Monthly Archives: February 2008

Cries from the Beloved Country Part IV

February 28, 2008 By in Uncategorized 2 Comments

I’m sorry to be only reporting negative things from South Africa, but this is absolutely terrible. This video is shocking and  has set off a firestorm in SA. There are many Afrikaners, especially more elderly ones, who just cannot come to terms with the new South Africa. Most young Afrikaners I think have made the mental shift, but there are always those who are still living in the past.

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A video of white South African university students feeding black campus cleaners soup they had urinated in has caused outrage in a country scarred by decades of apartheid. University classes were canceled and staff and students protested on Wednesday (February 27), demanding action against the four men. The video shows one student urinating into a container of soup placed on a toilet seat at the University of the Free State, situated in a conservative Afrikaner farming region. “This is the final ingredient,” he said before heating the soup in a microwave oven and giving it to the elderly cleaners — four women and one man. They were also taken to a bar where they drank alcohol and danced to Afrikaans music in what was portrayed as an initiation ceremony. The leaked video — filmed last year — sparked black and white students to demonstrate at the campus, marching to the Reitz men’s residence where it was made. It seems the video was leaked by one of the student’s ex-girlfriends, who was upset at being dumped.

Sky News has a good report.

Bubbles within bubbles

February 26, 2008 By in Ehud Olmert, Gaza, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Sderot Tags: Leave a comment

“The State of Israel has lost its dignity. Yes, countries have dignity too. Any country that allows its sovereignty to be violated 50 times a day will eventually wither and fall,” Sderot mayor Eli Moyal says Tuesday at a small protest tent he has established in a corner of Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv. The tent, a collection of posters, Kassam rockets, about two volunteers and a sound system blaring out home grown Sderot rap songs, moved to Tel-Aviv this week after spending a week outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. Moyal says the reason to bring the tent, part of the protest against the “government’s inability to either make peace or war”, to Tel-Aviv is to further get under the skin of Israelis living in the big city, not aware of the daily hell in the periphery town of Sderot. But, apart from a trickle of visitors who walk into the tent and sign a petition of solidarity with the people of Sderot, most Tel-Avivians were doing what Tel-Avivians do best: jauntily going about their business. One businessman in a nearby photography store says he just came out of the country club with its Jacuzzi and swimming pool. “A bubble within a bubble,” as one observer points out. “We’ve been in the hearts of people for a long time now and I have never met a single person who is not sympathetic to us,” Moyal tells The Jerusalem Post outside the tent. Not everyone is apathetic however, as many of the adjoining restaurants bring free food to the few volunteers manning the tent. Moyal admits that the protests, while managing to keep Sderot in the headlines, will not serve the ultimate goal of stopping the Kassams. Continue reading →

A very cool man

February 25, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , 3 Comments

A former Israeli now living in Cape Town has survived life-threatening conditions and defied contemporary wisdom by undertaking the most southerly swim in the world, completing one kilometer in an Antarctic lake in sub-zero air temperatures.

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Previous extreme cold water swims in the area had only ventured as far south as 65º latitude.

Ram Barkai, 50, undertook the swim last week in the body of water known as Long Lake, just over 70º south, near Maitri, the Indian scientific research station in Antarctica.

Long Lake, which Indian researchers at the station have renamed “Lake Ram,” is the farthest-south unfrozen water mass in Antarctica. It is also the farthest inland point in Antarctica in which a human being has swum.

“It hurts, and I don’t recommend it to someone who feels like just waking up one morning and diving in. I trained for many months, and the swim is very dangerous,” Barkai, who has lived in South Africa for the past 11 years, told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Cape Town. Continue reading →

Israel, Europe to get closer

February 24, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

The Foreign Ministry has begun a strategic overhaul of relations with the EU and its member nations, increasingly “plugging into” EU institutions and, in turn, allowing Europe to play a greater role in Israeli diplomatic and economic processes, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

So central has Europe become to Israel’s well-being, diplomatic officials have told the Post, that the Foreign Ministry believes it is time to reassess the Jewish state’s traditional reliance on “two pillars” for Israeli survival: a strong IDF and an unbreakable alliance with America. Given the growing importance of the European Union in world events, and in the Middle East particularly, the officials said, a third pillar has become necessary: deepening ties to Europe.

“Increasingly, Europe is involved in everything that touches us: trade, the Palestinians, Iran, UNIFIL in Lebanon,” said a senior Israeli diplomatic source. “They are in the [Middle East] Quartet, and central in many other areas. Developing a strong relationship with Europe is becoming the third pillar safeguarding Israel’s survival.” Continue reading →

Before the Uniform, there was the Star

February 22, 2008 By in Uncategorized 2 Comments

In her native New York, Estee Nemeth was warned not to wear any visible symbols of Jewish or Israeli identity in the subway. So she wore her Star of David inside her shirt. But she never dreamed that in Sderot, the Kassam-battered symbol of Israel’s struggle against terrorism, the chain around her neck and the patchwork Israeli flag she sewed on her day pack would get her into trouble.

In the fall of 2006, Nemeth, 25, walked into a cinematography class at Sderot’s Sapir Academic College, sat down and placed her bag down by her feet, just like any other student.

When the lecturer, Nizar Hassan, a celebrated Arab-Israeli documentary filmmaker, walked in and started teaching, something on Nemeth’s bag clearly bothered him. Nemeth says he stopped the lecture and asked her: “What is that?” referring to the credit-card sized Israeli flag sewed onto the bag. “Turn that bag around. I don’t want that side facing me,” he said.

Nemeth, initially thinking Hassan was joking, didn’t comply.

“Some of the other students also thought this was one of his jokes, one of his many ways that he challenges the students and gets them to think differently,” Nemeth says.

What happened next ended all notions that this was a game. Continue reading →

Raul don’t Rumba

February 20, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

In 1961, about 500 Jewish Cubans secretly left their island and flew to Israel on three planes to start new lives in the Jewish homeland. Once the Jews disembarked, the planes were serviced, cleaned and loaded with dozens of sheep – a gift from the Kibbutz Movement to the government of Cuba – then turned around and headed back to Havana.

The operation, kept secret for years, was a deal cooked up between Cuba’s new revolutionary ruler Fidel Castro and the Jewish Agency, and reflects an underlying theme in Cuban-Israeli relations since Castro’s rise to power: no real reason for the direct enmity which exists nonetheless, and which is expressed openly, because of each country’s relations with the US. Continue reading →

The Balkan Beat [Tinder]Box

February 19, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

The Balkan Beat Box is a NY-based Israeli electro folk band that fuses
mystical Jewish influences with the varied sounds of the Balkan
nations in southern Europe. The band, which performed in Israel over
the weekend and moves next to Canada, is taking the world by storm.
The mix of ethnic Balkan styles and influences with Western electronic
music make this band’s performances explosive in their energy. This is
hardly surprising given the geographical sources of the emotions,
history and national pride from which their music comes: the Middle
East and the Balkans, both explosive regions with the close
intermingling of peoples and conflicts that tend to flare up
occasionally, in the most violent way possible. Tens of thousands of
people have died in wars in the Balkans in the 20th Century, and this
is closely mirrored in our region too. In 1914, the Balkan wars spread
across the globe, and millions were embroiled in the firestorm, whose
embers also, eventually, lit the fire of WW2 and the Holocaust.

No wonder Israel is having such a hard time deciding whether or not to
recognize the new nation of Kosovo, and when to make that decision
public. Continue reading →

Duet in Damascus

February 14, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

“Gathering intelligence in Shiite neighborhoods is complex, of course, the nature of the neighborhood almost didn’t allow them to walk around on foot and look at things, neither were they able to drive around in a rented car. One of the buildings in the street matched the description given to them in an intelligence briefing by a local agent. After several turns in the area at different hours of the day, a car that was also seen at his office was noticed parked outside the building on the residential street. The next day, when they waited for him to leave the neighborhood in the early morning hours, they identified the man himself and his car. Now was the time to move. He finished assembling the bomb quickly and lifted it carefully – nobody enjoys walking around with a kilo of explosives in his hands. He quickly moved towards the car and crawled underneath it, took out the tools from his pocket, and placed the bomb under the chassis.” – Duet in Beirut, by Mishka Ben David, 2002.

 

No need to wait for the book on Imad Mughniyeh’s demise in Damascus. It may already have been written.

Duet in Beirut by former Mossad operative Mishka Ben-David is a work of fiction, but owes its wealth of detail to the author’s intelligence experience. Published in Hebrew six years ago, it describes a Mossad hit team traveling to Beirut, stalking the head of Hizbullah’s foreign terror department and assassinating him in a car bombing. Perhaps unfortunately for Mughniyeh, it was not translated into Arabic; had he read it, he might have taken greater precautions. Continue reading →

Sderot’s Facebook status: Angry

February 10, 2008 By in Facebook, Israel, Sderot Tags: , , , 7 Comments

Since I wrote this story at the start of the week, hundreds of people have joined the group. The group currently has over 350 members [up from 45 on Monday] and a whole new range of materials on building and firing rockets. I’m not sure how I feel about the ‘success’ this group is seeing, partly, I assume, thanks to the ‘Post story on today’s front page and on our website. I’m not sure its a good idea for Sderot people to make their own rockets and shoot them back at Gaza, and I don’t want to encourage it. But as you can see from the comments on the group, many people think its an idea whose time has come.

Here’s the original story:

A new Facebook group urges Sderot residents to use the internet to learn how to make crude rockets, like the Kassams fired at them from the Gaza Strip, and shoot them back at the Palestinians.

The group, which currently has 45 members, posts instructional material from the Internet on how to make rockets.

Sderot, just a few kilometers to the east of the Gaza Strip, has been under constant Kassam rocket bombardment since the end of 2000. A recent report showed that over 70 percent of the town’s children are suffering from trauma. About 10 percent of the town’s inhabitants have left to seek out a quieter life. Continue reading →

Cries from the Beloved Country, Part II

February 8, 2008 By in South Africa Tags: , , 5 Comments

Sheldon Cohen’s murder, as well as the power cuts are still a burning issue amongst Johannesburg Jews. Some people I talk to there are either thinking seriously about leaving, or are in the process of taking out a second passport. Others don’t even want to contemplate leaving, but are hearing stories about other JHB Jews who are looking into emigration. Some South Africans living overseas are saying they don’t see how they can come back to live in Jo’burg. The Post asked me to write a news feature on what’s going on. What I don’t like about this story is that I feel that without actually being on the ground and getting a sense of what’s going on from face-to-face interviews, I can only generalize. The other thing I don’t like about this story is that I know what JHB is like, I grew up there, and I know you get used to living in a place with serious problems, like we got used to it here in Israel. There’s nothing really new in all this – its just sad to hear the same old story again – violent crime and meaningless killing in a place you love so much. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a ‘normal’ country.

Anyway, the story appeared on today’s front page but was edited for space, so here is the full version:

Sheldon Cohen was sitting in his car outside a Johannesburg sports stadium last week waiting for his son Noah to finish soccer practice. He was talking to his father, Jack, on his cell phone when three young men ran passed him and shot him in the neck. Sheldon’s father heard his son’s dying breath and fearing something terrible had happened, sped to the stadium. The killers, who had moments before tried unsuccessfully to snatch a cellular phone from a woman parked nearby who was also waiting for her son, looked at Sheldon and thought he was calling the police. So they killed him. Jack arrived shortly after to see his son’s body slumped in his car, with his grandson Noah standing watch.

A week before that, a Jewish man walking to synagogue in Johannesburg was stopped by several men in a passing car. One man got out of the car and demanded that the Jewish man hand over his talis bag – thinking it contained valuables. The Jew refused, and was shot to death. Searching through his victim’s talis bag, the attacker found nothing of value to himself in it and threw it out of the car. Continue reading →

Cries from the beloved country

February 3, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , 4 Comments

Just got this email sent to me [scroll down]; its making the rounds amongst former South Africans here in Israel. The violent crime in SA seems to be worsening, and every time a Jew is a victim, we hear about it here. Invariably somebody knows the victim. I’ve spoken with several friends back home over the past few weeks, and some are thinking about leaving, to Australia, Canada, even some to Israel. I’m told that Jewish emigration from SA is on the rise, slightly; they’re coming here and Australia. Other friends are saying there is a strong sense of sadness in the air, and not just from Sheldon Cohen’s murder, its everything together, and people are feeling down. Continue reading →

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