Monthly Archives: November 2007

Reaction on the Golan: A new leisure park and a women’s entrepreneurial course

November 27, 2007 By in America, Annapolis, Israel, Syria Tags: , , , 1 Comment

Here is the latest news about the reaction on the Golan Heights to the attendance of the Syrian deputy foreign minister at the Annapolis conference: a new leisure resort park has been established near the Amir Junction, the new B’not Yaakov bridge has been completed, work on road 98 from the Magshimim Junction to the Bashan Junction is close to completion, an entrepreneurial course for women in the Golan has opened up, a new course to train the area’s community leaders kicked off, a new population absorption campaign has been launched, new playgrounds have been built in several communities, and the municipal pools in several communities finally closed after a long, hot summer. In the community of Hadnes near the Sea of Galilee overlooking the Jordan Valley, 150 housing units have been made available to eager residents, with the option of building two guest lodges per property to give the homeowner an extra source of income and encourage tourism to the area.  

Residents of the Golan Heights can be forgiven for not getting too excited about talk of returning the Golan to Syria and a resumption of the Syrian-Israeli track – they’ve heard it before, at several peace conferences during the past few decades.

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Annapolis today

November 27, 2007 By in Annapolis, Israel, Syria Leave a comment

Good article by Chris Kaltenbach in the Baltimore Sun today, quoting me about the ‘Post’s coverage of the Annapolis summit.

“We’re treating this as a major event, giving it at least four pages in Tuesday’s edition and possibly more in Wednesday’s paper,” Amir Mizroch, news editor for The Jerusalem Post, wrote in an e-mail from Jerusalem yesterday. “It’s the first meeting of its kind in quite a while, and the fact that Israelis will be in the same room as Syrians and Saudis is important.”

Syria’s relationship status: It’s Complicated

November 25, 2007 By in America, International Relations, Iran, Israel Tags: , , 5 Comments

Reuters reports Sunday that Syria had blocked access to Facebook

Now, Damascus has said it is sending its deputy Foreign Minister to the Annapolis conference, signaling a possible shift in its close relationship with Iran, who was not invited to the peace parley.

Iran and Syria have grown very close over the past few years, despite the different ethnic constituents [Iran is Shi'ite] and Syria is ruled by the minority Alawites. What brought them together were their perceived common enemies: America and Israel. It will be interesting to watch Tehran’s reaction to this turn of events.

So, based on today’s developments, this is what Syria’s official Facebook profile would look like if it had one [Thanks to Ricky Ben-David for the illustration]:

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The Syrian Arab Republic is…
Going to Annapolis
Networks: Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, PFLP, North Korea, Axis of Evil
Interested in: The Golan Heights; The Lebanese Presidential election; Whatever I can get
Relationship status: Its complicated: Is in a relationship with Iran, but is looking to see other people because Iran is on a collision course with most of the world
Looking for: A way out of the Axis of Evil

Notification: Syria has joined the group: Peace Conference in Annapolis

What’s eating the Israeli driver?

November 22, 2007 By in Israel, Lifestyle, Science and Technology Tags: , , , , , , , 8 Comments

“Godless sociopaths the lot of them,” Jackie, a Tel-Aviv taxi driver for the past 18 years says of Israeli drivers. “They care about nobody but themselves. I used to carry around a baseball bat in the cab and I used to shout and scream at people, but now I’ve mellowed out. I’ve made the switch in my head. Every year I go to Holland for three months to visit my brother and its hard to come back to these streets, it gets worse every year, they’re Godless and they’re mad, and this is the real face of the nation. They rush for no reason; they want to get in front of you for no reason, just so that they can wait in line one place in front of you. I can’t explain it. I think Israelis drive like they do because life here is so shit, in every respect. The Israeli eats shit all day, and then gets into his car and takes out all his frustrations on the road,” the taxi driver says.  
 
You know the type: The one that overtakes you on the highway like a mad person, cutting you off, putting you milliseconds from a crash for no reason you can understand; the one who drives so close to your tail that you can tell what he’s saying on the phone he’s holding in his hand by reading his lips; the same one that, at night, drives right up behind you and starts flashing his headlights for you to get out of the way, regardless of whether or not there is another vehicle on your right or left; the same one that suddenly moves across two lanes so as not to miss the exit, without looking, indicating or even putting the phone down; the one that doesn’t understand that safe distance between cars is not an extra space into which more cars can be squeezed; and the one that takes the parking spot you’ve waited patiently for, indicator lights and all.

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So we lost

November 19, 2007 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

I know the side is terribly disappointed, especially since it was such a crucial game. As I wrote in my story on Friday, Israel’s vulnerability is its batting, and that seemed to be the problem on Sunday, as too many batsmen underperformed. Everybody said however that the match was a cracker.  

 

Cricket: Close loss to Croatia relegates national team

JORG LUYKEN , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 19, 2007

John Vujnovich hit a half century and took three wickets as Croatia bowled out Israel and relegated the national team to Division 3 of the European Championship in a nail-biter at the Hadar Yosef Athletics Stadium in Tel Aviv on Sunday.The Croats set their hosts a target of 153 to win the limited-overs match. Israel came within a whisker of topping that score, but it was not to be. Needing seven runs off the last six balls, the team had to rely on a tail-end pairing of Yaniv Razpurkar and Steven Shein, who could not handle the pace of Croatia’s powerful Phillip Siljeg.

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Israel to host its first ever international game of cricket

November 16, 2007 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

Sunday morning, flags will be unfurled and hoisted onto their masts, a synthetic pitch will be laid down, anthems will be sung, a coin will be tossed, 22 men in white will walk onto the field and the first-ever international game of cricket to be played in Israel will get under way.

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Played over 45 overs at the Hadar Yosef athletics stadium in north Tel Aviv, the one-day European Championship clash between Israel and Croatia will be the first match between two International Cricket Council [ICC] member nations to be held in the country. The winner will earn a place in the 2008 European Division 2 tournament to be held in Guernsey, Channel Islands.

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Are you talking [English] to me?

November 14, 2007 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , 1 Comment

Gadi Bleicher is stepping down from a position that, over the past 10 years, has provided him a bird’s-eye view of how Israelis relate to the English language, and to how “Anglos” teach it here. After being Berlitz Israel’s district director from 1997 to 2002, and then its CEO for the past five years, he gives Israelis a grade of six out of 10 for their English proficiency.

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His competitors in English language instruction, including the formal education system, fare much worse in his estimation: somewhere between 1 and 2.

Bleicher shoots in all directions, blaming the formal education system for only teaching children how to read and write in English, but not to speak, saying this hampers Israelis as they seek their fortunes overseas. He slams his main competitors (“Wall Street Institute’s gimmicks don’t impress”); and Hebrew ulpanim (“It’s very difficult to learn how to speak Hebrew in an ulpan these days”). Bleicher rejects accusations that Berlitz’s pay scale and working conditions are not good enough to attract high-quality new immigrants (“Show me one other organization that absorbs as many olim as we do”). Continue reading →

Greenhouse – Incubating Middle East filmmaking talent

November 9, 2007 By in International Relations, Israel, Uncategorized Tags: , , 2 Comments

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Incubating talent

ISTANBUL – They say a good story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. This story has an excellent and dramatic beginning, a beginning so chaotic and fraught with danger that it almost put the middle’s very existence into jeopardy, let alone the ending.

I’ll introduce the characters straight away, because, as some say, a good story is first and foremost about people.

Fadi Hindash, 26, of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, is making a documentary film about hypocrisy in the Arab world so potentially explosive that he doesn’t want me to publish the location where he and his family have been living. Fair enough, almost no story is worth jeopardizing a person’s life. Besides showing, vividly and viscerally, that some Arabs are just as sexually and morally complex as Westerners, Hindash makes the point that in the Arab world, the feeling is that you can do whatever you want, but, you know, don’t talk about it. If you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist, and if these things (debauchery, homosexuality, prostitution, rape) don’t exist in your society, then you are free to judge and preach to others. Continue reading →

Between Europe and Asia

November 4, 2007 By in Uncategorized 4 Comments

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Last week I traveled to Istanbul to cover the Greenhouse project – an EU funded program to develop documentary film and filmmakers from the Middle East and Mediterranean. My feature will come out this Friday, but in the meantime here is a short travel piece from Istanbul that appeared in today’s paper.

Istanbul is, perhaps, best seen through the eyes of a cinematographer: Imagine a city so chaotic, but whose characters travail along the banks of a slow-moving river; and imagine a soundtrack so incongruent you can hear modern techno music and Islamic chants within the same earshot.

Location: Take a wide-angle lens, you’ll need one. The city on the Bospharus which straddles Europe and Asia is big – very, very, very big. Official estimates range from 12 million to 20 million inhabitants, which is an unsurprising discrepancy for this city.

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First Class observations

November 3, 2007 By in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Why does the captain need to tell me what altitude I’ll be flying at all the time? What possible use can I make of that information? Is he trying to engage me in small-talk? Does he want my input? Does he want to know if I concur? Yes, we should fly at 30,000 feet, or no, that’s way too low. Bring her up to 50,000 feet Captain, I think that’s where she needs to be.

Why do they play such soothing string quartet music as the soundtrack to the onboard safety video? Surely it would be more realistic and more constructive to play the video to the sounds you’re likely to hear should your plane experience a sudden drop in cabin pressure, as well as the sounds you’d hear should your plane be diving towards a crash; like the sound of people screaming; and the sound gushing wind makes when you’re flying at 30,000 feet and there is a hole in the plane. Surely that would better simulate what you would be up against in an emergency and wouldn’t it be a good idea to watch that video carefully? Such a soundtrack would definitely get people’s attention; nobody watches the safety video anymore. On an El Al plane you could also mix into the soundtrack of screaming the voices of frantic, desperate people chanting the Shema Israel, the prayer before dying, for extra realistic effect.

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