Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and Photos

Israel’s anguish regarding it’s two captured soldiers by the Hezbollah, has become more intense following the revelation of an article in a Lebanese newspaper that one captive is alive but the other is “no longer among the living”.

This announcement was followed by another scathing flow of words by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in which he called for negotiations with the “Zionist government in Palestine” to commence with serious negotiations regarding a prisoner exchange. Nasrallah made these remarks from his secret headquarters, which were relayed to a gathering of his followings commemorating the anniversary of the battle at the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, which Hezbollah has claimed as a victory, along with the entire Lebanese II war, for that matter. The Sheik concluded his remarks by saying that his organization has enough long range rockets to “strike anywhere in the territory of the enemy in Palestine” (he likes to refer to Israel as Palestine).

Quite obviously, this news must be very upsetting to the relatives of the two captured soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who have been in a state of limbo ever since the two were captured following a Hezbollah attack on their military patrol vehicle on July 12, 2006, which launched the 34 day war.

Goldwasser’s wife, Carnit, also made a brief statement following the news revelation and Nasrallah’s ‘kind’ comments. Now she, together with the parents of both Udi and Eldad, have to wonder which of the two reserve soldiers are still alive: her husband, or Eldad.

Hezbollah in general, and Nasrallah in particular, seem to enjoy playing with the lives of relatives of captured Israeli solders, just like they did for more than three years following the capture of three soldiers on the Lebanese border near Israel’s northernmost town of Metulla.

Nasrallah seems to feel that he is in full control of the situation, complete with his threats of retaliation should Israel decide to attack Lebanon once again. Judging from what happened last year, any Israeli response to a Hezbollah launched missile attack (like what occurred a few months ago when the city of Qiryat Shmona was hit by three Katyusha missiles) might be considered by Nasrallah as a full fledged attack. Israeli forces did not respond to the recent attack on Qiryat Shmona, by the way.

So what happens now in this game of “heads or tails”? Do ‘heads’ mean that soldier “A” is still alive and soldier “B” is not? Should a prisoner repatriation occur in the near future, who will come walking across to the Israeli side, and who will be carried over in a coffin?

The anguish that the Regev and Goldwasser families must be having is tragic indeed. And all of us can only sympathize with them and pray that it will all end soon, one way or another.

The Turkish elections were watched here and there was some concern over the massive victory of the Islamic party. After all with Iran next door and the Islamic fundamentalism taking over regimes and countries all over - we wanted Turkey to remain the fun country its been.

Israelis travel to Turkey often and despite the strong Muslim presence, there are good relations and a great deal of tolerance for the Israeli tourists. Any one that knows Israeli tourists would understand how significant that statement is…

The Turkish Ambassador to Israel said that “Turkey will continue to be a popular destination for Israeli tourists of course, we are honored to host them in our country”. Moshik seems to think so as well

I got an email about 30 minutes ago. Jill wrote me and asked if she can write her column again. Shit yes, I said
So after a long break (October 2006) here she is and hopefully for a long time. Welcome Back Jill !!

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen, Part Sixteen, Part Seventeen.

For those of you who were reading the ‘Not Jewish? What are you doing here?!’ column that was running in OJ a few months ago, you may remember that the story came to an abrupt halt with a rapidly worded entry that glossed over my last three years in Israel and fast forwarded to packing boxes and flying out to England, to where my boyfriend Saar, a singer/songwriter, had been offered a job recording with a London-based Italian record label.

Now I was no fan of London; I had lived there before, holed up in an overpriced flat in a northern side street, commuting with the miserable masses to the City, where I worked 13-hour days in a banking job that I didn’t even understand. Swaps, it was called, the basic concept of which still eludes me to this day, and the office was such an uninspiring place of stagnant boredom that a chronic fear of formal working environments has stuck with me ever since. The job, for what it was, paid ridiculously well, however (the silly amounts of cash involved in this type of work being the only reason anyone could ever possibly put themselves through it on a daily basis) and allowed me to then travel round South America, which is where I met Boaz, for whom I moved to Israel, to then split up with him, nearly move back to England, then meet Saar and end up staying, and for whom it now looked like I was going to move back to England. After all, when you’re an Israeli musician with a lifelong dream to take your talents abroad and you get offered a job in London, you pack your bags as quick as you can and you go.

Anyway, I thought, I could use a break from Israel for a while.

Things had been a little tense to say the least. In fact most days at that time, about one year ago to the day, I was sweating away in my Dizengoff apartment, glued to the 24-hour news reports of Lebanon II, waiting for the rocket warning sirens that were resounding throughout the North to reach Tel Aviv. I was arguing with the va’ad beit (superintendent) of my building, who was refusing to unlock the door to the bomb shelter, for reasons I discovered only after I had thrown a mini hysterical fit in the stairwell, forcing him to reluctantly open it up. The room was dank and dark, full of dust and cobwebs and the abandoned junk of present and former residents of the flats above.

“You’ll have to clean this place out, just in case,” I’d said to him, making out in the squalid darkness the remains of a dead cat that had obviously been trapped down there since the last Gulf War.

“You clean it out,” he’d retorted, locked the door and trounced back upstairs where the sound of the news floated out through the open door of his flat.

Yelling some frustrated and undoubtedly wholly incorrect Hebrew at him about it all being on his head if they bombed and we had nowhere to go, I’d marched back up to my own flat where, of all the ironies, I was working on a travel guide to Israel that had been commissioned by a British website.

While I was trying to lure readers to the ‘magnificent landscapes of the Galilee’, the very people who lived there were sitting in their bomb shelters – watching the news –and the area’s hotels had long been emptied of the visitors who had been the signs of the first real tourism revival since the Intifada.

They were tense and confusing times. And very sad. There was less of the defiant togetherness that had characterized the worst days of the Intifada; the mood was very low and very bitter. Soldiers complained their objectives were unclear, that equipment was short – as was food; northerners shrieked at the government for not doing more, those under constant bombardment spat at Tel Avivians for sitting in cafes and going to the beach, while the world spat at Israel for its bombing of Beirut.

Most people I knew spent each day dreading that their husbands, brothers or sons would get sent to the front, or clinging to their cell phones waiting for the SMS that would tell them they were safe back from an incursion and in Israeli territory. Because soldiers were dying – and that’s the one thing that Israel can’t take.

The country’s tolerance levels when it comes to dying citizens far exceeds what it can take when boys in uniform start getting killed. For when a soldier dies, the whole national psyche goes into deep mourning. It’s a strange concept to understand and one that generated much debate among friends and colleagues at Haaretz, where I worked. Why is a soldier’s death so hard to take? Perhaps it’s because a soldier is never just a soldier in Israel but a brother, son or husband, because they are something everyone can relate to; perhaps because of the place the army is given in the media and within society as a whole, that it represents Israel’s youth and future, it’s ability to defend itself; perhaps because the army is Israel and a death reflects a vulnerability that no one wants to see, or perhaps just because they’re young, good-looking kids who should be studying and traveling and living life and when is this whole bloody cycle of death and hatred going to end? But when I found myself in floods of tears at a Channel 10 report interviewing the family of a dead soldier, in a way that I had not cried for victims of suicide bombings, I knew that I had stepped deeper into the Israeli consciousness – and that a bit of a break wouldn’t do any harm at all.

“OK so let’s move to London,” I said to Saar…

This is a cute picture from AFP that caught my eye. An Iraqi kid washing a US jeep in Baakuba. It’s very very hot these days in the Middle East and so every picture which shows water and someone cooling down gets attention (even if its a Hummer)..

On a happier note for Iraqis the gunfire heard there today was actually a good thing:

“celebratory gunfire resounded across Baghdad and revelers poured into the streets after Iraq beat Saudi Arabia to clinch its first Asian Cup soccer championship on Sunday while mosques broadcast calls for the shooting to stop.” “Those heroes have shown the real Iraq. They have done something useful for the people as opposed to the politicians and lawmakers who are stealing or killing each other,” said Sabah Shaiyal, a 43-year-old policeman in Baghdad. “The players have made us proud, not the greedy politicians. Once again, our national team has shown that there is only one, united Iraq.” CNN

Mazal Tov

Tomorrow is TU BEAAV – basically our version of Valentines day. Ynet has an article on the average age of marriage in Israel being 27.1. Although compared to other western countries this is a young age, compared to the average in Israel over the last 30 years, it’s a higher and rising number (same as the US by the way). It seems kids are getting married at an older age these days. Personally I can say that everyone I know is well over this average (and some are still on the market).

The study also shows that the average difference in ages is 2.4 years, men older then women. As a result of this rise in age, the percentage of single Jewish men went from 28% to 61% for the 25-29 year old age bracket. Women’s numbers have also changed from 13% to 40%. Tel Aviv and Haifa are heavily single cities (above the national average) with 77% single males in TA and 69% in Haifa.

Have a Happy TU BEAAV

A recent editorial in the Jerusalem Post stated that 25% of today’s youth in Israel do not want to be in military service, or have been disqualified from the military due to physical or emotional problems. No longer are the country’s youth considering careers in the military either, as even this opportunity is becoming less available due to budget tightening measures to help keep the country’s inflation index at a near 0 level.

Why is this happening when Israel’s enemies are becoming more militaristic, and are willing to become martyrs in order to kill or wound more and more Israelis? The answer may lie in the fact that modern Israeli youth have simply changed most of their values from doing everything for their country to simply doing everything for themselves.

That’s right; Israel has become a “No. 1″ oriented society, where people are only interested in looking after their own concerns and not for the society as a whole. Beginning as a country with a “one for all and all for one” mentality in the country’s early years, Israel has become a nation in which social minded goals for its youth have been replaced with materialistic ones; including new cars, private homes, and frequent trips abroad. It’s actually cheaper to fly to Turkey or Greece on holiday than to spend the same time at an Israeli resort hotel – kosher food and all!

Instead of pursuing vocations involving physical work, such as driving a bus or truck (once very desired vocations), or as a tradesman or mechanic, today’s youth prefer to pursue careers in information technology where they also receive a late model car to drive to and from their posh, air conditioned jobs, enjoying a lifestyle that even their parents could only dream about.

Last summer’s Lebanese war did more than simply point out the problems that reserve soldiers faced by a government unable to provide for their basic needs while in the field. This war also indicated a society who simply wasn’t prepared to go to war, while the country’s enemies have been training and building up their military infrastructure. This ‘infrastructure’ now includes a virtual army or more then 15,000 trained soldiers in the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip, consisting of 4 field brigades, and an increasing array of munitions and explosives, most of them smuggled in under the obliging eyes of Egyptian soldiers and international “monitoring” forces.

When the country was fighting for its existence in the 1948 War of Independence, many of the men fighting in Israel’s military and paramilitary forces were either volunteers from abroad or Holocaust survivors who had only been freed from Nazi death camps a few years before. These men, and women, knew that it was either fight or die, and many did die during those first terrible months, especially in battles like the Battle of Latrun (in which more than 600 former Detention Camp inmates were slaughtered trying to take the Jordanian held Latrun Police Station) and the Battle of Burma Road, in which the American volunteer, Col. Mickey Marcus, lost his life.

Inspiration: what more inspiration is needed other than the obvious; in that the State of Israel is in perhaps more danger than it has been in since the Yom Kippur War and War of Independence. With Syria and Iran, two of Israel’s arch enemies, now forming a military alliance, and Hezbollah once again at full strength along Israel’s northern border; not to mention Hamas in the South and Israel’s “former” enemy, the PLO, entrenched in the West Bank, the people of Israel have no shortage of enemies to deal with.

The main concern these days for the Jewish State is whether the country’s youth are ready, and able, to accept the challenges needed to prevail.

The fall-out generated by the presentation of the State Comptrollers report dealing with last summer’s Lebanese war, has resulted in an even greater rift between the State Comptroller, Micha Lindenstrauss and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The report noted that both the Prime Minister and top IDF generals committed a number of failures during the 34 day war; and went into detail on how the home front was completely unprepared for such a conflict, while the government pre-occupied itself in waging a major air and sea campaign against most of Lebanon. The result was that over a million of Israel’s population were subjected to outright panic and undue suffering while the government appeared unable to properly assist them.

Without a proper plan regarding the home front, which became the war’s “front line”, the majority of assistance came from the Israeli public themselves, including private donors. The resulting shambles of public policies, showed everyone how prepared the country was to endure this kind of conflict.

Despite the Comptroller’s findings, Olmert and his government still refuse to admit that they failed; and even accuse Mr. Lindenstrauss and his staff of trying to make the government look bad for their own personal reasons. In fact, the government’s unwillingness to accept blame and to act on the report’s recommendations – as distasteful as they may be – indicates a political leadership who appear to have little regard to the feelings of the country’s population. That a gathering of over 150,000 people in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, plus groups of reserve soldiers protesting in front of the Knesset did not result in Olmert’s resignation only means that he and his cronies in the Kadima Party are intent on doing anything possible to enable them to stay in power.

Meanwhile, a number of Knesset members from outside of Kadima’s sphere of influence are calling for immediate implementation of the report’s recommendations
Which include a plan to be made up to handle the immediate evacuation of civilians from high risk areas, and to insure that ‘absorption areas’ are capable of handling an emergency situation without needed assistance from wealthy private benefactors.

Talk of creating a special investigative committee to probe deeper into the State Comptroller’s findings is also in the works among a number of Knesset members including NRP Knesset member Zvulun Orlev and Labor Party parliamentarian Shelly Yachimovich who feel that the report’s findings indicate “disgraceful failures by the government towards its citizens”.

Though the findings of the Winograd Committee resulted in the eventual resignation of former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and the voting out of office of Defense Minister Amir Peretz in recent Labor Party primaries, it’s anybody’s guess what will be the final outcome of Lindenstrauss’s findings; some of which are even more scathing than in the Winograd Report. Olmert and his immediate following appear unwilling to admit that things went terribly wrong during last summer’s conflict; and that needed recommendations appear to be implemented too slowly by the government – if at all. Until now the general public has acted with amazing restraint, considering all that has transpired. The question now is how much longer can things continue as they are, especially with threats of another, even more terrible conflict continuously present. Israel needs better leadership at the helm; and we can only wonder who is capable of doing this.

Moshik shows Olmert preparing the war against the State Comptroller: “This time we are going to war ready..”

Picture from The World Economic Forum Jan. 2007
Recent events centering around the attention being given to P.A. Authority President Mahmud Abbas and his Fatah Organization (formerly known as the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO for short) makes many Israelis wonder who their true friends really are. With the P.A. now divided into two entities “Hamastan” in Gaza and “Fatahland” on the West Bank, both the Israeli and the United States governments seem to have thrown their combined support behind Abbas, even though his people were thoroughly crushed by Hamas in Gaza, and are only still in control of Palestinian held areas in the West Bank due to Hamas not yet having enough strength in these areas – not yet anyway.

Israeli P.M. Ehud Olmert inviting Abbas to Jerusalem for talks, together with U.S. President George Bush’s speech on Monday concerning the U.S. government’s support of Abbas’ reorganized administration and outright rejection of Ismail Haniyah’s Hamas organization, seems to indicate everyone’s acceptance of the division of authority within the P.A. Olmert in fact appears so willing to accept a “moderate” Palestinian entity that in a gesture of good faith, he has agreed to release a total of 255 Palestinian prisoners in order to cement the deal. Not only that, the Israeli P.M. is also willing to not pursue another 180 members of West Bank terror groups, such as the Al Aqsa Brigades, some of whom were definitely involved in killing and wounding Israeli soldiers and civilians in the past.

Just who are these “moderate” Palestinians with whom Israeli government leaders, including newly installed Israeli President Shimon Peres, are now willing to accept as new partners for peace? Many Israelis appear to have very short memories since previously, before groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad came into being, Israel’s Public enemy No.1 was non other than the PLO, headed by that old-time believer in armed struggles, Yasser Arafat himself. With Arafat at the helm, and being ably assisted by none other than Abbas , known better by his code name Abu Maazan, some of the worst “armed struggles” against Israelis occurred during a 25 year period leading up to the 1993 Oslo Accords. These attacks include:

1. The 1968 Savoy Hotel attack in Tel Aviv
2. The 1970 attack at Ben Gurion Airport, carried out with the able assistance of both the German Badar Meinhoff gang and the Japanese Red Brigade.
3. The massacre of Israeli Athletes at the 1972 Olympiad in Munich Germany.
4. The attack and massacre of 23 Israeli school children in the northern Galilee town of Maalot.
5. The 1978 Haifa Road bus hijacking in which more than 30 Israelis lost their lives.
6. And numerous attacks against Israelis in Nahariyah, Jerusalem, on Kibbutzim, and on army bases.

For the point of good order, it must be pointed out that all of these attacks were carried out long before the first suicide bomber blew himself up at the Hadara central bus terminal in late 1993!

In more recent times, many of these ‘moderate’ Palestinians were involved in numerous shooting incidents against both soldiers and civilians in the West Bank, and were also part of the group of Palestinians who lynched two Israeli reserve soldiers at the police station in Nablus at the beginning of the Second Intifada in October, 2000.

Moderate Palestinians? It might be argued by some that the group of 255 slated to be released on Friday are not supposed to be ones with “blood on their hands”, such as Marwan Barghouti, who was sentenced to no less than 5 consecutive life prison terms by an Israeli military court. But really now, how can it be possible that none of these persons, including several women, have absolutely clean records without even a few drops of blood on their hands? Not only that, with the P.A. now split into two separate entities, the release of even a thousand Fatah prisons will not help towards securing the repatriation of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is being held by a group similar to the one who held BBC journalist Allan Johnston in Gaza for nearly four months. Who knows how many Hamas and other prisoners, many whom are surely murderers, will have to be set free in order to gain Shalit’s eventual release?

“Moderates”, in reference to Abbas and his Fatah organization, is only a cosmetic term conjured up to make the whole situation seem more palatable. But ‘palatable’ for whom? The citizens of Israel who have to live with their Palestinian ‘neighbors, or for US President Bush and other nations composing the 4 nation “quartet” who have pledged to bring about a final status solution for both Israel and the Palestinians.

If this scenario is what one refers to as “palatable”, then a lot of indigestion is certainly due to take place in both Israel and within the Palestinian Authority. And acute indigestion usually leads to a severe case of ulcers – bleeding ones that is.

In a ceremony fraught with pageantry and fanfare, Former Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres was sworn in July 15 as the 9th President of the State of Israel. In a moving Knesset ceremony, Peres took the oath of what is usually a largely ceremonial position similar to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth. In his acceptance speech afterwards, however, Peres (who usually loves to be in the center of governmental goings-on) indicated that his term of office will be anything but ceremonial, with the new president volunteering to go on various peace missions on the government’s behalf.

Despite his advanced age (83) Peres seems to be in excellent health, and loves to travel abroad and hobnob with foreign government leaders and other dignitaries. This means that he may become the county’s first globe trotting President and will undoubtedly not wait even for the paint on the door of his new office in Beit Hanasi to dry before he leaves on his first international assignment; most likely to either the USA or the UK – both favorite destinations for a man who has literally been in nearly every major world capital, including Olso Norway, where he jointly accepted the Nobel Peace Price in 1994, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

After nearly 50 years of governmental and political activities, Peres has finally found a position that most suits his wide and diversified career in public life. In a way it’s a shame he didn’t have this opportunity seven years ago when he barely lost out to Likud political party rival Moshe Katsav, who has now left the presidency in disgrace following his admittance to being involved in a number of incidents of sexual misconduct. Katsav is also being accused of at least two counts of rape, which were dropped by Israel State Prosecutor Manny Mazuz in an effort to keep an already scandalous incident from becoming an embarrassing public trial.

Shimon Peres’ ascension to the presidency will hopefully do much to erase the pall that has been cast on this office by both Katsav and Katsav’s predecessor Ezer Weizman, who wasn’t ashamed to speak his mind; even if his remarks were frequently taken out of context by the press. Peres brings an air of dignity to an office where dignity and protocol are two of the most important aspects. With Peres in this position, not only will he be meeting foreign dignitaries when they arrive in Israel, he himself will be going to meet them on their home ground; where Peres feels as much at home as he does in Jerusalem.

Despite his wife, Sonia being in ill health, Peres will undoubtedly volunteer to be his country’s official peace envoy for as long as he is able to do so. And judging from the current state of affairs that Israel finds itself in, peace is something that Israel sorely needs. If Shimon can make a positive contribution towards this end, his final position in public life will be more than fitting for a man who has dedicated a great deal of his life to the cause of peace.

Moshik has Katsav asking his wife, Gila, how is Peres going to handle the job without his wife…

There has been a great deal of talk about the anniversary of this war. You can read about Lisa and her adventures in Beirut. She was also on Channel 10 last night (Great Interview !!!) and she talked about life in Beirut a year later. This morning Yediot Achronot had a whole spread about Rinat Malkas who was in Bint Jebel last week as well and her experiences in Hezbollah country.

So we really want to know where we stand when it comes to our Northern neighbors. We watched some TV programming on the before and after of this war. People that lost their life, family, legs and in some cases much more. The situation of the bomb shelters in Israel that according to government officials are 95% redone and ready, although the cameras must have seen the other 5%..
The 22 year old kid (soldier) who lost his leg in the war and how happy his parents are because it could have been much worse, and how he copes with his new situation.

Then there are the families of the kidnapped soldiers who are still waiting for a sign of life, mostly from our government…and who want us all to keep the pressure on. This war is not over. It’s just taking a break. It seems like everyone knows it.