Return to Mamilla

Last week, I took a walk down Mamilla Avenue, my favourite shopping mall (insofar as I can be said to have a favourite shopping mall, since I actually hate shopping). I had birthday presents to buy and the Mamilla open air mall has, at least, the advantage of a constantly changing outdoor sculpture exhibition, full of quirky, colourful exhibits.

The subject of the current exhibition was Satire and Humour. Those of you who fancy a stroll through one of the most delightful spots in Jerusalem but can’t be here in the flesh, as it were, are welcome to join me on a virtual tour.

The art-works, which are all for sale, are – by and large – unnamed, but some of them so obviously represented well-known people or places, that titles came, unbidden, into my head and suggested captions for my photos, taken on my old and (for the most part) trusty Motorola RAZR V3x mobile phone, which I’ve had for about seven years and which is limited to 2 megapixels.

As I entered the mall, the first sculpture to catch my eye was one which I have named “Don Quixote” because it reminded me of the famous sketch by Picasso of the Man of La Mancha:

Nearby was a brightly-coloured, three-dimensional montage by Yuval Mahler which could be Akko (Acre) or Yafo (Jaffa)  or any one of the several several Israeli cities that boast an old, walled nucleus and a thriving new metropolis around it. I decided it represented Jerusalem, in the days before the area around the Old City was cleared and when shabby,  but vibrant, working-class neighbourhoods were still crowded up against its walls. But feel free to disagree with me. As I said – there are several possible candidates:

The next sculpture,  also by Yuval Mahler, I privately named “Humpty Dumpty” – although the tufts of hair and bushy eyebrows rather remind one of David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister:

Ben Gurion cropped up again in a sculpture by Raphael Maymon, which reminded me forcibly of Paul Goldman’s iconic photograph of “the Old Man” (as he was affectionately known) performing a headstand on the beach in Herzliya in 1957, when he was nearly 71 years old:

The next item, I have captioned “Singing in the Rain”, reminiscent as it is of Gene Kelly dancing around a lamp-post in the film of that name:

Not all of the images were so easily identifiable. This one, for example, reminded me of a Soviet politician from the dark days of communism, but I can’t put my finger on which one. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to comment!

And this sculpture was obviously meant to represent Albert Einstein.  Even if the face weren’t so easily recognisable, the E=MC² formula would have given the game away:

I’m not sure who, or what, the next piece was meant to represent, but it made me think of several financial scandals which have surfaced over the last few years, involving shady real estate deals and the corruption of certain highly-placed individuals now on trial and whom I shall not name until the judicial system has had its say. The words “Holyland Project” do, however, spring to mind.

On the other hand, I could be completely wrong here. The numbers on the man’s arm remind me of the numbered bricks in the Mamilla mall itself and could be a hint at the tearing-down of the old, low-income, mostly Kurdish neighbourhood that used to exist in Mamilla, which was torn down to make way for this very upmarket shopping mall. The Mamilla neighbourhood, situated dangerously close to the Israel-Jordan border between 1948 and 1967, became prime real estate overnight when that border (and the constant threat of sniping by Arab Legionnaires from the Old City walls) disappeared in the wake of the Israeli victory in the Six Day War. The original inhabitants were relocated to far less prestigious neighbourhoods in other parts of the city and the more picturesque parts of the neighbourhood were dismantled, each brick being carefully numbered, and then reassembled to form facades for the new neighbourhood.

Some of the items particularly appealed to me because they included animals – especially cats:

Cool Cats

Cats Rule, Dogs Drool

I think this next one is supposed to be a dinosaur – on a skateboard!

Skateboarder

I call this one “The Ratcatcher” – although, I must admit, I can’t see wherein lie the humour and satire here.

One of the creations made me think of Charles Dickens. It was as if no fewer than three Artful Dodgers had stepped from the pages of a book and into the streets of Jerusalem:

Other sculptures were so realistic, you might have mistaken them for exhausted shoppers who had just collapsed after a hectic day of consumer therapy:

Shop till you drop

This piece I mentally entitled “We Are climbing Jacob ‘s Ladder”:

I could find only one piece which had been named by its creator – “The Seven Deadly Sins” by Sarah Matoudi:

The artworks you see here are only a small selection of the ones I photographed, and my photographs encompass only a fraction of the wealth of humour and invention showcased in the Mall.  I love the whole idea of the Avenue serving as an outdoor art gallery. If one member of the family is a shopaholic but the children are becoming bored, there is always something to awaken their interest. And last Thursday, with schools still on vacation and many people taking a “Bridge” between Shavuot and the weekend, you could see numerous families combining shopping and touring.

Finally, then, something else for the children. I like this picture because it combines several kinds of statuary. First, we have the Ruth Erez sculpture of a hand, reminiscent of the Addams Family “Thing”. Then, we have the human statue and his own balloon statues. And finally, we have the mannequins in the shop window behind him. Thus, the whole Mamilla Mall experience is encapsulated in a single image:

Finally –  for those of you who are wondering – yes, I did manage to find a suitable present for at least one of the intended recipients .

Have a good week!

The Temple Mount Is In Our Hands?

Forty-six years ago today, the 28th day of Iyyar according to the Jewish calendar, Israeli forces liberated the Old City of Jerusalem from the illegal Jordanian occupation. The days were the days of the Six Day War, which broke out because the Egyptians had summarily dismissed the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the Sinai peninsula, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. Thus, the expectation was that if hostilities should break out, these  would be limited to the southern front and to war between Israel and Egypt, as in the 1956 Sinai (Suez) Campaign.

The Shabbat before the war started, I had a dream. I dreamed I was walking through the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, on my way to HaKotel Hama’aravi, the Western Wall. I had never been to Jerusalem, nor had I seen pictures of the Old City’s crowded alleyways. The following day, I told my dream to my classmates in cheder – Sunday Religion Classes. It is interesting to note their reaction: “What? You want there to be a war?” (All I had said was, that if war breaks out, maybe we will at last regain control of the Kotel.)

The Six Day War began the very next day – Monday, June 5th, 1967.  Monday was “Games Day” at my school. The entire school used to travel down by coach to the playing fields at Grove Park, in South-East London since, prior to the school’s move to the Barbican, we had no field sports facilities of our own. I remember, as we were waiting for the coaches, I nipped into a nearby newsagents and bought the Evening Standard. IT’S WAR, the banner headline stated, baldly. By the weekend, the war was over and we had, indeed, regained control of the Kotel. I can’t begin to describe the feeling when I knew that I would, at last, have a chance to visit the holy places. That didn’t happen, in fact, for another three and a half years. It wasn’t until the winter of 1970-71 that, on a visit to Israel with my family, I found myself in the alleys of Old Jerusalem and, amazingly, it was all familiar territory. The way from the Jaffa Gate to the Wall was just as it had been in my dream. How shall I describe that first glimpse of the Kotel? Can anyone who has never experienced it imagine the pounding of the heart, the catching of the breath, the pricking of tears in the eyes?

I was a young girl then. Forty-three years have passed since that first visit, during which time, I have visited the Wall many times, always with a feeling of suppressed excitement. It isn’t necessarily a feeling of overwhelming sanctity. It is more a feeling of – Destiny.

Every Israeli is familiar with the famous recording of Motta Gur, commander of the Paratroop Brigade which liberated the Old City of Jerusalem, announcing “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” Thrilling words – and yet, they are only half true.  Soon after the miraculous victory and liberation of the holiest of our holy places, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan handed the keys of the Temple Mount back to the Muslim Waqf, as a gesture of respect for Muslim “rights” at the site. But the Muslims do not show any reciprocal respect. For years now, they have carried out illegal excavations on the Temple Mount, creating underground mosques there and, in the process, throwing out and destroying thousands of tons of rubble, including archaeological remnants from the First and Second Temples, in a deliberate attempt to eradicate all proof of the Jewish connection to the site, which they brazenly deny, claiming we never had a temple there! To this day, Jews cannot pray on the Temple Mount. Even a solitary Jew who dares to stand and pray openly with a siddur  ( סידור - prayer-book, accent on the second syllable), is liable to be arrested by the Israeli Police, for “unruly behaviour liable to cause a breach of the peace” or for “obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duty”! Any hint of a negative Muslim reaction is enough for the police to severely curtail, or even completely prohibit, the presence of Jews on the Temple Mount. Yesterday, for example, the police reaction to riots by Muslims on the Temple Mount was to limit the number of Jewish visitors – on the very eve of the anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem.The police say this is for the safety of the Jewish visitors. But Reason and Justice require that the rioters be punished – not the people they attacked. To all intents and purposes, the Israeli Authorities have awarded the Muslims a “Heckler’s Veto“.

So, while I rejoice at the sight of the tens of thousands of Jews, young and old, marching through the streets of Jerusalem to the gathering-place in the Plaza in front of the Western Wall, there to take part in the traditional Dance of the Flags, it is a joy tinged with sadness at the knowledge that the Liberation of our Holy City is incomplete. I have no wish to prevent Muslims from praying at the Dome of the Rock or at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. I was brought up to respect other people’s religious sensitivities. But I demand the same respect from others – including Muslims.  We are not preventing them from praying on Haram ash-Sharif, as the Temple Mount is known in Arabic. Why, then, should we not pray there too? There is plenty of room on the Holy Mountain for hundreds of thousands of worshippers – and does not the Prophet Isaiah tell us: “Mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people”?

I will leave you with the song “HaKotel” – “The Wall” – performed by the incomparable Ofra Haza, in which a young girl, a paratrooper and a bereaved mother sing, in turn, about what the Wall symbolises for them: “The Wall is hyssop and grief“, goes the refrain. “The Wall is lead and blood. There are men with hearts of stone. There are stones with hearts of men”.

On The Map At Last

I was surprised and delighted to be honoured by a nomination from Labellestudio for the Versatile Blogger Award:

Thank you so much, Labelle – and congratulations on being nominated yourself for the award You deserve it!

Now, according to the VBA rules, I’m supposed to nominate 15 other blogs for this award. So, in no particular order, the nominees are:

Help! I Live With My Italian Mother-in-Law

Views and Mews by Coffee Kat

Picking Up A Hitchhiker

Rottin’ in Denmark

Crazy Train to Tinky Town

Fifty Year Project

Beauty is a Sleeping Cat

The Daily Norm

Not Quite Old

Rambling1on’s Blog

Views from the Couch

Le Monde de Shahlimare

It’s All From HaShem

Before anyone starts counting – I know that’s only thirteen…
I warmly recommend that you find the time to visit them all. I’m sure you won’t regret it.

Finally, I’m supposed to tell you seven things about myself. So – once again, in no particular order, here are some earth-shattering facts about Me .

1) If I were to be shipwrecked on a desert island – or sent on an extended mission to a space station – the book I would choose to have with me is J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.

2) My favourite colour is royal blue.

3) I am very judgmental. Less so than I used to be, I think, but still guilty.  However, if you follow this blog regularly, you might have already noticed that .

4) Besides cats, I love dogs, dolphins, meerkats and baby deer. But I hate cockroaches.

5) I have visited a score of countries, not counting England (where I was born) and Israel (where I live now).

6) My favourite pastry is – cheesecake.

7) I am a terrible procrastinator.

There, that’s it, Gentle Reader. Have a great week!

Naqba Does NOT Equal Shoah

Israel Independence Day is celebrated on the 5th of Iyyar,  according to the Hebrew calendar – three weeks after Pessach. In between, lie the two memorial days – Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and Yom Hazikaron (Remembrance Day for the fallen of Israel’s wars). Just as there is a direct line between the Exodus from Egypt, (which we celebrate at Pessach and which marks our physical freedom from the burden of slavery) and the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai (which we celebrate 7 weeks later at Shavuot and which marks our spiritual freedom and our evolution, from a disorganised rabble into a nation, with a common way of life and a binding Law), so there is a direct line between the emergence of the scattered remnants of our people from the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust (which we commemorate on Yom Hashoah) and our rebirth as an independent nation, (which we celebrate on Independence Day – Yom Ha’Azmaut). The rebirth of the Jewish state came at a high cost, which, apparently, has not yet been defrayed in full, as our sons and daughters continue to pay with their lives, not only on the battlefield, but also as victims of the many “Palestinian” terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

The word “shoah” is usually translated into English as “Holocaust”. The original meaning of the Biblical word, according to the Even Shoshan dictionary (Israel’s equivalent, more or less, of the Oxford English Dictionary) is “destruction” (horban – חורבן - the same word we use for the Destruction of the Temple and the subsequent loss of the Jewish Homeland), or “annihilation” (kilyon – כליון - a word with connotations of something being completely wiped out). The catastrophe which was visited upon the Jews in the lands occupied by the Nazis was so overwhelming, no other word was deemed sufficient to fully comprehend the magnitude of the event.

What the Nazis planned for the Jewish People was nothing less than genocide – another word which, like “holocaust”  is much bandied around today in a way which greatly cheapens it. We are told that what the Jewish State has done to the “original Palestinian population of Palestine” is as bad as (some even dare to say worse than) what the Nazis did to the Jews. And to counter the Jewish narrative of the Shoah, the “Palestinians” and their allies (many of whom support them out of pure, old-fashioned antisemitism) have come up with the narrative of the “Naqba”. The Arabic word,  naqba, literally means “catastrophe” – and, indeed, what happened to the Arab refugees who fled their homes in what later became the State of Israel was, for them as individuals, catastrophic. But this catastrophe was, by and large, brought on them by their own leaders who ordered them to leave and promised them that when “the Zionists” had been destroyed, they would be able not only to return to their homes, but also to take possession of the homes of “the Zionist enemy”. If the Arabs had not rejected the UN partition plan, for two states – one Jewish, one Arab – the “Palestinian refugee problem” would never have come into being. Yet the Naqba fiction* has now taken such a firm hold, not only in the Arab imagination but in the dogma of the New Left (including, I regret to say, the Israeli New Left and even a few Israeli “reconstructionist” historians) as to make any hope for peace between Jews and “Palestinians”  in the foreseeable future (I use inverted commas, because the existence of a separate Palestinian Arab People is part of the myth)  about as likely as the hope of discovering a live unicorn.

The propagators of the Naqba myth claim that the suffering of the “Palestinians” at the hands of the Zionists is equal to, if not greater than, that of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, attributing to “the Zionists” the same crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing which the Jews themselves suffered at the hands of Hitler and his cohorts, and – with a moralising tone which is breath-taking in its impudent mendacity – arguing that, after what we Jews have suffered, we should show more compassion!

The attempt to compare the Naqba with the Shoah is so vile a lie as to be a complete obscenity. Furthermore, any comparison of the Shoah with other acts of genocide is an attempt to water down the enormity of the Shoah.  Certainly, other peoples have been the victims of mass murder. The Rwandan genocide immediately comes to mind, as does the Turkish mass murder of the Armenians. But in no other case has one nation deliberately and cold-bloodedly devised a pre-meditated plan for the total annihilation of another, putting all its resources at the service of those responsible for the  execution of that plan. And the Shoah was  not the first time such a crime has been planned against the Jewish people. Pharaoh planned to completely wipe out  the Children of Israel by throwing all male children born to the Israelites into the Nile and giving their female children in marriage (or concubinage) to Egyptian men. This is commemorated at Pessach. Haman planned to exterminate all of the Jews throughout the Persian Empire, old and young, men, women and children. This, too, we commemorate – at Purim.  Yet there was no such Zionist plan to eradicate the “Palestinians” or even to force them to leave. Nor is the status of Israeli Arab citizens in any way comparable to that of Jews in the Third Reich (or, indeed, to that of blacks under the former apartheid regime in South Africa – another despicable calumny levelled at the Jewish State by her enemies and even by some who falsely claim to be her friends). Could Jews in Hitler’s Germany serve in parliament, as judges, as university lecturers? Could blacks in South Africa under the apartheid regime attend the same universities, eat in the same restaurants, even sit on the same park benches as whites? Yet Arabs in Israel enjoy all these rights and more. The attempt to portray the Zionist dream as being, in some sort, the successor to Hitler’s dream of a pure Aryan Europe, is, as I said earlier, so preposterous as to be obscene. And so is the comparison of the “naqba” – a much lesser “disaster” and one which, moreover, the “Palestinians” (or, at least, their leaders) could have avoided and which they brought on themselves – with the horrors of the Shoah.

Naqba does NOT equal Shoah. Anyone who claims it does, is either abysmally ignorant – or a bare-faced liar.

* See an excellent analysis of the development and strength of the Naqba Obsession by Sol Stern in the City Journal.

Pessach Cleaning Memories

One of the things I have been promising myself (and everyone else) that I will do, now that I am a Lady of Leisure, is to clean out all the junk from my desk, cupboards, wardrobe and everywhere else. So far, I’ve managed to put it off but, with Pessach almost upon us, I feel I can’t do that any longer. And yet –  where to start, that’s the great question.

On the radio, this morning, there was an interview with a rabbanit, who, speaking on the subject of Pessach cleaning, stressed the importance of renewal in cleaning. She said there is a tendency, in this consumer age, to throw out the old and buy new, but when an object has been cleaned and polished and made bright and shiny, it is as if it is new. Familiarity often breeds contempt – whether we are speaking of our clothes, our toys, our home – or our spouse! But when she does the Pessach cleaning, she feels she is revisiting places and possessions she once loved and discovering them all anew.

Be that as it may, her talk inspired me to tackle cleaning out my wardrobe. Unfortunately, with the rabbanit’s words echoing in my head, I fell prey to introspection. Here is the royal blue outfit I bought for my sister’s wedding - how many years ago? It’s still in perfectly good condition and, indeed, I even wear it occasionally. How can I throw it away? And that black coat, which used to be my mother’s – which her own father, a master tailor, made for her with his own hands? It’s been in and out of fashion several times. All it needs is a new lining. I’m certainly not going to throw that away. On the other hand – the blue-grey linen suit which I bought to wear in court in the summer months, almost 25 years ago, when I was at the start of my legal career. It’s in excellent condition (because I hardly ever wore it) and it’s bang up to fashion again. However, it no longer fits me. Not that I’m fat – I wouldn’t have you think that. I’m just not as skinny as I was then. No, I finally have the more womanly figure I always wanted (for all the good it’s going to do me now). I thought of giving the suit away to one of my younger (ex-) colleagues. It’s exactly her style. And yet – suppose I just go on a crash diet… I could keep the suit for what I once heard described as “thinspiration” (lol). It’s such a beautiful suit.

Okay, what next? Two old handbags, in terrible condition. I can throw them out, that’s for certain. Oh, but wait. Both of them are full of old papers, salary slips, bank statements, you name it. There might actually be something important there. I can’t risk throwing the bags away until I check their contents thoroughly and that, in itself, is a full day’s job. Okay, back in the wardrobe they go, till I can find time for that.

What’s this? A cardigan that I started knitting – when?!?!? I seem to have finished it – except for one sleeve. Now this surely represents a Piece of History. It must be just about the only time I ever actually tried to knit something. Maybe, now that I’m retired and have plenty of time on my hands (says who?), I should finish it. These bulky sweaters never really date and you can never have too many cardigans, can you?

Oh, what have we here? A slinky, red halter-neck dress that I once shortened, because mini-skirts were the fashion, then lengthened again, and which never really went out of style. I remember wearing that to go folk-dancing. It would have been more suitable for ballroom dancing but I had my eye on the dance instructor and – well, no more of that! It’s been a while since I could fit into it, yet somehow it takes me back to honeysuckle- scented summer evenings and a whole host of bitter-sweet memories. I don’t think I could bear to dispose of this dress.

And so it goes on.  The hours pass and I haven’t thrown anything away. The rabbanit’s words have only reinforced what I call my “Squirrel Syndrome”.

This afternoon, I went out and had a hairdo. While I was at it, I bought a new, clingy, navy blue dress for Pessach.

I don’t have room for it in my wardrobe!

Chag Sameach (חג שמח) to you all.

Will He Or Won’t He?

Manage to form a government, I mean. Netanyahu, I mean. As I wrote right from the day after the elections, the easiest thing in the world for Netanyahu to do would be, to form a coalition with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi party. But I think Netanyahu has personality issues with both of them as they are both possible future Prime Minister material – unlike the leaders of the haredi parties. Now, unlike some people, such as the obsessive Israel-hating blogger Richard Silverstein, I don’t pretend to have any high-level inside sources. What I’m going to give you here is the average Israeli’s view of the situation, formed by many years of living in this country.

One of the major pillars in Lapid’s election platform was the necessity for a change in the system which allows thousands of haredim to avoid (some would say “evade”) national service by the simple expedient of declaring themselves to be full-time yeshiva students and registering as such at a recognised yeshiva. To make matters worse, married yeshiva students receive a government stipend (which married university students do not receive) and the yeshivot (plural of yeshiva – ed.) receive government funding in accordance with the number of students registered at the yeshiva – all of this, needless to say, at the expense of the taxpayer.

Bennett’s party is a reincarnation of the National Religious Party. The “national religious” or “religious Zionist” sector supports national service and, while opposing compulsory military service for women, encourages girls to perform non-military national service, as teachers, medical auxiliary staff, etc. They even run organizations for organising such service.  Furthermore, since Torah and Talmud study is important to the national religious sector no less than to the haredi sector, they have also set up numerous yeshivot hesder, to enable young men belonging to that sector to combine military service with yeshiva studies.

For some reason, despite what seems to many to be a heaven-sent opportunity to put an end to the inequality of a system which allows thousands of haredim to get on with their lives – at the expense of the taxpayer, what’s more – whilst others have to put their lives on hold for three years, while they serve their country, Netanyahu has been giving Lapid and Bennett the cold shoulder, whilst courting the haredi parties. Bennett and Lapid have vowed to stick together, so that if Netanyahu wants one, he must take both. Lapid made what I consider to be a tactical error last week, when he declared that he would not sit in the same coalition as the haredi parties. In my humble opinion, he would have done better to say that he would be ready to join them in a coalition only as long as they agreed to some kind of a formula by which the haredim would perform national service (whether military or non-military) just like everyone else. By phrasing it the way he did, he gave the haredi leaders the opportunity to accuse him of “hatred of the haredim” and to accuse Bennett of forming an unholy alliance with a champion of secularism. Furthermore, I personally, am not in favour of ruling out any party that has any claim to being Zionist. As a spokesman for Bennett’s party said on the radio this morning, the haredim are Zionist, in their own way. This, in my opinion, is particularly true of the Shas party. Their claim is simple. They say that there are different ways of safeguarding the State of Israel. One of them is by serving in the armed forces. Their way is by studying Torah and Talmud and ensuring the spiritual continuation of the Jewish People. I cannot totally negate this claim, nor do I wish to. It is undeniable that, were it not for the continued study of Torah and Talmud, together with the strict adherence to an orthodox lifestyle, the Jewish People would not have survived the centuries of Exile and persecution. It is also undeniable, however, that it was political and largely secular Zionism, that spearheaded the return to Zion and the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in our ancient homeland. The haredi parties are mistaken when they accuse Lapid of causing a schism in Israeli society. The schism is already here. Ordinary Israelis, such as myself, who have every respect for the study of Torah, are unable to understand why haredim  cannot combine military service with study, in the same way as “national religious” citizens do. We cannot understand why, in addition to shouldering the physical burden of national service, from which thousands of haredim are currently exempt, we should also have to support them financially. We cannot understand why a brilliant secular university student should only receive a deferral of military service on condition that he or she serves in the reserves during his or her vacation and signs a contract obligating him or her to an extended period of military service on graduation, when no such obligation binds yeshiva students (whose “deferral” almost invariably turns into an exemption once they pass the usual age of military service, and who are not even obliged to serve in the Reserves). Did not Rabbi Akiva’s students shoulder the burden of military service when necessary?

However, I think the haredim rather threw away any advantage Lapid’s declaration may have given them, when they responded  that if Netanyahu tosses them aside in favour of Lapid/Bennett, or even cuts funding to the yeshivot, they would join a left-wing coalition led by the Labour Party’s Shelly Yachimovich and including Arab Israeli parliamentarian Hanin Zouabi, widely condemned for her open support of Palestinian terrorism. This was naturally perceived as a threat to join Israel’s enemies (Zouabi, that is, not Yachimovich) since, except for the Extreme anti-Zionist Left, Zouabi is considered beyond the Pale.

So, where do we go from here? Netanyahu has been forced to ask President Shimon Peres for a two-week extension to continue his efforts to form a government. Meanwhile, the only definite coalition agreement so far has been between the Likud Beiteinu party (or, rather, Netanyahu, since many of his own party are unhappy with it)  and Tzippi Livni, leader of the Hatnuah (the Movement) party – that same Tzippi Livni who prides herself on her integrity and on keeping her word, and who, on the eve of the elections and in their immediate aftermath, tried to get Lapid and other leaders of the so-called “Left-Centrist” bloc, to reach a formal agreement by which they would on no account, or under any circumstances, join a government coalition led by Netanyahu. According to Israel Radio this morning, Netanyahu and Bennett are due to meet this afternoon. I imagine that by the end of the two week extension, something will have been worked out. The likelihood of Shelly Yachimovich being able to form any government – let alone a stable one – is small and nobody relishes the thought of having to hold elections again this year, especially not Netanyahu who, it is predicted, will only lose more mandates, (as will Shas), while Bennett and Lapid are likely to gain support. In my humble opinion, once Netanyahu, Lapid and Bennett reach agreement, the haredi parties (or, at least, Shas) will find some way to save face and join anyway, if only to avoid the loss of government funding to their yeshivot.

Sorry if I sound cynical – but that’s politics for you.

Dancing in the Streets

One of the traditions, at Purim, is to masquerade in fancy dress. If one were to do this at any time other than Halloween (in North America) or Carnival/Mardi Gras (in Europe/South America), one would be looked at as if one was somehow rather peculiar. But in Israel, at Purim, there’s nothing unusual in seeing a shopkeeper, or a bus driver, or a receptionist in a government office, turning up to work, if not in full fancy dress, at least sporting some element of disguise, such as a brightly-coloured wig, a party hat, a fake moustache, or rabbit ears.

In the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall last week, Jerusalemites were already in festival mood, though the holiday is actually tomorrow (for Jerusalem)  or today (for the rest of the country). Groups of young (and not so young) people were strolling around in costume. Here and there, one might espy a pirate, a gypsy fortune-teller, Little Red Riding Hood, a vampire or a Grecian goddess. Giggling teenage girls were happy to pose for photographs.

From the lower end of Ben Yehuda, music poured forth from loudspeakers set up by a group of Bnei Akiva boys who began dancing. Within minutes, a flash mob had developed, as more and more passers-by stopped to take photos and eventually joined in the dancing themselves.

This is what I love about Israel – the freedom to be Jews, not only without fear of persecution but also without fear of embarrassment. The freedom to drop everything and start dancing in the street, without passersby looking at us and thinking – “Duh? WTF? Are they nuts or something?”

And on the same note – I love getting on a bus, as I did this morning, and seeing the scrolling indicator board, which informs the passengers what is the next stop, proclaim:”Happy Purim from Egged“.

And that is what I wish you all, Gentle Readers.

Happy Purim!