruit cookies.

Beet tartar

Dice beets and toss in miso / mustard / balsamic vinegar
roast with chopped garlic, just long enough for the beets to soften and carmelize.

Add raw:
Chopped green onion, shallots or leeks
Capers
Chopped pickles

Chick peas with broccoli, mushrooms, bamboo shoots

Soak chickpeas for at least two days
Boil until they are soft enough to eat, but firm enough not to disappear into mash (probably two hours, depending how long they were soaked)
After they are cooked, marinade in hot paprika and black pepper and set aside

Steam onion (either red or white will do) in sauce pan with a little bit of water
sprinkle black pepper over onion, and cover pan so nothing sticks to bottom

Add mushrooms (I'm using shitake, portabello, porcini and button) once onions are soft and water has dissolved (no need for oil because mushrooms are full of natural juice and flavor - just keep pan covered)

Add chopped ginger, garlic and more hot paprika and pepper

While mushrooms and onions are cooking, wash broccoli well
Chop the stem into circles until you reach base of the head
Florets should be separated, in bunches large enough to steam and small enough to match the other ingredients

Add broccoli to mushrooms and onions and steam for just a few minutes; broccoli should retain a bright green color

Add chickpeas and stir well, so that the spices of both absorb together

Add bamboo shoots (you can find them in a can, they were put there by a man or woman) and toss again

Roasted cabbage, carrot and fennel

Chop cabbage into small pieces

Chop the rough ends off the fennel, then chop the rest for the roast- not as small as the cabbage, but not huge

Chop carrot into circles - let's say 5-10 pieces depending on the size of the carrot

Add cloves of a whole garlic, one onion - I like putting in whole cloves and large pieces of onion

Add zatar, rosemary, cumin, black pepper, paprika, garlic powder (whatever your heart desires) and toss well, using your hands so that all the spices absorb well into the vegetables

Put in covered oven-safe pan and bake for 45 minutes, stirring at least twice over the course of the cooking time

Green salad
I'm testing simplicity tonight

Wash lettuce, roquette, chard and sunflower sprouts of all your bugs and mud, and set aside in strainer until dry and crispy

Chop cucumber, red pepper, turnip and kohlrabi

Adzuki bean sprouts (those are made by soaking beans for a day in a glass jar covered with cloth and a rubber band; then strain and rinse well, setting jar on its side to let the beans breathe. Depending on the weather, it can take between two to four days to sprout. You'll know it's ready when the skin begins to peel back and little shoots come out the end.

You could dress the salad with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon, black pepper and salt. Personally, I'm going to take raw tahini, mix it with chopped garlic and mint, squeeze in a bunch of lemon and douse it with black pepper, then mix it with water until not too thin, not too thick.

Seaweed and avocado salad

Soak wakame for about 5-10 minutes until the dry piece rehydrate and are leafy, fluffy and chewy; when it's ready, drain water.

Slice a ripe, yet firm avocado into the seaweed

Add fenugreek sprouts (made the same way as the adzuki beans)

Dill pesto

Rinse dill well, and grind in food processor or blender with a little water, olive oil, sunflower sprouts, garlic and a single date (fig is good too, just something to give it a little sugar).
Texture should be thick and creamy. Add lemon juice once you've removed from blender.

Fruit rye/oat cookies
I am so bad at relaying my baking, because I just kind of throw things together in the kitchen. It goes something like this:

One cup of rye, one cup of oats (either ground or left whole), chopped dried papaya, dates, whole goji berries, walnuts or pecans if you got them, one cup brown sugar (probably a lot more than that actually, my sweets are notoriously unsweet. Mix all the dried stuff together.

Add water (if I've got fruit nectar or a milky kind of drinking on hand I use that, but these just have water), maple syrup, honey, pomegranate juice (just get creative with your sweetners.

Add thina and sesame oil to thicken

Mix the whole mess together - texture should be thick enough to scoop into one scoop and scrape off with another.

Grease pan with sesame oil (you could use butter or margarine, but I like the oil best), do the whole scooping and scraping bit; you should be able to fit 12-15 cookies on a single baking pan.

Bake for 10 minutes on high heat

New York

2008-09-22T06:05:00.002+03:00

America is
the land of the free and
the home of the bling

Walked the bridge today
Brooklyn to Canal
forgot my camera at home

Here with Mimi, Co
trying to write a haiku
Chocolate wins again

a three-state solution

2008-05-05T10:49:00.006+03:00

My two favorite headlines of the past year - the headlines I have had the pleasure of gracing Haaretz.com with at least twice a week, regularly - are "Mideast peace deal possible by 2009" and "Iran vows not to halt its nuclear program." These statements are made by various officials - Rice, Blair, Bush, Olmert, Ahmadinejad, Khameini - and for the most part, I believe the second, but not the first. Never mind that these are potentially mutually exclusive proclamations.

The Iran nuclear program is a scare factor I prefer not to consider. I am convinced, in all the conspiratorial nature of the world, that something very shady indeed is happening up there on the axises of good, evil and otherwise, and I would not even know where to begin. The prospects are frightening enough, so the nukes I will leave as just another threatening headline until further notice.

But this peace deal, the Middle East settlement everyone is talking about, and rushing to promise for the end of Bush's term - just another headline? True, Egypt is mediating a truce between Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel, and true, Abbas is gaining some sort of security stronghold throughout the West Bank, but after 60 years, and 39.5 years, and eight years, and however else you want to count, does it really seem likely that a two-state solution, with borders and all, can actually be set in the next eight months? I suppose if a fetus can grow from nothing to human in just about that amount of time, anything is possible, but a peace deal seems a little harder to cultivate.

These promises can be seen as little more than lip service, because the accompanying factors are too great to ignore. Cairo's proposal for truce has been met with tentative, conditional acquiesence from both sides - Israel insists Shalit be included in the deal, that rockets stop, and so forth, while the Gazans insist the siege end, the air force attacks end, and borders be opened - and so forth. Meanwhile, Gaza and the West Bank have never been so divided. Talk of a truce with militants in the West Bank is not even up for current deliberations. First we work out our issues with Gaza, and then we move on to Abbas' territory. All in just eight months.

Israel, which has never had definitive borders, must demarcate its territory "once and for all," Rice said earlier this week. This is much harder said than done, as I'm sure the powers that be already know. The Palestinians in both territories, not to mention Israelis of all different religious and political camps, must agree to these demarcations or we will surely face another war the moment these lines are drawn.

While the wheels are still in motion, let me propose a third solution, one perhaps as futile as all the others now on the table. Rather than a two-state solution, of Palestinians and Israelis, perhaps what we need to aim for is a three-state solution: Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Regardless of how a future Palestinian state looks, the Arab citizens of Israel will find themselves in a quandary. Many are already so disillusioned with the government, which promises them equal rights and benefits but rarely follows through. Most of my Israeli Arab friends say they would not want to be a citizen of a Palestinian state with an unstable infrastructure, wrecked with violence, but their ties to the Palestinian people is unquestionable. They are Palestinian Arabs themselves, just on this side of the border. Another arbitrary demarcation, that is bound to change or be up for consideration once a Palestinian state has been created.

A three-state solution would be as temporary as the two-state solution now being prepared. Israel lies smack in the middle of two Arab authorities, one run by Hamas and the other by Fatah. Fatah, whose violent offshoots have been responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks of the Intifada, has realized that the only way to gain international legitimacy and appreciation is to curb its violence. Hamas and the other groups continue to fight as guerillas. The difference between a guerilla and a soldier is all a question of international recognition. So long as an organization is shunned by world powers, it will remain a resistance group (in modern terms, a terrorist organization), while the moment it promises to reign in the violence, it becomes recognized on an international level as a legitimate political authority. Look at Fatah. Look at Hamas. Both elected democratically in their respective territories, but one is the Palestinian Authority and the other is the Islamist Movement the U.S. and Other Western Powers Consider to be a Terrorist Organization.

As long as negotiators are working through a peace settlement with Gaza on the one hand and West Bank on the other, why should we believe that those two authorities can ever be melded into a single state. Israel will always be situated right between them and is hardly likely to allow the Negev to be carved up to allow Palestinins access from one province to another. Jerusalem is an issue that has been brushed off the table more times than can be counted. Israel refuses to even speak to Hamas - but in eight months they plan to let them into Jerusalem?

By January 2009, when Bush steps down and a new administration takes its place in Washington, only a provisional agreement is possible. Israel itself is likely to have a completely different government by then, and there is no way to know which ways the Palestinian electoral powers will have tipped at that point. A two-state solution is a foolish plan because there are at least three entities that need to be considered here. Before any kind of borders are drawn, we must first reach a deal on Gaza and a deal on Jerusalem and a deal on West Bank settlements.

Borders must be set between the Negev and Gaza, and between West Bank authorities under the respective control of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas must be granted some sort of authority to control its own frontier - in cooperation with Egypt and international monitors. Palestinians must stop attacking Israel and Israel must stop attacking Palestinians. We must stop thinking of the West Bank and Gaza as one state until both political and geographic stability have been implemented. That project seems a more likely possibility for 2019. For 2009, let's work on a three-state solution, one step at a time.

on technology

2007-11-07T14:16:00.001+02:00

Sometimes, when you want to make a machine work, all you have to do is turn it on.

consistency

2007-11-04T23:33:00.000+02:00

So it had to happen, change, and I was ready for it, or at least I told myself I was ready. Three months back in Israel, one more roommate gone and another in. Living with Eytan was really special, but it's unhealthy to live in Tel Aviv, or anywhere for that matter, if it's not doing you well.

Tel Aviv has been doing me well, though, so here I stay in my apartment, ready for a new phase. Change abounds - Aliyana the hamster has died and Eytan the human has moved out, leaving Eytan the hamster and Aliyana the human to our own devices, with Daniel, the new roommate (definitely human - the hamster is outnumbered).

The washing machine has broken, the computer is wonky, and here in my Tel Aviv life, I have become dependent on both, so a toast to warranties! A new semester, different expectations, every day fresh choices, and finally, I'm legally licensed to drive in Israel.

Yigal Amir has spawned a very intentional offspring and all sorts of exciting things are going on behind the scenes of the world's foreign policies that I'm sure we'll only hear about next decade - but hey, they're still fighting in the Gaza Strip, corruption still climbs the ranks of politics, and I know I've seen November 4 before in the news. So maybe change is just relative, a new notch in the same cycle.

no really, i've been back for two months

2007-09-20T17:56:00.000+02:00

The day I left India, a friend of mine who moved there six years ago told me that it takes about three weeks at home for the novelty of the first trip to wear off and to get swept back up in daily routine. Two months later, I'm back in my daily routine, but I think the novelty of the trip is getting stronger. The grass is always greener somewhere else, and in this case, the grass really is greener in India. This does not mean that I would rather be in India - I just miss that grass, and also the trees, and the mountains and the weather and the flowing freedom that comes with taking a trip out of time.

I spent the first few weeks back in Israel housesitting for my sister Shira while she and Ben were in the States. It was a good readjustment phase - not yet working, no real responsibilities, just bureaucratic errands and long walks in the park. I moved back to Tel Aviv in mid-August, dragging my friend Eytan away from Chava V'Adam to come live with me. My apartment looked like it had been attacked - overflowing ashtrays all over the place, dirty dishes on the porch, furniture stuffed into one room, tons of my stuff dragged into the stairwell, maggots, holes in the wall. We spent the first couple of days just cleaning and trying to force the subletter to come and fix the holes.

But everything worked out, and now my apartment is super clean and feels more like a home than ever. I started school the day after we moved in, and I guess it's been a while since I last posted, because there's only one class left of the summer session. It's been great. It's forced me to write and to rewrite and to become absorbed in my stories in a way I've never done before. I'm back at work also, so I guess my friend in India was right: at some point, we all drift away from vacation and back to the daily routine. But this doesn't mean back to a grind. Stepping away for three and a half months gave me a different perspective on the things that I want in my life. Now that I'm back in Israel, I just have to remember that perspective and make it part of my routine. Keep the novelty alive.

since last month...

2007-07-19T12:33:00.000+03:00

Okay, so maybe I lied, or was misled, or misguided, or erred. Or maybe, and most likely, fate stepped in and said, "Aliyana, life is good, really good, and it's never what it seems, but hey, it's better that way, so enjoy it and stop asking questions."

So there's no bus from Padum to Manali. No, there's not even a road from Padum to Manali. So in all fairness, how could I have considered taking such a bus on such a road?

Of course, this information was only imparted to me on the fourth day of the trek, at Lakhong, on a green patch in the desert, 4700 meters high, after walking up to 5100 and standing on glacier snow by a glacier lake and then descending to a river which could only be crossed by wading through knee-deep. Helmut, a Latvian guy we met, asked me as I stretched out exhausted, "so what are you doing after Padum?" "Taking a bus to Manali," I answered. He shook his head, amused. And thus the revelation was made.

I made quick calculations in my head and realized that in order to make my flight on July 17 I would need not only to leave the trek a day early, but would then need to spend six straight days on a bus from Padum to Kargil to Leh to Manali to Delhi.

Right. So I'll be back on July 24, instead.

The last few weeks have been some of the best and most invigorating of my entire trip. How else can I describe walking through the most remote place I have ever been, filled with the most unbelievable scenery ever laid before my eyes, raging rivers, giant desert mountains and snow-capped peaks, meeting amazing local people who showed me such kindness and generosity and reminded me of the inherent goodness of humanity?

Tiferet, Amelie and I started our trek in the middle of nowhere, continued on to the edge of nowhere, and found ourselves back in the middle of a different nowhere ten days later. Or rather, we began in a town called Darcha in Lahaul, about seven hours north of Manali. The bus ride from Manali was fun, excellent scenery and the best road signs I have ever seen (including "Better Mister Late than Never" and "Better Careful than Roadkill"). We had a stove, sleeping bags, a compass, maps and some pasta. We planned to hike the ten-day trek alone, without a guide or a porter, though we knew that there were three days toward the middle that we would want some help.

Truth be told, we knew very little about this trek. For instance, we thought the trail ran alongside a road, but, as we've just learned, no such road exists. Instead, the trail ran deep through the valley, over mountains, and through the remote desert. We also thought there would be places to stay and eat along the way, which for the most part, there were, except for those three crucial days toward the middle when both a tent and sufficient food were more than necessary. We also didn't know just how many times we would cross rivers without bridges, or how tired we would have been after 20 km of walking per day with a full pack.

Lucky for us, or maybe because of fate, we didn't have to find out any of these lessons the hard way. After a relaxing shabbat in Darcha (where we mainly ate and walked, and met an amazing woman who gave us chai and boiled potatoes for lack of biscuits and just smiled at us a lot for lack of shared language) we headed up toward the trail. Our compass was really helpful, as was Tiferet's knowledge of how to use it, but the trail itself was hard to follow. With our packs, we scaled up the steep side of a hill after finding ourself on the wrong trail (I am not exaggerating, we had to scramble) and finally found ourself on the right route.

Darcha is the last "big" town (I am using that word lightly) in Lahaul, the northern part of Himachal Pradesh where green meets rock and eventually turns into the remote Zanskar range of southern Ladakh. On the first day we walked through this drastic geographical change. We met Helmut and his friend Edmund in the early afternoon. They were shocked that we weren't prepared with 800 grams of food a day. That we had no tent. That we had no sunglasses. Edmund was wearing water-proof gaiters over his gore-tex boots. Helmut had two walking sticks and butt warmer made of styrofoam. They had two porters and seven horses. I had what could best be described as "light hiking shoes" with airholes to beat the heat.

When we got to first campsite, about four hours later, we learned that Helmut and Edmund had already informed everyone there of our lack of preparedness. They were worried. I lay down to watch the bags, while Amelie and Tiferet went to talk to an Israeli family who had apparently made it to the pass halfway through the trek and then returned because of bad weather. Amelie and Tiferet came back and told me that the family's porter had extra food and extra horses and would take us over the difficult pass for a total 1,000 rupees a day, all included. Sounded good.

So that's how we met Nanda Lal, our undersized one-eyed horseman and Darshant, his eternally smiling assistant. Only it turned out that their English was slightly slight, and they were not actually the family's former porters, but rather Edmund and Helmut's current porters. And so a party of 14, including seven horses, two porters and five happy-go-lucky trekkers, was born. At first, our days were short, but as we delved deeper into Zanskar they became more difficult, longer, and all things considered, so much better.

Unfortunately, I stopped eating hot food around the third day, when the smell of dal and rice for breakfast and dinner, breakfast and dinner, brreeeaakkfast and... well, I couldn't really handle it anymore. Really. I had to force the third breakfast down, and even then it came back up, so I decided I would be better off eating dry chapatis in the morning and dry pasta at night, with plenty of biscuits, dried fruit, nuts, and of course, water, in between. And hard candies. Edmund and Helmut fed me porridge one morning, but for about three days, I didn't really eat so well. My nausea wasn't helped by the knowledge that the dishes were never washed properly, and that Darshant washed his hands in said dishes after making the chapatis. For some reason, though, I made it to the end of the trek with full energy, if a little skinnier.

The sleeping part was also a little difficult. Our tent, which we shared with Nanda Lal and Darshant, smelled of horse, dal and rice, which would have been okay, but Zanskar is also really, really cold at night, and my sleeping bag (a "North Fake") just didn't cut it. I fell asleep at around 10 P.M. every night, and then promptly woke at about 3 A.M., when the coldness reached its peak. Then I would stay awake until about 6, when Darshant, smiling, would wake up to begin preparing the dal and rice.

Food and sleep aside, I have never felt so alive. This was a trek with purpose, to get from one place to another, from the last roadpoint to the first. We met a group of Zanskaris on the second day making the trek to Manali (of course, we wondered why they didn't take a bus. Yeah.), and realized that Zanskaris really are some of the nicest in the world. We walked up to Shingu La, 5100 meters high surrounded by glacial wonder, and then realized that Zanskaris really have some of the nicest land in the world. Then we walked down into a desert, surrounded by wonder, simple magical wonder. Like the day we walked for hours and hours in the hot desert, only to turn around to see the same beautiful and majestic mountain in exactly the same place and at exactly the same size at the same distance it had been hours before. We were all Alices in Wonderland. Each village we walked through was beautiful, a green oasis in the desert, where villagers have learned and mastered the art of irrigating their land to grow trees, grass, and vegetables. We met a fledgling school run by Czech volunteers along the way, in Kargyak, and another more developed school, run by young Ladakhis, in Ichar.

After learning that the road to Padum was nonexistent, I told Amelie and Tiferet that I want to finish the trek a day early. If we finished at the pace Nanda Lal wanted, there was no way I'd make my flight. If we finished a day early, there was a chance. My plan was to change my ticket, but I had no idea if and when a new seat would be available and didn't want to take the chance.

They were fine with speeding up (it meant just skipping a side trip to the Phuktal Gompa, which I had wanted to see) but our horseman were less keen. "You, this, hard day, long day," Nanda Lal said. "It's okay," I said. Helmut and Edmund decided to take a six-day side trek themselves, so the horseman were really at our whim, though the Latvian guys made them write where we would be camping every night.

So we sped up, which really wasn't that long or that hard (8-9 hours a day including long breaks). Maybe it sounds hard, but by the 6th or 8th day of a trek through the mountains, it's actually enjoyable to walk for so long. Especially when your pack is being ported by a horse named Ali.

Oh, but man (and woman) makes plans and God laughs, he laughs so hard. And then he cries, and his tears become rain, and then they freeze and become snow, and suddenly man (or in this case woman) finds himself (herself) in a tea stall in a place called Pipla, stranded for a full day with ten Zanskari boys under 21, far away from Delhi and airplanes that fly to Israel on July 17. So the speeding up plan backfired, and instead we spent the day eating local thukpa and drinking milky chai and listening to '80s dance music with these boys in a hut made of mud that began to melt and spread under the weight of the water. Tiferet and I were huddled on a muddy bench listening to her eclectic i-pod collection (especially enjoying Evergreen's "this is going to sound a little obsessive, this is going to sound a little bit strange") when the rain stopped in late afternoon, too late to move on to the next town. We slept inside the hut that night, well-fed on thukpa and warm indoors.

The next day we walked to Rehru, a 7-hour walk from Pipula. Amelie, our strong horsee, our wild monkey, was sick, maybe from the water, maybe from something we ate, and Tiferet had to help her walk, dragging all the way. We stopped for a few hours at the school in Ichar, where the annual picnic was underway (I arrived there about an hour before Tiferet and Amelie). Two of the boys from Pipula were there, Amelie passed out with eyes open, the 21-year-old teachers awkwardly asked me to marry them, and Tiferet led a rousing clapping session while the kids laughed and danced. We headed on after a few hours, on a never-ending walk that actually did end, in a town called Rehru, where a rocky road appeared, dotted with jeeps. If I left one of those jeep, 20km from Padum, I could make it by nightfall, catch the first bus to Kargil, and avoid taking chances. But I really wanted to walk the 20 km, to finish the trek. But if I did, there was no way I'd make my flight. OOOOOH.

No thinking, I decided, just feeling. I needed to get on one of those jeeps. One of the most important lesson I've learned in India, especially on this trek, was to take my Libran scales and use them for good, rather than indecision. Instead of weighing one side, then the other, then the one side again, I learned it's necessary to weigh both sides, quickly, take one side of the scale, stick with what's left, and then take that off the scale as well. So we got to Rehru, found our tent, gathered my things, then I got into the jeep and was off. Just like that. It was the right decision, such a clear right decision, even though it meant I wouldn't finish the tenth day of the trek like I wanted. I had walked from the last available road to the first again, nine days through the mountains. It was better than good. It was great, it was amazing.

And the lessons I learned after getting into that jeep were better than amazing, they were life changing. I met a bridge contractor from Kashmir who took me, in the dark, to the abandoned bus, the only one in town, woke the driver, confirmed that I would be leaving with him at 4:30 the next morning. Then this contractor, Salaam, took me to his friend's guest house where I got a hot thukpa and a beautiful room with a bathroom for a really low price and an amazing four hours of sleep. Then this friend, the guest house owner, knocked on my door at 3:30 a.m., brought me two cups of hot water to drink, then walked me to the bus, where the driver was still sleeping, then back to the guest house for ten minutes, then back to the bus. Such good, good people. I was the only passenger on the bus, for about ten hours, until we got closer to Kargil and the locals started piling on. Just me, the bus driver, the conductor and his friend for ten hours. I should mention that the "conductor" was a very short and skinny 22 years old, as was his friend. The driver was a short and skinny 30 years old. It was the tiny bus club. We drove through the beautiful valley to Kargil, eating cookies and stopping for lunch in some remote town. It was fun.

When we got to Kargil, the bus conductor and his friend took me to buy my ticket for the next day to Leh and then accompanied me to a dark and crappy guest house in the market, where the rooms were overpriced and undercleaned dormitories. I didn't care, I was so exhausted, but managed to convince the manager (Mohammed Ali, no relation to the boxer or porter horse) to give me a discounted room. He did, and then didn't leave me alone until I left town.

Which despite my grand plans actually happened two days later, not one. I called my mom, and told her that even if I left the next morning, I would be rushing at an inhuman pace and would make it to Delhi only in time for my flight. I asked her to change my ticket for the 19th, or the 22nd, and gave her Ali's cell phone number to update me with the changes.

She called me back half an hour later, and told me there was a seat available only on the 23 (tisha b'av) and told me that making these changes had been harder than giving birth to me. Thanks Mommy.

So now, rather than having to rush, I had six extra days in India. What to do. Ali and his friend Ismail decided I should stay in Kargil for an extra day. At first I said no, but then decided, I have the time now, and the next day was supposed to be the annual festival, so why not. Changing my ticket wasn't hard, but it wasn't easy. It meant waiting at the bus station for an hour with Ali and Ismail for the driver to finish dinner, and then negotiating with him to give me my money back. He kept 50 rupees, but it was worth it, and I knew it would be.

Kargil, I should mention, is a town really on the border between Muslim Kashmir and Buddhist Ladakh. The town is 95 percent Muslim, made up of four separate tribes originating from East Asia, Central Asia and Kashmir. Rather than greeting each other with Namaste, as the Indians do, or Joolay, as the Tibetans do, in Kargil people say "Salaam Aleikum." They say "walla." They say "Yallah." They say "Kif Halak." They aren't Kashmiris, they aren't Persians or Pakistanis. Their main language is Purik - though the town abounds with dialects - a mixture of Urdu, Hindi and Ladakhi. The festival was great, a local celebration of all these different cultures, with dances in all the traditional clothes, a horse polo game and an archery competition.

The next morning I set off for Leh. Both Ali and Ismail were sad to see me go. Aside from the festival, they had taken me on a walking tour of all of the forest, mountains, rocks and rivers in Kargil. I think it would be fair of me to say that I saw more of this bus town than any tourist, aside from the Swiss guy I met who once spent three months there learning the language. He wins hands down.

I met a few other tourists on the bus to Leh, one of whom was a Canadian girl who took me to her guest house once we arrived. The Israelis generally stay in Chanspa, so I decided I wasn't going to stay there. Some also stay in Karzu, a few minutes walk north. We were to stay in Chubi, which was about a 20 minute walk from Chanspa and a 40 minute walk to the market. Our "guest house" was really a family house, where we had beautiful rooms in a house nicer than my parents' and ate and helped prepare delicious Tibetan food. I spent most of my time in Leh wandering into the randomest villages, walking kilometers a day because of all the energy I had built up from the trek. On Sunday I went with a group of 6 other people to a town called Likir, where we stayed in the most comfortable place where food was all included. I really like everyone in this group, even though group traveling is usually not my thing. They were to go on the next day for a "baby trek" to some other villages, but I had to get back to Leh to catch a bus to Manali. No way was I going to delay my flight again (though I would love to keep traveling, I have places to go, people to see, and things to do in Israel).

I made it back to Leh by early afternoon. My friend Mailani had bought me a ticket for the next day at 4:30 a.m., so I tried to arrange a taxi service to pick me up in the morning to take me to the bus station. I was worried. For some reason, I knew the taxi wasn't going to come. I told this to Vineta and Mailani, my friends from the guest house. They told me I was being paranoid, overworried. I don't know. I just had this feeling.

I borrowed Mailani's watch to give myself a backup alarm for the next morning. Both my clock and hers went off at 3:00. The taxi was set to be at the house by 3:30. At 3:25 I woke up, stuffed my bag together and ran out to wait for the cab. 3:35. 3:40. No cab. I was supposed to be at the bus by 4. The owner of the house came out to wait with me. "No cab?" he asked. "No cab," I said. He went to make a phone call, which was useless, considering that we didn't have the driver's cell number. "I am going to walk," I said, despite the warnings of street dogs, the distance to the station, and the simple fact that I didn't know exactly where the station was. No way was I going to miss my flight again. "No," he said. Ten minutes later. "Okay, you walk. Go. Go!"

So I went. I walked for about five minutes, quickly, with all of my things on my back. Suddenly a jeep appeared from a side road. I flagged it down with my flashlight. It was a group of guys heading for the local mosque. "Please," I said, "I'm late for my bus." They told me they weren't going in that direction and drove off. Then came back. "Get in, we'll take you to the market," they said. They dropped me off near a pack of dogs, and said, "walk straight from here." 3:55. I started walking, an within seconds saw two bagpacked figures, walking quickly. I fell in step with them. They knew the shortcut. It wasn't straight. We didn't talk, just walked toward the bus, put our things on the top rack, and headed off into the sunrise toward Manali.

We were on a local bus, which is much cheaper and apparently less comfortable than a tourist bus, though I didn't mind it at all. We made it to Manali the next day, after a quick night stop in Keylong. I sat next to a Korean girl named Chakuri, and my friends Tiran and Yaara were also on the bus. In Manali I went back to my former guest house, where I had left the rest of my things in a hurry. The owner, Sergo, was happy to see me. "Aliyana," he said, clasping my hand, "wasn't your flight last week?" My stuff was safe, he booked me a ticket to Delhi for the next day, and gave me and Tiran a nice room for 100 rupees.

On my last day in the Himalayas I walked around, took a two hour tabla lesson, and generally just loved the mountains. Sadly, I also spent a few hours at a memorial service for Dror Shack, a 23-year-old whose body was found Sunday on the way up to Khir Ganga. He was found with stab wounds, and a knife nearby. His bag was missing, and nobody is sure what happened. Nearly all of the Israelis in Manali came to the service, though most of us have never met him. Apparently everyone has left Khir Ganga since this happened. Shimmy and Sara, where are you?

I arrived in Delhi this morning, and am exhausted. The overnight bus ride, on a tourist bus, was one of the most uncomfortable rides I have had on this trip. The guy sitting next to me decided one seat wasn't enough for him. He wanted to spread out. I kept asking him to make room for me. When he didn't listen, I picked up his arm and moved it. By force. He elbowed me. I barely slept, but managed to drift off when he woke up at dawn. I leave for Israel Monday evening.

... and onward

2007-06-28T17:38:00.000+03:00

If I haven't been searched for drugs yet in a particular country, it means I haven't been there long enough. Apparently, I've been in India long enough.

After leaving Khir Ganga, I went back to Kasol for the night to collect my bearings before heading off to Manali. There are a few ways to get to Manali from Kasol, but the cheapest and near easiest way, other than by motorbike, is by local bus to Bhuntar and from there to Manali.

A couple of friends who I'd shared a jeep with from Dharamsala to Kasol were also planning to head off to Manali by local, and since the ride is only about 4 hours, I wasn't in a rush to leave before noon or 1. Which is good, because as I may have mentioned, there's no benefit to rushing in Parvati. So we ate our breakfast, and I collected some pants from the tailor, a game of chess or two and one of backgammon were had, and by noon we found ourselves in town, waiting for the green bus to Bhuntar.

A friend of mine told me earlier that week that a few Israelis were searched for charas in Kalga, and forced by the cop to pay $100 in bakshish. I later met one of the infamous trio in Kasol and he confirmed every word. The cops here are more interested in dollars than in incarceration and in this part of the mountains, searching foreigners is normal.

So when the three cops boarded our local bus about halfway to Bhuntar, I wasn't surprised. The ticket seller was also a cop, which is unusual and made me think he probably called his cop friends to come take a joyride. The three officers crowded around the three of us and another foreigner, and asked to see our passports, after which they peered into our wallets, pouches, side bags, and every other visible compartment. When they found nothing on me or my friend Yael, they seemed dissatisfied, but their triumphance returned when they saw my friend Ben's keychain - one of those nifty little leather mixing bowls. Off the bus they dragged Ben, his luggages trailing behind. And then: pffft. Officer #1 blows the whitle and off sails the driver.

"Wait!" I call, and Yael chimes in. "Our friend!" Rrrrrreeeer. Officer #1 looks at us. "You may get off with him," he said. Yael considered for half a second and said, "I'm going."

And me? In that split second at 3 P.M. on a Friday, four hours away from my destination, facing further police conflict and humiliating searches and an unclear bus schedule, what did I decide to do? For a split second I said, "I'll come too," and then, one split second later I said, "actually, I'll see you there." Off went Yael, and off we went.

For the first time, I realized what it means to travel alone. It means not getting off the bus. It means doing what's right for me in such a situation. Ben wasn't alone - he was with Yael and she was with him. I don't think I would have helped the situation by getting of with them in that random town with those bribe-hungry cops. I saw some other mutual friends in Manali the next day, who told me that Yael and Ben had returned to Kasol after Ben paid the cops 1,000 rupees (he managed to talk them down from 2k.)

Believe me, I felt sorry for going off, but felt absolutely sure I had made the right decision. We arrived in Bhuntar just as the bus to Manali was leaving. Four Sikh brothers herded me there and then sat around with me the whole way, leaving an empty seat beside me and not letting anyone sit down and sharing their bananas with me.

Manali was totally different than I expected. I think I expected some sort of mafia town, but it is actually green and charming. I stepped off the bus right into the summer festival, which was wild. A few nights later I got to check out the culmination of the festival, a local beauty pageant whose winner will compete nationally for the Miss India title. It was boring as hell, but the crowd was hilarious.

I've been staying at a great guest house with a bunch of English people, some Austrians (including one traveling with her new Indian husband) and an Italian girl. We got along great and had such a nice time in our little commune, which is a nice house with a huge courtyard, long dinner-party table, and a hammock. A rafting instructor named Lara also joins us at night. He is very depressed, speaks alternately of wanting to kill himself and wanting to take us on a free rafting trip. We've declined his invitation each time. He doesn't seem dangerous, but I think it's best to have happy conversation around him.

While in Manali, I've taken tons of walks through the forest, went to Vashist to see the waterfalls and the hot springs, and to Nagar to see the Nicholas Roerich exhibit.

My plan was to go from here to the lesser-traveled Kinnaur region on Wednesday, but, well, I changed my mind. I'd made the plans with my friend Tiferet, who I met in Dharamsala, and two of her friends. We decided to meet at 7:30 to solidify the plans. The two friends and I met, hardly had anything to talk about, and then Tiferet showed up with another girl, Amelie, and said she was going to walk to Leh instead.

Walking to Leh takes 21 days and is very difficult. It is an ascent of about 3500 meters, and it is up and down mountains onto desert plateau. I thought about it for a few minutes, let it fester in my mind. I don't have 21 days to hike, since I want to be in Delhi by July 14. But these women, Amelie and Tiferet, are amazing. They are strong and they are smart and if they can do it, why can't I?

So, I am leaving Manali tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m. for a town called Keylong in the Lahaul region of Himachal Pradesh. On Sunday, we're going to start walking north. I'm planning to walk 10-12 days with them, and then either catch a bus to Leh or return south, depending on the date. There are two trails to Leh: one that requires a guide and a porter and is entirely in nature for three weeks, and one that veers through nature as well as villages, which we're taking. We'll pass through a village or permanent tent accomodations every night. I got myself a sleeping bag and a huge rainponcho and am stocked up for warmth. I'm leaving most of my things in Manali, taking only what's necessary for a 10-12 day walk through the Himalayas. And then...

kasol...

2007-06-21T17:32:00.000+03:00

This morning I woke up in a small room built of wood slabs and yellow tarp. It was very comfortable. When I opened the door to this small room, I saw a gigantic mountain, steep and ridged and covered in radiant green trees. It was very nice. Then I had porridge and said goodbye to Shimmy and Sara, my good friends from Israel who I just spent the last two weeks with. Then my friend Anav and I started walking down the mountain, into a magical forest straight out of a fairy tale. Khir Ganga is amazing. It's a tiny tourist site at the source of a hot spring set on top of a green hill facing this unreal view, the kind I really wish I could take and replant across the street from my apartment in Florentine. But I can't.

I arrived in Kasol two weeks ago, planning to meet Shimmy and Sara in one of the villages nearby for shabbat. Friday came, they had't passed through yet, so I decided to wait for them, knowing I would see them even though we had planned something else, and then 4 p.m. came, and then I had a fleeting thought to go to the village anyway, and then the bus passed and the cloud of exhaust lifted and there they were, eating momos on the street.

We decided to go to Kalga village anyway, even though it was late. But this is the Parvati valley, and things are very slooow in the Parvati valley. So we went to wait for the bus, and then 5 p.m. came, and we knew it was still another 45 minute walk from the bus drop-off to Kalga, and that sunset was at 6:45, and the bus hadn't come yet... so we stayed in Kasol, and had a really nice shabbat at the beit chabad and in the forest.

The only downfall, maybe, was the down fall of one of my sandals and one of Shimmy's sandals into a merciless current in the river. We both laid them on the huge rock we were sitting on, and suddenly, when my eyes were closed and I was laying on my back, I heard Sara say "uh, Aliyana, your shoes just fell in." Well it turned out to be one of mine and one of Shimmy's, neither ever to be seen again, so we threw the remainder of each pair in after its partner and walked back to town barefoot.

And then, there was the beit chabad. A good organization in many ways, brings shabbat and kosher food to people who want it, Jewish spirituality to those who want it and those who don't want it and those who don't know they want it. But the Beit Chabad in India is kind of difficult for me to deal with, and not just because I blame them for whatever animal, vegetable or mineral settled in my stomach in Dharamsala. I usually get uncomfortable with Chabad India around the time they say "birshut adoneinu moreinu urabeinu, melech hamashiach leolam va'ed," though sometimes other things tip me off. This particular Chabad experience, the one I spent with Shimmy and Sara in Kasol started off nicely. The vodka, which I don't usually drink, was flowing freely, and after a few hours, I drank some, but the head Chabad guy, a seemingly good dude, he drank a lot. He drank so much that by the end of the night, when all the candles except three were burnt down and everyone except maybe eight people had gone home, he began to have an exchange with the baba, over a canvas partition.

Now the baba, he also seems like a good dude. When the Chabad guys had the whole room riled up in a resounding rendition of "hakadosh baruch hu, anachnu ohavim otach," the baba was rowdiest of the bunch. Now, standing on the other side of the canvas partition, the baba began the conversation by responding to the Chabad guy, who had said something about the "holy temple."

"Holy Temple, holy temple," chimed in the baba from the other side of the parition.

At which point the Chabad guy turned to the baba and explained to him that he was "nothing but a poster" in the eyes of God. The baba responded calmly, telling the Chabad guy "you are wrong." The Chabad guy went on for a bit, the baba kept saying "you are wrong" and I sat there at the end of the table watching a woman named Shanti, who moved to India from the states 30 years ago, eat leftovers from the meal.

I met the baba again later in Kasol, and then in Pulga, a small village nearby set on the side of a hill inside a jungle. The baba's name is Mango. The owner of the guest house where we stayed in Pulga, Baba Ji - actually a former baba who now wears a baseball cap and keeps his chillum in the pocket of his khakis - later informed us of the politics between Baba Mango and himself. Mango apparently won't talk to Baba Ji because Baba Ji is no longer a baba. Baba politics. Who knew.

There is much more to tell but I'm off now... I'll write more from Manali...

three weeks in a day

2007-06-06T19:12:00.000+03:00

I am testing out my Japanese language skills now, since blogspot has been reset to Japanese on this computer. I'm sure I could change it, if I could read Japanese, but as it is, I can't figure out where the language options are, since they are in Japanese.

A few days ago I came to the realization that while I've been in Dharamsala for almost three weeks, and am itching to get back on the road, there are so many things I still want to do here. But alas, my trip to India is not so long, and there are still so many other places I want to visit. So tomorrow, I'm off to Parvati Valley to play in Kasol and its surrounding villages.

A few days ago, that same day I came to the realization that I may have been slacking off here on my holiday, I decided to walk up to the Baghsu waterfalls. I'd already been to the falls above Dharamkot, which was an hour and a half walk through beautiful forested hills and felt a little like heaven must feel. The Baghsu waterfalls are a 10 minute walk from the village, and are always densely populated, but still beautiful. I walked to the upper falls and watched Indian boys playing games in the pools, Buddhist monks chatting on rocks and a family of Sikhs splashing their feet.

On the trail up to the falls, I fell in step with an interesting family. There were the obviously western mom and dad, a blond girl and a Tibetan girl, who walked holding the woman's hand, speaking accented English. When we reached the pools, I photographed the girls playing and then introduced myself to the parents, Matthew and Theresa, offering to send them the photos. He is a philosophy teacher at Wesleyan, in India with the family for a year to research the influence of Buddhism on Wittgenstein. Theresa is home-schooling their daughter, Ruby. The Tibetan girl, Zompa, is a friend of the family, and a student at the Tibetan Children's Village school.

We ended up talking about how I had missed out seeing the Dalai Lama (he has indeed gone to Australia), and they told me that if I was interested, I could still go meet the Karmapa, a high Tibetan Buddhist teacher who heads the Karma Kagyu school. He greets the public every Wednesday and Saturday, they told me. It sounded great. They told me I could grab a cab for 400 rupees to the monastery, and that there may or may not be a lecture. That sounded less great. I asked them if they were planning to go. They said yes, so I said, great, maybe we could share a cab? We arranged to meet Wednesday at 1:30 by the Dalai Lama's temple.

So today I waited, at 1:30, at 1:45, at 2. No family. I had almost decided to give up (no way was I going to spend 400 rupees on a cab myself - that's a lot of money here) when I saw Matt running past the temple. "Sorry we're late," he said. Theresa was right behind him. "Difficult day in home-schooling," she apologized.

We climbed into a cab and rode through Mcleod Ganj, past Dharamsala, and to the Gyuto monastery on the outskirts of town. We left our shoes by the door, and I tried slyly to bring my bag inside, even though I could see everyone had left theirs outdoor. I just wasn't ready to leave behind my camera. "Either the camera stays out here or you stay out here," the security woman said sweetly. She was much tougher than she looked. Theresa and Matt told me they come here every week, and have never heard of anything being stolen. So I took out my passport and wallet, assured my camera I would be back soon, and went inside to join the dozens of people sitting and waiting. The Karmapa came out after about 15 minutes, and we walked toward him in a line with hands extended, each of holding a white scarf. One of his assistants put the outstreched scarf around my neck (traditional Tibetan form of greeting) and the Karmapa handed me a red string. That was it. No lecture, which made 8-year-old Ruby happy. My camera was safe. I made some joke about attachments to Theresa, but I was really relieved no-one had taken it.

The monastery was a beautiful building set in front of snow-capped mountains, surrounded by the monk's dormatories. We sat around and talked a bit with Isabel, a French nun with a quirky sense of humor who had just moved to Dharamsala after spending 20 years in Nepal. Ruby got antsy, and in her excitement to leave took a running leap down the stairs, tumbling gracefully like some sort of martial arts superhero. Except then she started to cry. So we told her how graceful she was, which made her laugh, though she still used her scraped knee as an excuse to get out of Tai Chi practice.

Back in Mcleod, I decided to check out Vijay's yoga class, considering that yoga in India is a traveler's addiction and most of my practice has been alone on the roofs of my guest houses. It was an incredible class. Vijay is about 40 years old and slim, and wears the shortest white shorts I have ever seen. (My friend Tamar later told me that she caught a glimpse of his wardrobe in the storage room after class one day - and indeed, he is the owner of at least 10 pairs of cleanly-pressed short white shorts). He is very flexible, and wasted no time showing that to us, while we laughed at his shorts. The class was Hatha, which mixes exercise with relaxation. Through the two hour class, his assistants came by to each of us to stretch our bodies into the correct position, something which noone has done for me before and which I really appreciated.

After the class I went with my friend Tiferet to check out the Dalai Lama's temple at sunset, and then to pick up the clothes Rais the tailor had made for me. He invited me to sit for chai, which I did, taking my first sip just as all the electricity in the city went out. Rais is 23, a Muslim from a small village near Pushkar. He came to Dharamsala last year and makes really beautiful clothing. "One year before I know no English," he confided. Now he is learning Hebrew, and knows quite a bit already.

I'm really going to miss Dharamsala. It's a place where people come to spend a long time, to make a home for themselves in India. I've played a lot of music here, met some great people, and have been working on a new story, writing by hand for the first time in years.

I'm off now, will try to post more photos as soon as possible...

day in dharamkot

2007-06-04T09:25:00.000+03:00

same, same, but different. wake up, stretch my arms, sun pours through the windows, bathing me in heat. i look at the clock. it's 7 a.m. back to sleep till 9. wake up, stretch my arms again, think, what am i going to do today.

could climb up to the snow line, would go see the dalai lama but i think he left for australia, maybe i'll go to the waterfalls in baghsu. but the days here start slow.

a day in dharamkot begins with breakfast. teeth brushed, clothes on, i grab my bag, walk through the gate, an immediate left up to the restaurant, where mohan and rinco smile and serve. "hello madam," they say. people alreading lounging on the cushions at a low table, sometimes chen and nurit, sometimes yael and ben, before that itamar and dena, who went to kashmir, and aviv, who went home. i join them, eat cornflakes or sometimes banana porridge, either topped with bananas.

we sit and we talk, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for hours. we talk about politics, we talk about diharrea, then we introduce ourselves to the new people, with whom we've just talked war and digestion. some people go down to the israelit restaurant to see what movies are playing. others go to the silver school to make jewlery. others go to yoga, or just came back from yoga. today i go down to baghsu, over the stones and the trails, through the trees. i want to sit and write but i forgot my notebook. i hop down the stairs, swig water, say hi to rupert, out for his daily walk, and find myself on the main street in baghsu. i go straight to bulu's workshop to talk to sam about my drum, but he's not there, so instead i play jembe while others play didg. then off to deep the tailor, where i laugh with him and he makes my pants, then makes them smaller, then makes them bigger, then makes them smaller, and finally i give up.

dharamsala for the traveler is slow, relaxed, always busy and always a holiday. at nights there are concerts, there are long sits, there are movies, there's time. it feels less like india than like summer camp. dharamsala for the resident is different. it's planting and harvesting and working and selling and living, and it's not summer camp. two different worlds, the traveler living on rupees to bide time for cheap, the native living on rupees to bide life and its expenses.

throwing tomatoes at pakistani soldiers

2007-05-31T10:27:00.000+03:00

Every night, on the Indian-Pakistani border, thousands of people gather on each side to wave flags and see who has more spirit. I was there only once, on Tuesday night, but based on that I would have to say that Indians are more colorful but Pakistanis have more spirit.

The border in western Punjab is about 30 km from Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple, one of Sikhism's holiest sites. I came to Punjab in a private jeep with seven other Israelis, and while the whole trip lasted only two days, it was an intense experience.

The actual changing of the guards at the border is nice, but not so intense. Our driver, an Indian named Mohammed Azar, drove us straight to the border from Dharamsala, after a stop at a gas station and at an empty garage doubling as a restaurant. Considering my recent stomach illness, I decided not to eat there, just to be safe. We arrived at the border at around 3:30, three hours before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. That was our driver's idea, and though everyone I'd spoken to before the trip told me not to arive before 5, it's hard to convince a group of Israelis to listen to you and not to the tired driver.

We plowed our way through the swarms of kids trying to sell us flags and paper visors and postcards and CDs and DVDs and waited for about an hour at a restaurant in the "food court". Our waiter, who also tried to sell us DVDs and postcards, had a disconcerting bandage over his nose. On closer inspection, I realized he had no nose. Or at least no cartiledge. The restaurant, a nice and spacious air-conditioned room, had barely any food. The waiter offered us chai and instant noodles. "Do you have anything else?" we asked. Samosas, he offered us. Samosas it was.

At about 5 we headed out of the restaurant and toward the border. We were seven among hundreds, walking toward the stadium like fans toward a soccer match. A guard checked our bags, and as we continued on we saw a number of Indian soldiers in uniform with white stirrups and a hat shaped like a turkey crown. The guards, some of India's tallest citizens, were trying to separate the swarms of people into male and female lines. I moved over to the women's line, and convinced my other female friends (who originally tried to stay in the men's line) to join me. They had no objections, in the end, having just been dragged into a photo op with a couple of Indian men who took the liberty of grabbing their breasts.

On the women's side, nobody grabbed our breasts, and the line moved very quickly to the stadium, past the famous border gate. A guard with a turkey hat and stirrups sat us in the nearly empty VIP section, with the other white people, while the Indians scrambled and stuffed into crowded rows. One of the girls I was traveling with, said, "I know the battery on my camera is going to die at the worst time." Damn those self-fulfilling prophecies! As soon as she said it, I knew mine was going to also. I turned on my camera, and lo and behold, the empty battery sign popped cheerfuly onto the screen. So I photographed, but not as much as I would have liked.

Eventually, every section was filled to capacity, including the VIP section. We met a young Israeli woman with her two kids, a couple of older Indian women who had come to Amritsar for a national Christian conference, and two girls from Chattisgar on vacation in the north. On the Pakistani side, hundreds of white-clad Muslims sat cheering. There seemed to be fewer of them than Indians, and they sat in a much more orderly fashion, but they definitely knew how to scream. On our side, two boys ran by with Indian flags, and then back again, and then two girls, and back again, and then groups of kids started dancing to Indian music. One kid started breakdancing and everyone cheered him to stay on. Meanwhile, in the VIP section, all of the Indians tried to get the two little blond Israeli kids to pose for photographs with their kids. All of the kids were embarassed.

Then out came the guards, some standing by the gate others on a platform, screaming to each other in Hindi army talk. Then a loud voice said something in Hindi, which I can't remember, and the crowd went wild. The voice said it again. The crowd screamed in response. Then the voice said, "Hindustan!" To which everyone responded something sounding like "Zindaman." Then the voice said something sounding like "Qantas!" To which everyone responded, "madram!"

The two girls from Chattisgar laughed at us. "You don't know what we are saying?" they asked. "No, we don't speak Hindi," we answered. They told us that the chanting was basically "I salute India. India is beautiful." "Don't say that about Pakistan," they said, laughing. We promised we wouldn't.

About five guards came out and stood at attention in the middle of the path. The gate opened, and one by one they walked over to shake hands with the orderly Pakistani guards. Then the ceremony was over, and the thousands of would-be soccer fans walked back out to the "food court," swarmed again by postcard hawkers and water salesboys.

**********************************************************************************

I wanted to go see the Golden Temple right after, having heard that it is an unbelievable sight at night. I pictured a giant temple made entirely of gold glimmering in the sunset. The rest of the group wanted to go eat first, and before that wanted to go find a guest house with a shower. I personally had no poblem eating and sleeping at the temple, which many travelers do, but I was the only one who wanted to.

Traveling with a big group was difficult, not just because we couldn't agree on where and when all the time, but because sometimes Israelis have a tendency of being too Israeli. I like everyone on an individual level, but together it was too loud. Singing and talking loudly in places where it just wasn't acceptable, shouting "what the fuck" in front of the Indians, who just weren't used to that kind of thing, and making fun of a man's mustache to his face, in English. One of the guys wanted to throw tomatoes at the Pakistani soldiers during the changing of the guards. When I asked him if he was serious he said, "yes. That's the tradition here." He actually tried to cross the gate. One of the girls, wearing a thin white tank top, wanted to join the Indian kids and dance in front of everyone during the ceremony.

By the time we started looking for a guest house, I was tired of traveling in such a huge group (this was by far the biggest group I had been with). We finally found a guest house, ate a nice dinner, and got to the Golden Temple by midnight.

It really was an incredible sight. Before going in we stored our shoes and covered our heads, and then entered the sacred Sikh space. The temple, which I think may be gold-plated marble rather than completely gold, is a stunning building set on a concerete penninsula in the middle of a giant fish-filled pool surrounded by a long rectangle compound. There were people sleeping everywhere, others sitting in groups or alone, praying, others waiting for the temple itself to open at 2 a.m.

The space had such a great energy. In a way, it reminded me of the western wall, a holy temple where devout people come to be close to their history and to a clear presence of God.

Chen and Nurit and I decided to go back to the guest house, after about an hour, so that we could get up early and watch the sun rise over the temple. Despite my dying camera battery, I took a bunch of photos, which I'll post as soon as I can.

Back at the guest house I showered, then collapsed on my bed. After what felt like a few minutes, but was really a few hours of deep sleep, I woke up to Chen and Nurit knocking. It was 5:30 a.m. We made it to the temple in time for the sun rise. When we arrived hundreds of people were standing still on the banks of the pool responding to the chanting. We walked around the compound in sacred silence, sat for a while and watched the people moving, and then filed into a long line to walk into the temple, the origin of the chanting. Once we entered we saw hundreds more people sitting on the floor, some standing, all listening, some following along in prayer books.

We stayed for about an hour and a half and then walked out through the market, into the already boiling dusty day. We stopped into a modest little dhaba for chai and aloo chapati, and then bought the best bananas I have ever tasted. By the time we got back to the guest house it was already 9 a.m., and I was locked out of my room. So the three of us laid down on their bed and slept for a couple more hours. At one point the driver knocked on the door and asked for 1,000 rupees advance, so he could go to the market. 1,000 rupees at the market, I wondered in my sleep, as thoughts of him driving off into the sunset waving the bills gleefully in his hands filtered into my brain.

When we woke up, the driver was still there. I guess he had done some shopping at the market. About five of us went for breakfast/lunch, and arranged to meet the others at 2 p.m. Well, 2 P.M. came and went, and the others never showed, though while we waited we had a nice conversation with the turban-clad guest house manager and his beautiful wife. Both are well educated, their children doctors and engineers, and they seemed very interested in what my parents do. "So your parents are not married?" they asked, me confused, after I told them my parents live in different countries.

The missing three showed up after 3, and we piled into the jeep to head home. First, of course, a car passed by one of the open doors and jammed it, before driving off.

We made it back to Dharamkot by 9:30, dropped our stuff off, and went to eat labne for dinner at one of the restaurants on the main street. We'd all kept our rooms in Dharamsala, so coming back was like coming home.

painting schools and other things

2007-05-28T14:45:00.000+03:00

A couple of days ago my friend Chen said to me, "so are you coming to paint the school tomorrow?" I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded great. "Yes," I told him.

When I first arrived in Dharamsala, I was in bed by 11 and awake by 7 or 8 every morning. Each day, my bedtime seems to be getting a little later, and unfortunately, so does my waking time.

So the next morning, I'm ashamed to say, I almost had to pull myself out of bed to meet the rest of the volunteers. We met out in front of one of the restaurants in Dharamkot and together continued on to an Indian school in Gamru village, overlooking Dharamsala.

Our job was to turn the dirty and peeling walls of this elementary school into a clean place to learn. We started by taking all of the pictures of the walls, and then we sanded, and only then did we start to paint. There were four rooms and a hallway to paint, which we did in green, pink and orange. Even after the paint was on the walls, though, the school still looked manky, so we wandered around painting grass and flowers and leaving handprints and designs all over to cover the black stains. I think the kids are really going to like it.

The institution is a charity school opened three years ago by a young British guy named Phil. The 160 kids enrolled study at a tuition of about 140 dollars a year, which is paid for solely through donations. Our group of volunteers was organized by a woman named Orly, a healer and traveler. The group was all Israeli, but a real mix of personalities and ages.

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By the end of last week, I was able to start eating again, which I've been doing with vigor ever since. Dharamsala really is way more interesting without a fever and digestion problems, but I guess even those who have never visited India could have told me that.

To say that I am staying in Dharamsala is kind of a lie. I am staying in Dharamkot, a small tourist village overlooked by Upper Dharamkot, a humble little Indian town. The tourist part of town is really just that, and it is mostly inhabited this time of year by Israelis and some Europeans. Days are spent waking up whenever (between 5:30 A.M. and 10 A.M.), eating a nice breakfast, then going off and doing whatever. People learn yoga and massage and nutrition, relocate from restaurant to restaurant, knit, write, play music and walk. It's never boring here and there are always different and new people to meet and spend time with.

When tourists refer to Dharamsala, they usually mean Dharamkot, Baghsu or Mcleod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama. Most people never even really go into Dharamsala itself, which is a regular Indian town.

Aside from painting the school, I've also visited an ayurvedic doctor, hiked to a beautiful set of waterfalls, started learning to knit, and tried planning the jembe I want to build.

I've also discovered the Bayit Hayehudi, the alternative to Beit Chabad, which I have inadvertantly begun boycotting (listen, I really don't know what made me sick, but the last thing I ate before vomiting last week was cholent). The Bayit Hayehudi is a great and open atmosphere, and has a certain kind of energy I have really been missing here.

I'm going off to Amritsar tomorrow for a couple of days with some friends I've met here to see the changing of the guards at the Pakistani border and to watch the sun rise and set over the Golden Temple.

fevers, tibetans and the never-ending bus rides

2007-05-21T17:05:00.000+03:00

After spending two nights in Rishikesh (at least one night longer than I planned) I headed out for nearby Dehradun to catch the bus to Dharamsala. I was told the ride would take about 12 hours, but knowing Indian buses and knowing Indian promises, I prepared myself for a 16-hour overnight ride. I wasn't far off. Seventeen hours after leaving Dehradun, and at least two engine problems and four stops later (in some of the dirtiest places I have seen yet in India), we arrived at the Mcleod Ganj bus stand.

At least I didn't suffer the ride alone. A few minutes after reaching the Dehradun bus station, a girl I vaguely recognized from my most recent Rishikesh guest house (Nishant, highly recommended) said hello to me. She turned out to be Israeli (despite looking completely European), and also turned out to be a former employee at Haaretz. Small world. In India, as in most places in the world, friendships that are supposed to happen happen. Aviv and I got along right away, and spend the whole ride talking and laughing together. Yes, we spent 17 hours talking and laughing. This is because there was no way in hell we could sleep. We were seated in the front of front seats on the deluxe bus, which must have been comfortable for the tall (read: very, very big, even huge) Tibetan monk seated across the aisle from us, but for us was very difficult. Aviv and I are about the same size (read: haven't grown since we were 15, and it's questionable whether we even grew before then) and our feet only reached the wall in front of us if we leaned our shoulders onto the space where our butts belonged and stretched with all our might.

So no sleep. Still, it would be hard to call it "the worst bus ride I have taken in India" since nearly all have been such gems. But usually, I find myself crunched up against a window or pushed onto the engine seat by an unknowingly overbearing Indian man. So in a way, this was okay.

There was a group of seven other Israelis on the bus, (not to typecast) the kind that just got out of the army and were in desperate search of a shanti Tel Aviv nightlife in Dharamsala. Which they found. Dharamsala, at least its upper two villages Dharamkot and Baghsu, caters nearly entirely to Israeli tourists. Most tourist places in India specialize in Israelis, but this was out of control. I'm talking Hebrew signs everywhere, shakshuka in every restaurant along with a waiter itching to try out his Hebrew, and more Israelis than you'll find in Dimona. But a much better view. Aviv and I hightailed it to the furthest guest house in Dharamkot, set basically in the forest, and set up home.

Which was a great idea, since the next day, after lunch at the Beit Chabad and a long walk in McLeod Ganj (home of the exiled Tibetan government) I found myself almost too weak to walk. Being the stubborn person that I am and the grandaughter of my Polish grandmother, I insisted on walking the 3 km from McLeod Gan to Dharamkot. By the time I arrived at my guest house, I essentially collapsed on my bed, not merely because I was exhausted, but from what would turn out to be a very uncomfortable case of probable dehydration.

First came the near fainting, and then came the shivers, which engulfed me all night long, even after I began vomiting in earnest. Knowing I needed to drink water, I tried with all my might, only to lose it into the bucket or toilet a few minutes later. Since I have experienced probably three fevers in my life, the last one about 15 years ago, I was convinced that I was about to die, and was nearly content to accept my fate. Aviv, who like a sister patted my back and changed my bucket and refused to go to sleep until I did, convinced me that it would pass in the morning. Inwardly, she was convinced I had malaria.

When I awoke in the morning, after sleeping in short spurts, my fever was still high and I couldn't keep down any liquids, or ingest anything into my body. So I elected to stay home and "sleep" while Aviv went off to play with Itamar, a great guy we met at the Beit Chabad over Friday night dinner. Personally, I began the day by cursing the good will of the Chabad, who I was convinced had made me sick, but I soon realized that what I had was a pretty clear case of dehydration. I spent the whole day in bed, hurting from head to toe, unable to eat, cold, hot and weak. But I did finish "Everything is Illuminated" (great book, thanks Gil).

Today, Monday, I got out of bed, and ate a meal (in all honesty, not the best decision) and walked to Baghsu with Itamar and Aviv to explore. Dharamsala is truly lovely, and I'm looking forward to regaining my energy in full so I can explore some more.

Bebra to Dodi Tal to Darwa Pass and back to Bebra

2007-05-18T11:06:00.001+03:00

(1) Trail to Dodi Tal / (2) Commercial for MSR camping equipment (or, Chandara and his son helping Peter with his stove) / (3) Chandara and Bindra / (4) Trail to Dodi Tal / (5) Dodi Tal / (6) Trail to Darwa Pass / (7) At Darwa Pass / (8 and 9) Bebra children

Agora

2007-05-18T11:00:00.001+03:00

Gangnani through Uttarkashi to Dodi Tal

2007-05-18T10:54:00.000+03:00

Photos:
(1)Cows grazing in a field of cannabis / (2) Gangnani hot springs / (3) A cow loving Uri / (4) Cow after loving Uri / (5) Agora woman on trail to Dodi Tal

...and back down the Ganga

2007-05-18T10:46:00.000+03:00

Photos:
(1 and 2) View of Gangotri from Gomuk trail / (3 through 6) Hira village, above Gangnani

Up the Ganga

2007-05-18T10:23:00.000+03:00

Rishikesh-Uttarkashi-Trail to Gomuk-Bhojbasa

'homely stay in a beautiful natural location'

2007-05-16T10:57:00.000+03:00

For most tourists and pilgrims, Uttarkashi is a stopover town on the way to one of the four sources of the Ganga River. We ended up staying there for two nights, mostly because I couldn't decide what to do next (yes, the indecision of being a Libra has followed me to India) and because Uri wanted to buy some essentials before going off on a week-long trek. I decided to join Uri on the trek to Dodi Tal, which according to Indian mythology, is the lake where Shiva cut off Ganesha's head and replaced it with that of an elephant.

Orian headed off to Srinigar, Rachel stayed in Uttarkashi, and Uri and I took the 8:45 local bus (which left at 9:20) to a small town called Sagnam Chatti, about one hour northwest of Uttarkashi. The bus was crowded, as usual, with people piled three to a two-seater, four to a three-seater, and scores more hanging in the aisle. When we arrived in Sagnam Chatti, at the end of the line, we were met with the usual, "Hello, you want guide?" We didn't, so we crossed the short bridge to the foot of the trail, where I traded my sandals for trekking shoes. A European couple walked by us, their backs straight and tall, wearing hard-core hiking boots and carrying obviously well-packed bags. I continued to tie my shoes.

On many of these treks in the western Himalaya, the beginning is often the steepest part. Uttarkashi is about 1880 meteres high, and according to the map, we would have reached 3000 meters by the time we arrived at Dodi Tal. Up, up we walked, past the brushes of stinging nettle and cannabis, into the dense forest.

About half an hour into the hike, we heard a voice calling to us. We looked up and saw nothing. There it was again, the voice. We looked up again, and saw, behind a rock, a face. The face also had a hand, which summoned us. We looked at each other, and decided to go. The voice, the face and the hand also had a body, that of a toothless woman lounging behind the rock, next to another woman, a young girl, an older man and a teenaged boy. "Chocolate?" they requested, holding out their hands. "No chocolate," we said, but we did have a few packages of Parle-G biscuits, one of which we gave to the toothless woman to keep. We opened another package and shared it with them. They were from the village of Agora, 8 km up the trail, and had come down to cut branches to bring back to their village.

After the snack, we continued on the trail, which was so unlike the trail to Gomuk. To begin with, the ascent was much easier on my lungs. Maybe this was because my body was more acclimatized, or maybe because there is so much more oxyegn in the forest than in the desert-like atmosphere of the way to Gomuk. Also, there were no chai shops on the way up the trail. There was, however, a sign for a guest house in Agora boasting "a homely stay in a beautiful natural location." I hope they meant homey.

Agora, which we reached about two hours later, was in fact a beautiful natural location, but seeing how early in the day it was, we decided to continue on to the next village, Bebra, to spend shabbat. We did stop in Agora long enough to eat lunch and watch the rainclouds gather above us.

By the time we arrived in Bebra, the daily rain had poured, lightly. We paid the 10 rupees to the forest guard, who then accompanied us to the nearest dhaba / chai shop. The dhaba owner asked us to stay in his guest house, which, upon closer inspection, was as unappetizing as it appeared at first sight. "Is there another guest house here?" I asked. The dhaba owner and the forest guard both vehemently shook their heads at me. Uri gave me a disappointed look. "Wrong queston," he told me.

We continued on, about 100 meters, where we found another guest house, this one much more homey and much less homley than the last. The European couple, who turned out to be as Swiss as they looked, had already set up their tent on the grass behind the stone house. We took a room, and then joined the couple (Peter and Miriam), who were trying out their Indian camping stove for the first time in an attempt to make lemon ginger tea. Chandara Lal (the guest house owner) and his "woman" Bindra joined us for tea, and asked us when we wanted to eat dinner.

The rest of the afternoon we lounged and wrote, looking out at the forest and the stream, as buffalo and cows and horses and children strolled by us. Agora is a small village. Bebra is a very, very, very small village. As night fell, I went off down the trail to sing kabbalat shabbat. For the first time I began to feel deeply the peace and quiet I have been looking for since I arrived in India. It is an amazing place to let go, to really rest.

Sunday morning, we continued our trek to Dodi Tal, which is only about 16 kilometers from Bebra. On the way, we passed through another small village called Mahji, bigger than Bebra but smaller than Agora and much less developed than either. We stopped for chai, looking at the clouds above us. "It won't last," I said, now an expert on Uttaranchal weather. "It'll rain for a couple of hours and then clear."

Well, the rain began as we began the hardest ascent to Dodi Tal. By rain, of course, I mean hail. And by hail, I mean hail.

When we arrived in Dodi Tal we were soaking wet and freezing. The Europeans, Swiss as they are, were in much better shape than we were. My shoes were entirely soaked through, as were my pants. We crowded around a fire where about 10 Indians sat warming their hands. The majority of said Indians, we learned, were managers and factory operators from India's largest company, Tata. They were in Dodi Tal for adventure-training / team-building, and they were very funny. I don't know how else to characterize them. One of them, a skinny man with a disproportionately small head, asked us to pose with his colleagues for a picture, so we did.

Uri and I ended up spending the night in a dhaba run by a 17-year-old boy named Moskesh and his 14-year-old brother Bipin, who made us dinner and fed us chai, and set up warm blankets for us on the floor.

The next morning we awoke at quarter to 6 with the Tata adventure-trainers and climbed up to Darwa pass with them. Well, not really with them, since they are all much older than we are and much slower. We began the ascent with them (1,000 meters over 6 kilometers) and met them again on the way down. By the time we arrived at the pass, after walking on snow up a slippery slope, we found ourselves literally inside the day's raincloud. Peter and Miriam, the Swiss mountaineers, scurried up to the summit in their state-of-the-art hiking boots, but I didn't really feel the need. I was standing in the middle of a cloud, 4,000 meters high. That was good enough for me.

We were back in Dodi Tal by noon, exhausted from the already full day. I went to sit by the lake, to sort out the many thoughts and realizations I had reached while slipping down the wet trail.

We spent the night with Mokesh and Bipin in their dhaba again. This time, though, as we set to sleep at around 9 P.M., we found ourselves in the midst of a Hindi sing-along. About 20 loud friends from Delhi had crowded into the dhaba for a late dinner, and paid no mind to our attempt to sleep. "If this had happened an hour ago, it would have been great," Uri said. "It's still great," I said, and fell asleep.

The next morning, at around 5:30, Uri went back up to Darwa pass, where he planned to continue on to another town, two days down then trail, and then to Yamnotri, one of the char dham (sources of the Ganga.) Peter and Miriam came in for a chai about half an hour later, and then continued after Uri. At about quarter to 7, I gathered my things and began my trail back down to Bebra.

Before I left Dodi Tal, Mokesh asked where I was going to stay in Bebra. "My grandfather has a guest house there," he told me. "Well, I stayed at Chandara's before," I told him. Mokesh wrinkled his nose. "Chandara Lal? No good."

"Why no good?" I said, laughing. "You mean good, but not your grandfather?"

"No," he said, seriously. "He is very low civil caste."

I didn't really know how to respond. The caste system is not something I truly understand, and it is not my way of determining who is good or not.

I said goodbye to Mokesh and Bipin, and all of the other Dodi Tal friends, and found myself back on the trail, this time alone. The night before I had realized that, as wonderful as the friends I have made are, and as enjoyable as it has been to share these experiences, I needed to spend time by myself, to have the alone time I have been craving for so long.

At first, as I found myself inside of the dense forest, I was a little scared (mostly of whether or not to tell my mother. Hi Mom.) There I was, alone, on a trail in the forest, with only my thoughts to accompany me. It was then, amid deep thoughts and vivid scenery, that I realized. I was not alone. There on the trail with me were millions and trillions of living organisms, trees and plants and herbs and bugs and animals, all experiencing the early dawn with me.

I was like Dorothy, but without a tin man, or a lion, or a scarecrow. And no Toto. Obstacles arose and I met them, crossing rocks over streams, difficult ascents, slippery paths, the whole while looking around me and within me.

As I walked on, I saw something in front of me, long and slim, slithering on what looked like a big white rock. My heart jumped. A snake? How would Dorothy deal with this situation? How would Jack Kerouac? I walked slower, and then noticed that it wasn't a snake at all, it was a tail, a long graceful tail belonging to a lazy cow.

I stopped for a water and biscuit break along the way, on a rock near a stream. It was there the bees came out, one at first, and then two, and then I stood up and heard them buzzing all around me, either in mind or in reality. Two of them nestled onto my backpack, which I had slung on a rock. I paced, unsure of what to do, as the bees buzzed on bag. Finally I dumped my water bottle onto the bag, and the bees flew away. I grabbed my bag and continued down the trail.

On I went, through Mahji with its beautiful children, down the trail, through the forest. I ran out of water about 5 km away from Bebra. About two kilometers later I heard the giggling voics of wood nymphs, who turnd out to be three young women, under 30, all beautiful, all missing multiple teeth. One of them stuck out their hand and said, "toffee?" 'Toffee?' I thought, and shook my head. "Pani?" they said, arms still outstretched. I showed them my empty water bottle, and gave them what was left of my biscuits. They insisted on posing for a photo with the biscuits in their hands, perched in front of their toothless mouths.

I stopped at the first water spout I saw, just outside Bebra, and stuck my head under the flowing water. The women from the trail passed by me as I sat there, their baskets filled with the branches and leaves they had collected along the way.

I arrived in Bebra a little while later. Chandara and his son were in their dhaba, and seemed glad to see me. They offered me chai and food, and I sat around with them for hours, helping with their wood carvings and relaxing. The food they served me was just what we'd had on shabbat: rice, dahl and fern, which is quite possibly the strangest vegetable I have ever had. A fly died in my chai, more than once, but I just spilled it out each time and graciously accepted another.

The Tata team, who left Dodi Tal half an hour after I did and arrived in Bebra two and a half hours after I did, were staying at Mokesh's granfather's guest house for the night. The team leaders had organized a night of Garhwali song and dance for them, which was really an amazing experience. I sat next to Jasmila, Chandara's young daughter with whom I had developed a special relationship despite our complete lack of shared language. Looking around me, I realized I was the only foreigner there. It was a nice feeling. Later on, I got some advice on good treks in Himachal Pradesh from one of the guides, a Nepali whose father climbed Everest twice without oxygen and "expired" on his third attempt.

The next morning, early, I headed back down to Sagnam Chatti, taking my time to complete the 10 km. The Tata crew left at around the same time as me, and we were accompanied by the children of Agora, who walk up and down the trail to school every day.

I reached Sagnam Chatti about an hour and a half (and a total of 60 km) later, just in time to catch the bus back to Uttarkashi. I spent a few hours by the Ganga and then got on a bus, planning to go to Dehra Dun. I decided to get off in Rishikesh instead, where I am now. Tomorrow, Dharamsala.

a stroll through uttarkashi market

2007-05-16T10:35:00.000+03:00

Before leaving Uttarkashi for another trek, this time to Dodi Tal, I decided to buy antiseptic cream, considering that the tube my grandmother lovingly gave me before I left expired in 1996.

The market in Uttarkashi is lined with pharamacies, so I figured the whole mission would take about 10 minutes. Into the market I went, where I located the first pharmacy (Parvati Memorial Clinic) and walked up the stairs.

"Namaste," I said. "You have antiseptic cream?"

The pharmacist stared at me.

"For cuts and scrapes?" I tried again.

He stared at me again, then turned to his assistant and said something in Garhwali. The assistant went over to a drawer and pulled out a tube for me.

"Oh, good," I said, turning the tube over to read the indications. "Oh, this expires in June 2007," I said, pointing to the expiration date. "Do you have one that will last longer?"

The assistant put the tube back in the drawer, and pulled out another one. "10/08," he said, pointing.

"Thanks," I said again, looking it over. And there it was, not even in small print: 'This drug has proven carcinogenic in rats and mice. Use in moderation.'

I handed the tube back to the assistant and thanked him. Back into the market I went and up the stairs into another pharmacy.

"Namaste," I said to the pharmacist, who sat behind the counter, sweating henna from his balding head. "You have antiseptic cream?"

"No," he said, shaking his orange-stained scalp.

"For cuts and scrapes?" I asked again.

"No," he said.

"You know what I am asking for?"

"No," he said. And that was that.

Back into market, this time to an ayurvedic pharmacy, where I should have gone from the beginning.

"Hello," I said to the man at the counter, who was talking to a his friend with a big smile.

"Hello," he said back. His friend smiled at me.

"You have natural antiseptic cream?" I asked. "Yes," he said, and handed me a tube. Sixteen rupees and no indications of carcinogens. Perfect.

As I pulled out my wallet to pay, the pharmacist's friend said to me, "which country belongs to you?"

Now it's fairly normal in India for a local person to say, within minutes of meeting a foreigner, "which country?" Sometimes they say it under their as they pass by a foreigner, without even saying hello first. But "which country belongs" to me?

"Well, no country belongs to me, yet," I said. "But I live in Israel."

"Very good, many Israeli live India," the man said.

"Yes," I agreed.

"Have a sweet," the man said, pulling out a ginger-flavored Halls throat candy and handing me my change.

hello? hello? hello, you want room?

2007-05-09T15:13:00.000+03:00

About a week and a half ago, I left Rishikesh in all its heat and splendor, and headed northeast then slightly west then up, up, with my friend Liran to Gangotri, one of the four sources of the Ganga River. The season was just opening there, which meant it was cold and more cold, and also meant that each day a new restaurant and tourist pull was being built before our eyes.

I'll start 11 days ago, when I arrived in Uttarkashi, the passing town where I am sitting at this very moment. Since my first transportation experience in India was the relatively calm, pre-booked tourist bus from Delhi to Rishikesh, I only learned about the gem that is Indian transport when I attempted to leave Uttarkashi for Gangotri. Liran and I, dutiful westerners that we are, woke up early, ate a nice breakfast of champions, and arrived at the station at 10 A.M. sharp, awaiting our bus. No bus in sight. When we asked the station manager when the next bus was scheduled to leave for Gangotri, he told us 12:30. He then told us 2 P.M. He then told us 1:00. We then left the station and wandered around the market, ducking into a back alley where we met a beautiful baby, his parents, his grandmother, and a deaf uncle with wild white hair. I took family portraits, which they loved and which I'll post as soon as I download my photos.

At 11 A.M., we returned to the bus station. No bus, but it would be there by 3, the station manager promised. So, we sat at the station and talked to a group of babas and their protege, an 11-year-old boy with beautiful dimples wearing only an orange scarf around his waist, who we later met wandering around Gangotri.

The bus arrived at 1 P.M., and we eagerly got on. A smiling man with an unfortunately cracked yellow tooth saved us a seat and took it upon himself to be our translator and personal adviser. About 20 minutes after we left Uttarkashi, the bus driver stopped, and the Man with the Yellow Tooth smilingly urged us to get off the bus and drink chai at one of the roadside dabas. I didn't really want chai, considering that the last time I'd used the toilet was after breakfast. So I left Liran to drink the powdered milk and sugar while I went off in search of a toilet, or at least something resembling one. I wandered through the gates behind the daba and found myself overlooking a giant dam. I started to take out my camera, and immediately put it away when an officer motioned to me to put it away. The Man with the Yellow Tooth told me, "no camera." Got it. I went up to the officer and asked him if there was a toilet nearby. He motioned somewhere away from where we were standing, and said, "No camera." Yes, I understood. No camera. It also turned out there was no toilet.

After returning from the futile urination attempt, I also learned that there was no bus. "Poonture," the Man with the Yellow Tooth told us, smiling as was his way, though it looked like the bus driver was fiddling with the engine, not the tire. "Another bus at 3," the Man said, showing us his watch, which read 2:30.

A jeep/taxi pulled up about 20 minutes later, and Liran, The Man with the Yellow Tooth and I jumped aboard. The jeep was going to Darali, about 25 km from Gangotri, which meant we would have to get another taxi from there. And so the ride began, a slow uphill climb through the mountains on roads built only for one, and certainly not for the massive trucks that tried to chicken us around the bends. I've got to hand it to our driver, who successfully maneuvered us around some trying curves. We stopped about 5 times along the way, at various dabas, where we got out to pee and stretch, and at a blasting zone, where we stayed in the car with the windows rolled up.

When we arrived in Hermsil, about 2.5 km from Darali, the jeep driver said "challo" and the Man with the Yellow Tooth explained, this is where you get out." And so we did. Liran and I were joined by Shiva, a mountain guide who really seemed to want to be our guide, and Sergei, a giant Russian who told us he had lived in Israel for five months with his Jewish wife in 1991. He also told us he had recently returned from Jammu Kashmir which "vasn't danger" except for "few moment" when snipers shot at his bus after some sort of kidnapping attempt.

Sergei, Shiva, Liran and I walked along to Darali, already high in the mountains. Waterfalls flowed over the highway in cold currents, which I ran across barefoot to avoid soaking my leather sandals. An overly packed jeep came by and offered to take us to Darali for 40 rupees. We declined. Less than a kilometer later we arrived in Darali. "Excuse me, you sit," said Shiva, who really wanted to be our guide. "No, it's ok," we said, "why don't we get on this jeep to Gangotri?"

As the jeep crawled to Gangotri, night fell, though luckily none of our luggage precariously strapped to the roof did. We arrived in Gangotri at around 8 P.M. I let out one foot, and then another, and within seconds was swarmed by 15 boys shouting, "hello? hello? you want room?" I did, but not like that. The gang followed us down the street, repeating their mantra, which was echoed uncountable times from every corner. Little did I know that we had arrived on what was ostensibly the first day of the Gangotri season.

We found a place for 120 rupees (including a bucket of hot water for a shower), and went out to eat, trying to tune out the shouts of "hello, want room?" I am not exaggerating, not even a little. I wish I had recorded it.

The next day, Liran and I headed out on a three-day return trip to Goumukh, a glacier over 4,000 meters high. Gangotri is about 3,000 meters (these are not exact measurements), so the hike was 36 km round trip at an incline of about 1,000 meters. We arrived at the entrance to the park and payed 150 rupees to get in. Indians pay 40. On the sign it says Pony - 25, so I guess even horses have to pay. Babas get in for free.

The first few hours were difficult, not for my legs or my back, which were handling the walk well, but for my poor sweet lungs, which have barely experienced such high altitudes. My face beat bright red as we walked up the hill, through melting snow patches, a view of giant mountains over 6,000 and 7,000 meters high visible in the distance.

On the way up, we were passed by young guys in ripped shoes and flip-flops carrying generators and bags of something unidentifiable, which we soon learned were to stock the chai shops. On the first day of the trek, there were only three chai shops scattered along the trail. On the way back there were about nine. For some reason, these shops were built in clusters right next to each other, each cluster at least 5 or 7 km away from the next.

We met a nice Japanese duo walking up, who kept stopping to smoke chillums along the way. My lungs cried out to these Japanese guys, but they seemed fine. Aside from the incline, which got easier, the hardest part of the trail was avoiding the kilometer of sliding rocks, about three kilometers away from where we were to be spending the night. Oh, and the rain.

The walk up should take most western-bred white people between five to seven hours. By the end of the sixth hour, my western-bred white self was tired. We were supposed to be sleeping at an ashram at a pass called Bhojbasa, but I was beginning to believe there was no ashram. As we turned a corner, my foot hit a metal object, which I realized was a horse shoe. Now, I'm not so superstitious, but it was a nice sign. It meant that there had been life on this trail before. My optimism returned, and soon enough, we saw below us Bhojbasa pass.

First, we went to a cluster of tents which we mistakingly believed to be the ashram. The manager showed us one tent, where an Indian man was tucked into bed. "250 rupees per person," he said. We stared at him. "Ashram is there," he pointed.

Down we went to the ashram, which was run by a nice baba named Raju, who told us food and board were included in the 160 rupee price. I went with him to fill out the guest form, tired and hungry, and oh, so cold (it was approaching about 2 degrees up there). When I got to the question about "purpose of my visit," I turned to Raju and said, "what is the purpose of my visit?" "To meet me," he said, looking at me half-seriously, half-mockingly. So I wrote in the slot, "to meet me." Raju jabbed me in the ribs.

Darkness fell, wrapping the mountains which I can only describe as glorious, and we went inside for the evening prayer (arti), which consists of bells and chants, and ends with the leader of the prayer bringing around a flame, water and a sweet to each person in the room. After the prayer, we went into the dining hall. The room was set with three rows of narrow cloth, in front of which were placed a metal plate and cup. We sat down, two of the rows filled with babas in their orange cloths, blankets, some wearing sandals, some barefoot, none in shoes. The travelers, which numbered to about 10, sat in the third row, all of us layered and freezing.

Raju stood at the front of the room and said, "you may eat as much as you wish, we will come by to fill your plate again and again. But please, do not take more than you can eat and do not leave food on your plate." He began chanting, "Shri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram," as the babas sang along.

Then came the food, which, true to Raju's word, did not seem to end. "More chapati?" I nodded. "More sabji?" I nodded. "Rice?" Yes. "Dal?" Of course. "Chapati?" No... well, okay. "Sabji?" Well, it is really good. "Dal?" Okay. "Rice?" Uhhh... But on my plate it went, and try as I might, I did not finish my food. So I scooped it up and put it on Liran's plate. One of the kitchen workers laughed. Throughout the meal, which was delicious, which was filling, which was warm, I couldn't stop saying or feeling, "this is amazing."

Liran and I shared our room, which consisted of a giant thin mattress on the floor, with an Israeli guy named Uri (not the same as the one I met in Rishikesh), who had recently returned from Tapovan, a higher peak above the Goumukh glacier. We all passed out at around 9 P.M.

We woke up at 9 A.M., but I don't think I slept more than five hours, partially because of the cold, partially because the bed was not very comfortable, and partially because of the very odd dreams that kept sliding through my brain.

We woke up too late for breakfast, but Raju gave me a pot of hot water to clean my face and teeth. We then headed up to Goumukh, which is only about 5 km from Bhojbasa. Despite the rain, the walk was beautiful, and the glacier astounding. Rachel, a British woman who we met at the ashram, and who I later would spend the good part of a week with, told me that she had seen a sign next to the chai shop (about 1.5 km from the glacier) which was marked '66 - apparently signifying the recession of the glacier since 1966.

There were a couple of officers at the glacier when we arrived, who told us "duty, no go glacier." Ice was falling from the glacier, in the rain, so it apparently wasn't the best time to get close. "50 rupees," the officer told us. "No way," I said, and went to sit on a rock to look at the glacier, leaving Liran to bargain. "No," Liran said. "20?" the officer suggested. No-go, go-go.

We stayed another night at Bhojbasa, this time without Uri, who went back to Gangotri in the morning. There were at least three times the number of travelers staying there, and half the number of babas, who all seemed to have gone up to Tapovan that morning.

The next morning I woke up early enough to drink three huge chais and eat a bowl of chickpeas, and to talk to some of the other travelers staying at the ashram. We headed down the mountain at about 10 A.M., lazily wandering. The decline was so much easier than the incline, I could practically run it (which I did, when we passed the kilometer of the landslides).

When we arrived back in Gangotri, we were exhausted. We went to our previous guest house to retrieve our belongings, which we'd left locked in a room at a high price of 50 rupees. The owner of the guest house was nowhere in sight, and when he finally arrived he was very sad (I'm using the term "sad" lightly, to describe his fury) that we were not going to stay there another night.

We went to the Krishna ashram, a place mainly for travelers. Liran left the next morning for Rishikesh, and I ended up moving in with Uri, who was also staying there. We stayed that for two nights, and were promptly kicked out into the rain on the third for having "violated" the "rules" of the ashram. The "rule" we "violated" was returning past 10 P.M. the night before, when we'd gone into the forest with about 10 friends to make a bonfire. I apologized for my violation, though this rule was not written anywhere (there actually was a very extensive list of rules posted in our rooms, and this was not on it). The swami, who I will call here Swami Ego, said to me, "sorry? didn't know? I do not forget and I do not excuse." Our German friend Anne, who had been at the ashram for 2 weeks helping out, was also booted for this violation.

So Uri and I went back to pack, as the rain started to fall in bursts. When it cleared for a few minutes we took our stuff and went to sit in a cafe, where we sat for about six hours at a huge table with just about every traveler in Gangotri (remember, this was still the beginning of the season, so there weren't very many). We found a room, and moved on to another restaurant, where met our friends again. It was a very lazy, beautiful day.

The next morning I left with Uri, Rachel and an American named David to Gangnani, a small village housing pools of hot springs. We went for breakfast before catching the bus. My banana porridge had not yet arrived when David spilled my chai on my lap, soaking me through. I jumped up and started looking for another pair of pants in my bag, when I realized that I'd left my laundry, and with it all my pants, in the guest house. It turned out to be a very good thing to have had my chai spilled on me. On the bus I kept hitting my head on a piece of metal above me. I haven't figured out the significance of that yet.

In Gangnani we relaxed for three night and three days, in a really nice wooden guest house/chalet set above the hill. Anne joined us for a night, and then David left. We had two rooms between us, so we figured Uri would need a roommate. That's when Orian came by, completing our crew. Most of the other travelers from Gangotri were also there, in the same wooden cabins as us, so it really felt like Camp India for Adults. On the first day we strolled up to the nearby village, which with its lush setting and slate thatched roofs really looked like a fairy tale. The little creatures running around playing (beautiful children who I will post pictures of soon) made it seem all the more so like a fairy tale. The rest of the time we lazed around, going into the pools at night, eating and relaxing.

Except for Rachel and a Dutch guy named Mark, all of the campers at Camp India for Adults headed out in a jeep for Uttarkashi, where I am now, staying with Uri and Orian. Still undecided about tomorrow's journey, but I think I see a lake in the distance.

some more pictures...

2007-04-28T18:57:00.000+03:00

And more to come...
making sugar cane juice in Prakash's village
prakash and danny designing instruments
himanzu laughing at the om shanti cafe
danny and himanzu

Laxman Jhula at night

some pictures...

2007-04-28T18:45:00.000+03:00

danny reading tehilim when asked to buy monkey chapati

the ghat at svarg ashram

across laxman jhula

wedding in rishikesh

mazal tov!

the after party with satlan and danny

plantation

2007-04-27T07:23:00.000+03:00

Generally, there are two official methods of driving, the British way (on the right side of the road) and the other way (on the left side of the road). India, in its innovative glory, has discovered a third method: the middle way.

Prakash, who celebrated his 26th birthday yesterday, took me to his village about 12 km away from Rishikesh after we ate lunch, so he could pick up a letter from the village head enabling him to get a passport. He is a very good driver, so even though nearly all other vehicles on the road tend to straddle the divider lane rather than choosing a side, I feel safe with him. We left the bustle of the city and its roadside vendors, and found ourselves in the trees, on dirt paths, and soon enough, in his village, where Prakash was treated somewhat like a celebrity, with people waving from each side of the road, some stopping to talk to us.

Earlier in the week, Dani went with Prakash to his village to check out the wood he uses to make didjeridoos, and had told me that his house was little more than a shack. When we arrived, I saw that he hadn't been exaggerating. The house is made of crumbling cement with a thatched roof, and comprises three small bucket rooms swarming with flies, so different from the clean, marble-floored flat in Rishikesh Prakash has been renting for the last half year. It is the house Prakash grew up in, before his mother died of cancer and his father moved to Mussorie to do construction work. The place now belongs to his older brother, his wife and their children, who shyly stared at me, though I wasn't the first traveler to have come visit. The village itself is beautiful, a vibrant green collection of trees and fields, so quiet and peaceful.

We stayed for about half an hour, during which I managed to lose my already beaten sandal in a swampy march, soaking my pants in mud. Well, I wouldn't be a proper foreigner if I hadn't manage to do something embarassing like that, so I consider it a job well done.

I was planning to leave Rishikesh yesterday, but Dani and I decided to continue separately on our ways, so I think I will stay until Sunday, and then head up to Gangrotri with a few friends I've met here. But somewhere up there, down here, and all around, God is laughing at these silly plans of mine, so I'll keep you posted as things change (which they are bound to do).

the adventures of israeli sandals in rishikesh

2007-04-25T17:21:00.000+03:00

Shai and Adam, a couple we met at the yom ha'atzmaut party, told us about a Hindu musical jam at the Center of Light yoga center, so we picked up Prakash, his dijeridoo and my drum and went to play. It turned out be not so much a jam as a concert, which started off seeming pretty dodgy with a western duo who studied in Pakistan playing tabla and sitar while the 4-year-old daughter of a couple of Hare Krishna devotees danced in strange poses next to them only half-covered in a red and white sheet. The jam ended about 3 hours later with an Australian dude in a jodhpur beatboxing and singing reggae in loops while the whole room danced.

Afterward, Dani and I piled on to Prakash's bike, who asked us to come back to his place to sleep. It was such a treat, because of his fan that actually works and his cool marble floors. I was exhausted, having nearly passed out at the concert, and went right to bed.

My sandals, which I had fixed in Jerusalem before I left, broke again, so the next morning after dropping some stuff back off at the guest house, Prakash and I went into town to find a sandler. It is an unbelievable feeling to ride on the back of a motorcycle in the mountain air, and Prakash is a very good driver. The sandlers in India I am a little less impressed with. The first one we went to was a little thin man sitting barefoot and cross-legged on the side of the road hammering rusty nails into my shoe.

Via Prakash, I tried to tell the sandler that while he had done a fine job crudely sewing black leather on my light brown shoes, I really didn't want to step on rusty nails. Prakash told me that these were the nails everyone used. I told him that all rusty nails were once silver and there must be some fresh ones somewhere in Rishikesh. Out when the rusty nails, and in went the black thread which if left alone could last maybe a week. Five rupees to the nice man, and off to another sandler. This one had a few silver nails in his lump, but did not understand what to do with the broken leather. Prakash reasoned with him, explaining to me that he was teaching him how to fix the sandal. To no avail, so we went to the next stall over. This sandler just shook his head and handed me back my sandal. They're pretty crudely fixed now, and may break soon, but there is no real shoe selection in Rishikesh (all plastic) so I'll wait until I get to Dehra Dun in a few days.

I am treated differently by people in Rishikesh when I ride around with Prakash. Many people have made comments to him, in Hindi, which I can't understand, but I know are about me since they are all said with a gesture in my direction. I assume they have something to do with me being white and a foreigner. I've also noticed that when Indian women ride behind a man on the back of a motorcycle, they sit perpindicular to the driver, with their legs swinging over the side, not right behind the way I do. I don't really know what people think about an Indian guy riding around with a white girl, but considering that Prakash has told me that his father will pick out his wife for him when the time is right, I imagine local people may think our friendship is strange.

if monkeys could talk

2007-04-24T15:07:00.000+03:00

After we moved into Mama G's, Rishikesh started to feel more like home. That night (Sunday) Dani and I went back to Om Shanti cafe to hang out with Prakas and Himanzu and friends, but ended up haing one of those revelatory conversations in Hebrew between the two us that can only be held over chai in a land far, far away. How lucky we were that the conditions were right. The conversation, which I don't really want to get in to, basically stemmed from Dani's question, "do you know what made you the kind of woman that you are," meaning I guess independent and firey, and whatever else characterizes women that are not so dainty and like to do things like travel to India by themselves. From that question, we both went spiralling into our past, on the roof of the Om Shanti cafe, me digging up truths I'd known about but forgotten, he digging up answers he had recently begun to tap into but hadn't yet fully developed.

Monday was kind of a slow day that started late and was spent mostly wandering around the city. I'd packed lightly, really lightly, and only had one pair of pants, which until yesterday had experienced India with me to the fullest. I decided it was time to buy a new pair, which should be easy considering how cheap everything is. But I'm small and those cute little yoga pants that every tourist here wears makes me look like I'm the star of a carnival, which would be fun if I were, but I'm not. I finally found a good pair of pants, and bought two, and then ran off to my tabla lesson.

My teacher's name is Bhuwan, and I need to take pictures of him so you can understand the extent of my tabla experience. He is about 35 and tall and lanky, and has one of those funky mustaches that only and Indian man in the prime of his life can still pull off. He wears his hair greasy and slicked back to a curl on the bottom, and likes to brush it back every once in a while in a nervous gesture.

But enough about that. On the tabla, he is not nervous, and depsite the language barrier (our lessons usually sounds something like this: "no, position, very bad. yes, good. not this. this. no this. yes this. finger, no pfufff, bling. yes this,") he is a very good teacher. In my two lessons so far, I've learned nine different sounds and about 5 different patterns, which, when I learn to play them fast and correctly, will sound like songs. It is so different from the congas and the jembe and all other instruments I pretend to play, and it's very tiring, but addictive to learn.

Wandering home for dinner, which mama cooks and feeds to all her sons and daughters on the patio, an Israeli stopped us and told us about a Yom Ha'atzmaut party that night on the other side of Lakshman Jula. It was one of those parties that reminded me not to spend to much time in Kasol, the Parvati village which has become overrun by Israelis. The party was nice but cost as much as a night in a guest house, with lots of food I was to full to eat and drinks which I was too tired to imbibe, and lots of Israeli energy, which I am never really able to handle. We met some nice people though, which is always a good thing, and left after a few hours.

We went to bed late, Dani on the roof and me inside our sweltering room. I tried to sleep on the roof also, but the mosquitos attacked me, and I still don't want malaria. Dominique, a French Canadian Montrealer staying at Mama's, woke me up at 6 A.M. and we did an hour and a half yoga session, which released some of the tension that sleeping under a fan all week had shoved into my neck.

After yoga, and the post-yoga chai (there was also a pre-yoga chai, of course), and the post-yoga-post-yoga-chai-breakfast, Dani and I did laundry and then went wandering through the forest, getting ourselves mentally prepared for the Gangotri glacier, where we're trekking later this week. Later on, a little boy name Seeba latched onto us at on the Jhula and then wandered around with us, silly tourists that we are, for a few hours. He didn't say much (well, aside from "what is your name" and "seeba" he only really said "yes," even when it wasn't the obvious answer), but I love Indian kids, and he loved laughing and eating the chips we shared with him.

It's been a really long day, and I'm exhausted, but every day am loving India more and loving Rishikesh more.

I love...

2007-04-24T15:00:00.000+03:00

I love that in India, men hold hands when they walk down the street.

I love that in India, it's okay - no, it's encouraged - to believe that all is one.

I love how in India, the cows walk like the royalty they are treated as.

I love how in India, people paint "blow horn" on the back of trucks and cars, and use said horn instead of turn signals.

I love how Rishikesh bustles during the day, how its poor are saints and its children are so, so beautiful.

I love how at night, Rishikesh is suddenly so quiet and so clean it is astounding and makes you wonder if you were zapped into a different universe.

I don't love the dogs, which come out at night and nibble on people. I like the monkeys, because I've never really rubbed elbows with them before, but I don't like the way they jump without warning and sometimes make beautiful little Indian babies cry.

I love the tabla, but it is very, very hard.

I love that Rishikesh, in less than a week, has become so comfortable to me despite the fact that so much about it is so different than anything I've ever experienced.

yes, no problem

2007-04-22T11:39:00.000+03:00

It is very hard to find Indian food in Rishikesh, but there is a lot of falafel and sabich. Last night, after spending the day walking up and down Ram Jhula and looking for Svarg Ashram (the "best vibes in town" according to lonely planet) we realized we had been in svarg ashram the whole day (really very good vibes) and were hungry. We lost Eyal and Uri somewhere along the way, so it was just Dani and I that caught the rickshaw back up to Lakshman Jhula. At the Third Eye, which came highly recommended by my Israeli friends, they had a Hebrew menu, but no tali. So we left, passing all of the Israeli cuisines along the way in what seemed to be a futile search for Indian food.

Not so futile, it turns out. We ended up at Om Shanti musical cafe ("you have tali?" we asked. "Yes yes, no problem, madam," they said, though that could mean any number of things here.) But yes, no problem, Om Shanti musical cafe had a very good tali, and it turns out, an even better vibe than Svarg Ashram (take that, lonely planet).

When we walked in, we were the only customers. The owner made Dani chow mein, which he finished before my tali arrived. And when it did, it was unbelievable. Three different hot dishes, rice, chai, 3 chapatis, all for 35 rupees, which is about 3.5 shekels or 70 cents. I couldn't finish it, it was too big, so I told the owner and his friends to eat with me. At first they were reluctant, but then they did, and for the first time, we made Indian friends and caught the Indian vibe. They were all about my age, and such nice guys. We sat with them for hours, playing music and talking and drinking chai. When we first got there they had been playing a guitar with strings that buzzed painfully, so Dani fixed it for them as best he could, and then twirled out jazz chords throughout the night.

One of the guys, Prakas, told us, "I have friend from Israel who play didjeridoo, his name Iftach." Now, I know a few people named Yiftach who play didj, but it turns out that this friend was a Yiftach who has a band, "is called the giraffes," Prakas told us. "They are very famous," I told Prakas, who knows quite a few Hebrew words and makes didjeridoos himself. He invited us to come to his shop to make instruments, which is what Dani is doing right now. Dani made a funky protoype in Israel, a guitar/drum combination that sounds something like a string instrument being played underwater, and now he is trying to improve it, so he and Prakas drove off on his motorbike to a carpenter about 12 km away.

This is really the first time that I've had to be myself, and to walk around since I left Israel. I'd forgotten that I was even traveling alone. It's been great traveling with Dani, and with the other guys, but I don't want to get caught up in this group as my be-all-end-all traveling partners, and it's starting to feel like a good time to reduce our group size, because with four people things can get a little stressful. Until today we stayed at the Nigah guest house, run by a 28-year-old feeble looking stoner named Satpal whose entire vocabularly consists of "chillum, joint and boom boom. ("Satlan," we call him, to which he answers with a great big laugh, "yes, satlan, sababa.") It's been hard to convince him that not all Israelis come to India to rip their heads open with chillums, but toward the end of our stay there, he started to catch on.

We moved on this morning to Mama G's guest house, near the Bandhari Swiss Cottage. This cluster of about 5 guest houses is the most popular in the area, because it is built in the forest, and it's possible to rent a double room for 150 rupees a night (15 shekels or 4 dollars.)

There was only one room open in the whole neighborhood, which I jumped on quickly. Mama G was very nice, and said to me, "I save this room for you daughter, come back in few hour." So I paid, even though it meant we only had one new room between the four of us. At first we told ourselves (in that Hindi accent that has permeated our speech subconsciously (mostly because Indian won't understand me if I speak in my normal accent) and will certainly embarass me if it stays with me when I leave India) "no problem, we'll take it and we find another one, then fine, and if not, not." Then Dani said (after we'd already paid) "why move and share a room when we have such big separate rooms in town?" Good point Dani. So I went to Mama and said, "Mama, we are too many people, we change our mind." This did not make Mama happy. She came back with 100 rupees and said, "you get rest when room is full." Dani came back just then and said, "let's take this room and tell Eyal and Uri to do their own thing." So I told Mama, "Okay, we stay." The smile returned, and because I never signed anything or gave my passport, I needed some sort of confirmation from her. "You give me hug?" I asked. Mama forgve me, and I got my hug.

um, toto, where's Kansas?

2007-04-20T15:32:00.000+03:00

Sitting at breakfast this morning in Rishikesh, it finally hit me that I'm in India, far away from work and Israeli politics and my family and my friends and responsibility and my apartment. It's true that there are cows in the streets and monkeys on the bridges and it's true that the smells of India range between the sweetest incense and the most foul, unidentifiable scents I have ever experienced. The view from Rishikesh, however, of green mountains overlooking the Ganges River, is as beautiful as I expected it to be, and I can only imagine what it will look like when I start trekking in the hills.

I haven't been alone since I got to the gate at Ben Gurion, and saw Dani, an old friend of my cousin's who I've known for years. Somehow, the two men that were sitting in my three-seater with me wanted to move, so Dani and I sat together, and over the course of the next day and a half met at least a dozen other Israelis. Eyal joined us on the flight from Bombay to Delhi, and Uri, who never told me his name, walked with us from the base of Rishikesh where the bus dropped us off up to Laksman Juhla, the highest neighborhood in town. We got to our guest house at around 7 AM and are renting two really nice rooms (except that there is only a hole, no toilet, in mine) and each paying something like three dollars a night.

I slept for really the first time since I left Israel this morning, after breakfast. I'd closed my eyes for a few hours on the plane to Delhi, but by the time we got to Delhi I was exhausted. I knew, before I even left Israel, that I didn't want to start my trip in Delhi. Delhi is like Tel Aviv on crack and so far from what I came to India to experience. The men treat women like crap, the vendors will fall you around literally for an hour until you finally agree to buy something, and yes, the cows and their excrement freely roam the streets. I spent most of my Delhi day on Pahar Ganj, the tourist street, a place I'll be sure to avoid next time I'm in the city.

The bus ride to Rishikesh, which should take about five hours, was an excruciating eight hours. Excruciating because I have never smelt such smells, have never felt such bumps, and have never had as hard of a time falling asleep on an overnight ride. The first four hours, which started at 9 PM and included a two hour "tour" of Delhi, was my real introduction to India. The streets of Old Delhi are home to hundreds of people, lying visibly on mattresses or sitting round fires and food pots. They are not lying there to get money from passing tourists. This is simply how they live. And that particular scene extends even beyond the city parameters, I'm sure to an extent I can't even imagine.

Despite the slight discomforts and the fact that I've barely seen anything, let me just say, India is amazing.

before and after

2007-04-12T07:52:00.000+03:00

planning for a planless plan

2007-04-12T01:11:00.000+03:00

For the last few weeks, people have been asking me whether I'm scared or nervous or exicited about going to India alone. My half-hearted response, in that unfortunate monotone I haven't yet succeeded in altering, has for the most part been, "excited. No, really, I'm excited."

And I am, I'm really excited. I've been planning to take this trip for at least five years, but then I had to finish school, and then I started working at Haaretz, and then I met and became close to so many amazing people, and then got so comfortable and happy to be near my family after so long, that I had to delay my eventual date of departure. People are so skeptical of five-year plans, but just because they didn't work for Stalin doesn't mean they're not valid.

I'm a big fan of five-year plans. Some of my best plans are five-year plans. They're much more exciting than planning for this coming afternoon, and much less nerve-racking. Because now that my five-year plan lands in Delhi next Thursday, I have to admit, I'm getting a little nervous. Not about being in India, because that's still a week away, and still very exciting. No, I'm nervous about everything I have to do before I leave.

I still have to clean my room and store all my stuff, to pack my bag and to buy the right sandals, camera and vitamins, I still have to resign my lease and sublet it right over to Pucho, my new roommate's friend. I still have to have a party in Tel Aviv and a party in Jerusalem, and I have to spend time with my mom and my grandmother and my sister and brother-in-law, and my cousins and aunts and uncles and friends. I still have to see if the university has approved the creative writing program's recommendation to accept me, and to make sure the government of Israel hasn't forgotten its promise to give me free tuition.

Let the five-year plans continue. Shanti, shanti, know what I want to do and move forward, slowly, slowly. Embrace each plan, and when it goes well, go with it, and when it goes wrong, follow along with a new idea, a new plan.

I spent the weekend with about 20 amazing people at a house in the Judean Hills Shira and Ben have been taking care of this month, and got some really great advice from some friends who have traveled by themselves to India. Sitting at the table, surrounded by friends, Chani turned to Chana and said, "what advice can you give Ali about India?" Unsolicited, but so, so appreciated, I sat there and soaked up names of places and streets and bus ticket vendors, and lessons about money and people.

I'm not at all ready, but I'm getting there. Slowly, slowly. My seven-day plan starts in the morning.

Note: If you have only one leg, don't try to steal an ATM machine

2007-04-11T16:20:00.000+03:00

Pomono, California (AP) - A man who authorities say tried to steal a 1,500 pound bank ATM machine was captured on Tuesday after his prosthetic leg fell off during the getaway.

******

And then of course, there was Piglet and Piglette's unfortunately inbred offspring, with his two snouts and three eyes, forlornly posing between mirrors at a farm in Xi'an, China.

(AP)

kiss of

2007-01-31T20:08:00.000+02:00

In a country milked by war and soaked in corruption, certain limits should be set. For example, a president should not be allowed to rape an intern or an employee. They can get down and dirty, using the American model, but no forcible sex allowed. Simple rule. No forcible sex. Bad Mr. President. Now get off the stage.

A few more examples of limits that should be set. A member of parliament should not be allowed to finance personal vacations using government money. A candidate for prime minister should not be allowed to make deals with a businessman friend to work out illegally robust campaign expenses. A cabinet minister should not be allowed to sway the tender in the sale of a bank to help a close personal associate.

Get off the stage, we shout. But no, free they walk, these state leaders, with criminal probes on their heels, down a long path of unfinished allegations. Our fearless leaders.

The former justice minister, whose career nearly ended this summer and almost certainly ended today, has been convicted of forcing a 21-year-old IDF soldier to kiss him. It happened, by chance, the day Hezbollah went to war with Israel, the same day Israel went to war with Hezbollah. The soldier was finishing her service and wanted a picture with the justice minister before she left. So, they posed, he bearish and sheepish, one hand in his pocket,the other around her back. Her head nestled in his armpit, her arms wrapped around his generous middle.

Snap. Picture taken. Now what are they thinking? She smiles at him, itching to get out of his embrace. 'He's gross,' she thinks. 'Do I kiss her?' he wonders. He goes for it. Hell, it's her last day.

Bad move, Haim, right into the trap. Six months later, you are walking out of the court, a convicted sex criminal. What kind of justice minister are you? What kind of country is this? Congratulations, Haim, our misguided friend, you are now the first of our illustrious leaders to be convicted of a crime in 2007.

The irony of a justice system which convicts its justice minister first. Now that he has been found guilty, and faces up to three years in prison and a lifetime of shame, who is next? The president? The prime minister? The comatose prime minister? In this country, we may see Ariel Sharon convicted before Moshe Katsav.

Three years in jail and that whole lifetime of shame thing is quite a hefty price to pay for forcing someone to kiss you. If Katsav is convicted, he gets 16 years. That makes more sense. You force someone to have sex with you, the president of this honorable nation, then you must suffer the consequences. Especially when there are seven other allegations against you, four of them nullified because of a statute of limitations.

Katsav is a criminal. He is sick. His address to the country was pathetic. For nearly one hour, he babbled about his innocence and shouted at reporters, and generally made Israel cringe.

Haim Ramon, our 56-year-old former justice minister, is probably as scumbag as they come. What he did was offensive and inappropriate, and to top it off he lied about it, shaming the victim and attempting to exonerate himself in a pathetic and certainly unjust way.

Forcing someone to kiss you is wrong, and in many cases should be considered a crime. It is manipulative and it is invasive and it is condescending, as is touching anybody anywhere they do not want to be touched.

In this case, an employer - who happened to be an elected government minister - kissed an employee - who was, incidentally, also a soldier - who did not want to be kissed. It was a completely inappropriate situation, but was it a crime?

They were both adults. Nothing in the brief bit I have read of the indictment describes any sort of violence. It describes him inserting his tongue into her mouth and her being very upset afterward. It quotes him saying she flirted with him and her calling his bluff.

Are all unwanted kisses sex crimes, even those in which the most violently described act was that of a tongue sticking itself in an unwanting mouth? Is it a crime that should be punishable by three years in prison? The judges certainly must know more than we do.

Ramon's crime was not that he forced the young woman to kiss him, though that was the conviction. His crimes were forcing her to kiss him, while justice minister, then lying about it, while justice minister. He admitted that he kissed her, but said she wanted it. She didn't want it. He knows that now.

Seems reasonable of the court, then. Set these leaders to a higher standard and show them that if they want to exploit their positions of power, they are going to have to pay.

So that would mean that all of the other criminal leaders, elected to set an example for us Israelis, will also be convicted harshly due to their high positions, right? Maybe not. The Israeli justice system, like so many other things Israeli, is upside down and backwards.

That being said, I know nothing about justice.

eid mubarak

2006-10-28T21:40:00.000+02:00

My friend Mahdi invited me and Hannah to his village, Arabe, to spend Eid al-Fitr with him and his family. I'm used to driving past the Arab villages on my way up north on Highway 6 and through Wadi Ara, but I haven't been further inside than the roadside ceramic shops in at least 10 years, and certainly not since the Intifada began and returned to hiatus. One of the two words I could use best to express my experience is a very common Jewish feeling: guilt. The other is perhaps less particularly Jewish, but another necessary emotion of humanity: humbling.

The guilt is easy to understand. There's not much Jews don't feel guilty about, and in Israel, there's even more of a reason to feel it. Never does one feel the Arabian quality of Israel than in these villages, where nearly all the signs are in Hebrew, but only a handful, mostly students and professionals, speak fluently, and where the traditional Muslim culture flourishes. Hannah and I took a train to Haifa, and then caught a bus into the Arab "triangle" - Arabe, the famous soccer town Sakhnin, and Deir Hana. The bus was practically empty, aside from an old woman who talked to us incessantly about how she couldn't figure out what bus to take to Haifa and how she has to pay 80 shekels a day to take a cab to the city for her medical check-ups. She got off just before the turn into the triangle, and then it was just us and a Muslim woman about our age.

Mahdi and his cousin picked us up at the entrance to the city, and we drove across town to his family's land on the outskirts. We stopped to get beer for his uncles, which surprised us, considering that we were going to a celebration to mark the end of Ramadan. But Mahdi told us that only his mother and a couple sisters fasted this year, and besides, it wasn't so odd for some Muslims to drink beer. We tried to understand this according to the Jewish separation of religious and secular, but Mahdi told us it wasn't like that. They were Muslims, and Muslim is Muslim, whether one fasts or drinks alcohol. He wouldn't be allowed to drink himself until he got married, he told us - tradition is tradition.

He sat us down at a table outside the front door of an absolutely illuminating house set on a cliff above both his uncle's homes. His dad was the oldest brother, and therefore entitled to the best piece of land. Mahdi's four sisters came out, one after the other, bringing us dried fruit, and candies, and nuts and cola. Mahdi spoke to them very authoritatively, in a tone resembling a father's or employer's, which made me feel uncomfortble, not just because of the gender factor, which was obvious, but because of my own inability to say anything to them except shukran, making me feel like an snobby guest, or a mute imbecile.

That feeling grew even stronger when we went down to his uncle's yard to join the meal. The barbecue was still going strong, but the eaters were slowing down. One of his aunts jumped up to stuff Mahdi's hands full of shish kebobs, and mine and Hannah's plates with grilled onions and tomotoes and chips and salads. Again and again. They thought it was funny that we weren't eating meat, and funnier that I don't speak Arabic. My best form of communication was smiling and leaning toward Hannah for the right phrases. One of his aunts and an uncle spoke to us in Hebrew and everyone else chattered to us in Arabic, anyway, looking expectantly at me after each sentence. I just kept smiling and saying shukran.

I actually enjoyed the limited communication, in a certain way, because it gave me a chance to abandon the normal guest routine of answering questions and talking about myself, and experience Mahdi and his family. It would have been nice to understand what they were saying, but just sitting around and feeling warm with a friend's family, in a place I've never been before, was really comfortable and humbling. This was clearly an Arab world, however, and my inability to speak to them only heightened my feeling of being a Jewish immigrant, and of course, the neverending feeling of Jewish guilt.

When we finally got the courage to tell his aunts we were full, Mahdi took us on a stroll through town. The streets were packed with young people, some playing on giant air-filled giraffes and most others walking aimlessly in groups. Mahdi told us he was taking us to the one cafe in town where women were allowed in, but warned us that this might only be the second time a woman had been inside, the other time being Hannah's last visit. He told us women never went out in Arabe, at least not without their male relatives. The waiter did shoot us a questioning glance when we came in, but didn't say anything, except asking what we wanted to drink. Mahdi told us he couldn't drink alcohol at a cafe in his town, but we could if we wanted. I definitely didn't feel like drinking a beer in a place where woman aren't usually allowed.

Since we ate dinner so early, it was only 7 pm when we left the cafe. I was happy to go back to Mahdi's house to relax, but he seemed a little embarassed that there wasn't much of a night life for us to see. We sat on low mattreses and watched TV with his little brother Hamudi and their mother, who the minute we sat down threw her blanket over our legs and brought us tea and fruit and nuts. She did the same thing when Mahdi's and Hannah's friend Farid, came over. The three of them worked together last year in sadaka reut - literally friendship friendship in Arabic and Hebrew - a non-profit organization that educates Arab and Jewish kids on coexistence. They're all really comfortable with each other, and comfortable to be around, but I kept feeling nagged by the fact that we were sitting with two Arabs, in an Arab village, speaking in Hebrew. The guilt stemmed from the knowledge that no matter how far back their families were tied to the land, it was still longer than my immediate family, yet we were speaking my language, in a state that was clearly more concerned with my welfare than with theirs. And at the same time, they were Israeli citizens, but self identify as Palestinian Arabs. They would never want to be transferred to the West Bank or Gaza, as our new minister of strategic threats, Avigdor Lieberman, has suggested, but they don't really want to remain second class citizens here either.

The clear divisions between our worlds made me realize that when Jews in Israel work on coexistence, we are doing it of guilt for what we have done and what we are doing. When Arabs do it they are also doing it out of guilt, in a certain sense, but in a much less direct way. They are doing it more because of the realization that if they don't, they will remain on the fringes of a society that fears them and is at best only tolerating them as citizens. Their guilt is sometimes for what their neighbors have done, or their Palestinian brothers, but on the whole, they are considering the best course of action for the future. Many Jews feel that way too, knowing that it is only moral and secure to be at ease with our non-Jewish neighbors, but I don't think it is possible to extract the factor of guilt from the equation. Especially considering that Israel was designed to be a Jewish state, and plainly speaking, Muslims are not Jewish, no matter how much we work at coexisting.

I felt even more guilty as I sank into one of the three beds in the girls' room, while they slept somewhere else, and when we sat around eating a gloriously huge breakfast together, chewing silently for lack of shared language and of politeness. And as part of that guilt, and in part from humilty, I reminded myself to learn Arabic before I came up again for another visit.

atonements

2006-10-12T01:17:00.000+02:00

Okay, so I skipped the exciting sequal to part I of my Europe adventures. What with all the morbidness and corruption that charactizes Israel, you may have thought I got sucked into an uncomfortable black hole, or worse, Israel's current leadership, but no, I've just been lazy. In the spirit of the season, I apologize.

I will post my Amsterdam litany as soon as I stop being lazy. I promise. In the spirit of the season, though, let me be fair and admit that I still have almost a year to break this vow.

Since it's been a month since I last posted, I'll start by saying that my laziness hasn't been due to inactivity, but rather the result of returning to work, and of my recent sumbergence into one of the most intense holiday periods in my memory, and an equally revelatory birthday.

I've let my lazy inclinations override my ability to express my vivid inclinations mostly because it's much easier to blurt emotional decriments of immoral wars and political snafus than it is to lie on a couch and blabber about my insecurities or over-confidences. There, I said it.

In the midst of a particular insecurity involving a remarkable set of coincidences, someone asked me, "what are you so afraid of?" Details don't matter here, precisely because I've realized that it is details that I am afraid of. Our lives are so composed of details that it has become virtually impossible to disentangle ourselves from the figures that identify us.

By ascribing ourselves to certain definitions, we lose sight of our purpose in life. By clinging to past memories and self-assessments we hinder our own growth as much as those who file us away in their aging perceptions of us.

On my 24th birthday I realized that despite all my confidence in the work and experience that has made me the well-adjusted person I am today, I am not actually such a well-adjusted person. On Yom Kippur I realized that I had sinned more this year than ever before, if only because before this year I did not believe in the concept of a sin. It contradicted my understanding of the non-duality as the only "the."

I don't know what changed this year. Maybe it was when the concept of regret, which I had stuffed deep into the recesses of my mind, not to be used but to be remembered, finally poked out of its hiding spot and hit me in the heart. I hit my heart also, to atone for my sins, but that was largely symbolic. Maybe I'm getting old, Maybe it's the constant flux of friendships that has defined the last year of my own sedentary living among a group of wanderers. Maybe it's the way I treat my parents, or my sister. Maybe it's my fear of confrontation. Maybe it my own self-judgements.

On Sunday, after an exhausting birthday and the party my sister and I threw in her Sukkah, I sat with my friend Amy and asked her to do a birthday exercise with me. It was a heart-to-heart that followed at least two and a half others over the course of the night, and I was feeling vulnerable, but enlightened. I told Amy that what I'd learned most in recent weeks is the need to be self-critical without being self-abusing, and aware of my achievements without indulging judgements of others.

Then I asked her to close her eyes, and bring herself back to age six. We sat there with our eyes closed, still as a pair of discombobulated statues. My first grade school portrait, the one where I'm staring intensely into the camera with only the slightest hint of a smile, appears in my head, and brings me to Mrs. Powell's classroom, where one of my classmates asks me if I'm Chinese and where my boyfriend SamShmuel and I hold hands and kiss each other on the cheeks. Suddenly Sam and I are in his basement, facing each other with a set of hockey goals behind us, ready to show each other ours in exchange for a peek at the other's. I walk around the old Hillel playground, and then I am bitten by a snake, or at least I tell the office ladies that I am. I am wisked into a recurring dream of that tooth fairy period of my life, when standing on the walk leading up to my old house on Cromwell Ct., my sister's eyeball falls out of her head, and I scramble around looking for it. That leads me into another recurring dream, of a later period, but I pull myself back to first grade.

Amy and I open our eyes, for a moment, and return again to our past, this time to ten years old. My oval face plumps out and I am standing in shorts, a matching t-shirt and a Charlotte Hornet's cap on the banks of the Dan River with my parents and a distant kibbutznik cousin. I take the image from a picture in my dad's living room drawer, prompting me to tell Amy we should try to get away from viewing ourselves externally.

I find myself playing with my friend Bene, baseball, and then at her house for a sleepover. We walk upstairs, where I see her mother's wig. Her mother lies in bed, a few years before dying of cancer. Amy and I are twelve, suddenly, and I am in a classroom, where I ask a long-time classmate for a piece of gum, and where she answers, "No," firing off, "because I don't like you" when I insipidly ask her why. I'm wearing a freshjive t-shirt, and smoking my first cigarette Friday night at an NCSY shabbaton with my two cool older friends, Meatball is playing in the background and then I am back in Hillel, where I see Amy. I try to catch her eye, but the hallway is too wavy, and she just keeps smiling that frozen smile borrowed from an old yearbook, as I open my mouth on my 24th birthday in my sister's sukkah and ask her to look at me. I tell her we are in the hallway, surrounded by lockers, one of which is adorned with a Happy Birthday Ali sign autographed by everyone who has walked by and felt like leaving me a memento. She laughs, and I try to catch her eye again, but everything is still moving. With my 12-year-old hands I grab her shoulders, and look at her in the eye. She is looking back at me. In my sister's sukkah we sit completely still, not moving or touching, our eyes closed. I grasp her with my mind's arms and tell her, "I'll see you in 12 years." She doesn't hear me. I say it again.

My sister comes out to the porch, and shuts off the music. I open my eyes. So does Amy. She tells me she was looking right at me, but she didn't hear me say anything. Maybe I didn't.

italia and the dam, part I

2006-09-12T01:25:00.000+03:00

I got back from Europe almost two weeks ago, and celebrated my labor holiday by heading straight to work for eight consecutive days. My trip was whirlwind, as they always seem to be. I landed in Rome at 8 am, and caught a train downtown, hit suddenly with the realization that I'd crossed the rainbow. I met up with Shlomo and Elisha, who'd arrived in the north of the country 10 days earlier. They'd just finished what was supposed to be the highlight of my trip, venice and the rained-out alps. We wandered around sweaty Rome, an ancient-modern metropolis comprising the dirtiest and holiest aspects of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in one. We played drums on the street with some Czech guys we met near the Colosseum, inhaled pizza and beer, and found ourselves on a slow train to Napoli. Somehow I'd already spent 20 euros.

Napoli was a whim. Shlomo wanted to go to Lecce, a beach town in southeast Italy, the Italian Jamaica, he told us, though admitted he had heard conflicting reports. It was a nine hour train ride and we had to be in Pisa for a flight to Amsterdam three days later. We asked around for some place closer and picked Napoli after someone in their Rome hostel told us she had needed at least another couple of days there to fully absorb it.

One thing I thought I learned in that last few years is not to judge a place by its bus or train station. Elisha and I were skeptical. Shlomo walked across the street to find a hotel. I hung back. I didn't want to leave, but I didn't want to stay there. We kept walking toward the beach, on the side of a never-ending urban highway, and through the winding alleys. The streets and buildings of Napoli are incredible architecture, but not equipped for tourists. We walked back to our roadside resort on the highway and sat down. Elisha suggested turning back - the first twinges of a theme. Shlomo was at a different pace - twinges of another. We looked through a book and caught a cab to the one recommended hostel on the outskirts of town.

It was the least expensive place we'd stay in for the rest of the trip. The shekel has nothing on the euro, except unique pictures of Israeli heros. I went up to my room, which was stuffed with bunkbeds and a disporportionately large bathroom. My Venezuelan roommate greeted me, climbing into bed. The other roommate came out of the bathroom with a wave and a toothbrush and said, "I'm deaf."

We told each other about ourselves with notes and elementary sign language. I still remembered the alphabet that I'd taught myself in 6th grade when I used to skip morning prayers and read whatever I found laying around. As soon as it became clear to me half an hour later that her name was Alex and not Anna, we were able to understand each other almost perfectly. She was a wild woman, traveling solo around Europe after a few months of trekking with two other deaf friends. When I told her we wanted to go to Pompei to see the preserved molten expressions of fear, she slapped the bed and told me that she was going the next day.

She nixed her sleep plan and came out for beers. Alisdair introduced himself in the lounge by signing hello to Alex and apologizing for his Australian hand-language. He was a big guy with a blond ponytail and creative piercings. He drank coke and ate gnocci with melted cheese with us while we drained beers. We sat at an outdoor table sewing a conversation of Italian, English, Hebrew and sign-language with each other and the giddy waiters.

It was hot and rainy when we arrived in Pompei after trying to navigate our way through the Italian train system. The piazza was rumbling with people. When we got to the cashier, Alex tried to explain that she was deaf and entitled to a discount from the discriminatory propretiers of the historical relic. After Alex showed her the code on her Missouri driver's license, the cashier wrote back that she could only give a discount to someone with valid European permission, was Alex by any chance from the United Kingdom?

Alex said yes and pointed me out as a fellow deaf Briton. The cashier asked Shlomo if he was also from the U.K. Shlomo said "yes," in a clear American accent. The cashier handed us our free entrance passes. Elisha paid the full 10 euros. Shlomo sailed through the ticket stubber at the entrance, who then stopped Alex and me and asked us why we should get in for free. Alex said, "because we're deaf and fwe're rom the U.K."

Pompei was a huge city, almost the size of old Jerusalem. The buildings were made of ancient stone stained by the amazing colors left behind by the volcano that consumed the city 1927 years ago. It's amazing how much is intact. The whole city was unearthed in nearly perfect condition due to the preserving effects of lava. We let ourselves get lost on the stone roads, watching Mount Vesuvius try to boil. It felt alive. The eeriest relics are the magma encapsulted corpses of some poorer citizens of Pompei who were caught in a submergence of molten rock that fateful day at work after all of their wealthier neighbors had heard the forecast and evacuated the city.

It started to rain, and everyone took cover next to abandoned shops. Alex pulled out a blue poncho in a Mary Poppins sort of way, and skipped on down the street, oblivious to the rain.

We had agreed to go on to Firenze together that night, where Alex promised a couple of free beds from a friend she'd met on couchsurfers. Shlomo and Elisha didn't want to go back after already having spent two days there, but it sounded like a great idea to me. A few hours later we found ourselves on a platform for a train to Firenze that was supposed to have left 20 minutes before. Alex and Alisdair had caught the train just before that, having more decisively evaluated their budgetary options and used their ticket-buying skills. Elisha and Shlomo and I decided after a tense hour to go to Rome. I still wanted to go north after that, so we agreed if there was still a train to Firenze when we arrived in Rome, we'd go there, even if it was 3 in the morning. No matter that we'd vetoed a ticket via Pisa from Napoli that would have brought us into Firenze at 3:30 anyway.

The Rome train station was emptier than we'd seen it and the next train to Firenze was at 6 in the morning. Elisha checked the time, We had 6 and a half hours to kill. There was a train leaving for Lecce in 15 minutes.

We stood next to the platform for a few minutes, then silently filed our way to the street. We stopped in at one hostel, then another. Twenty-eight, 30 euros, we were told after walking up four stories, but only if we had booked a bed in advance. We hadn't. Back down the stairs. Into another hotel, up as many floors as the last, but this time in a rickety old elevator large enough for two slim Italians and an operator. Reasonably priced, so we gave him our passports and paid. He showed us our room, next to his desk, with two single beds, and told us we would have to go to sleep right away as there was no extra key to the building. Back into the elevator. Elisha and I waited on the corner while Shlomo went in to a hotel to ask if they had room. I saw another hotel on the ground floor on the corner, so I went in to ask. Twenty euros and we could use the internet, the manager told us in Italian. Fanan.

We collapsed onto our beds, three floors of tall stairs above ground. Shlomo drank a coke, and then took a beer after Elisha and I counted the ethics of drinking from a minibar. I took the other beer, and Shlomo drank two fruit juices.

I was ready to go to Firenze right away in the morning, as we planned, but Shlomo decided it would take only ten minutes to get to the station, and stayed in bed until I had already gone down to use the internet. He came down 10 minutes later, and paid for the minibar. We got to the train station after the time I thought the train was leaving, but with 15 minutes to spare before its actual departure.

When we got to Firenze, we discovered the art of buying tuna fish, bread and cheese at the supermarket. Elisha discovered the art of boxed wine for a euro. He bought four.

We stayed in Firenze long enough to have lunch, and then got back on the train to go to Livorno. We didn't know anything about Livorno, but we could get there for five euros and then take a short train to Pisa in the morning. The book told us that we could camp on the beach.

An hour and a half later, exhausted by the train, we arrived in Livorno. I got flashbacks of Napoli's loneliness. We pointed to a map and said "mare" to numerous passersby once we got of the train, but nobody seemed to know. I wanted to go back to Firenze. Shlomo said he was staying and was going to go out on the town. I tried to convince Elisha to come with me. Neither of us had very much money on us and I knew that if I spent money on a room for a third night in a row that I would have a very boring time in Amsterdam.

The train to Firenze was leaving at 8:45. It was 8:30. Alisdair called me on Elisha's phone and said there was an extra bed for me at Alex's couch-surfing friend's house, but no room for Elisha or Shlomo. They wanted to stay. I told them they could probably sleep on the floor there. They didn't want to spend another hour and a half on the train. Neither did I. 8:42. We left the station.

On the other side of the tracks, in the exit behind us, Livorno was a very clean Italian suburb. I stopped someone on a moped and asked him where the mare was. He pointed down the road, trenta kilometers. I put my hands together under my cocked head and asked if we could sleep there. He said si.

We walked toward the beach, even though the map told us there was no beach, only a marina. Shlomo went into a hotel to ask about prices. Elisha and I had decided we were either going to sleep on whatever version of a beach or meet some friendly dreadlocked Italians at a bar. I wandered off to find the internet. I discovered that in Italy, police officers eat ice-cream instead of doughnuts. When I came back, Elisha was carrying my backpack and Shlomo was telling me he got a very good deal on a room and Elisha and I could each have a free bed if we wanted.

We wanted. We made spaghetti with cream of mushroom soup and drank boxed wine, then conquered Livorno. Well, we walked to the beach and saw that it was a marina with an enchanting old fortress, and found a cobblestone alley with a bar and our dreadlocked Italians, and then Shlomo went back to the hotel while Elisha and I drank wine on a ledge one hundred meters above a canal.

The next morning we went to aeroporto Pisa, to catch our flight to Eindhoven. The airport was the size of a small town bus station, with security just as lax. Shlomo consumed everything he didn't want to take on the plane with him, and we went to wait by one of the three flight gates.

I'll save Amsterdam for part II. (Don't be fooled by the first line of the previous post.)

truckin

2006-08-25T13:13:00.000+03:00

I'm in Amsterdam right now on a semi-spontaneous trip to Europe. I was supposed to leave for Italy early last week, but because of wars and all, I was told to cancel my trip. The day after the cease-fire, my boss told me to get a ticket. So I did, and a day and a half later I was in Rome.

I met up with two friends in Italy, and we traveled around the south and center of the country for half a week, and then flew to Amsterdam, where we'll be till early next week. We've met and traveled with an amazing deaf woman traveling around Europe by herself, an Australian cop who speaks Italian and has numerous facial piercings, a repented Newark gangster, and a couple from Argentina who perform circus acts across Europe.

I'll write more about it later, just posting to let everyone know where I am.

operation, war, or quagmire

2006-08-14T02:30:00.000+03:00

I've become an experienced obituary writer this month, and war savant, and political adviser. I've become a real Israeli this month, tied to the news and expecting the worst. I've become an old woman scared for our boys who will never be men, and scared for the children, and our parents, and our animals, and of a government of inexperienced leaders I know I can do nothing to stop.

113 soldiers died this month. Most were civilians called to duty, not by choice, as all Israeli men between the ages of 18 and basically 40 are required to do. We hear about soldiers' deaths usually eight hours before we are allowed to tell the world, to make sure the families get to hear first. We say 25 people were wounded "in various conditions" when we mean 15 people killed and 10 moderately to seriously wounded. I hear about missiles falling on air force bases just meters from my mother's house, and while I call her to scare her, I write that a rocket fell somewhere in the vicinity of her region.

Every time the names of the soldiers are released, I see pictures of them on our photowire, and write a short blurb about their short lives and post it on the site for the next 12 hours, until the next batch of soldiers. I look up and down the list quickly, looking for my friend, my friend's little brother, my friend's friend, my cousin's former classmate. Sometimes I find them.

Sometimes I see a picture of a guy my age who I never met and wonder if I was supposed to marry him. I think of his families who are so real, literally like almost every family in Israel, who have spent the last day, week, month, or 20 years, worrying about their son who, in his role as dutiful Israeli citizen, male protector of the Jewish nation, was putting his life on the line somewhere in a hostile country. Their son, but a soldier. Their son, now another collection of photos and a short video played at memorial day services with tearful music and testimonies of good servitude in the Israel Defense Forces. Their son, a war statistic, pushed into the quagmire. Their son, a pawn pushed forth by a country fighting blindly.

As Uri Misgav so eloquently writes in Haaretz,

The last Israel Defense Forces soldier to die before the cease-fire goes into effect will not know that he is the last. Nevertheless, it is possible that, in the split second that his life ends, he may just manage to feel some kind of vague, surprising discomfort.

Contrary to literary traditions, he will not particularly resemble the hero of Eric Maria Remarque's novel "All Quiet on the Western Front," who was killed a few hours before the cease-fire was declared, ending World War I. Remarque's hero at least died without knowing that an agreement on the end of hostilities was being cobbled together behind his back. The last soldier to be die before the cease-fire goes into effect will die when the timing and conditions of the cessation of hostilities are already known to all.

This war was called hastily, but it was never called a war. Our defense minister and our chief of staff called an operation of soldiers to wipe out the Hezbollah. They must have really believed this was possible. We haven't exactly been winning with the Palestinians, but we certainly haven't been losing. One month later, and thousands of lost futures and destroyed families and lives later, the IDF is still carrying out "an operation." An operation to remove the cancer from Lebanon and our northern front. An operation performed by interns, not doctors. We have all lost tremendously.

This is the longest battle-themed war in Israel's history, they say. For some reason, the Intifada, and Nablus, and Jenin, and the Gaza Strip don't count, maybe because there it was the IDF aggressing against a relatively unarmed population. Hezbollah, a guerilla organization, has buffed itself up since we last visited Lebanon, building a 9,000-strong force armed with thousands of long-range missiles supplied by Iran, a supposedly nuclear power backed by the Khomeini Revolutionary Guard, and by Syria, sovereign Lebanon's enemy/mistress.

No more. I got into an argument with a friend the other day, trying to convince her of the conclusion I reached 32 days into the most updated war, and 13th most updated month, of my life. I told her we should withdraw from Lebanon. I told her we had no right to conquer Lebanon. This war is with Hezbollah, a portion of Lebanon, but not with Lebanon itself, a sovereign state filled with civilians who did nothing to us and did nothing to deserve this fate. I told her the Lebanese army needs to deploy to regain control of the south, along with an international force until things tide over. I told her Israel should do all its negotiating through the UN instead of making unilateral decisions on the fate of millions of people.

She told me Israel needs to fight because this can't keep happening. She told me we were a nation that had been persecuted for centuries, and could under no circumstances weaken ourselves to the brute of anyone. She told me Israel should conquer south Lebanon until Lebanese no longer want to live there, to wipe out the Hezbollah once and for all.

My friend is a very reasonable person. She doesn't want to wipe out Lebanon. She just wants to protect Israel. She was born into war.

I went to work right after that conversation, and saw that a UN resolution had been reached, that a cease-fire was called for Monday morning, and that Lebanon planned to deploy its troops in south Lebanon along with an international force. Lebanon had already agreed to the cease-fire. So had Nasrallah, grudgingly. Olmert was going to talk to the security cabinet the next day.

Then Kofi Annan came out and said he'd spoken to Olmert, he'd spoken to Siniora, everything was all worked out. The cease-fire would begin at 8 A.M. Monday. IDF troops would withdraw as international forces moved in. Cease-fire? Cessation of hostilities? Armistice?

About an hour ago, the IDF called for its forces to begin withdrawing, effective immediately, except in cases of self defense.
Earlier in the day, Hezbollah forced the Lebanese cabinet to cancel its meeting on the cease-fire, saying it was not willing to discuss disarmament. It is hard to believe that this cease-fire will last even days, but it's nice to have some sort of respite. Does this mean I'll stop thinking tonight is the night for the Zelzal to hit Tel Aviv?

152 Israelis have been killed among them 39 civilians. Over 1,000 Lebanese have died. And yes, we are still bombing Gaza, but let's talk about that later.

when in war, do as the...

2006-08-12T23:29:00.000+03:00

Israeli Arab columnist Sayed Kashua writes in Haaretz,

no comment

What a mess, ya'allah. And I was one of those who believed the people who said the war would end by this week. Wow, you have no idea how much I hate wars. Depression is not the word. Now I think the phrase "The war will be over this week already" is permanently true, like the idea that messiah will always come.

"Quiet now," I shout at my little girl, who is bugging me incessantly and not letting me lie on the sofa like a human being and watch a little news.

"Daddy, daddy!"

"I swear, if you're not quiet, I'll lock you in your room," I shout. "What kind of way is that to talk to the girl?" scolds my wife, she being involved in the field of education and whatnot. "She's not letting me watch television. War, damn it, war." "So what?" my wife shouts. "Why are you letting her see these scenes anyway?"

"Do you want me to switch to Al-Jazeera Kids? Fine. There, between Tom and Jerry and Power Rangers, they show clips with children's bodies."

My daughter cries a little and I feel even worse. "Come here, sweetie, come here. I'm really sorry. It's because of this movie. Remember I told you that movies aren't real, that there's no way the cat can fall from a 100-story building and still keep running after that? It's the same thing. A movie, only they call it war. See the red? That's ketchup, they wash it off later in the shower."

"That's not true, Katyushas are falling in Haifa and Safed, we were there on holiday," the girl adds, weeping. "You promised a holiday, sea, hotel, after day camp, and you didn't do a thing. You lie all the time."

"It's not nice to talk to Daddy like that. Daddy never lies. As soon as this movie that they're making in the north is over, we are going on holiday."

"Daddy, look," she shouts with enthusiasm and points to the screen. "Take me there, Daddy, that's where I want to go." The image on the TV screen is of small children playing with inflated things, children in bathing suits and a lot of games. "There, Daddy, take us there."

"That's Gaydamak's tent city."

"Yes, Gaydamak, take us to Gaydamak."

"There's no way. We can't go."

"You're a liar."

"You can't talk to Daddy like that. Get going, off to your room."

"What kind of way is that to talk to the girl?" my wife says, getting up from the sofa and taking her by the hand. "Come on, sweetie, don't cry, come on, you should be asleep already."

What nerves, ya'allah. There's no end to it. What am I going to do? The girl is right - I've been promising her a holiday for half a year already, sea, pool. What can you do - war. "What happened to you with her?" - my wife has returned to the living room - "Do you have any idea what you look like?"

"How would you like me to look, exactly?"

"All right, we're all on edge, but there's a limit."

I go back to staring at the war. Ya'allah, how do you get out of this mess? Of all the options in the world, I had to be born an Israeli Arab, what shit it is. I don't have many choices. No matter how I look at it, I have only two options: kowtowing or militancy. There's no middle ground. I checked out all the possibilities, thought of a million different formulas. Nothing. I don't have a lot of time and I have to decide what I am: an ass-licker or an extreme nationalist. It's a hard choice.

I tell you, in a desperate attempt to find a way out of this trap I watched all the Arabs who were interviewed on television, I read everything they wrote in the Israeli papers, I followed their shouts in the Knesset, but none of the precious Israeli Arabs delivered the goods.

If you come and say that we are all in the same boat - the fact is that people are being killed in Nazareth, in Haifa and in the Arab villages in the Galilee - that there is an alliance of life and an alliance of death with the Jewish people, and at the end of your remarks express the hope that the war will end, people will say it's because you are looking after numero uno, that you don't want to offend your boss, and above all because you're afraid to lose your National Insurance. If you attack the government's policy and the military way of thought and call for an end to the bloodshed on both sides, people will say that the sea is the same sea and the Arabs are the same Arabs and that they all want to throw the Jews to the sharks and have done with them.

True, there are also a few Jews, not many, but there are some who speak against the war on television, but that doesn't mean under any circumstances that they support Hezbollah. They fall within the legitimate framework of the Israeli internal debate, and you don't. So what do you do, damn it?

I didn't see even one Arab who made a good impression. I watch them on TV and have pity. Why do they accept every offer to be interviewed, the fools? You can understand politicians who want to impress their voters, but people from all kinds of organizations and bodies - don't they get it? Don't they understand that they will look ridiculous no matter what? The fix is in. There is no way to come out looking good.

When they are asked, "So what does the Arab public think about the developments?" the meaning is actually: admit it, admit you support Nasrallah, say you abhor the state, you fifth column, you, every one of you. There is no room here to be against war as such. Hey, who are we kidding ? Arabs have suddenly become pacifists? Vegetarians? Hey, tell us another one.

When it comes to the Israeli media, the best thing an Arab can do in wartime is shut up. Abstain, not appear, not write. Because the Israeli target audience will treat what they say with more than a grain of salt, if at all. You don't really wield influence. No one listens to you. And if they do, it's only to reinforce positions they already hold, most of which are against you.

Attempts at self-defense and citing concern for coexistence are useless slogans, most of which will go down within the framework of the response, "Yeah, yeah, sure, why not? Coexistence. We'll show you what coexistence is."

The only way I can think of that can satisfy the interviewer and after him the Israeli viewer is to appear in a Kach movement T-shirt and pound on the tank in the backdrop, while screaming, "Pulverize them, don't leave a stone standing, pulverize."

"Tell me," I ask my wife, "what's better, kowtowing or militancy?"

"What do you want from me?"

"No, nothing. I think I'll go on holiday until the war ends."

"That could take time, no?"

"Noooooo, they said a week."

plea

2006-08-10T01:48:00.000+03:00

I'm sitting in my apartment listening to my itunes on party shuffle. Fifteen Israeli soldiers were killed fighting today in Lebanon. Fourteen Lebanese were killed yesterday at a funeral for 15 other people. In another Lebanese town a man lies moderately wounded - a professional term better understood to us layman as "just below life-threatening" - while his wife and son fight for their lives, unknowing of the rest of their family's deaths. Thousands of northern Israeli residents who have spent the last three weeks huddled in fear in shelters as rockets and missiles explode all around them are migrating southward, refugees of war. The majority of the recent IDF deaths have been reservists, people who were killed just a day after being notified that they must leave their families, work, freedom, lives to don uniforms, kill, and get ready to give their lives for the Israeli cause. The rest of the soldiers were kids whose first taste of life away from home as been combat.

Israel is exploding, and so is Lebanon. People are being killed every day, some for sitting at home, others as gun-yielding Israeli military cattle. None of them want death. None of them want innocent deaths, on either side. On both sides of the border, civilians want peace. In Israel these civilians sometimes wear uniforms, because they have too. Some of them wanted to be fighters, wanted to give their all to defend their country. Defense can mean offense, they reasoned, because if we don't actively defend ourselves, who will. A lot of the Hezbollah fighters are kids, too. They have a cause too. I don't understand it. I don't understand their form of resistance. They want us decimated. We want the same of them.

Lebanon, I wanted to meet you, I wanted to see you. I don't want to kill you. I want you to get rid of Hezbollah, the cancer within you that has destroyed you by attacking Israel when it knew full well that Israel would plow through Lebanon without mercy in order to wipe it out.

Israel, I want to love you. You are my home and I do love you. I want us to get rid of the cancer within is that pushes us toward war at every nudge from our neighbors. You shouldn't have done this. They picked a fight with us, those bastard Hezbollahniks, but we didn't have to respond like this. We didn't have to kill all these people. They are dead now, because of us. So many of our own are dead or refugees now because we haven't figured out yet to stop listening to the American war-mongers and use our words, not our arms. The Americans speak a language of war. Hebrew is a language of logic, zionism was supposed to be a language of defense. Why have you stained my flag with innocent blood? Why are you making my language so offensive?

The irony is that the person currently updating the Israeli dictionary is Amir Peretz, former man of peace, who is now the proponent of this war. I voted for him. He told me he wanted to eradicate poverty, and discrimination against Arabs. He told me he wanted a Palestinian state. He told me he didn't want to fight.

But now that he's sitting in the control room, he keeps pressing the red button. What exactly is the view from there? Is it one of desperation? Is it one of blood? It must be a very hazy control room, because the logic is lost in this war. Our leaders are seeing only red.

Life is exploding. My building shook last night, probably from the air traffic, and in my dream's eye I saw rockets exploding around me. The other day I ran to the door when I heard a loud sound, my keys poised to unlock my apartment and run downstairs to the storage room for safety. My very level-headed friend Mati told me he had a bag packed next to his bed just in case.

My boss told me today that I couldn't go to Europe next week as I planned because Mati is going to be called up for reserve duty. They need me on the site. I've been working there for 13 months, up to my ears in war stories every day - I just want to leave this crazy place, have some peace for a few weeks. But what can I do? I want a vacation, but I can't take it because my country has gone to war and is taking my friends with it. I want a vacation, but I need to be here. How could I even take a vacation now?

I don't know if my writing is reflecting the desperation with which I write this post. I don't give a shit about my vacation. I give a shit about the loneliness of my country, the destruction of my beautiful north and its people, the destruction of beautiful Lebanon and its people, the war-infused frenzy that has brought my country back to misguided patriotism and Lebanon into renewed hatred of Israel. I don't want war. I don't want destruction. I don't want death. I don't want hatred.

Israel, we are renewing the hatred around us. WAR DOES NOT WORK. Olmert. Peretz. Halutz. Don't you remember how much we are fucking up in Gaza? Did you really think this was the answer?

Stop fighting. Take negotiations into your own hands. Negotiate with Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora. Let the international force in. Let the Lebanese troops in. Stop aerial bombing. Decimate the Hezbollah, but through logic, not blind explosions. Let us live. Let us have a vacation, from war and from destruction. Let Lebanon continue to exist. Let Israel continue to exist. Let us live.

wandering jews

2006-08-09T05:23:00.000+03:00

Nir Hasson of Haaretz writes,

The wandering Jew: Out of money, northern refugees refuse to leave the hotel

For the last three weeks now, Meir Yanko has struggled to find a place for his family. The family fled Safed on the third day of the war, after the first volley of Katyushas to fall on the city hit their grandparents home. Yesterday Yanko recounted their journeys:

"At first we arrived at the King Solomon hotel in Jerusalem, from there we moved to the Jerusalem Pearl hotel, which offered us a free night, the next day we went to a hotel in the Dead Sea for a discount price, after that we continued to Eilat.

"From there to a hotel in the center, and on to a host family in Petah Tikva, after which we spent a night sleeping in our car at the Masmia (Re'em) junction, with me guarding outside. On Friday we arrived at my sister's in Hadera, but then rockets fell in Hadera, and the kids had flashbacks, so we fled again to the center. Since yesterday we're in Jerusalem again, at the Ariel hotel. It's safest here, but I still don't know what we'll do tonight".

So far the Yankos have spent NIS 18,000 on their enforced vacation. The father says he cannot afford it any longer, but returning to Safed is not an option.

"The kids are crying, they will not return. I don't want to sound like a poor beggar, but we're mentally exhausted," says Yanko.

The Yankos are only one of tens of thousands of families who left their northern homes following the start of the Katyusha firings. What started as a vacation from the war, funded by donations, is increasingly turning into the sad plight of families who keep relocating.

The troubles of the refugees could be seen as an exemplary case study of a welfare system that relies on donations rather than on regulated government funding. Those who financed the exodus themselves have fallen into financial difficulties. Others, who were supported by donations, are being asked to leave the hotels and return to their homes despite the ongoing bombing.

Suicide threat

Last Thursday one of the guests at the Kings hotel in Jerusalem threatened to kill herself because she was asked to leave. Police cars and ambulances arrived at the scene. The woman, together with a group of 60 Kiryat Shmona residents, came to Jerusalem with the aid of a private travel agency called Be'ad, which raised funds from private donors.

"The next day a riot started. The group refused to evacuate, and after some deliberations they received four extra days in a Dead Sea hotel", said Prima Hotels CEO Eti Levy.

Yesterday those four days were used up, and the story repeated itself. For eight hours the members of the group sat in the hotel lobby and refused to board the buses that were there to take them back to their homes in the north.

"On the one hand it's heartbreaking. On the other, I don't know what I can do. The Kiryat Shmona municipality told me to call the police to force them to leave. But I can't do that," she says.

"We must divide these moments of relief between many people", explains Yaakov Fried, CEO of Daat Travel Services. After some deliberations, and with the help of the Ra'anana municipality and of the nonprofit Parents for Pluralistic Education, a place for them was found in the Meitarim school in Raanana.

Seven in a classroom

One of the group members is Antoine Salame, a former member of the Southern Lebanese who lives in Kiryat Shmona. He fled south with his children, while his mother and sisters who live in a village in southern Lebanon have fled north to Beirut.

"Now we are here in the school, seven of us in a classroom. Since the war broke out, there is no work. I can't afford to return home," he says.

Ilana Mushkin, head of the Parents for Pluralistic Education says the school is available for the people from the North until August 27. "We hope that by then the government will find a solution", she adds.

A group of 500 residents of Nahariya who stayed in the Be'er Sheva Naot Midbar hotel, funded by the Sakta Rashi Foundation, found themselves in similar circumstances. Two days ago the group members refused to leave the hotel, after a week-long stay. One of the group members, Amos Gabriel, turned to the office of Defense Minister Amir Peretz, with whom he is acquainted from the time he was head of the workers' committee in the Hanita metal factory. Following Peretz's personal intervention, a temporary solution was found, plus funding to house them in several places in the center and in the south.

Tanya Gliatman from Carmiel, her 4-year-old daughter Sonya, her infant son Yuval, and her elderly mother have stayed for the last two weeks in the WIZO Hadassim boarding school in the Sharon. For the first week of bombing they were still in the shelter, but after the little girl started suffering from anxiety, they decided to go to the first place that would take them in. Now she is worried that with the coming of the school year, they will again have no place to go.

She has no intention of returning to Carmiel while it is still within Katyusha range. "One Katyusha fell on my daughter's playground, another on my workplace. I'm afraid to go back, and I haven't got the slightest idea what we'll do if we are forced to leave", she said.

She is full of appreciation for the school's staff, but is angry with the government: "So far those who helped the refugees were private and philanthropic bodies. The state has vanished."

Five hundred and fifty refugees from the North were taken inton the boarding school since the beginning of the war; in normal times it is home to 200 youths. A week from now the youth are supposed to return to the boarding school and prepare for the opening of the school year. As of now their return is on hold, and headmaster Zeev Twito is debating whether he should push the refugees to return to their bombed homes in the North or to postpone the opening of the school year. Every day he gets calls from families in the north who beg for a place to stay, and lately decided to house additional families from Kiryat Shmona in the gym, for lack of another location. All 84 youth villages and boarding schools, which have so far taken in around 8,000 people, are faced with the same problem.

Education Minister Yuli Tamir does not rule out a delay in the start of the school year due to the situation. "At the moment we do not plan to evacuate anyone," she says. "There is no great harm in delaying the school year by a week."

'cross-fire'

2006-08-08T22:15:00.000+03:00

The Associated Press writes,

Ali Rmeity lies broken and bandaged on a hospital bed, wincing in pain. Three of his children are dead and his only surviving son is in intensive care - but he doesn't know this yet. Doctors fear telling the 45-year-old now would be a bigger blow than he can sustain.

Rmeity was at home with his wife and four children shortly after nightfall Monday when Israeli missiles slammed into their apartment building in the predominantly Shiite southern Beirut suburb of Chiah.

At least 30 people were killed - half from Rmeiti's family - as workers continued to retrieve bodies from under the slabs of concrete Tuesday.

"I had been feeling tired, so I went into the bedroom and laid down on the bed. Five minutes later the bombs fell and I found myself crying for help under the rubble," Rmeity said Tuesday. "My wife who was on the balcony was thrown in the air. They found her somewhere, I don't know where."

Rmeity's wife, Hoda, was being treated in an adjacent room at the Mount Lebanon hospital near Beirut. She has severe lung injuries and several fractures. Their 9-year-old son, Hussein, was in intensive care with head trauma and brain contusion.

The Rmeity's three other children - Mohammed, 22, Fatima, 19, and 16-year-old Malak - were killed. So were Ali Rmeity's parents, his three brothers and two sisters. His brother's family who lived in the same building also died.

In total, 15 of Rmeity's relatives were killed, according to hospital officials and relatives. But Ali doesn't know it. He only was told that his mother, an elderly woman, had died.

"I don't know anything about the rest of my family. Some people have told me they're being treated in another hospital, but I don't know whether to believe them," said Rmeity, who was wearing a head bandage and a white hospital robe that couldn't hide the injuries and burns on his body. Doctors said his injuries were not life threatening.

"I know that my mother died, may God have mercy on her soul," he said, his mouth quivering and his green eyes filling with tears.

The hospital's owner, Dr. Nazih Gharious, said it was too early to tell Rmeity of his loss, which might prove to be too much of a shock. Rmeity's brother-in-law, Ibrahim Jomaa, repeatedly warned visitors not to slip and tell Rmeity that his children were killed.

"If he finds out he will surely die," he said.

Rmeity said his children had been scared for days and wanted to leave their apartment even though the district of Chiah so far had been spared from Israeli airstrikes. Friends repeatedly told him to come stay with them.

"But I didn't want to impose on anyone, we're a big family," he said. Now he wishes he hadn't been so stubborn.

"If I had listened to them, this would not have happened," he said putting his head in between his hands.

drafted art

2006-08-07T03:11:00.000+03:00

Mobius drew my attention to this petition drafted and signed by Israeli artists calling for an end to the war in Lebanon and Israel. Check out the gallery of signatures.

the abrahamic war of attrition

2006-08-06T07:50:00.000+03:00

I

I remember when I was a little kid, the idea of the wars in Israel was very exotic and exciting to me. I had never lived under war before, and all I knew of it was what I read in books. I was in Israel during the first intifada, during the hijacking of the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and sporadically throughout the entire first war in Lebanon, I just didn't really understand it as war. They were all incidents so far from my comprehension. I liked the idea that the war in Lebanon, "Peace in the Galilee," as it's called in Israel, started the year that I was born. I liked the idea of my country fighting a war for peace, especially since I never had to feel it.

This war isn't romantic, it's desperate and fruitless.

The fear of the defense establishment in Israel is that Hezbollah is waging a war of attrition on Israel. To Israel, this notion is absurd. It has been fighting its war of attrition already for nearly 60 years. It was born in imbalance and has not yet found security. Israel's security situation is not just one of civilians dying. Israel is suffering an existential crisis. Every attack on Israel or in Israel is a battle of the brawns between a country that is sick of trying to prove its right to exist and guerilla populations trying to prove it otherwise. Every attack on Israel is an attempt weaken it, to force it to let go of territory it conquered in war or mandate. Israel cannot coexist with its neighbors because its existence depends on territory that once belonged to its neighbors. To its neighbors, Israel can exist as a concept, but not in practice.

Israel has always responded in defense, leading it ultimately to crisis. Now that Israel has the means to not only defend itself but act as aggressor, it has jumped to the occasion. Israel does not want another war of attrition. It presents itself as aggressor to avoid every having to be in the defense position in a war of attrition. Security of it existence is its primary concern, not the safety of its citizens. Every 18-year-old is required to join the army. Every citizen has a responsibility to preseve Israel's existence.

Israel is now faced with an obstacle it hasn't seen in years, and had hoped it would never see again. It is under siege. Residents of the north have become refugees to the south. The death toll is rising. During the intifada, the fear was everywhere. Everybody feared for their life. You couldn't get on a bus without thinking you could die. Now you can't go to sleep at night without thinking that.

In Tel Aviv, we keep telling ourselves we know more than Hezbollah. They say they have missiles that can reach Tel Aviv. We scoff at that, even as missiles reach Hadera, 20 km north of here. Who are we kidding? Hezbollah is backed by Syria and Iran. If we so much as touch Syria, we will be wiped out. The war of attrition will explode in our faces, and we will find ourselves once more fighting for existence.

We still have the upper hand. This whole thing started because two soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah just two weeks after another soldier was kidnapped and two others killed by Hamas, a legitimate political leader. We felt attacked from all sides again. Not just by militants now, but by war-like guerillas. Our government is ever so reluctant to call this conflict a war, which it obviously is, because a war means one legitimate army fighting another. It means fair game for redivision of land by military means. Our right to the West Bank and to the Golan according to international agreements is by military might alone. Syria attacked us and we took the Golan. Jordan attacked us and we took the West Bank. Egypt attacked us and we took the Gaza Strip.

Now Hezbollah is attacking us, and telling us to give up Shaba farms. If Hezbollah wins, they will try to force us to cede territory to Lebanon. In all fairness, we do not have to oblige. If Lebanon gets involved, and wins, we will be forced to give them what they want.

In the Middle East we know that this war will not end until one of the populations is destroyed, or until everybody comes to their senses and stops fighting. As long as we have what they want, they will not leave us alone. As long as there are Jews living in a ruling state of Israel, the Palestinians will fight us. The Palestinians don't want to live under a Jewish state. They want to live in this territory under their own state. Our interests are impossible to reconcile.

Palestinians and Israelis share an existential crisis, of different porportions. Palestinians and Israelis both have no concept of future. We can't plan because we have no idea if our lives will be tomorrow as they are today. We know that we are living in a perpetual war of attrition. We are an impossible contradicition. We will only co-exist - each of us will only be able to exist - if we lose the ideology and remember our humanity. The Palestinians have allies, and so do we. It's all out war. May the strongest survive.

II.

My friend Zim and I broke the cardinal rule of coexistence last week, and talked history with our Arab friend Mahdi. Zim, a Yeminite Jew, tried to explain to Mahdi, an Arab Palestinian, that he too was an Arab. Mahdi would have none of it. "It's impossible," he said. "You can't be a Jew and an Arab."

"But my grandmother's mother tongue is Arabic," he protested.

"You are either a Jew or an Arab, you can't be both," Mahdi shot back.

"But my family lived in Yemen for a thousands years," Zim told him.

"It's impossible to be both," Mahdi said.

"Can you be a Christian and an Arab?" Zim asked him.

"Yes," Mahdi answered.

"A Muslim and an Arab?"

"Yes."

"But not a Jew and an Arab."

"Impossible."

Mahdi told us the history of the Arabs. To him it started with Muhammed, with the beginning of Islam, when the Arabian empire took flight. He told us Muhammed was the 25th and last prophet, who followed and solidifed the visions of Christianity and Judaism. He told us that Muhammed spoke to God, and then spread the word, forcibly, to the Arabian people who had no religion or concept of God. His divine purpose was to convert everyone to see the truth and beauty of Islam.

We told him our history of world. He was not pleased about it. "Are you telling me that the Jews started it all?" he asked.

"No," we assured him, as we waxed neo-Isaacian nostalgiac.

The history of the world (or at least part of the Middle East) according to Zim and Aliyana

The Arabs and the Jews are cousins, descended from jealous brothers who were fated to spend their lives in testosterone-flared civil war. Isaac and Ishmael, sons of Abram. Abram was a descendent of the Semites, and spoke a language vaguely resembling Hebrew and Arabic. He spoke to God, realized that all is one, broke his father's idols and heart, and left his home for the the Mediterranean coast. He fell in love with his cousin Sarai, but couldn't conceive with her. She gave him her maidservant, Hagar, who quickly bore him his first child, Ishmael. God had told him before pushing him into nomadism, that he would be blessed to populate the world with seed as numerous as the stars in the sky. Ishmael was the first seed.

God never told Abraham, as he became known, that his offspring would get along. When Sarah finally gave birth to Isaac, Abraham was thrilled, and Sarah was jealous. She threw Hagar and Ishmael out of her tents, and sent them wandering through the desert to Arabia. Meanwhile, Abraham showed God how strongly he believed in him, by offering his beloved son as a sacrifice upon God's request. God like that, but it was only a test.

Isaac was Sarah's child, and therefore Abraham's favorite. Ishmael was a half-orphan exiled to Arabia. Isaac stayed in Canaan, believing himself the heir to the Abrahamic dynasty. He forgot about his brother, but his brother did not forget about him.

Isaac was the father of Israel. Abraham was the patriarch of the Semites, both the Jews and the Arabs. Isaac's descendents fought for the land of Israel, received the Torah, wandered through the desert, through hardships and persecution, and emerged only a low percentage of the promised "stars of the sky," as tribes fought and divided, with 10 lost along the way. Ishmael's seed did fine.

When one of Isaac's descendents was crucified on a wooden cross, his disciples called him the ultimate martyr, the son of God, and tried to pull as many Jews as they could with them. It didn't go over as well as they expected, but they recruited a good number. They hoped to revolutionize Judaism, but with so many stubborn bretheren, they broke off, and call themselves Christians. The disciples of Jesus believed him to be not only a prophet, but physical divinity. They trotted the globe spreading their message, violently forcing Arabia and Europe to submit to their growing empire.

They encountered resistance in both. In Arabia, where the population of Ishmael had itself submitted through force to the religious empire of Muhammadism, the Christians were not welcome. They destroyed Arabian culture, razing the biggest library in the world and smashing scientific and mathematical instruments. The three sets of cousins, one a former regional power, the others budding empires, found themselves at odds. Intermarriage and conversions had run rampant along the way, but in an age of religious wars, people clung to a particular loyalty. The three super-clans divided, and civil war set in.

Jews and Christians and Muslim remained in both Arabia and in Israel. Jerusalem was conquered, and then reconquered a numer of times, switching hands between the power-hungry cousins, each vying for the Abrahamic inheritance. The victory cycle was set on spin.

The Jews living in Arabia, and in the Islamic Ottoman empire were free to worship as they chose, but were considered second-class citizens. The Christians, who had smited the Muslim one time too many, remained at war with their Ishmaelite cousins. Jews lived in the Arab world for hundreds of years, preserving their Isaacian ancestry. They were hesitantly welcome until the creation of the state of Israel - perhaps in the Arab mind Isaac's bid for renewed civil war.

*The moral of the story, according to Zim, is that the only thing separating us is our own self-created distinction. Our blood-lines mixed, we cling to our own versions of Abrahamic heritage, believing that we are the true link to God's promise. In reality, the only thing that divides us is our own self-designated divisions. We're all really African.

**************************************************************

Mahdi was in good spirits when we told him our late night theory, but he refused to budge from his original thesis. Arabs were the descendents of Ishmael, and Jews were the children of Isaac. Arabs are mostly Muslim, but a Christian can be an Arab, too. But you can't be both a Jew and an Arab.

We live in the most sought after and expensive property in history. The Christians have given up the fight, for now, waiting for Jesus to return to Jerusalem and build the third temple. The Arabs and the Jews are back in a war of attrition.

Mahdi, an Israeli citizen, but not an Israeli, he told us, fully support the Palestinian initiative for a state, but will not move to the West Bank or Gaza. He is not an Israeli, he said, because Israelis are Jews. He is an Arab concerned with preserving his rightful place in Palestine, regardless of under whose control. "I won't leave my home," he said.

III.

I am going to the north tomorrow. I'm scared.

wars censors freedom

2006-07-19T22:33:00.000+03:00

About half a year ago, when the rate of Qassams flying daily into the western Negev from Gaza picked up at an alarming speed, the IDF censor sat down and printed us up a new list of dos and don't. Do: Report Qassam. Don't: Report where Qassam lands. Everything we write is supposed to go through the censor, and for good reason - militants are able to look at a news web site and use the information to correct their errors.

I see the logic in this kind of censorship and fear the consequences of not following it - not as a journalist who could be tried, but as a civilian in a country at war. I don't want Hezbollah or Hamas learning from my writing how to better aim their rockets.

The counter issue of maintaining civil rights in times of crisis, however, raises the ever-present question: does a military censorship limit the newspaper's freedom of the press and citizens' right to freedom of information? On a practical level, it is a dichotomy never to be resolved. Security trumps freedom. With our future a gloomy trend of terror and security, it is necessary to create a space where personal freedom, our raison d'etre, is our reality. The tricky part is that news itself - any writing or expression for that matter - is a creator of reality.

What kind of reality do we want to create?

The Associated Press writes,

Here's news you may never hear about Israel's war against Hezbollah: a missile falls into the sea, a strategic military installation is hit, a Cabinet minister plans to visit the front lines.

All such topics are subject to review by Israel's chief military censor who has, in her own words, "extraordinary power" - to shut down papers, block information and throw journalists in jail.

"I can, for example, publish an order that no material can be published. I can close a newspaper or shut down a station. I can do almost anything, and I can put people in jail," Col. Sima Vaknin said Wednesday.

Israel believes that as a small country in a near constant state of conflict, having a say over what information gets out to the world is vital to its security. Critics say the policy is a slippery slope not fit for a democracy.

The range of issues subject to censorship are all related to the same simple goal: Israel's desire to prevent Hezbollah from using the media to help it better aim the rockets it is firing into Israel.

Abiding by the rules of the censor is a condition for receiving permission to operate as a media organization in Israel.

The conditions include; no real-time reports giving the exact locations of missile hits; no reports of missile hits on army bases, strategic targets, or misses into the sea; and no reports telling when citizens are allowed to leave their bunkers for supplies. Reporters are also not permitted to give details about senior Israeli officials going to the north of the country, where the rockets are falling, until the officials are gone, nor are they allowed to report places where there aren't enough shelters or where public defense is weak.

So far in this conflict, about one rocket in 100 fired by Hezbollah has killed an Israeli. The rest usually explode in empty fields, tear concrete from abandoned streets or plunk into the sea. Fired blind, Hezbollah's thousands of mostly short-range, inaccurate munitions simply pose a random peril to Israeli citizens.

For obvious reasons, Israel would like to keep it that way. Live media feedback, the censor says, changes everything.

Report immediately that a missile splashed into the Mediterranean, for example, and any guerrilla with an Internet connection knows to aim left.

Report that an oil refinery in Haifa went up in flames, and he'll surely celebrate and reload. Report that a senior official is going up north, and it will be raining rockets there in no time.

So the logic of censorship goes.

But in an era when mobile phones have cameras and the terrorists' weapons include laptops and video crews, even the chief censor acknowledges that a complete blockade of news is in many cases not possible.

"Not in 2006," she says.

Restrictions on the media are not unique to Israel. The United States military for example, makes journalists embedded with troops in Iraq sign a document agreeing not to report specifics of troop movements and attacks in real time, for reasons similar to Israel's.

Critics say the censorship system is worse than ineffective - it's undemocratic, often counterproductive and a violation of freedom of speech.

"People are entitled to get as much information as they can about what's happening in a conflict," says Rohan Jahasekera, associate editor of the London-based magazine, the Index of Censorship.

"There's a reasonable expectation and a right of people to get full information about the conduct of a war." he says. Israel's censorship rules were not unusual, he adds, but "it's unusual in that they're enforced."

Jahasekera also refuted arguments that reporting missile landings helped Hezbollah, since the rockets the Islamic militants use are "spectacularly inaccurate."

Bob Steele, Nelson Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute, a media studies organization, says editors should bear the responsibility for decisions to publish or not.

"These are decisions that the news organizations and journalists should make - with the input of government and military officials," he says. "They should not be decisions that are made by default."

"We should always push back on censorship," Steele adds, even if it's a losing fight.

every katyusha has an address

2006-07-18T06:36:00.000+03:00

Yair Ettinger writes in Haaretz,

On Friday night, during the prayer welcoming the Shabbat, a siren interrupted the prayers in the synagogue of the Sanz Hasidim in Safed. About 20 worshipers - the few members of the congregation who remained for Shabbat - all moved close to the inner wall of the synagogue, as far as possible from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Such sirens have been heard in the city since Thursday, when a resident of the city was killed, and the confused worshipers held a discussion as to whether it was preferable to finish their prayers inside the synagogue or to obey the instructions of the security forces.

"Daddy, the sealed room," said a child pulling on his father's sleeve, prompting a debate that was held in Yiddish laced with Hebrew terms from the security vocabulary: "The security room? Never mind," another person answered, and the prayers were renewed inside the largely empty synagogue. Five minutes later a whistling was heard in the distance. Those of the worshipers with sharp ears and fast reflexes quickly made for the nearby kitchenette, a kind of impromptu security room; others, even before the building trembled from the nearby explosion of a Katyusha rocket, managed to lie down on the floor. In Safed people lie down like that, and not only on the local graves of righteous men.

The Divrei Haim synagogue of the Sanz Hasidim is located in Tarpat Alley (Tarpat is the acronym for 1929, a year infamous for Arab rioting all over Palestine). Overall, Jewish spirituality and the Israeli-Arab conflict are combined in the streets of the old city - "Defenders' Square" with "Messiah Alley," the mikveh (ritual bath) of the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria, a leading kabbalist) with the Arab house in which Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) grew up.

In Tarpat Alley a Magen David Adom ambulance was parked on Friday night, outside the synagogue. The motor was running, the red lights were flashing. In front sat two Sanz Hasidim. They wore Shabbat clothes, including the traditionally festive coat made of silk, but they were on call. Both are volunteers for Hatzala (Rescue), an organization whose ultra-Orthodox volunteers, MDA paramedics, have evacuated over 100 victims in the Galilee since Thursday.

While their friends were praying in the synagogue, they sat frozen in the ambulance listening to the intercom, forbidden to open the door or perform any activity not related to saving lives. When the falling of the Katyushas was heard, the ambulance disappeared. Fortunately, one of the rockets fell on Friday night on a synagogue that had not opened because there were too few worshipers.

Barely a soul
Safed and all its neighborhoods is a city that is beaten and in shock, which is worriedly monitoring any sliver of information and every Katyusha landing in Haifa and Tiberias. Its unexpected joining of the "Katyusha club" led to the closure on Friday night of local shops, hotels, banks, postal services and most of the drugstores. There is barely a living soul on the streets. The Safed municipality estimated that 50 percent to 60 percent of the 13,000 inhabitants of the city have abandoned their homes.

"Anyone who remains here is someone with nowhere to go, or someone who can't afford to leave," said Moshe Madar, the municipality treasurer and the head of Safed's emergency headquarters.

Apparently many of the residents of the Canaan neighborhood belong to this category. On Friday afternoon, a Katyusha hit a wretched and peeling housing project on Hashiva Street. Eleven residents were injured, two moderately. On the sidewalk lay a dead Pekinese dog. His owner was injured as well. After the evacuation of the wounded, many residents went out into the street, and the desperate policeman called on them to enter shelters and other protected spaces. Protected spaces? Security rooms? Who has heard of them in the housing projects? "Where should we go?" asked one resident in panic.

On the third floor of the building that was hit the door was opened a crack, and from it Yaffa Ben-Porat peered inside the stairwell. Her husband, Ephraim, was in the other room, and she was beside herself with fear and helplessness. He is a chronically ill and bedridden, and needed care - even under the barrage of Katyushas that in the end hit the building in which they have lived since immigrating to Israel from Morocco in the 1950s

"I have nobody," said the 62-year-old Ben-Porat. My children are in Ashdod, so we're here alone. There is nobody to come and visit us. Please sir, speak to the municipality, speak to someone about taking care of us." A few minutes later an ambulance crew came to evacuate Ben-Porat and his wife to Ziv Hospital until things blow over.

Perhaps few people remained in Safed, but for the most part those who stayed there over the weekend tried to demonstrate high morale. Both religious and secular people spoke of determination and patience, and expressed faith and confidence in the Israel Defense Forces, or in God.

Shlomo Zeid is the owner of the only hotel in the old city that opened its doors on the weekend. Only one room was occupied - by a journalist. Zeid himself is an atheist, frustrated by the fact that Safed is becoming ultra-Orthodox, but on Shabbat morning, when his ultra-Orthodox neighbor came to visit and spoke of faith in the shadow of the Katyushas, they both managed to agree that "every missile has an address." They're not sure why, but this saying gave them confidence.

Memories of 1948
In 1948, legend has it, Safed held out through natural and miraculous means - through natural means, because the Safed old-timers didn't stop reciting Psalms, as is their wont; and miraculously, because the Palmach (the pre-state commando strike force) arrived in time.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Shlomo Makleb, one of the city's old-timers today, says that he and his neighbors are praying. "Imagine if we didn't pray, a Katyusha would land here every second," he said.

Rina Kobi, who lives in the old city, was a newborn during the 1948 War of Independence, but this weekend she pulled out the arsenal of family stories from her memory: how her older brother used to run between the outposts of the Haganah (the pre-state military force) and the Etzel (right-wing militia), and distribute cans of sardines to the Jewish fighters.

"I grew up on those stories about 1948," she smiled. "Who would have believed that missiles would be flying over our heads?"

In the afternoon, with Katyushas rumbling in the background, she sat on a bench in the street chatting with an ultra-Orthodox neighbor. She was calm. "Me?" she said. "I have no fear at all. The children and grandchildren asked me to come stay with them in the center of the country, but why should I leave my house? In 1948 we didn't leave, and I'm not leaving now."

Kiryat Bratslav was full compared to the other ultra-Orthodox neighbors of Safed; almost half the members of the community remained. In the large Bratslav synagogue they decided to try to maintain routine as much as possible. They even celebrated a circumcision there on Shabbat morning; the baby was named Israel. After prayers, they read the haftara from Jeremiah, which includes the verse: "Out of the north the evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land." The rabbi said in his sermon, based on the words of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, that "out of sadness comes happiness."

Some of the worshipers found relief in jokes about Nasrallah, but Nahman Klein, the head of Hatzala in the Galilee, instructed them, in a very severe tone, to make sure their children did not play outside.

Before the beginning of Shabbat we m et Klein in the mikveh. "On a day like this, immersion is a very exalted thing," he said. "We remove from ourselves everything we have undergone during the week. Today and yesterday we evacuated over 100 casualties. I personally immersed myself in the hope that the sanctity of Shabbat will preserve us from all evil. I prayed that God would help us, that we will see better days."

Two hours later the ambulances raced to Moshav Meron, where Yehudit Itzkovich and her grandson, Omer Pesachov, were killed. There were no casualties in Safed.

are we scared yet?

2006-07-17T14:51:00.000+03:00

In the last week, Hezbollah has managed to remind us what we've forgotten even after five years of intifada: we are under siege. With each rocket strike, Hezbollah defiantly instills within us the fear of retribution, saying, "when a country bombs another population repeatedly from the air, it should expect the same." Hezbollah and Iran, in the name of Palestinians, are proving that they can destroy us just like we can destroy them. It doesn't matter which came first. It only matters who can win the most number of enemy casualties. This is siege. This is war.

Hezbollah - like Hamas - knew that kidnapping Israeli soldiers was a ticket to war. A war detrimental to its civilians and to its infrastructure, but extraordinarily useful to its overall cause. Hezbollah - and Hamas - attack Israel; Israel responds with the only language it knows - war; and suddenly the international community jumps on board to pull the self-conscious bully off the revengeful underdog.

Less than a month ago, I hitchhiked up north, to Tzfat, and to Tiberias, to the Jezreel Valley, and to Meron. On the same day, Israel's offensive on Gaza escalated to undeclared war when Hamas kidnapped two Israelis and the Israeli government clamped down with force. Now, the war in Gaza is forgotten as crude numbers of innocent Lebanese civilians die every day and rockets rain down on Israel - in Tzfat, and Tiberias, the Jezreel Valley, and Meron - killing innocent Israelis.

The day the first Katyusha hit Nahariya - where about two months ago I hitchhiked and ate free hummus from Marwan the hummus man - killing a woman, injuring dozens and scaring the living daylights out of thousands more, I was riding on only an hour and a half of sleep, starting work at 7 am. I sat down at the computer, saw the message on the wire: 'Katyusha hits Nahariya; casualties feared' and set about writing and reporting as if it weren't Nahariya, where I have hitchhiked and eaten free hummus from Marwan the hummus man.

I did that all day long. Even when the first Katyusha hit Tzfat, and my friend called to ask what the hell her sister was supposed to do, the rocket was meters away and she was freaking out. What do I know? I told her to tell her sister to go underground and stay out of the streets.

The day went on, the Katyushas kept flying, and I kept trying to relate to it the way I would treat a bomb in Iraq, or even a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Of course, if I lived in Iraq, I would leave.

I'm not leaving here. I don't know why. This government does not have my undivided support. Israel has the right to defend itself, but it does not have the right to swing its explosive arms around civilians. Israel should have negotiated immediately with Hamas. It should have gone to the United Nations, not to its arsenals. Hundreds of innocent people are suffering from attacks whose justification are tantamount to stubborn ideology. With each air strike in Lebanon and artillery fire in Gaza, I try to remember why I live in Israel, and if I am a zionist, and if I ever was a zionist, and whether being a zionist requires supporting a war that will probably secure us another two or five years of peace at the price of hundreds, if not thousands more lives.

Media is the third leg of this war, the comptroller of military and government. I work round the clock and when I'm not working, my mind is colonized. Under siege. I can't go up north. I can't hitchhike. Hezbollah has taken my freedom away from me, like we have taken the freedom away from the Palestinians. Let's not talk about what came first - now we are both under siege, as we have been in a more indirect way for decades.

After work Thursday I passed out fully clothed on my bed, exhausted, from a night of drinking and day of war reporting in an air conditioned Tel Aviv office. The phone rang about three hours later. I only sort of heard it, but answered it anyway. The voice: "What the hell happened in Haifa?"

It was my dad. When I told him I didn't know, I'd been sleeping, he said, "go look on the internet." I did.

I wanted to crawl under the covers and hide, but decided I had to get out of the house. My friend Yoav's band was playing on the roof of an amazing neighborhood shanti-Indian restaurant. I missed the first half off the show, eating and drinking beer with Ella and her/everyone's dog Raven, but when I sat down, I fell apart.

The front guitar man said, "We're going to play a song now that connects more than anything we've played to what's going on."

I figured he was talking about the ambiance - not everyone was obsessed with the situation, right? - and he was, in a larger sense of the word.

"As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear evil, because you are with me." The tune was beautiful, and the words were pentrating. My body started to relax, and I, who never cry, felt tears streaming through the broken dams of my eyes and emotion. I covered my eyes, let the tears flow. "Here we have a world, here we have life, here we have love. Just a smile on our faces," they sang, "we have love."

All we need is love, I guess, but what we have instead is ideology and war. We have desk journalists like me sitting in Tel Aviv rooms complaining about quashed freedom when people, in every nook of surrounding, are dying and in the line of fire. Iran - a country sworn to the destruction of Israel - has given a guerilla organization long-range missiles that can reach up to 200 kilometers away from their launch, and my friends and family in the north are either living underground or stubbornly staying home, while I write about fear, or more accurately apprehension, of a punishment that comes with the territory I've chosen to live in. I have made a political choice to live in Israel, even though I can argue that I am here because my family is here, and my friends are here, and I have a good job, and a good life, and spirituality, and freedom, and possibilities.

Now that I'm faced with reality, it's harder to remember why anyone would choose to live in a place of war. I am choosing to operate as a civilian soldier of Israel. I want Israel to survive. I want to survive in Israel. I don't want to be afraid of noises in the air. I don't want my country to be killing innocent people by the hundreds. I don't want to be a citizen of a bully nation. I don't want to fight in the army. I don't want to be a politician. I want to live, in Israel, as a Jew, with my Arab neighbors, and my Jewish neighbors, and anyone who wants to keep this holy land beautiful and free and open to all possibility.

the crippled leading the blind

2006-07-11T06:17:00.000+03:00

Hamas is cruising its way through this situation with all the right moves. Along with two other militant groups, its armed wing crossed the Gaza border, violating the Geneva convention in doing so, and ambushed an Israeli tank, killing two soldiers and kidnapping the third. It knew the move would bring upon it a deadly and destructive IDF military offensive and it knew it would be hammered with international criticism. How could it not? Every militant heading to north Gaza to launch a virtually useless rocket at Israel knows it is making itself target for Israeli assassination - just as every suicide bomber knows his or her death, and the deaths of the Israeli civilians they attack, will be forgotten amongst the inevitably massive devastation that will result.

But it did it anyway, smoothly and logically. While Israel and innocent Palestinians sweat in war and fear, Hamas is painting itself as a 'partner in peace,' ready for non-violent negotiations and a cease-fire. Cleanly-shaven and well-dressed, Hamas leaders started by brushing off government connections to the kidnapping with vague 'reports' from the captors, and then declared that as IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit was a prisoner of war, the only fair retribution was a prisoner exchange - 1,000 women and under-18-year-olds jailed in Israel in return for Shalit.

The kidnapping, and the deaths of the two soldiers at Kerem Shalom, are beginning to fade from the spotlight. The IDF's offensive on north Gaza and the upwards of 50 Palestinian deaths, including at least seven civilians in three days, has taken center stage.

As the IDF refuses to declare war even as its shells and tanks continue to move further away from Shalit, exploding on children and militants alike, Palestinain Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and exiled political chief Khaled Meshal calmly reiterate their demands and announce their readiness to compromise. As Defense Minister Minister Amir Peretz, wide-eyed and corrupted by his unlikely position, orders the IDF to escalate its offensive, Hamas reduces its prisoner-exchange demands to 130 female non-security prisoners and sticks out its hands to a perplexed Olmert, who continues to refuse any negotiations with Hamas.

Israel has been calling the Palestinian Authority a 'terrorist government' since its inception, repeating the slogan that the Palestinians are 'no partner in peace.' Hamas, which until less than a year ago was known to the world only as a terrorist organization, has emerged on top. It is now portraying itself as the democratically-legitimate government of a certified state. It is a master of disguise. It has conveniently found a way to hold on to its mission of destroying Israel while making itself out as a reformed political faction.

Hamas knows what it is doing. It is bringing down Israel. With all its promises for negotiations and cease-fire, the Palestinian government has as its initiative the destruction of the Jewish state. It knows this initiative has a price, of lives and international opinion, but it also knows that the price is higher for Israel. The only IDF casualty in Gaza so far was due to friendly fire, while the number of Palestinians killed daily can consistently be counted on two hands. Yet the Palestinians have nothing to lose. They have already been labelled terrorists; thousands have already been killed, their future is already lost. Their children, who survive, grow into militias, while those who want an education and peace suffer beside them.

The world condemns Hamas, but it is wrecked over the humanitarian crisis engulfing the Palestinians. In waging this war, Israel is blindly leading itself into the Mediterranean sea with the wily assistance of a non-state governed by militias. The Palestinians and the Israelis are in a desperate situation, but Hamas is lucid. It knows the loss will be massive, but it is doing its all to make sure that if Gaza has to go into the sea, Israel will have to go first.

'balanced' 'war' tactics

2006-07-10T08:50:00.000+03:00

The New York Times writes,

JERUSALEM — The pattern has recurred time and again for several years: Palestinians fire rockets from northern Gaza that cause damage or casualties only occasionally, yet prompt a tough Israeli response, like the offensive now under way.

Why, then, do the Palestinians persist in firing the crude, inaccurate rockets when there is virtual certainty that the damage they inflict will be far less than the punishment they will suffer?

(Read article)

don't ask

2006-07-07T02:45:00.000+03:00

When I heard sometime in mid-March that 'folk surrealist' Devendra Banhart would be performing in Israel in early July, I got a new excuse to push off my "vacation" another few months.

First, the "vacation." I have about 40 hours of scheduled shifts and 128 hours of freedom every week, never the same time or day as the last, but I keep telling myself I should take a vacation. Go visit my father in Detroit, and friends in Montreal, and family in California, and mountains in Colorado and British Columbia, and Amsterdam, and the alps, and France, and India. Big plans, but every month I push them off. I haven't left Israel in 12 months.

Life is good. I live in a virtual war zone, war zone because it is, virtual because I only know about it from the news I write and read, but life for me has been good. All superstitions on.

Though I knew about Devendra, and used it as an excuse for how much I didn't need to leave this country, I didn't try to buy a ticket until the morning of the show. It's how I bought my ticket for Roger Waters, less-favored lead singer of the band that, with only cliche applicable, changed my life when I heard it for the first time at 14. I knew I wanted to see Roger Waters, I knew I didn't want to pay 375 shekels for the ticket, yet I knew that I would get into the show.

For Roger Waters, it worked. I called Elisha at 10 am and asked him to go get me a ticket, I'd pay him back, there were only 50 left. He called me at 12:30, said he bought me a ticket, and there were now four left.

It didn't work so well with Devendra. Though I like his muisc, Devendra didn't figure on my list of cliche-spawning life-changing musicians, so when I called the club and was told the show was sold out, I wasn't worried, even thought at least two people had told me the day before that I should not miss this show.

I was supposed to work until 11 p.m. anyway, so I figured I'd get to the show after work, an hour after opening, and convince the bouncers to let me in for free or cheap to see the end.

When I got to the club, at 11:15, there were only a few stragglers outside, including my roommate and her friend. Her friend had called me half an hour before telling me he had an extra ticket for 100 instead of 150 shekels, and then called again 20 minutes later to tell me the guy who was supposed to bring him the ticket had either bailed or gone inside. No ticket.

The friend, Nitzan, handed me his beer, and the roommate, Rona, reminded me I should have gotten a ticket two days before.

Then Devendra and his crew walked by. Devendra held up by his crew. Nitzan called out something, in what sounded like English, to Devendra. He turned back, and then walked through the first gate into the venue.

"I'm going to get a ticket from Devendra," I said, and walked up to the gate.

"Hey Devendra," I called out. He turned around and came over to the gate. "I don't have a ticket to the show, but I really want to come in," I said. "Any chance?"

"What's your name?" He asked, from the other side of the gate.

"Aliyana Traison," I said.

"Aliyana Terson?"

"Traison."

"I'll see what I can do," he said, and turned back toward the venue.

I started to turn to Nitzan and Rona, who came over to the gate, and barely had time to think 'this is not going to work', when I heard someone say, "Aliyana."

I looked up. Devendra was standing about 30 feet away from me, giving me a double thumbs-up.

"You're in," someone said.

"Aliyana Traison," the bouncer said.

"Follow Devendra," Rona and Nitzan said.

I waltzed through the gate, up the ramp, and hit two new bouncers, who had never heard of Aliyana Traison, or Devendra Banhart, and sent me to the guest list brigade. The guest list brigade, feverishly looking up and down their Hebrew lists while I pretended not to speak Hebrew, told me I wasn't on the list. Of course I wasn't, I said, call Devendra. Who is Devendra, they asked.

We sorted it out. The woman called Devendra and asked if someone named Aliyana Traison was on his list, he said Of course, and the two new bouncers who were really just puppies apologized to me and cleared the way.

VIP, but that's where my relationship with Devendra ended. During the show he looked right in my direction and told everyone he wanted to introduce the person he loved most in the world, his dad, who was standing right behind me, holding a beer and thoroughly enjoying Devendra, who was barely able to stand at this point.

His music is 'surreal,' it's 'folk,' it's lyrical tongue twisters with jazzy undertones, and he is charming, a contemporary Jim Morrison. He sometimes sacrifices his musical genius for charisma on stage, but he's got both, and more than that, he really appreciates how much he is appreciated.

savta

2006-07-07T02:27:00.000+03:00

I was woken up at least four times this morning by the phone ringing and people telling me important things. I don't remember who I talked to or what they said. I do remember my mom calling and like in a dream, because maybe I still was, telling me my grandmother was in the hospital, about to go into surgery, because of an overnight emergency. Something to do with her intestines. Would I like to speak to her, she has a tube down her throat.

Shuffle, phone passed to savta. I don't remember what I said, I don't remember what she said, I just remember that it was of utmost importance for me to speak to her. I think I told her I love her. She had a tube down her throat. I think she told me the same thing.

All day long, when the phone rang and I saw my sister's or my mother's number, I got very scared and my head started to hurt. It kept pounding. She was out of surgery, in intensive care, but not breathing on her own. Apparently that was normal, for her age, her heart condition.

When I was 17, completely unconnected to grandparents or life or death, I had a somewhat nervous breakdown. Less nervous than empty. Then release, like water gushing from a broken cork. I didn't feel anything for three days. I went to school, I think I even talked, but I didn't feel. I didn't know who I was. I didn't recognize my body. I just watched, and went through the motions, and didn't do anything weird or crazy. Just was. Three days later my mother, looking into my unfeeling, nervously-breaking-down face, told me my grandfather was very sick and in the hospital.

I bawled. I felt more than I'd felt in three days, more than I'd felt in three weeks, three months, three years.

He died a year and a half later,on my second day living in Montreal. I wasn't near anybody in my family. I wasn't ready.

I'm not ready. My grandmother is 78 years old, and she still works full-time. She's a Holocaust survivor, and probably the most hard-working person I know. One of the most alive. She was always more like a mother than a grandmother, and only now do I finally recognize that she is getting old. She, who's been through worse in her life than I could imagine and still always comes out beautiful, if neurotic, is getting tired.

But she's alive. We're supposed to take a trip together, with my mother and my sister. That, I'm ready for.

fantasy-land

2006-07-05T07:18:00.000+03:00

When Hamas was capturing Gilad Shalit from a tank position on the Gaza border and the Palestinian Resistance Committees were abducting Eliyahu Asheri as he hitchhiked up the West Bank on his way to a camping trip, I was in the north trying to catch a ride with some friends to the Kinneret.

One of us got a text message about the first kidnapping, but we didn't hear it. We were on our own fantasy-land adventure.

I decided Saturday night to take a midnight bus to Tsfat, since I was supposed to go to nearby Kadita with Tiferet on Friday and then bailed because I'd been at the Roger Waters show the night before and couldn't handle the idea of trekking north before Shabbat. Meir said he would go with me. I'd ended up spending Shabbat at my friend's parents "house" (mansion, by Israeli standards) with 10 other people, one of whom forgot his bag there. So before heading north, we went to the guy's house to return his bag. Someone there told us to go to a dinner honoring our friends who just got married, so we figured we'd go for 15 minutes. We'd been there for five when this guy came in, looked at me in the eye, told me he was the groom's cousin, had seen me at the wedding, and asked me my name. I told him who I was, said we were leaving for Tsfat in 10 minutes, and asked him if he wanted to go. He stood up, said yes, and 10 minutes later we were off.

We got to Tsfat at probably the same time Palestinian militants crossed the Gaza border and ambushed Shalit and his crew, abducting him, killing two of his friends, and injuring one.

Halfway up north, we debated whether to go straight to Tsfat or straight to the Kinneret. Public transportation being what it is at 3:00 in the morning, we opted to stay on our bus and get to Tsfat. When we got to what is one of the oddest cities in the world, we grabbed a couple of mattresses and a guitar from a guy at Meir's old school, and climbed up the roof of an old synagogue dedicated to the great Kabbalist Isaac Luria. We played music and talked about harmony and fell asleep in the sun.

We spent the next day wandering around Tsfat, and then headed toward the Golan. No-one stopped for us. We didn't know Eliyahu Asheri was doing the same thing in the West Bank. We didn't know he was being kidnapped and killed. We decided to go to the Kinneret. It was hot and we didn't want to spend the whole day on the road.

We ended up spending most of the day on the road. The driving force of these treks around Israel is the journey. It's the hitchhiking and the amazing people who drift into your life for a Lord of the Rings-like adventure on a random day when you should be working but happen to not. We got to a beautiful little jungle cove on the Kinneret, and pushed our way through the smelly piles of garbage that obtrusively invade the air and water, emerging in what really looked like paradise; all green and blue and white, huge trees and lake and crabs, and a natural pool, and beds of rocks. We stayed for a few hours, and then Tiferet came, and we started walking along the shore, looking for a place to sleep.

We found ourselves on the road. A young couple in a nice car pulled over and said, "get in. This is totally unsafe." We crammed into the car. They dropped us off at a kibbutz, where we wandered around looking for a beach. We snuck past the hotel, and were promptly herded out by a guard who showed us a reed-infested, mosquito-swarming, patch of dry grass to sleep on instead. The trek continued, this time on foot, through the fields and the orchard, and now the dark, about 3 km until we made it to a fairly muddy, but fairly accesssible beach. We lit a fire, and went swimming. The ground was too muddy to sleep on. I found a restaurant about 200 meters down the beach, deserted, with white leather benches on a patio. I curled up and slept for a few hours. I found everybody else in the morning in an orchard behind the beach, where there was one tree connected by branches with six different trunks. The owner of the house told us it had been in his family for 80 years, and that every time a branch reaches the ground, it becomes absorbed into the earth and then grows more roots, another trunk. He gave us each another lichi.

We started the trek home together, and then split up. I got to Tel Aviv early Monday afternoon, and passed out for five hours. I hadn't had a good night sleep since Tuesday. At 12 am I went to work. I'd looked at the website before crashing and updated myself, but now I was at work. No more fantasy-land. Two people were kidnapped. It wasn't clear if either were alive.

It became clearer over the next few days. Eliyahu's body was found Thursday morning in a field in Ramallah. The IDF had dismissed the PRC's claim of kidnapping a civilian, and his parents didn't report him missing until Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday, his kidnappers showed his ID card. His parents thought he was going camping. So did he.

Israeli tanks moved into southern Gaza a week ago Wednesday, the IDF's first ground incursion there since it pulled its troops last September. Prime Minister Olmert swore this was not a bid to reoccupy Gaza. Israel has no intention of staying in Gaza, he said. We just want to bring our boy home.

They started by bombing three bridges in central Gaza, splitting the strip between north and south. Intelligence had heard Shalit was being held near Khan Yunis, in the south, and that the kidnappers were planning to cross into Sinai. The tanks crossed the border.

Hamas offered to negotiate on Shalit's life, first saying it would release information, and then the soldier himself, if 1,000 women and under-18-year-old prisoners from Israeli jails. Israel said no negotiations, "we will not succumb to extortion." Then Olmert said, well, maybe non-security prisoners. Then balked. 'No,' he affirmed it, 'no negotiations.' Hamas issued an ultimatum: Israel had until 6 A.M. Wednesday (a week after the incursion) to realease the prisoners or suffer the un-specified "consequences." Israel chose the consequences: "We will not succumb to extortion..." yet "we just want to bring our boy home."

Esther Wachsman, the mother of the last IDF soldier to be kidnapped by Hamas, in 1994, wrote in Haaretz that while she in no way advocated the release of terrorists from prison, she begged Israel to reconsider its offensive in Gaza. Nachshon Wachsman was killed during the IDF operation to free him, along with another soldier. Esther Wachsman writes that on the same day Hamas issued a similar ultimatum on her son's life - prisoner for prisoner - Peres, Rabin and Araft announced that they were to receive the Nobel peace prize. When asked what kind of peace they had achieved in light of Nachshon Wachsman's abduction, Peres answered, "in war, we must take calculated risks."

The IDF moved on into northern Gaza yesterday. It's what Israel's been wanting to do since September, ever since the settlements were crumbled and the Qassam rockets started flying daily into the western Negev town of Sderot. They moved into Gaza even before Tuesday's rocket hit the empty parking lot of a school in central Ashkelon. They moved into northern Gaza to slam the launching sites and the militants behind them from all sides, on the ground, not just from the air. The air hasn't proven so effective - three different strikes on Qassam-firing militants ended up killing 14 civilians in three weeks, and injuring just a few of the militants.

The IDF has wanted to return to the ground in Gaza since it left. It just hasn't had the excuse. It stuck to air strikes, because while denounced, it wasn't outright occupation. Now they've got the excuse - a captured soldier - and have conveniently twisted the operation to include all the errands they've had to run in the northern Strip and throughout. Olmert said the plan was to make sure Gazans didn't sleep at night. He wants to bring our boy home. And stop Qassams. And put pressure on Palestinian civilians - as if this is the kind of pressure that's going to do anything other than create and sustain a new generation of Palestinians who are going to hate Israel with even more of a passion and more of a justification than their parents for all their brothers and sisters and uncles and friends and mothers and fathers killed by IDF fire.

Three Qassam rockets, at 15 kilometers their longest range yet, landed in Ashkelon in the last two days. Israel called this a 'declaration of war,' as it does so often, and the air force bombarded the north, where most launching sites sit in the rubble of former settlements. Now that they were already in Gaza, reoccupying militarily, the IDF rolled right up to the north, and showed what they meant by war. But the history of the region is one of pattern. It doesn't lie. With each IDF or Palestinian attack, comes a response even fiercer than the one before.

If the government wanted to bring Gilad Shalit home, it would negotiate, or focalize its operation, not use it as an excuse to have its way with Gaza.

Jason Reaven

2006-07-03T15:08:00.000+03:00

On my ride to work yesterday morning from Jerusalem where I'd slept only two and a half hours, I was the only non-Arab non-male. Instead of joining 99 percent of public transportation in the hourly news update on Israel Radio, we listened to Muslim morning prayers. I prayed no-one would die that day from any side in this conflict. I didn't ask for world peace, I just asked for a day without casualties.

I should be honest that it was just one of those quick prayers, the kind that pops into your head as more of a thought than a proclamation and festers around for a while until it feels like a legitime request for god, complete with ultimatums and promises.

My sister left me a message sometime in the middle of the morning, something about crazy news. When I called her back she asked me if I remembered Jason Reaven from camp. It took a minute to connect name and face and character, but when I did I remembered a really nice guy a couple years younger than me who walked around with a guitar and made everyone feel good.

Three masked men knocked on his door in the middle of the night last Thursday, and tied up his roommates with duct tape and clothes, and then robbed them. Jason came out of his room and asked the men what they were doing there. They shot him in the head.

In an instant. The robbers fled. His friend broke out of the bindings and ran to a neighbor's house to get help. In an instant, in a nice neighborhood, to a nice kid in Ohio.

I read some articles about it. They all read like an article about a 22-year-old man who was shot in the head by robbers who then fled. If you have any information, contact the police. Another tragedy, in an instant, paths crossed, snap decisions, then the unbelievable. Not just a story. Not just a news article. A person.

citizen nation

2006-07-03T14:11:00.000+03:00

Haaretz writes (I translate),

The Bedouin sector is to submit a counter-report to the United Nations alongside the official state report on discrimination, as part of its demand that the international body help fight systemic discrimination against Bedouin in Israel.

When the Justice Ministry submits its report in August, social groups will simultaneously submit documents criticizing the state report and elucidating state discrimination against the Bedouin sector. Bedouin say they are not treated as equal citizens in Israel.

Israel is a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, and periodically submits reports on advancements in the arena.

The state will submit its next report in Geneva in August. The Negev Coexistence Forum, in conjunction with Physicians for Human Rights, prepared a counter report pointing out failings in the state report.

Services: According to the state report, in Bedouin towns citizens "receive services at a level equal to every other citizen in the state."

According to the counter-report, there are six Bedouin towns recognized as "permanent communities" and one city, Rahat. There is no public transportation in any of the towns. Rahat has 40,000 residents, one post office, one bank, and no public library. The towns do not have any of these services, unlikes Jewish towns with an equal number of residents, according to the Adva Center.

Land: The state report writes that "members of the Bedouin community were given more land per person than any other population."

The counter-report shows a different picture. There are currently 45 Bedouin villages, among which only 10 are legally recognized. Despite the more than hundred Jewish agricultural villages in the Negev, until recently there was not a single Bedouin agricultural village. The two Bedouin villages now defined as "agricultural" were not given proper water rations or crop rations, according to former Bedouin Administration chairman and current Rahat city adviser Eli Atzmon.

Haya Noah, of the Negev Coexistence Forum, said land allocation in one village is 10,000 dunam for 1,000 people, compared to Jewish communities who are each given thousands of dunams for fewer than one hundred families.

Water: The state reports that since 1997, the sedentary population in unrecognized villages have had access to water. The Bedouin Administration claims that in 2003, the water committee converged only four times, and approved only six out of 80 requests for water. Bedouin say that in certain cases it took a year to hook up a water system and at a cost of NIS 10,000.

Religion: Israeli law grants its citizens access to holy sites. According to the Bedouin report, the city of Be'er Sheva refused to delineate the only mosque in the city as a prayer center or as a Muslim community center, as recommended by the High Court of Justice. A city spokesperson said the building could not be used as a place of worship, but as a museum, as it hasn't been used as a mosque for over 60 years.

those unruly campers

2006-06-30T08:47:00.000+03:00

AP writes,

U.S. Forest Service officers were hit, elbowed and pelted with a rock when they tried to arrest unruly campers at a gathering of the Rainbow Family, a free-spirited, loosely affiliated band of hippies, officials said.

The confrontation Monday night was one of at least three clashes between officers and campers as thousands of the Rainbow Family gather for a weeklong outing, which officially begins Saturday. None of the injuries was serious, Forest Service spokeswoman Kimberly Vogel said Thursday.

About 5,000 members of the group, which promotes non-violence and harmony with nature, have arrived at the campsite in the Routt National Forest about 50 kilometers north of Steamboat Springs in defiance of the Forest Service, which has refused to grant the group a permit, citing the fire danger.

About 200 campers surrounded 15 officers and became verbally abusive Monday night, Vogel said. As the officers tried to arrest some campers, the crowd surged forward, striking at least three officers and pulling the suspects free, Vogel said.

Campers piled on top of one suspect, blocking officers from making an arrest. One male officer was injured when someone dived at his knees, a second suffered bruises when a rock was thrown at his leg and a female officer was elbowed in the knee and face, she said.

Officers arrested one suspect, drew their batons and used pepper spray as they backed away, Vogel said.

In the previous two clashes, campers surrounded and intimidated Forest Service officers, she said.

Campers are spread out in 20 square kilometers of meadow and forest where up to 60 percent of the trees have been killed by a beetle infestation and are vulnerable to fire, officials said. Forestry officials worry that in a fire, the narrow dirt access road would become clogged and campers would be trapped.

Mystery # 3 solved

2006-06-19T22:12:00.000+03:00

For months, my 60-year-old pyromaniac neighbor used to light a match, toss it into the public garbage bin, and watch the flames. He did this almost every day. He would sit on a chair on the corner when the cops came by, talk to the firefighters, and watch. He wasn't trying to hurt anybody, he said, he just wanted to see how people reacted.

the right to be cloned

2006-06-13T13:05:00.000+03:00

A few weeks ago, Rabin-assassin Yigal Amir was caught on tape attempting to smuggle his seed from prison to his controversially betrothed, and continued to blast the Shin Bet for fabricating the report until he was sat down and shown the video himself.

Amir's smuggling attempt breached a High Court injunction prohibiting him from using in-vitro fertilization to impregnate his wife. Israel Prison Service had approved them for the procedure in March, but the court halted the proceedings after two former members of knesset petitioned to deny Amir the right to bear children.

In repayment, the High Court on Monday rejected their petition, and said although Amir "was and still is one of the most denounced criminals in Israeli national consciousness of recent generations, if not the most denounced of all," he nevertheless "has, as any other prisoner, basic human rights, from which he was not stripped upon entering the prison."

In a "proper constitutional regime," said the justices, "the human rights umbrella protects a person insofar as he is a person, including an imprisoned criminal."

The court ruled that "the considerations seeking to worsen the conditions of his imprisonment because of the severity of his crime, or to limit his human rights in revenge for his deeds, are not relevant and therefore invalid."

When would it be considered relevant and valid to limit a prisoner's human rights as punishment for the severity of his or her crime or deeds?

In legal systems that employ capital punishment, the convicted is denied the basic human right to survive. Thirty-eight out of 50 of the United States employ capital punishment. Israel, technically, does not have a death penalty, except in certain cases of war crimes or treason. It used it once, executing Adolph Eichmann for war crimes committed not geographically in Israel, but against members of the Jewish nation. The United States has a constitution of rights. Israel, technically, does not.

Yigal Amir used murder to fight a national process for peace and security. Israel condones the death penalty in certain cases of treason and war crimes. Amir struck a direct blow to Israel's security but was sentenced to multiple lives in prison, not capital punishment. He was guaranteed the human right to survive. Now he has been guaranteed the human right to procreate,

In a legal world of pick and choose, under which universal umbrella of human rights are these rights protected?

(High Court quotes from Haaretz)

cafe hafuch

2006-06-08T04:27:00.000+03:00

Haaretz writes,

The Musawa Center for Arab Rights in Israel on Wednesday submitted a complaint to the Trade and Labor Ministry charging that the Arcaffe chain discriminates against Arabs in its hiring policies.

Some 50 protesters also demonstrated Wednesday evening outside a Tel Aviv branch of the cafe.

A recent Army Radio investigation found that Nazareth student Wasim Kanaza was refused employment at three separate Arcaffe branches while reporter David Glick was hired using a resume similar to Kanaza's.

Musawa receives numerous complaints of employers discriminating against Arabs, but in most cases it is difficult for the group to prove that systemic discrimination or racism is involved.

The line between systemic discrimination and security is choking. There is no lack of justification for clear violations of civil rights. Historical precedent and fears have superceded human right and decency.

The reactions that come to mind, and their equally weighted justifications, are confounding. From indignation at this blatant national discrimination, an institution basing its hiring policies on ethnic favoritism and elitism, comes a clear understanding of proponent justification.

Fear is the justification. Inexcusable discrimination for a cause. It's a security measure, drawing flashbacks of numerous inside employees or acquaintances helping or architecting an attack.

Arcaffe denies that its hiring policies are based on race, creed, sexality, religion or anything other than ability.

Israelis don't like to call themselves discriminatory, though Israel's critics would say otherwise. Does that make me a critic of Israel? Israelis live in a world measured by our nation's relationship to others. There's the original divine appointment of Jews as chosen people, and there is the modern permeation of Israeli Jews feeling different from, if not superior to, the Arabs living here both as citizens and as outlaws.

This cultural relativism is duly based on Israelis' recognition of Israel's unofficial and unconstitutional designation of its Arab sector as second-class, and on the inherent fear of a people under threat of attack whose neighbors are related to their oppressors. Both Palestinians and Israelis claim to be on the defensive, and it is the middle-man who bears the brunt.

Israeli Arabs are citizens with equal rights who have been served a rotten meal on a silver platter. They took on citizenship instead of refugee camps and were told that, according to democracy, they could freely practice their own religions and speak their own language.

They were given the right to run their own municipal authorities and run for a seat in federal parliament. They were given the right to control their own schools and facilities, and pay taxes and receive social benefits.

They were not given the right, at least in recent years, to see their families who chose differently. They were not given a high spot on the Knesset's lists of priorities. They were not given the right to feel like a desired part of Israeli nationalism.

Arab politicians cannot oppose Israel's national self-designation as Zionist and with a Jewish majority. They cannot identify with the Palestinian cause. There are legal repercussions for breaking this rule, like eviction from politics, detainment, and interrogation, and illegal repercussion such as threats from people like MK Avigdor Lieberman who calls for the execution of any Arabs MK who support Palestinians.

Arabs who live in the state of Israel agree to observe a status quo whereby they respect Israel's national character and abide by the laws as any other citizen, and in return they are granted full rights as citizens of a developed, western nation. Israeli Arabs who collaborate with Palestinians or amongst themselves to attack Israel break their end of the deal. Israeli Jews and governments who unofficially and unconstitutionally demote Arabs to second-class citizens break theirs.

The average Israeli Arab, like the average Israeli Jew and the average Palestinian, is a person trying to live his or her life with joy, comfort and a sense of achievement. Israeli Arabs took a much better deal than Palestinians, in that they are able to live as free citizens. In return, they are forced to live as second-class citizens under a state which wasn't their first choice and is now their rightful home.

when kosher pigs fly...

2006-06-06T05:40:00.000+03:00

There's either revolution or national suicide brewing in the Palestinian Authority. In the midst of an ensuing humanitarian crisis stemming from lack of aid and an only recent promise by Palestinian banks to pay government workers their long-delayed salaries, as a war of identity and land claims with Israel rages and a civil war between Fatah and Hamas escalates, Mahmoud Abbas has decided to show who's boss. He delivered an ultimatum to Hamas a few weeks ago, telling the ruling party either to accept a plan drafted by imprisoned Fatah men calling for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, or get ready for a national referendum on the issue.

Hamas refused. Abbas told them they had until midnight June 5 to make their choice. Hamas refused. Abbas held a 70-minute phone conversation with Haniyeh, and at the stroke of midnight, declared that talks had failed, and he was preparing within 48 hours to call a referendum. Hamas said it still wanted to talk.

A referendum is expected now for sometime in July. A useless referendum in practical terms that can achieve nothing but vainly demonstrate Palestinian opinion in a rigid Hamas system and flaunt worthless Fatah muscle. No matter the outcome, the Palestinian people cannot determine the borders of their own state without full agreement from Israel, or without the approval of the Hamas government.

It is a contradiction in democracy. Hamas won because the Palestinian people were fed up with Fatah's corruption, but their victory was further indicative of the general Palestinian desperation and approach to the conflict that rules their life. The Palestinian public voted for a party which holds as its mandate the destruction of Israel, the refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist. The Palestinian people are entitled, and encouraged, to exercise their voice and change their approach by voting for a state based on 1967 borders. But there is no way to ensure that the results of such a referendum could be implemented as long as Hamas remains in power and refuses to give up the mission statement which won it its mandate in the Palestinian parliament.

ah, personal freedom

2006-06-06T05:09:00.000+03:00

The Associated Press writes,

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of Alaska Monday over a new law penalizing marijuana possession for personal use in the home.

The civil liberties group alleges the new law is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.

"Is marijuana so dangerous that it justifies restricting a fundamental right? The state thinks it's yes, we think it's no," said Michael Macleod-Ball, executive director of the ACLU of Alaska.

The lawsuit also claims the law allows prosecution of people who use marijuana for medical purposes, which the Alaska Department of Law disputes.

Along with the lawsuit, the ACLU is asking a Juneau Superior Court judge to block the law. Macleod-Ball said a judge set a Thursday hearing on a temporary restraining order.

The law, which was signed by Gov. Frank Murkowski on Friday, is an attempt to reverse a 30-year-old Alaska Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled the privacy rights of Alaskans trumped the harm the drug could cause.

Later court decisions set a legal limit of 4 ounces (113 grams) that an individual can keep in the home.

Murkowski for the past two years has been pushing through a bill to counter that ruling, understanding that the final decision would be up to the courts.

Under the new law, pot possession of 4 ounces (113 grams) or more is a felony, with possession of amounts less than that is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.

"The issue of marijuana appears destined to be resolved by the courts," said Department of Law spokesman Mark Morones. "Now that there's some science behind it, we know a lot more about it now and its potency now than when the Ravin decision was decided."

Gearing up for the court fight, Murkowski and the Legislature included in the bill a set of findings meant to prove that marijuana has increased in potency since the original Supreme Court decision, and therefore has become more dangerous.

Joining the ACLU as a plaintiff is an anonymous 54-year-old woman referred to as Jane Doe who uses marijuana to treat pain caused by a neurological illness called reflex sympathetic dystrophy, according to the lawsuit.

She and another plaintiff, a 42-year-old woman referred to as Jane Roe, will not list their real names because they fear criminal prosecution under the new law, the lawsuit says.

Jane Doe and the ACLU claim there is no exception under the new law for medical marijuana patients. Morones said medical marijuana users are protected under the new law and will not be affected.

balancing in sweet purgatory

2006-05-29T04:22:00.000+03:00

I walked into the bunker of death two days after I went to heaven.

Shoshana and Micha are the caretakers of heaven, and there's no place like it on earth. They have a harp store, which used to be in the same hidden narrow alley as my aunt and uncle's jewlery shop in Jerusalem, and is now at the bottom of the hill where they live. The house is set low into the hill, the front gate lush green trees hiding stone staircase leading down to the wooden cabin, down further to homemade sauna and swimming hole, garden. My friends like to go there to work in the garden during the day and completely unwind at night. This time, I only went there for the unwinding part.

It was another insane week at work, like these weeks are, and I had three days off to be free. I woke up the first morning of freedom with a really deep cough, but went to Jerusalem anyway. Some friends and I had talked about going up to Shoshana and Micha's the week before, and then forgotten, but somehow after I decided to go anyway, I found out five more of my friends had the same idea.

We got there late, and the women went down right away, armed with water bottles and towels. Shoshana was standing there, completely nude. 'Nice to meet you,' she said to some of us. She went off to get something, and the rest of us got naked and walked into the sweat.

It was a small wooden structure with a wood stove outside and a basket of coal inside, dark except for the candles, lit also by oil and sweat. The top bench was the hottest. I sat on top, dripping and breathing out my toxins. I tried to stay in as long as I could. I made it for about twenty minutes each time, four times. In between each, we ran out and jumped straight into the cold swimming hole. The contrast of heat and cold went so drastically to my head, my mind spinning out of control (otherwise sober) and I felt like I was walking on the moon. I went back in. Then back to the water. Back to the sauna. Back to the water. We were mermaids in space.

Micha and Shoshana have a great house, filled with art and instruments, good smells and herbs. We jammed on different drums, a sax, guitar and something resembling a wooden xylophone.

Shoshana told us about her dream, which she had ten years ago, in which she saw the dome of the rock burst into gold and blue petals, making way for the temple to grow directly from within it. In her dream, she was at the wailing wall with thousands of people praying intently, and when she looked up, she saw the shrine break into pieces and the temple push through. She tried to say something to those around her, but she couldn't find the words, she was in shock. She watched the whole transformation, alone. When it finished, everybody looked up, oblivious to the change that had taken place while they were praying.

I didn't actually walk into the bunker of death a couple day later, but stuck my head in for about thirty seconds before feeling completely swallowed by the smell of human waste emanating from inside.

It was Saturday, and we had just eaten lunch and cake and

decided to go for a walk in the hills around elisha's moshav a lovely beautiful place full of magic sienna was tired and cosmos had lots of energy we wandered and walked and when we got to the bunker elisha said it was from the 1948 war i said who's going in with me nobody would i took a deep breath stuck my head in and felt death wash over me it stunk of human i thought maybe from the people who use it as shelter now or maybe from the screams and rifles and war and death curse panging me now forever never couldn't be i decided must be the elements

pinning a spinning wheel

2006-05-24T21:16:00.000+03:00

Olmert's speech to congress was nearly perfect. I was impressed. I had to stay late at work the night before to cover the press conference he held with Bush after their first meeting at the White House, so I was expecting a little more of the same.

He was nervous at Tuesday night's press conference. They both were. Bush slammed out another winning analysis when, following his statement on how conflicts can be resolved through negotiations on both sides, he thoughtfully looked up and drawled, "the only problem is that Hamas [pause] doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist."

Here were two of the strongest leaders in the world talking about peace, and negotiations, with Olmert even promising a state in 3 or 4 years, and not four hours earlier the House of Representatives ruled in a sweeping vote of 361 to 37 to choke as severely as possible any aid flow into the Palestinian territories, while in Europe, the rest of the western powers were working out a plan to funnel aid to the Palestinian people without feeding Hamas.

Olmert's address to congress was smooth. He had pizzaz. He said all the right things to appease all sides, and piss off all sides, and painted himself as Sharon's heir, the hardened Israeli prime minister who's seen it all, loves his people, and of course, is concerned about the plight of his neighbors.

To the same House of Representatives that voted to further limit aid to Palestinian, Olmert said, "the Palestinians will forever be our neighbors. They are an inseparable part of this land, as are we. Israel has not desired to rule over them, nor to oppress them. They, too, have a right for freedom and national aspirations."

Right for freedom and national aspirations. In a non-state with a crumbled infra-structure, constant in-fighting and near starvation in cramped refugee camps, obsessed with the idea of their national pride, their homeland, and their struggle. A struggle inherent to Israel's struggle, its freedom and national aspirations.

Like elections, it's impossible to take Olmert at his word. He is not the hardened Israeli general turned prime minister of the past. He is the former disappointing mayor of Jerusalem, the former deputy prime minister everybody held at arm's length. He is riding on the victory of a man who died at the prime of his career, a prime 180 degrees away from where he promised he would be during his own corrupt election campaigns.

A friend of mine on a three-week leadership program in Israel told me that the one thing he's gotten out of his trip is the realization that no solution is possible in this conflict. Interesting because when he asked me what I've gotten out of my work this year, the first thing that came to mind was the realization that a solution is completely possible. Despite all the variables, including the temperments of our leaders.

Abbas proposed, and Hamas rejected, an idea to pose a referendum to Palestinians on whether to accept a state based on the 1967 borders. It was a strange propasal and an obvious reaction from Hamas. Such a referendum is meaningless. A Palestinian referendum on the borders of its state would by nature be a referendum on the borders of Israel's state, and in this conflict, neither entity can unilaterally determine the borders of another state.

A solution is possible. Maybe a temporary solution, like the others, to tide us over a few years, or even decades, before the next war. But there won't be a solution as long as each side refuses to compromise. We've heard this before. If Palestinians will agree only to a state set at 1967 borders and Israel will agree only to withdrawal as long as it does not require retreating to exact 1967 borders, then the current situation will persist. In the meantime, Israel's promise to withdraw becomes more generous by the offer, and the Palestinian vow not to recognize Israel becomes weaker by its offers. In the next five years there will be a Palestinian state, but the solution can be furthered only if Israel agrees simultaneously to set its borders.

dawning of the age

2006-05-23T04:17:00.000+03:00

Max went to Africa today, so we had another long weekend hafla all together in Jerusalem. The community that's grown together that I've been a part of this last year has been so amazing. There's really no other way to describe it. We came together last fall at the rainbow gathering, some people we'd known before, some friends of friends, lots of travelers and passers-by, a new generation taking over Nahlaot in Jerusalem, its narrow stone alleyways and cave-like houses, its teachers and its laundromats. It's a transient community of people who touch down on each other for a few weeks or months or years, then stay or go, and find a path. I spend almost every weekend with these people and these places. Its a big part of home.

The apartment where yoni lis used to live and then hillel moved in with ami and the other ami and then max when hillel left is the hub. At least it was before the lice, and now Max is gone, but the energy is still there. It's the door in the middle of Nahlaot's main 'street' that's literally almost always open and inside there's an extra person sleeping and so many more eating or cooking or playing music. Adina, the Queen of Nahlaot, singing and whimpering and giggling, and someone walking her home, and Ezra mopping and laughing, and Ami making chai or cooking or eating or learning or playing guitar, Devora smiling, and Max moving to rythm, barefoot,and then Jackie, and Elisha somewhere, and Meir Chaim somewhere, and eveyone stopping in or staying. Then there's the anonymous guy sitting cross-legged on the bench on Be'er Sheva who tells you to look above the door for the key when you were looking nonchalantly in the tree, and the tourists.

Both of my mother's brothers and their wives and kids live in Nahlaot, in the same Nahlaot but more settled and less touched by fairydust. My sister also lives there, with her husband, but they've been in India for the last few months. During the winter, I was in Jerusalem at least three days a week. Now that it's summer, it feels even more like a utopic shtetl, the center of the world, from a certain angle.

Ironically, the only thing weakening paradise is the product of its creation, its transience. That is its beating heart, its allure, its rejuvenating character. For the last half year, everything fit into place. Two of my oldest friends, and a good friend of one of them, and that new friend's girlfriend, and then another of their friends who ended up with the female of my two oldest friends, and a new friend who I grew up with, and an old sporadic friend, and others who I'd mention but this sentence is too long, and the tel aviv family, became my closest. And there were always more people around. And there has always been food, and a place to stay, and someone to talk to, and freedom and flow and comfort. Sometimes we go to the woods or to a festival or to a farm and sometimes we spill onto someone else's house.

It's like college or camp but more ambiguous. Everyone is doing something similar and everyone is doing something different, and some of us work, and some don't, but it works, and we're family, and people leave and new people come and some people stay and become the world to each other. Already people are going, and still in a few weeks or months, and again next year. It feels like everything is on the brink of change, but it's always been changing. When Max left he told me that I was the mama and had to hold down the fort. There are other mamas around, and more will be back at some point, and then I'll be gone, and then a new generation.

life, death and, blah

2006-05-18T04:27:00.000+03:00

There were probably a million things I could have written about in the last week, but I kept holding myself back. It's spring, and it's a time of birth and freedom, I can appreciate that, but it also feels like the end of an era, overburdened by change and worry and departures and distance and change. I don't know if my thoughts about all this have been negative or regressive or positive and a learning experience - but I wanted to avoid writing another tirade about death, war and the good hiding in the world.

I kept putting off writing about the deaths of the two people critically wounded in last month's bombing in Tel Aviv. Both were young and sons and died of organ failure. I took the news pretty hard. My instinct when I heard about the first was that the second had died also. He did, the next day.

I hear about people I don't know dying every day, but for some reason, this one hit hard. Maybe it's that everything seems to be exploding around me, figuratively, or maybe it was because it all hit so close to home, literally, down the street, and in so many other ways. The last few weeks have felt so transitory and transformative to me, that the news of of two more people whose lives and families and everything around them changed in a split-second was a lot to handle.

I'm in my own absorbed reality, much less tragic, thinking about how insane, and deaf, I am going from construction now at all sides of me starting before dawn, thinking about the amazing community I've been part of that's already in the process of morphing with time and the nature of things, thinking about emotional labor, and caring for friends, and the balance between selfishness and selflessness, thinking about the importance of sleep and the importance of adventure and the importance of love and the importance of happiness, thinking about my family, and my work, and joie de vivre. It's absorbed and it's not so tragic, but it's another reminder that life is not static.

I got a ride with my boss on Monday to outside of Jerusalem, planning to meet up with friends in the city and hitchhike together to Meron for Lag Ba'omer, traditionally the 33rd day counting down to the end of the grain harvest and the giving of the torah, and in the hasidic world, the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, author of the Zohar, who is buried in a huge tomb at the top of the mountain. I wasn't sure I wanted to go. I went for Lag Ba'omer five years ago, and hated it, feeling very out of place, and very small and sticky and debaucherous. But I figured I'd be with great friends, and we could spend the whole time camping in the forest.

When I got to Jerusalem, nobody was ready to go. It took five hours of eating and playing music before we got on the road, and then we were 12. We stayed a group walking through the empty market, to the street, to the bus stop, to the random junction where every ten minutes another five buses pulled up, and another hundreds after hundreds of haredi men, wives, sons and daughters, and dozens of hippies, pushed their way on. Lots of screaming, lots of shoving, and one woman who gave me a dirty look and slapped my arm when I made a noise she said wasn't modest. We waited almost two hours for a bus. Then we reconsidered.

Four of us went on. I stayed in Jerusalem. We broke down again into two groups, one went to learn zohar and the rest of us went to make a bonfire and play music in the park. The apocalypse that had hit the park on Independence Day was back, this time in the form of hundreds of groups of high school kids eating meat and gleefully building enormous fires. We went back into the forest, and ended up sleeping there until late morning. It wasn't exactly what I had planned, but it was nice.

I keep learning, over and over to stop planning. Things change whether we plan them or not. We're much more susceptible to great surprises when we're not so busy feeling disappointed at unfulfilled dreams.

The park looked destroyed when we came down from our site. I wondered who was going to clean it. We decided to pick up some garbage, and ended up attacking three sites. We scored some ketchup and unopened bags of about 40 fresh pitas. I needed to get out of the city and go be lazy somewhere in nature. It took some time but at around 2:30 we made it to the bus station. Then we waited some more, until I made everyone get on a bus that was going close to where we wanted, if not exactly, because I so much prefered to be sitting on a bus riding through the Jerusalem hills to a random spot than sitting in front of the bus station waiting.

So we did, and the day was awesome. We went to a collective community called Evan Sapir, set on a cliff in the middle of the forest. We found a great tree cave and a natural pools carved into stone, and a handmade wooden sweatlodge, and lots of green and quiet. We sat around for six or seven hours, but this time we weren't waiting.

I tried to avoid writing this post because I didn't want to write about death again, and I didn't want to come up with some feel-good analysis of how to keep these things from breaking us down, or give some moral guide to reorganizing tragedy to build ourselves up. But it's unavoidable.

Usually, when I hear about deaths, I can do that moral guide thing, I can distance myself enough to understand the loss on some level, and use it on other levels to recognize the lesson learned to love life and make the most of every second. You never know when things are going to change. Man makes plans and god laughs. Be ready for change. Be ready for tragedy, be open to its invigorating elements.

But I don't think I succeeded in doing that that with the news of these deaths. I know about change, and I know how to look at the positive elements of tragedy, but sometimes we just want to mourn, not necessarily use the opportunity to boost our own morale and price of life. Even when we don't know the victim personally, recognizing their name, hearing about them in such detail, seeing their families crying and knowing, feeling, the desperation they must be going through, being familiar with the exact place they were injured and having been there numerous times, being familiar with the kind of community they come from, the kind of life they lived, makes it too difficult sometimes to be ready to pick ourselves up and find the feel-good moral of the story. Even if we get to spend a day lazing around in nature and feeling alive.

democratic lifeline

2006-05-15T14:35:00.000+03:00

In his address assembling the new security cabinet Sunday, Ehud Olmert said that this would be the vehicle driving a new era in determining Israel's way of life and democratic nature. In hebrew, he used the term "arichat hahaim" which spelled one way means way of life, and spelled another means length of life, or lifeline.

He made the announcement only a couple hours after the supreme court decided to uphold its standing law preventing Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from living together in Israeli territory. In a vote of six to five, the supreme court upheld a discriminatory law that could have been avoided if Israel had a constitution. Five of eleven supreme court justices said the law was discriminatory, and supported the petitions to change it - but the law stands.

The justices' reasoning was that in time of war, you can't grant citizenship to the enemy. Judge Mishael Cheshin, who announced his resignation just before the final debate on the issue and serves his last day tomorrow, said a few months ago, "No one is preventing them from building a family but they should live in Jenin instead of in [the Israeli Arab city of] Umm al-Fahm."

Could an American supreme court justice make the same case for a U.S. citizen wanting to bring over his or her Iraqi partner?

Proponents say the ruling is not a matter of infringement on citizens' civil rights but rather a necessary wartime precaution, which leads us to understand that in wartime, civil rights don't count.

Right after the ruling, Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel's citizenship law had to be set into basic law, and said he'd do it in six months.

But without a constitution, there is no way to insure citizens' rights. Basic law does not have the same power as a living constitution. Without a constitution there is no vehicle to allow citizens to challenge a particular law on an individual basis with the guarantee of a general citizens' right.

When the citizenship law is set into place, there will be no room for arguments of discrimination. Amendments can be made, but not with the backing of the constitutional right of the citizen. The law will be determined with consideration of security and religion, and will not consider the rights of those who are affected by the rule. The basic law will only continue to perpetuate the cycle of discrimination, because it will establish a general rule without consideration of rights. It will allow for a supreme court justice to suggest its non-Jewish citizen go live in a refugee camp in a violent non-state rather than give its citizen's spouse the right to live with family. Setting this law, or any law, without a consitution provides only a legal basis for systemic discrimination.

The difference between determinining Israel's 'way of life' and its 'lifeline' is minimal. As long as Israel continues to set its way of life without consideration for the varying and individual needs of its diverse citizens, its lifeline shakes. As long as Israel continues to spout democratic rhetoric while doing nothing to change or quell the discrimination that exists on on every level from religious to economic to racial, its lifeline shakes. As long as no documents exist to provide a guarantee for the right of an individual citizen, its lifeline shakes. Israel cannot call itself a democracy while simultaneously discriminating openly against its citizens. Its length of life depends on a necessary lifeline, a consititution. Without a constitution, there is no way to ensure the sustainability of any of the rights its citizens enjoy now, or the sustainability of democracy.

it's all in the wrist

2006-05-08T05:01:00.000+03:00

We read our horoscopes on the way to Haifa on Friday. We laughed at its advice. The general hint of the week was not to rely on our luck, use careful planning and do our homework. True, we were on a 3:30 train to Haifa instead of the 2:15 to Acco, and true we had missed that train because while we stood arguing with the guards to keep the doors open just one more minute our friend Danielle was upstairs at the ticket booth frantically trying to figure out whether to get a ticket and to where. But we felt lucky.

It was a lucky day. I'd worked till seven am and written some diatribe about war until nine and slept until one and now I was on a train up north. We bought a sandwich on the train and somebody offered us theirs uneaten. Bad idea? We figured we'd never do it on a New York subway but this was Israel. We got a ride in the Haifa train station parking lot and from there five more until we reached Tsfat. We knew we were camping, but we didn't know where. We were meeting 12 other people.

It turned out we were sleeping in a park on the peak of Tsfat next to a crusader fortress. We got there as the sun was setting. The tents were already set up. Pesach, an awesome guy who loves his friends and loves to be happy and wasn't even there for the weekend, had arranged us all meals in the old city. He'd set me and two others up at his friend Yonatan's house, which turned out to be an old stone split level building with a giant black llama outside the door and a great family inside. We came with an extra person. They gave us an exta sleeping bag.

We got back to the tents at different times and drifted in kind. I woke up at about 10. We moved onto a platform in the shade overlooking the city and covered it with blankets and sleeping bags. I'd bought vegetables, Tiferet cooked them with lentils, Jackie and Miriam also made salad and stew, and someone else had gotten 40 pitas, three loaves of bread and some wine. There was another stew there, from someone, and a bag of eggs that had made their way from somewhere else.

We sat around and ate and sat around and gave each other massages and sat around and talked, and people started thinking about going for a walk in the wadi. Danielle and I went for a shorter walk and when we came back, Jackie and Elisha were hanging in a tree. We'd met a guy and his dog, one of whom looked into the tree and said, "those people look like their going to fall."

I only saw Jackie's legs. I'd stubbed my toe before and it was bleeding and I was on my way to clean it when somebody said, "what happened," and everybody ran over to see.

Jackie was lying on the ground, half her body hidden in the bushes. She was dazed and her arm was twisted into a shape I've never seen before. At least not on Jackie. Ami went to get an ambulance and we tried to figure out how to move her while she said, "guys, I think it's serious," which we could see, and Max rubbed her head and I rubbed her stomach and someone else held her other hand.

The ambulance came and the paramedic put her arm on a styrofoam splint and joked around. Elisha and I helped her to the ambulance and someone handed me her bag. Her passport was in there. Nobody had any money. My phone and wallet were locked in someone's house.

None of us had ever been in an ambulance before. It was bumpy and narrow and Jackie looked like she was going to throw up, but gracefully. The paramedic forgot her name and asked Elisha whether he was her boyfriend. He didn't want to say. The paramedic wanted to know what Elisha did. We wanted to know how Jackie was.

The best day to get hurt in Israel is on a Saturday. The emergency room was empty. I took her passport and insurance information and tried to sort out the bill, but they wouldn't accept her insurance without a card and we had no way of paying. I signed a promissory note to pay the next morning and got another one from the ambulance.

The doctors forgot her arm hurt or didn't understand her pain because she doesn't speak any Hebrew and their English was worse. They jostled her arm and let us follow them around with Jackie to the x-ray room and into the "activity room" but they didn't give her any drugs until right before they snapped her wrist back into place and they made us wait outside while they did it. We heard her crying inside and laughing and shouting "arret" and then we went with her to get another x-ray. She walked with us this time.

The doctor was reluctant to write the diagnosis in clear English for her insurance company and told her she'd have to wear the cast for 6 weeks and get a follow-up once a week only after he'd already turned around and said goodbye and Jackie had gone out of her way to ask.

We got a ride from someone waiting for his mother which took us all the way back to Tzfat. We'd taken 10 steps on the pedestrian mall when we saw the cops. They said hello to us and saw Jackie's cast. They asked Elisha who he was. He said he'd lived there for four years and indicated that we were coming back from the hospital with our friend who had just broken her wrist. They took his I.D. number and searched his pockets and Jackie's bag, which he was carrying. The bad cop handed the tobacco over to his good partner in the car to smell and a bag of tea to the other partner. When Elisha handed him his rolling papers the cop smirked and lifted them up for his partners to see. Then he gave them back to Elisha and one of the cops in the car gave Jackie a lemon.

We'd thought we'd have a hard time deciding what to do now that sleeping on the beach made less sense, but when we got back to camp everybody was in a hurry to go home. We made havdalah on a giant cup of arak, two candles and some tea, and then everbody packed up and went to the bus station. Danielle stayed behind with me and Jackie and Elisha. So did the guy and his dog, who had come back. He offered us a place to stay but we still wanted to go back to the hospital to pay and knew that pizza and ice cream had to be had. Elisha went off to return equipment to friends around town, and I ordered a large pizza. By the time we finished eating it was past 12 so we decided to take up the offer of another friend who had invited us to stay with him.

Gavi's house was beautiful and clean and we each got a sheet and a blanket and a bed. We slept well and Jackie was comfortable and only woke up at 11:30. I'd gotten a text message the night before saying I was working at 8 pm. We got our stuff together and thanked Gavi for being so damn awesome and headed to the highway. A cab offered to take us to the hospital for 15 shekels and a guy in a red car offered to take us for free. He picked up his friend who worked at the hospital on the way.

It took a while to figure out the money situation and the insurance situation and the bureaucratic situation at the hospital, but we were on our way out by 3:30. We wanted to get to the train in Acco, but someone offered us a ride to Ma'alot where we could get a bus into Nahariya, so we got in. We drove north instead of south and looked at the mountains and listened to our forty-year-old driver's P.J. Harvey collection and got to Tel Aviv by seven. Marwan the hummus man gave us a free half kilo at the Nahariya station.

Jackie told me last night, when I came home from work at four and she was just waking up from a drowsy sleep, that she always pictured herself getting hurt. I asked her if she ever pictured any particular and she told me she usually saw herself being slammed by a truck mirror while riding her bike or being hit by a bus walking in the sreet.

I thought I was the only one who did that. Pictured my own limitations in vivid detail and worse-case scenarios. I asked her if she thought everybody did it. She said she didn't think so.

She's in a lot of pain now and feels helpless in her body. She's going to be in a cast for six weeks. She feels stupid for grabbing a branch that she didn't trust in the first place, but people fall out of trees. It could have been avoided but so could a lot of things or maybe nothing can. She pictured some injuries and got another, we picture some realities and get another, but it is what is and once you know that the rest makes a lot more sense.

more war

2006-05-08T02:11:00.000+03:00

Apparently, someone (a.k.a Bush) is calling the war on terror world war III (thanks for the heads-up, Mobius), in agreement with an article written last month for the Wall Street Journal by David Beamer, whose son died on 9/11, and contrary to my assumption in the last post that "there is a world war happening right now and nobody has stepped forward to declare it."

But according to ABC,

In 2002, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explicitly declined to call the hunt for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group and its followers "World War III."

Can a world war be declared retrospectively?

war games

2006-05-05T07:47:00.000+03:00

Do I walk around freely at night without curfew during war? Do I take long weekends in nature? Do I hop between cities from a great job to easy relaxation and freedom of press, dress and pastime? Do I fear rockets and missiles and bombs and guns? Do I see soldiers walking around en masse, tanks rolling in the streets? Are these my soldiers? Are these my tanks? Is it seige or celebration? Trench warfare or terror?

Israel and the western world are fighting a war on terror, an oxymoronic term distinguished into separate concepts only by nuance. In both cases, destruction is the goal, humans are the target. In a country with mandatory conscription, the line between civilian and soldier is fine. When is it terror? When is it war?

I live in the center of this conflict, but my experience of war is through media alone. In the West Bank and Gaza, militants take the steets shooting guns in the air, their infrastructure is the crumbled product of weak effort and occupation, their youth are the brainwashed victims of ultimate pessimism, fundamentalism and constant violence. Foreign soldiers roam the streets, invading homes, destroying buildings, attacking from air, sea and land. The thousands killed comprise both militants and innocents. Theirs is a war zone.

Mine is the target of terror. Terror is innocuous war. Civilians are at risk in both but it is the method of fear-mongering that differentiates combat from terror. I can leave my house whenever I want and never have to worry about losing my home, but I know that each day I am the likely target of destruction. I know I could be blown up on a bus. I know a rocket could hit Tel Aviv. I know Israel is the front-lines of any battle between the Middle East and the U.S. But I live otherwise freely with only the threat of terror. Meanwhile, thousands more in my half of the war zone are maimed, dead or traumatized. Nobody has won.

The difference between terrorism and the Cold War is that terrorism has proved its possibilities. Terrorism is the natural heir to the Cold War. It is the new war game. There is a world war happening right now and nobody has stepped forward to declare it. The allies have reconvened against the axis of evil. They are fighting to prove that traditional warfare will surpass this new debauchery. On one side, it is the same cast of characters: Britain, France, United States and a new German republic. On the other side, Arabia has been reincarnated into a fundamentalist military and economic power. Islamic fundamentalism has replaced the crusades. The wars go on, now indistinguishable and unprecedently long.

Terror is war which cannot be declared, because it relies on surprise tactics and ambush. Terrorists don't declare invasion - they strike when nobody is looking. By declaring a war on terror on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has set out to prove that only a war which is declared can be won. By sending combat soldiers into Palestinian towns and invading with air strikes to crack down on security, Israel is firmly sustaining its tradition of war, of triumphing through military and intelligence. But by refusing to admit its nuclear capabilities and singling out Israel in case of U.S. attack, Iran has set out to prove that cold war is superior - that terror is the best way to prove a point. Iraqi rebels and Palestinian militants are doing the same. It is the guerillas against the soldiers.

But traditional war has lost its efficacy and its glamor, and the guerilla turn from armed ambush to suicide bombings is a promised defeat. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still rage, soldiers are still killed in combat, civilians in cross-fire, and it is becoming more difficult to remember what the fight was about in the first place. Suicide bombers, using alternative war tactics, set themselves up for deliberate loss - a loss of their own life, a loss of innocent lives and absolutely no redemption for their cause. Terror is the new war, but both are impossible situations. It is impossible to win a war on terror because terror is the new war. Traditional warfare cannot snuff terror because terror is by definition an unbridled tactic of ambush. War is a game of logic and power, of demarcation and boundaries, of winners and losers. Terror is fundamentalism, the anti-logic. It is total annihilation without any rules.

This generation's world war will not end until it is acknowledged for what it is. As long as each side continues to play a different game, no solution is possible.

58

2006-05-04T00:31:00.000+03:00

Only one person called me on it. It was David, a kid who I haven't seen since he was 8 years old and charming the pants off of everybody at our camp. We were at an innocuously massive bonfire/drumming extravaganza in the middle of downtown Jerusalem, at Ronen Jembe the jembe maker's studio/apartment/secret garden, when this blond kid came up and asked me if I was I me. I was, and I told him so. I asked him if he was his older brother and he said no. Then I remembered him.

In the last ten years he has become even more charming than I remember and a self-declared right-wing religious fundamentalist, though you wouldn't know it from looking at him (whatever that means). He told me he was going to the army next year because Jews are a warrior nation and as a Jew, he had to be a warrior. He said his yeshiva in Gush Etzion was full of 'lefty liberals,' he told me he wouldn't question the morality of anything in the torah because why would he question the morality of something god told us to do, he told me if a baby was born and he saw that it came from Amalek he hoped he would be able to kill it, he asked why he should go somewhere besides Israel to learn about himself, and he told me he firmly believed that Jews are superior. When I asked if he had ever read any Ze'ev Jabotinsky, he looked at me and said, "that's my man!"

The whole time we talked he was laughing, not because any of it was a joke, but because the truth of it to him was so clear, it was ridiculous.

He told me he could never be a real hippie because of his political leanings (though it has a totally different meaning in this country) and then he called us on it, our raison d'etre, our reason for partying and drum-banging and guitar-strumming and flying-high around the fire.

"I doubt how much any of these people really mean it," he said.

He could have meant a thousand things, but it turned out he meant, "how many people here do you think are dancing because it's Israel's 58th birthday? They'd be doing the same thing at a Phish show."

It was only when he said it that I remembered it was Independence Day. I'd remembered by name, but I'd forgotten what it meant. When I was kid it meant these romantic images of Jewish pioneers and partisans, heros and brave hearts, flying the flag of Israel, secure at home. For David, that's still what it means, and for my grandmother too, and for my father, and somewhere, for me too, but none of it makes any sense.

While we were dancing and barbequing more than 2,000 Israeli Arabs and Jews were marching in Daliat al-Carmel to mark 58 years since Naqba Day, the term Arabs use in reference to their defeat in Israel's 1948 war of independence. Do native Americans do this on the fourth of July?

The park in Jerusalem was stuffed with people and grills the whole day, everybody had the day off (except me, I had to be at work at 4), and the place looked like a war zone carnival, all smoke and bodies and noise.

But when I got into Tel Aviv, it was a totally different celebration. I know over in my neighborhood there was a street party, and the beaches and parks were probably filled, but at least by the bus station, independence day was despressing. I saw three separate men sleeping deeply on three separate empty sidewalks, and a lone family making a barbeque in front of a crumbling building on a corner street.

I wonder what people were thinking about the meaning of the day. For some it was a fiercly patriotic day of historical permission to shoot fists up in victory and say, 'look at me, I'm in holiday heaven and this is my homeland, I'm home.' And for others it was a time to say, 'yes, I know I vote and I know I sit in Knesset and I know I say I'm happy being an Arab with Israeli citizenship, but today I'm showing you what I really think, and what I really think is that today symbolizes the day I traded one freedom for another, and here I am in solidarity with my brothers who didn't take the choice." And for everyone else, it was just a free day to relax.

And one day later? One day later the grand synagogue in Petah Tikvah was covered in swastikas, and then elected Yisrael Beiteinu head and member of Knesset Avigdor Lieberman went all out and said what he'd been trying to say all this time, that Arabs in Knesset who show loyalty to anyone besides Jews should be executed. And everyone else started thinking about Lag Ba'Omer and the next big bonfire.

kids who died as soldiers

2006-05-02T06:44:00.000+03:00

I was in the middle of typing a sentence when the siren went off. I looked up. Everybody in the office was standing. The siren sounded for a minute. Then silence. Twenty-four hours of memorial ahead for Israel's fallen soldiers, a day not for barbeques or parties (that comes tomorrow night, independence day), but for ceremonies and sirens and crying and remembering. There's not a family in Israel that hasn't had a close relative or friend die in the line of duty. This country is small and conscription is mandatory - whether or not we agree with its policies, the IDF is an inseparable part of Israel, its beating heart.

My roommate, whose brother was killed nine years ago in a helicopter crash over Lebanon, told me that he doesn't buy into a day of memorial. He said there were only two days a year that his family got together, memorial day and the anniversary of his brother's death, but still, he couldn't get into it. He said those who remember will remember every day, and those who need a special day to remember need more than just that.

Ceremonies are being held now in every city and town across the country. Another siren will sound tomorrow morning for two minutes. Everybody will stand, everybody will remember. The best music is being played on the radio. Pictures and images and stories of kids who died as soldiers are flashing across TV screens and across projector screens at ceremonies where families sit and cry, cry for their sons, their daughters, their neighbors' sons, their neighbors' daughters, for the concept of Israel and the concept of national unity and the concept of youth and the concept of defense and the concept of war.

martyrs

2006-04-30T22:40:00.000+03:00

The first time I remember being really affected by the amount of death I have to deal with on a daily basis at my job was the day that a soldier was stabbed to death at a checkpoint, another soldier was crushed from the waist up in an APV accident at a base in the north, some 35 Iraqis were killed in a suicide bombing and another dozen people suffered the same fate when a Bangladeshi cyclist rode into a group of people gawking at a defused bomb. I was supposed to keep writing.

Later that day, on the bus to Jerusalem, I overheard the guy sitting next to me talking to his brother on the phone, and heard that the soldier at the checkpoint was his friend.

It's impossible not to take all these deaths personally. But getting stuck in fear is a bad idea if you work in news. I started working at Haaretz during the disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank, an excessively prepared-for circus that could have been a thousand times worse than it was. And then: three Israeli teenagers shot to death at a Gush Etzion hitchhike post, five more dead in a bombing at the entrance to a Netanya shopping mall that had been hit three times before, a whole slew of Qassam rockets and IAF missiles tossed back and forth over Gaza and the western Negev, 1,000 killed in a stampede in Iraq, another hundreds then hundreds then hundreds in suicide bombings in Baghdad, dozens killed by riots over a cartoon, a string of Palestinian kids killed by falling shells, another string of militants killed by more shells, a haredi father killing his son, an Ethiopian man killing his wife and then himself - all human and destroyed and faceless.

When the falafel stand in Tel Aviv was bombed a couple of weeks ago, I tried to stay detached. It had been hit before, I wouldn't go there, and 10 blocks could be really far if I let it. I heard there was an American teen wounded in the attack, and I tried to stay removed, even as every aspect of this attack kept hitting closer and closer to home.

But I couldn't stay detached, and I am not detached. Every fatality and every causalty, even when numbering among so many others, is an individual who within seconds had his or her life changed without any warning. This American teen, who has an Israeli parent, and looks like such a good, nice guy, a kid, is now going to wake up every morning - if he makes it - and after a split-second remember that he was the victim in a suicide bombing a couple days into a week-long trip visiting relatives in Israel and now everything is different. His story is everywhere on the internet, even though his parents have tried to keep the information among friends. He's not faceless. He is the wounded hero, whether he wants it or not.

Nine people were killed in that attack aside from the suicide bomber and eight more are still hospitalized, one other in serious condition. Newspapers showing images of the attack show the destroyed falafel stand, and then slip in a bunch of photos of the bomber - one that looks like a school photo, another of him dressed in black with a yellow headband, pointing a gun directly at the camera. There are images of his family crying, his mother's face wrecked and wrinkled, passing out photos of their martyr. Their hero.

The bomber chose to be this martyr, this hero, out of frustration and complete pessimism that anything better could come of his life. Out of occupation. Out of brainwash. This American teenager chose a shwarma, and ended up critically wounded, representing all Israelis, all Jews. The bomber was targeting Israelis, his oppressors - he wasn't out for this kid in particular, or for any of the nine particular people who died because of him - but that's who he got.

It didn't matter that neither this American Jew, nor any of the people who died, were his particular oppressors - to the bomber, all Jews in this land are oppressors, and it was up to him to fight. War is war. Innocent or guilty, fatalities and casualties are part of war. War is not supposed to be personal. But it is - every Israeli kid, every Palestinian kid, every American tourist, every soldier, every European peaceworker, everybody, everybody who is struck in war is an individual, a person. Each life worth an immense value, impossible to express. They become the hero, the individual who suffers on behalf of everyone else. There's the hero or martyr who chooses this fate out of frustration, desperation, or hate, and there's the hero who never wanted to be a hero or a martyr in the first place. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who's the victim? Who's the hero? Who's the martyr? It's a lose-lose situation.

independence or catastrophe?

2006-04-28T13:45:00.000+03:00

Eliyahu McLean sent out this invitation for a joint Arab-Jewish commermoration/celebration of Naqba Day (the Palestinian 'catastrophe' day) and Israeli Independence Day. I've never seen anything quite like that, considering how impossibly contradictory the one day is for two peoples. Jews consider the day a celebration of 58 years of sovereignty in Israel, while Palestinians mark it as 58 years of displacement from their towns and villages.

For more information call
Ibitsam Mahmid, 054-7433974 or Michal Talya, 04-9531935

יהודים וערבים מציינים יחד את יום הזיכרון, יום הנכבה ויום העצמאות

פרויקט "מקום לשלום"
ועמותת "שביל זהב"
בתמיכת המרכז למפגש ודיאלוג בנס עמים
מזמינים אתכם למפגש דו-לאומי ייחודי
בימים שלישי-רביעי, 2-3 במאי, בנס עמים (סמוך לנהריה)

ביום העצמאות הישראלי מציינים פלשתינאים בישראל ומחוצה לה את יום ה"נכבה",
שפירושו 'יום האסון'.

במשך שנים הורגלו היהודים להתייחד עם כאבם ביום הזיכרון ולחגוג את שמחתם ביום העצמאות – כבאירועים בלעדיים של הציבור היהודי בישראל.

מנגד, הורגלו הערבים בישראל להסתיר ולהצניע את כאבם על האובדן הכבד שעברו עם הקמתה של מדינת ישראל.

חג העצמאות הישראלי, מעצם טבעו, מציע חגיגות נוסטלגיה למנצחים ומתעלם מהמנוצחים.

ביום חג זה מתגברות אצל בני שני העמים בישראל תחושות הפירוד, הזרות והניכור האחד כלפי סמליו של השני.

לנוכח פער חריף זה בתחושות בני שני העמים אזרחי המדינה, אנחנו, יהודים וערבים, נקראים לחשוף את המשותף לנו ברמות עמוקות יותר מן המקובל, ובאופן אחר מן המקובל בימים טעונים אלה.

נבטא את מה שמייחד כל צד בתרבותו, בסיפורו, במקורות לכאבו, נתחבר בכאב ובסבל האנושי עצמם ובשאיפה המשותפת לתיקון ולהשלמה, ונוכל לחגוג את נקודות המפגש המעשירות את חיינו, החיצוניים והפנימיים.

במפגש נחווה התבוננות פנימית ביקורתית; ביטוי אותנטי של חוויות ורגשות; היכרות והבנה עמוקה את רגשותיו של הזולת; תרגול של קבלה וחמלה כלפי עצמי וכלפי הזולת; הרחבת יחידת ה'עצמי' הקולקטיבי ('אנחנו'); הפנמת ערך האחריות האישית לגורל האישי והקולקטיבי; מודעות ליחס בין שינויים אישיים פנימיים ובין שינויים במציאות החיצונית.
אלה יהיו חלק מתהליכי המפגש שיאפשרו לנו לזרוע זרעים של
גילוי, ריפוי ושינוי מציאות.
בסדנה, המתקיימת זה השנה הרביעית, יילמדו וינחו אנשי מקצוע בתחומים שונים ופעילי שלום בהנחייתן של מיכל טל-יה ואיבתיסם מחמיד, "המקום"/"שביל זהב".
§ היומיים בנויים כתהליך אחד שלם, הכולל אירוח, לינה וארוחות בבית הארחה במקום.
שעת ההתחלה ביום ג': 14:00 שעת הסיום ביום ד': 19:00
§ מחיר: אדם בחדר של 3 אנשים 220 ₪ (חדר זוגי 250 ₪). נא להירשם עד יום ג', 18 באפריל.
במהלך פעילות הסדנה תתקיים הפעלה מודרכת לילדים בגילאים 4-14, מותנה בהרשמה מראש.
בואו בהמוניכם, נשים, גברים וטף!
לפרטים נוספים: מיכל טל-יה: 04-9531935 , איבתיסם מחמיד: 054-7433974
להרשמה: שירי בר 04-9831843

عرب ويهود يحيون معا ذكرى يوم النكبة ويوم الأستقلال

مشروع " مكوم لشلوم" وجمعية " شبيل زهب " بدعم مركز الحوار بين الأمم

فى "نس عميم" (قرب نهريا)

يدعونكم الى لقاء خاص ثنائى القومية
أيام الثلاثاء والاربعاء 3-2 من أيار
فى يوم الأستقلال الأسرائيلى يحيى الفلسطينيون فى أسرائيل وخارجها ذكرى يوم النكبة .
على مر السنين تعود اليهود فى أسرائيل على الأنفراد فى التعبير عن آلامهم فى يوم الذكرى وأفراحهم فى يوم الأستقلال كمناسبات خاصة بالجمهور اليهودى فى أسرائيل. وبالمقابل تعود العرب فى أسرائيل على اخفاء آلامهم على الخسارة التى ألمت بهم مع أقامة دولة أسرائيل.
بطبيعة الحال يدعو يوم الأستقلال لأحتفال المنتصرين. فى هذا اليوم تتزايد وتتعمق مشاعر الفرقة والغربة بين الشعبين مواطنى دولة أسرائيل. نحن اليهود والعرب ندعوكم للمشاركة فى الكشف عن المشترك بيننا بشكل أعمق من المعتاد فى مثل هذه الأيام المشحونة. وندعوكم للتعبير عن مشاعرنا بشكل صادق كى نتواصل معا من أجل هدف مشترك, الأصلاح والتسامح.
فى هذا اللقاء نعيش تأملا داخليا, نعبر بشكل صادق عن مشاعرنا, نتفهم بعمق مشاعر الأخر, نتمرن على التقبل والتعاطف مع النفس والأخر.

يدير هذا اللقاء الذى يعقد هذه السنة للمرة الرابعة ميخال طال-ية وأبتسام محاميد (همكوم/شبيل زهب).
برنامج اليومين متواصل ومتكامل ويشمل أستضافة, وجبات فى بيت الضيافة المحلى, ومنام.هنالك ترتيب فعاليات للاطفال –جيل 4-14 فى ساعات الورشة. هلم بجماهيركم نساءا ,رجالا ،وأطفالا.
يبدأ البرنامج يوم الثلاثاء الساعة 14:00 وينتهى يوم اللأربعاء الساعة 19:00.
الثمن للشخص فى غرفة لثلاثة أشخاص: 220 شاقل، وللشخص فى غرفة لشخصين:250 شاقل.
الرجاء التسجيل حتى يوم الثلاثاء 18.4 للتسجيل: شيرى بار 04-9831843
للتفاصيل: ميخال طال-ية 04-9531935 , أبتسام محاميد 054-7433974

surprised visit

2006-04-26T11:19:00.000+03:00

Donald Rumsfeld surprised everyone, including maybe himself, by showing up unannounced for a visit in Baghdad on Wednesday. Bright eyed and charming, the U.S. Secretary of Defense who is currently targeted for resignation came to 'congratulate' the new prime minister on his smooth appointment and cabinet selection. And also to assure the war-stricken country that American troops would not be sticking around forever.

Later in the day, just when everyone must have been glowing from the surprise, Rumsfeld's friend Condoleeza Rice showed up, also announced - perhaps just as surprised to find herself in Baghdad as Rumsfeld, and hell, the rest of the world.

Why did two of the most senior members of the Bush administration show up on the same day for 'unannounced' visits in Iraq just as the same administration is standing to completely unravel precisely due to the confusion the whole world is feeling about what America is doing in Iraq in the first place?

(I'm not suggesting conspiracy, just wondering what the hell they are trying to achieve? These unannounced visits seem about as pure as a cab driver driving purposefully off a cliff and then offering to drive the victims to the hospital, congratulating them along the way for how well they are holding up.)

effective signage

2006-04-26T08:15:00.000+03:00

An Egyptian demonstration in Dahab denouncing an attack earlier in the week that killed 24 people. photo by Nir Kafri, Haaretz

oh, the mysteries

2006-04-24T04:13:00.000+03:00

My concept of reality has shifted since I moved to Florentine in south Tel Aviv last month.

First, there's my sleep patterns. Never very reliable, they've only become more sporadic since the move. I'm actually closer to work than before, which logically should mean I get more sleep, but I'm only getting less. I never get to sleep before either the wee or not so wee hours of the morning, if at all.

I blame the construction workers. And Ya'akov.

Construction starts every day at the crack of dawn and doesn't stop until the builders' voices are dry from yelling at each other, or until they are sure everyone in the neighborhood is wide awake. They really are nice guys, but they drill right into my wall every day and drop heavy objects (I'm talking cinder blocks and metal beams) onto my rooftop (right above my head) from the top of their work site in the adjacent building at least every half an hour. The sound shakes the building and leaves me cowering, certain whatever is being thrown up there is going to come crashing straight through the roof and onto my head. It has scared me right out of sleep on countless occasions (I work midnight shifts at least a few times a week, and am usually trying to get to sleep right when they start work). At first I thought they were just using the roof as a storage spot. Then I went up to the roof and saw them dropping a block of cement from their rooftop to mine. They told me they hadn't thought it would bother me. They also told me a month ago that they would be finished in two weeks.

Ya'akov is my landlord. He is in his late 80s and is very interested in us and our apartment. He calls early in the morning, often, to chat and is surprised when I am not always in the mood. He doesn't understand that I don't always work at midnight, and am sometimes trying to sleep. He also likes to collect rent checks and fix things not before and not after 6:30 am, and hasn't caught on that it's not necessarily everybody's best hour.

Then, there are the mysteries.

Mystery # 1: The feces in front of my apartment door

When my roommate came in the other day and told me someone had taken a shit outside the door, (actually, what she said was, 'aliyana! why do you always gotta shit right in front of the door!'), I thought she meant downstairs, actually outside the building. But no, there it was, right in front of our door in a building with a closed entrance and only one other apartment besides our own.

Naturally, we assumed the feces belonged to our neighbors' dog, so we wrote a nice note asking them to please clean it up, and assured ourselves that the dog must have done the deed while his human friends were calling his name from downstairs - our neighbors probably hadn't even realized it had happened, we told ourselves. Poor, shitting dog.

Note securely taped to the neighbors' door, we went out. When we came back, the shit was still there, and the note had been relocated to our door, folded inside out, and stamped with a new message: 'Not our shit. We sold the dog last week.'

This of course brought on many questions, not the least of which: whose shit was it? And, of course: who was supposed to clean it?

Mystery # 2: The artichoke, leek and potatoes rotting on top of my refrigerator

When I came home last week from Jerusalem, there was a bunch of vegetables sitting in and above the fridge rotting. I didn't think much of it, except for a bit of surprise at my roommate's choice of decaying artichoke. When I pointed out to him a few days later that the vegetables were still there and rotting, and maybe he wanted to eat the artichoke, he told me that they weren't his. My other roommate said she hadn't bought them either.

A true mystery.

Mystery # 3: The burning garbage dumpster

Without fail, every day since I have moved in, the garbage dumpster on the corner of my street has been set on fire, and police and fire trucks cheerfully visit the neighborhood. I don't take it personally - I think it started before I moved in. At first we assumed it was a vandal throwing kerosene and a match into the dumpster, but every day? Another unsolved mystery. Perhaps there is something flammable inseparably attached to the dumpster that ignites from daily friction? Or perhaps it is a criminal, underworld conspiracy (and perhaps these are the same folk that shat in front of my door and left a bag of rotting vegetables in my kitchen).

(I'm looking for a roommate, by the way, if you know anybody)

rude awakening

2006-04-18T02:44:00.000+03:00

I woke up today at around 4 pm to the sound of the phone ringing. By the time I was conscious enough to realize that it wasn't part of my dream or the usual construction noises that plague my building every day, all day, the phone had stopped ringing. I saw that I had 6 missed calls and five voice mail messages, one from each of my parents and the rest from friends, all making sure I was alive and sleeping and hadn't been down around the old central bus station. It took me a few minutes to understand what was going on. Most of the messages started with something fairly standard like 'chag sameach' and ended with, 'because there was a bomb attack in Tel Aviv.'

What a way to start the day. I'd gone to bed at around 10 am that morning after working a midnight shift, so I hadn't had a chance to check the news again. I called my mom and asked her what happened. She told me at least eight dead and 30 wounded. She also told me it happened at the same falafel stand that had been hit twice before. The last time, three months ago, I remember the owner of the restaurant talking exctitably, saying how lucky everyone was, what a miracle it was that the only person who had died was the suicide bomber.

This time, he told reporters 'There is no second miracle.'

Finding out about an attack is a weird sensation. A million thoughts fly through your head at once, until all that's left is mindless and numb recognition. You call everyone you know to either tell them you're okay, or find out if they are, and then you go about the rest of your day. Today, I got my internet cable installed. Life goes on, we keep doing the same things, even when not 15 minutes away at least eight people are dead from an attack that could just as easily and arbitrarily have targeted you. Did target you, me, in that abstract way. We were just sleeping at the time.

combatants for peace

2006-04-07T05:40:00.000+03:00

The amazing Ashraf, another Sulha friend, is co-organizing this event at Al Quds University in Abu Dis.
********

Al Kuds University Piazza, Abu Dis, Monday, April 10th, 2006, 3:00 PM

We are honored to invite you to the “Combatants for Peace” Israeli-Palestine Liberation Gathering. On the occasions of Passover and Palestinian Prisoner Day, we will gather around one table and describe how all of us, who were warriors in the past, put our weapons aside and replaced them with a non violent joint battle against the occupation and for peace between the two peoples.

“Combatants for Peace” is a unique non profit organization comprising a group of Israeli and Palestinian individuals who were actively involved in the cycle of violence in our area. The Israelis served as combat soldiers in the Israeli army and the Palestinians were involved in acts of violence in the name of Palestinian liberation. It is us, who in the past used weapons against one another, who saw each other only through eye-sights, it is us who cooperate today. The Liberation Gathering marks the hope and longing for freedom and independence of both peoples. The liberation gathering is the first public event of “Combatants for Peace” following a year of activity.

Schedule of event:
Gathering
Presenting the organization and its activities
Personal testimonials – the stories of two group members
Artistic show
Speeches
Summary and future plans

We will be honored to host you in the Liberation Gathering
For more details: www.combatantsforpeace.org
Elik Elchanan: 054-2015159
ashraf khader:0599778374

To be (colonialism) or not to be

2006-04-02T10:39:00.000+03:00

I.

Whenever I get on a bus or hitch a ride, I mumble silently to god not to let anything blow up. I also make sure to ask god not to let the driver I'm riding with crash into anything, because statistically speaking, Israelis are more likely to be killed in a traffic accident than a terrorist attack.

After a little self-assuring prayer, I stop worrying. Why bother? I can't pass every ride with stiff nerves, scared that something is going to happen to me along the way. If it happens - and hey, it could - then it happens. Nothing I can really do.

A couple days after elections a Palestinian dressed as an Orthodox Jew blew himself up inside a car driven by a couple from the settlement of Kedumim who picked him, a teengager and a 20-year-old woman up from a hitching post along the highway.

The first time I was on that highway was when I was hitchiking myself, with three of my best friends, to the settlement of Shiloh for the weekend (don't be scared/pissed, mom, I won't do it again). It was my first time in the West Bank aside from a wedding I went to in Gush Etzion and a Shabbat spent in Ma'ale Adumim eight years ago. Both the Gush and Ma'aleh Adumim are verbally tossed around as non-settlement settlements, likely to be annexed to Jerusalem should Israel disengage from the West Bank. I've never been to a Palestinian city in the West Bank, the official reason being because I am an Israeli citizen and it is illegal for me to cross into PA territory. For the last many years I also refused to go into the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The first thing to strike me, when standing on the West Bank highway with three friends, with the strange feeling of having been suddenly transported, together, from Jerusalem to the shtachim, was that Israelis and Palestinians drove on the same highway.

Putting the separation wall and the IDF treatment of Palestinians aside for a minute as important but separate issues, what I noticed then was that the Palestinians villages and Jewish settlements are literally within a stone's throw of each other throughout the West Bank. Shiloh is less than a ten minute walk from its nearest Arab neighbor (and apparently heavily guarded, though it didn't look like it to me). Waiting alongside the highway, I saw two white Palestinian license plates for every one yellow Israeli plate driving along the same road.

This shocked me. Granted, I couldn't see the wall from where I was standing, nor did I take one step into a Palestinian village. But I was completely surprised to learn that Jews and Palestinians drive on the same road. And that Jews hitchhike, without worry (except me, mom) on that very same highway. For some reason I thought it would be completely separate.

What stops those Palestinians that are committed to carrying out an attack in Israel from pulling that same attack along the highway, next to one of the settlements? Not all Palestinians want to attack Israelis, but for those who do, isn't this the easiest place?

Apparently.

I've mentioned before how easy it is to hitchhike in Israel, and how, especially in the territories, it seems as though every Jew is eager as anything to pick up another Jew, maybe to avoid a situation similar to last week's events in Kedumim.

When I was standing on the highway, waiting for my own ride into Shiloh, I was scared. I knew that the chances of something happening to me then were as likely as something happening to me on the bus I take approximately four times a week back and forth from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, but I was scared anyway.

Plenty of cars stopped for us, so many more than when I hitch in the rest of Israel. Most of the drivers were healthy looking, well-fed and suntanned hippie teens who invited us to jump in and catch a ride to the spring with them, or who suggested that rather than hitch, we hike through the wadi. Through Arab villages, of course, but a really nice hike nontheless.

II.

I started thinking recently about the idea tossed around of Israel as a colonialist enterprise. What got me thinking was the depth of the culture in Israel in terms of linguistic, religious and geographical pride - the quintessential terms for nationalism, but not necessarily congruent with the experience of so many colonialist movements. Aside from the Afrikaaners, I couldn't think of a single example of colonialism whereby occupiers had a language and culture unique to that place alone, where the occupiers considered themselves a nation, and not just a representative of a larger occupying power.

So is Israel an example of colonialism? What's the definition of colonialism? Is it necessarily a byproduct of occupation? Are these two synonymous? According to Wikipedia,

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizers generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population. The term also refers to a set of beliefs used to legitimize or promote this system, especially the belief that the mores of the colonizer are superior to those of the colonized. Though colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism, the latter is broader as it covers control exercised informally (via influence) as well as formally.

Incidentally, Wikipedia also uses Israel's occupied territories as an example of colonialism as referenced above. Theirs is obviously not the deciding definition of colonialism, but it seems as good as any place to start.

1. Extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced.

In the case of Israel, the nation in question comprises Jews and Arabs (though with a government intent on Jewish character.) First problem here is definition of nation. Considering that this is the first sovereign nation state to be established in a land which has been occupied by one imperial group or another throughout its history, it's difficult to say exactly who the nation is here. I guess it refers to the Jews, but there are Israeli Arabs and Christians, and hey, we're already into the deeper question of whether nation here means religious, linguistic or otherwise. 'Beyond its borders' is another problematic designation, considering that Israel does not exactly have definitive borders. Some of its land was given in by international agreement, while the rest was won in war. Then of course there's the problem of whose borders we are going by, those described in the bible, those designated by the UN, or those declared following wars which Israel militarily won.

Next we come to the issue of 'settler colonies' and 'administrative dependencies.' In terms of settler colonies, this whole not having an official border thing really makes it difficult to determine what exactly a settler colony is. Colonies on illegal land? Should there be a difference in consideration between settlements deemed legal and illegal by Israel? Where does the bible fit in? What about administrative dependencies? Let's say by settler colonies we are referring only to land conquered through modern war and internationally recognized as illegal (meaning 1967 borders and on). In that case, the whole separation wall, deemed as apartheid by many opponents, is indeed a sort of ethnic separation, but also by default removes Israeli administrative sovereignty from all land and cities within the Palestinian Authority - a step away from colonialism. If we are to refer to all of Israel and its uncertain borders (not just those in post-1967 borders) as settler colonies, then this whole question gets a little more complicated.

That segs into the next part of the definition, the part that refers to all of this illegal rule being imposed on an indigenous population directly ruled or displaced.

I knew there was a reason I hate politics.

First, I guess we have to try to unravel this whole business of the indigenous population in this here holy land. Some would argue that the indigenous population, by divine and historical designation, is the Jews. Of course, that ignores the fact that Abraham, the father of the Jews, came over from somewhere in today's Iraq, and the fact that his descendents inhabited the land with the godly permission and commandment to kill and conquer the other nations existing there at the time - including the Canaanites, the Moabites, the Philistines, and yes, even Amalek. It also ignores that god's land promise was intended for Abraham's seed - should that exclude Ishmael?

Is the land Israel because it belonged to an Israelite kingdom for so long? Because the Jewish religion and nation were solidified here (2,000 years of exile aside)? Because it is promised to Jews in the torah? Or is the land Islamic Arab because they were here for so many centuries? Or Christian Arab? Or perhaps Ottoman, because they occupied here for some five centuries? Or maybe Philistine or Moabite?

Okay, that part's giving me a headache. Let's move on to the directly ruled or displaced part. In the years prior to British colonization, the Jewish communities living in Ottoman Palestine were directly ruled in the sense that while they were given freedom to practice their own religion without fear of death, only Muslim were eligible to own land or be Ottoman citizens. Jews were sovereign from the Ottomans only inasmuch as they were not citizens of the empir.e Displaced? Yeah, Jews were displaced, no matter where you argue they originate from.

The Palestinians have also been displaced. Are now displaced. Those who spout the rhetoric of Palestinians really being Jordanians, or Syrians or Lebanese or Egyptians are missing that point. Whatever displaced the Palestinians, be it the establishment of the Jewish state, the Arab neighbors who today voice international disappointment for Israel and who even in those days launched war on Israel, did not accept the mass number of Palestinian refugees. Not in 1948 and not in 1967. And not today, really, either. Was this to prove the point that Palestinians must stay in Palestine at every cost? Whether a nation of Palestine as such existed prior to the establishment of the state of Israel is an irrelevant question; one exists now. As separate from the rest of Arabs as Iraqis are from Syrians. Arguments that its lack of sovereignty keep it from being a nation are moot and ridiculous - Israel, comprised of the Jewish nation, is a modern state that did not exist before. The previous Israel was completely different. Not to mention, throughout our displaced history, Jews considered (and consider) themselves a nation, having to do both with land and ancestral heritage. Palestinians, regardless of when they merged, now belong to a nation they connect directly to a land. Saying 'Palestinians don't exist' is as equally obtuse as saying 'Germans' or 'Italians' (two examples of nations that did not exist until two centuries ago) are not nations, that 'Germany' and 'Italy' are not countries. They are now. And both, incidentally, are composites of patchwork nations nationalized into one by political and military movements.

Back to the directly ruled part. Palestinians are not directly ruled by Israelis. They are ruled by the Palestinian Authority. Theirs is an indirect rule in that they are subject to Israeli military control, and thus to international aid because of their collapsing infrastructures. But there is a democratically elected Palestinian Authority that, try as it might, Israel could not prevent from exercising its political muscle, despite any economic or military control it employs.

Regarding the question of any overlap between the definitions of occupation and colonialism, the idea of an extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders onto another nation's land sounds like a pretty clear example of occupation - but does that necessarily mean that occupation is synonymous with colonialism?

Wikipedia gives a bunch of definition for occupation, including the periods of time following a nation's territory invasion by controlling enemy troops; the act of settling onto an uninhabited tract of land; A situation where a country or region is under the control of a foreign army. According to this definition, even those who argue that the land was uninhabited when Jews arrived (i.e. "a land without people for a people without a land") should recognize that Israel's conquest of the territories was occupation. The IDF presence in the West Bank, despite its position of defense, is still a foreign and thus occpying force in a region inhabited by people not under Israel's political jurisdiction. From this, it would seem that while the definition of colonialism encompasses the definition of occupation, occupation does not necessarily imply colonialism.

2. Colonizers generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.

There doesn't seem to be any question of whether Israel dominates the regional resources (i.e. water, food, aid) used by the Palestinian Authority. It does (though the issue of aid is a constantly changing battle these days). And considering the horrible state of the PA's infrastructure, it seems clear that Israel dominates the work and business sector of the region as well.

Does Israel impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population? It doesn't seem so. Palestinians speak Arabic and are not forced to learn Hebrew (the majority doesn't speak it); Palestinians are Muslim or Christian, not Jewish; and I think any danger of Israel imposing socio-cultural structures on the Palestinians is probably the last thing anybody's worried about.

3. The term also refers to a set of beliefs used to legitimize or promote this system, especially the belief that the mores of the colonizer are superior to those of the colonized.

Terms or beliefs used to legitimize the system? I don't think Israel could talk itself out of anything here. Zionism as a system essentially embodies this part of the definition. It is the idea that Jews belong in the land, regardless of argument, because either a) god promised us such as the chosen people; or b) the more secular argument that leaves god out of the equation but fights for the right of Jews to have a homeland.

Jews do not have another country. Period. Using the argument that Palestinians are Arab and Muslim and thus could be recast into any Arab land is essentially an argument of ethnic transfer, and means nothing. Using any argument that one group is superior to another here is ridiculous and counterproductive. Here we are: two people in one land, neither of us going anywhere. The band Shotei Hanevua or Fools of the Prophecy, has a great song that comes to mind, with lyrics that go (in translation) "nobody is going to leave here... so start loving each other."

Or don't. But stop trying to prove you have more of a right to the land than the other. How could we even possibly begin to say who this land belongs to? It's like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? Who cares? They both have the bird flu now!

4. Though colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism, the latter is broader as it covers control exercised informally (via influence) as well as formally.

The final part of the definition is actually the part which, if you're looking, most justifies the view that Israel is not an example of colonialism. This is not to make any comment on Israel military or humanitarian practices with regard to Palestinians - it is a comment on whether Israel is an example of colonialism.

When considering how Israel compares to standard colonial enterprises, quite a few differences come to mind. But none stands out to me as much as the truth that whereas in every other example of colonialism I can think of the colonizing group was a representative body of a major world economic or political power, Israel is not. Regardless of a posteriori arguments that Israel is a pawn of the U.S., there is no arguing with the fact that Israel was established not as a satellite of a thriving imperialist power, but as a haven for refugees.

Also, this need for a refugee haven demonstrates the other significant difference: Not only did the new immigrants not represent a major power looking for economic leverage, but they were all refugees who for reasons of personal danger could not go back to the countries they came from. They could have gone elsewhere, but not back to where they came from. This was not the case for the original Afrikaaners, whose ancestors were Dutch representatives looking to secure an economic trade route and, along the way, set up a European society. Afrikaaners would be hard-pressed to say they were Dutch, and would accuse you of insigating ethnic transfer if you suggested relocating them to Holland. But the colonial intention nevertheless makes a difference when considering whether or not it is an example of colonialism. The question of intention is also necessary in considering whether there is a difference between colonialist and colonist, referring to the distinction between settlement as a method of economic/military exploitation and settlement as a refugee solution.

Does any of this make a difference when considering when military rule/defense is necessary? Or when it is justified? Or if refugees turn to exploitative measures as a method of security? Or if the land is won in war? Or if the refugees turn to more expansive settlement through economic and political motivations once their greater state has already been established, and the refugees are no longer refugees, but citizens?

Every nation is entitled to its security. And every nation is entitled to live freely without being crushed or terrorized by its neighbor. Every nation.

The question of whether Israel is an example of colonialism is useless. The answer might temporarily satiate and satisfy, but it's not really going to get us anywhere. Israelis and Palestinians are both here. That's it. Get used to it.