Just came back from the BBC studio in Jerusalem where I was a guest panelist on the World Service Newshour radio program with Julian Marshall.

You can hear the second part here. I can’t find the first part online yet but will post it as soon as I can.

It was my first time on radio, so I was a little nervous, but the people on the other side of the line were real professionals and very encouraging, so like the BBC.

We spoke about everything from Ehud Olmert, Hillary Clinton, Avram Grant, Boxing in Jamaica, and Mars exploration.

Today, Israelis chose the Duchifat, or Hoopoe in English as our national bird.

Some quick research shows that the Hoopoe fills its nest with its own fesces to ward off predators. So basically, to keep itself safe, it has to live in its own crap, along with all the constant bad smell. It also can apparently fling its fesces at its enemies as a sort of projectile. Some more research shows the bird is mentioned in the holy books with King Solomon, and is thus associated with wisdom.

Interesting choice for a bird to represent Israel.

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

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

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

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

Barman: I’m afraid I can’t do that.

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

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

Me: What? You’re not serious.

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

Me: Because?

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

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

Barman: I can’t do that. People talk.

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

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

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

Welcome to Absurdistan.

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

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

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

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

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

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