Walking down Kovshei Katamon St.

I took a walk down from my apartment to a friend's house, and I took a few photos on my way. I walked down a street called "Kovshei Kataman" (in Hebrew: כובשי קטמון) - which means "Conquerors of Kataman" St. The name comes from the 1948 war, when this neighborhood was conquered by the Palmach even before the declaration of the state.

The first photo is of the little market that's closest to my house: Deli Market.



Here's the stop for the #13 bus, which goes to the center of the city and then to Mahaneh Yehudah.



This is Halperin St., which goes down from Palmach to Ha-Lamed Heh St. As you can see, it's not really a street.



This is the roundabout where Kovshei Katamon meets several other streets, including Rachel Imenu. A few years ago the city put up this curious little sculpture installation of little chairs. Whenever I walk by here late on a Friday night, all of the chairs are being used by groups of religious girls out schmoozing on Shabbat evening.



Here's some more of the chairs.

Gershom Scholem Library

I’m just sitting here and staring out the window of the Gershom Scholem library at the trees on the Givat Ram campus – an assortment of Mediterranean (palm trees) as well as some evergreens that I don’t think are native here. You enter this part of the campus by getting off the bus right after a small parking lot. The entire campus is enclosed by a fence (as are all the other universities in Israel, for security reasons). You have to show some form of identification to the first guard, who is toting a submachine gun. To get in, you must go through the security checkpoint – guards go through purses and briefcases with computers in them, and you have to walk through a metal detector as well. Then, you walk across a broad swathe of green lawn which runs down between university buildings to the National and University Library. There is a winding path that goes across the grass, where in the last year a delightful four-part sculptural exhibit has been added showing the common birds of Israel, both migratory and resident. Israel, since it is between Africa, Asia, and Europe, is a wonderful place to observe the migrating birds in spring and fall – the Huleh valley is especially good. Unfortunately, since this is summer, you just see the resident birds.

Inside the library building there are several sub-collections, including the reading rooms on the second floor – including the general reading room and the Judaica reading room, which is the other place where I hang out. I’ve been coming to this library probably since 1988, when I was writing a big paper for a course I was taking on the Hekhalot literature, which eventually became the topic of my dissertation. I spent 1992-93 here (mostly in the Scholem library) working on the research for my dissertation, and I was here again 1998-99 on a fellowship. I don’t know if this is absolutely the best library in the world for Jewish studies research, but it is certainly among the best. You can’t go into the stacks of the National Library – you have to order books using little slips of paper, which are whisked downstairs where the books are. The books then come up to one of the reading rooms or the circulation desk on the first floor – carried by a dumbwaiter from the basement. The system certainly hasn’t been changed since I first started coming here, and I would guess it’s the same one they’ve been using since the library was built, sometime in the 1960s, I think. Most books that I need, however, are in the Judaica Reading Room or the Scholem Library. The basis of the Scholem Library is Gershom Scholem’s personal collection, mostly centering on Jewish mysticism, magic, and philosophy, but including a great deal else in Jewish studies (for example, a set of the Talmud). The collection has been added to – both by purchase and because the scholars who work in here give copies of their books and articles to the library (for example, I gave the library a copy of my dissertation and also to the published book that came out of the dissertation). It is definitely a great place to work.

Crossing Borders

I saw a good movie a couple of nights ago, also as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival, called “Crossing Borders.” It was in Arabic, with Hebrew subtitles (as a result, I followed most of it but sometimes couldn’t keep up with the subtitles). The movie followed two Israeli Arab women who live in Arab towns in the Galilee (in the part of the country called the “Triangle,” which is more Arab than Jewish). One of them was in a fairly traditional marriage, with several children – for the first part of the movie it mainly showed her cooking for the family and visitors.

Her husband was involved with a group called Ta’ayush, which is a joint Arab-Jewish political organization that is concerned with providing aid and support to Palestinians in the occupied territories. The movie showed him going to Ta’ayush demonstrations and other activities (such as helping Palestinians to harvest their olive trees), and then calling his wife and asking her to cook for him and all the Ta’ayush members he was about to bring home for a meal.

As the movie progresses, his wife gets increasingly angry at him. She married him when she was fairly young, and his political involvement opened her eyes to the political situation of Arabs in Israel. She eventually becomes part of a women’s organization, and as the movie ends, it seems likely that they will divorce.

The other woman who is featured is a single woman, a teacher in the local school, who is a member of Hadash, the Israeli communist party (which is largely, although not completely Arab). She is running on the Hadash slate for a seat on the local council. We see her campaigning, in particular against candidates from the Islamic movement slate. The day of the elections, there are processions through town by the Islamic movement - cars driving down the street with green flags, honking horns, and also fireworks – so we already get the idea that the communists won't be successful (and in fact, they aren't).

She talks about her life as a single woman in a society which says that everyone should marry, especially women - but she doesn't want to because she likes her freedom. She talks rather bitterly about the influence of Islam on the situation of women. In one scene she is driving around her town passing by the local coffeehouses, which she says she really can’t go to because that is where the men hang out. Instead, she goes to Kfar Saba (a Jewish Israeli town) to hang out in the cafes – but the movie never shows her interacting with anyone there. She is also involved in Ta’ayush, and we see her also in the occupied territories, assisting an elderly man whom Israeli soldiers are not permitting to go through a checkpoint. The film was interesting to watch, but a bit hard to follow, and I think it was necessary to know a lot about Israeli society to understand it.

Religious experience and mysticism

April DeConick, in her excellent Forbidden Gospels Blog, has an interesting discussion of a new article by Peter Schäfer on the question of religious experience and mystical texts. As April notes, in his writing on the Hekhalot literature Schäfer has usually emphasized the importance of viewing early Jewish mystical literature as coming out of an "exegetical impulse" and not out of personal religious experience. While I agree with Schäfer that we need to look at both the ritual (usually called "magical") and the mystical aspects of the Hekhalot literature, I think that he goes overboard in his emphasis on exegesis. I agree with April in her approach: "My own approach is to consider the intersection of these two aspects, and to take very seriously the mystical tradition as a living practiced religious tradition." Anyway, read her blog posting - it's a very interesting and worthwile discussion of how to define early Jewish (and Christian) mysticism.

Darfur - The Devil Came on Horseback

Tonight I went to the Jerusalem Film Festival and saw a very affecting film - The Devil Came on Horseback. It's about Brian Steidle, an American who went to Sudan in 2004 as an observer of the ceasefire between southern Sudan and the government in the north, and who ended up being a witness to the genocide that was just starting in Darfur. He worked for the African Union documenting the genocide, but because he had no power to intervene at all, he eventually quit and since then has been trying to get the word out about what's going on and trying to influence the U.S. government to act. The film showed harrowing photographs that he took of the results of the Janjaweed attacks on Darfur villages - entire villages completely burned down, bodies of people murdered in many different ways, including being burned alive by the Janjaweed. (The film is called "The Devil Came on Horseback" because the word Janjaweed refers to "devils on horseback" - the Arab militias which are trained, armed, and funded by the central government in order to ethnically cleanse Darfur).

Steidle and the film's producer were at the film tonight, as well as a man named Ismael - a Darfur refugee who has just entered Israel eight days ago with his family from Egypt. He spoke very eloquently about his situation - he and his family (wife and four children) have been in Egypt for four years after fleeing Sudan. He left Egypt because the Egyptian government has treated the Darfur (and other African refugees) very poorly (not a surprise, it treats its own citizens very badly).

Steidle said, in answer to a question from the audience, that about 90% of the villages in Darfur have been destroyed by the Janjaweed, about half a million people have been killed (don't believe the statistics you read in the newspapers that say 200,000 have been killed - that figure is very out of date), 2-4 million are refugees either in Chad, the Central African Republic, or internally in Sudan itself. About a million of the internal refugees are living in refugee camps where they are getting no aid whatsoever from relief agencies, because the Sudanese government refuses to let them enter. He said that what has gone on up to now is "Stage 1" of the genocide, and now "Stage 2" is beginning in these inaccessible refugee camps - at least 300 people a day are dying of starvation and illness, which means at the current rate of death over a 100,000 people will die in the next year in these camps.

For a couple of years African refugees from Darfur and elsewhere in Africa have been slipping into Israel over the border with Egypt, and there are currently around 1200 Darfur refugees here. The Israeli government has been shamefully incompetent in dealing with them (see also this article on government plans to deport African refugees back to Egypt) - the military, who finds them on the border, tries to pass them to the police, who then dump them in Beersheva, which doesn't have enough resources on its own to take care of them, and private individuals, kibbutzim, and businesses have ended up helping them. Some heroic students in Beersheva and elsewhere have also been helping them out. Tonight at the film screening a student named Tali was there, informing people about a group of the Darfur refugees who have been sent by the Beersheva municipality to Jerusalem in order to arouse the action of the national government. They are currently camping outside the Knesset in the Wohl Rose Garden. She came and told the audience that they need blankets and diapers for the children, and even more than that, pressure on the government to make it help these refugees.

Even though I love Israel, it is very disheartening to see how miserable this current government is - this is only the latest demonstration of its incompetence and hard-heartedness. (For another example - the government still has not managed to renovate the bomb shelters in the north after last year's war or in Sederot, which still suffers from ongoing Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza). Prime Minister Olmert, who should have resigned last summer after the catastrophic war with Hizbollah, is still hanging on. Every day when I open the newspaper or listen to the radio there is another disgusting scandal being revealed, or other repulsive government conduct. (Tonight, for example, I saw on the Mabat news at 9:00 that a lawyer who was in the Knesset today physically attacked an MK for something he had said). What gives one hope is to see that there are still people in this country who care and have the moral backbone to do something when they see injustice being committed in front of their eyes.

What are Syria's intentions?

A couple of pieces of "interesting" news in relation to Syria:

In a Ynet story, it says Lebanon 'to erupt in 1 week.'

Syria has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon ahead of an expected "eruption" in that country, Arab and Iranian press reports have said. The media reports were translated and made available by MEMRI in a special dispatch on Sunday. "In the past few days, Arab and Iranian media reports have pointed to the possibility that Lebanon's current political crisis may become a violent conflict after July 15, 2007," the MEMRI dispatch said. July 15 comes one day before a special UN Security Council meeting which is expected to discuss the possibility of stationing international experts on the Syria-Lebanon border, in order monitor the ongoing illegal cross border arms traffic to Hizbullah, thought to be originating from Iran and Syria. The UN Security Council is also expected to meet next week to discuss a key report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a development which may bode badly for Syria.

"On July 5, 2007, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported that Syrian authorities had instructed all Syrian citizens residing in Lebanon to return to their country by July 15, 2007. The next day, the Israeli Arab daily Al-Sinara similarly reported, on the authority of a Lebanese source close to Damascus, that Syria was planning to remove its citizens from Lebanon. Also on July 5, the Lebanese daily Al-Liwa reported rumors that Syrian workers were leaving Lebanon at the request of the Syrian authorities. In addition, the Syrian government daily Al-Thawra reported that Syrian universities would accept Syrian students who were leaving Lebanon due to the instability there," MEMRI said in its report.

Also, Syrian troops penetrate 3 kilometers into Lebanese territories.

Syrian troops on Thursday reportedly have penetrated three kilometers into Lebanese territories, taking up positions in the mountains near Yanta in east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The daily Al Mustaqbal, citing sources who confirmed the cross-border penetration, did not say when the procedure in the Fahs Hill overlooking Deir al-Ashaer in the Rashaya province took place. The sources said Syrian troops, backed by bulldozers, were fortifying positions "in more than one area" along the Lebanese border, erecting earth mounds and digging "hundreds" of trenches and individual bunkers."

As Michael Totten commented, "If Israel sent the IDF three kilometers into Lebanon and started digging trenches and building bunkers it would make news all over the world. But Syria does it and everyone shrugs. Hardly anyone even knows it happened at all."

It certainly sounds as if something might happen in Lebanon vis-a-vis Syria very soon, but Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is speaking softly to the Syrians at the moment:

'Come to Jerusalem to talk' was the message of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Syrian President Bashar Assad, in an historic interview to Saudi satellite station Al Arabiya, aired by Channel 10 Monday evening. In his first appearance on a major Arabic news station in over six years, Olmert, speaking in an office adorned with the blue and white Israeli flag, told his Hebrew-speaking interviewer: "Bashar Assad, you know … You know I am ready to hold direct negotiations with you and you also know that it's you who insists on speaking to the Americans. The American president says: 'I don't want to stand between Bashar Assad and Ehud Olmert. If you want to talk, sit down and talk." Assad has "heard many things from me already," Olmert added. When asked where he would hold such talks with Assad, Olmert said "any place he [Assad] would agree to meet," hinting that Assad would even be welcome in Jerusalem.

The return of "the concept"

I recently read Abraham Rabinovich's book on the Yom Kippur War and the most interesting thing about the book is how he explains why the war was such a surprise to Israel. It had to do with "the concept" that the Arab states did not have the military capability to attack Israel. This concept held even when Israel received a warning just before the war began from "the Source" - an Egyptian spy very close to the Egyptian president Nasser. Zvi Zamir, who was then the head of the Mossad, flew to Europe to meet with him the day before Yom Kippur. According to Rabinovich (p. 83), "The Source's message was blunt. Egypt would attack tomorrow before dawn."

Update - the spy's name was revealed to be Dr. Ashraf Marwan. Zvi Zamir accused Eli Zeira, who was head of Military Intelligence before and during the war, of revealing Marwan's name. Zeira then sued Zamir for libel, but the court decided that Zeira did indeed reveal the spy's name. What is truly peculiar is that Marwan just died in a fall from the balcony of his house in London. Zamir is now charging that "reports in Israel about Dr. Ashraf Marwan, Israel's Egyptian agent who warned of the pending outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, led to his death. 'I have no doubt that reports published about him in Israel caused his death,' Zamir told Haaretz yesterday, in response to Marwan's mysterious death in London on Wednesday. Zamir, who questioned Marwan during a secret meeting held in London on the Friday on the eve of the 1973 war, said he had no idea whether the Egyptian had committed suicide or had been assassinated."

In an article in today's Haaretz, Uri Bar-Yosef warns about The return of 'the concept'. He writes:

The possibility of initiating a diplomatic process with Syria passed before our eyes almost without notice. The president of the United States publicly declared his disinterest in participating in such a move, Israel's prime minister has more urgent matters, and Syrian President Bashar Assad, as we know full well, has no real military option against Israel. Therefore Syrian threats to pursue the military option if the path of negotiations is closed off evoke little fear on Israel's part.

This indifference is a mistake. History teaches that on at least three occasions we believed our adversary did not have a military option, and Israel could do what it pleased. On each occasion, we were proved wrong. For each mistake, we paid a high price. Those who are in charge of the country's security would be well-advised to take this into account and avoid the need to learn this lesson a fourth time.

The three examples he gives are the Six Day War, the War of Attrition, and the Yom Kippur War. In all three cases, the Israeli leadership was convinced that the Arabs had no military option, and it was wrong three times.

Bar-Yosef says, "The situation today is not very different. The IDF is stronger than the Syrian army, but that does not mean Syria does not have the ability to hurt Israel or that if it had no choice, Syria would not exercise this ability despite the risks. The military logic dominating Israel's strategic thinking tends to downplay the weight of political considerations pushing Syria into turning to the use of force. If it does turn in that direction, and if Israel pays a high price for it, in a few more years we can sit and cry once more over the error of neglecting the diplomatic route because of the adversary's lack of military options and over the heavy price we have paid."

Israel updates

A few scattered items.

1) Scary stuff about Syria from Haaretz

Syria is producing more rockets and preparing its army for possible armed conflict with Israel, but is unlikely to initiate an attack, head of the Defense Ministry's political-security department, Amos Gilad, told Israel Radio Saturday. Gilad said Syria is increasing its army's preparedness for violent conflict, such as possible Israeli retaliation to Syria's support for militant anti-Israeli groups, but that it is unlikely Syria would initiate an attack against Israel. Gilad also said Syria is equipping the military with more anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles and producing more rockets. Noting that Israel has been in the range of Syrian rockets for years, he said: "Any disaster would stem from the fact that the attitude in Damascus is much more violent, and that they (the Syrian leaders) have become enamored with the violent option".

2) Protests over the Katzav plea bargain: Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post both say that about 20,000 people showed up in Rabin Square tonight to protest. (And this was on about 24 hours notice - pretty impressive showing).

In what was a palpable atmosphere of outrage and combative determination, some 20,000 people piled into Kikar Rabin on Saturday night to protest the plea bargain reached Thursday between the state and President Moshe Katsav.

Chanting "We will not accept this," and "We will not give up," the protestors cheered as speaker after speaker, mostly media personalities associated with women's rights, as well as several left-wing MKs, spoke about the "injustice" caused to the complainants in the Katsav sexual abuse case, after Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz dropped rape charges against the president. The women's rights groups said they planned to file a petition on Sunday with the High Court of Justice to have the plea bargain annulled. There were no right-wing or religious Knesset members in attendance.

Women's groups, along with the Association of Rape Crisis Centers, called for justice and equality, and expressed anger at the dramatic development. Such was the surprise at the amount of people in attendance, that several women's groups vied to get their spokespeople on the stage to address the crowd, with at least one group not able to enter a speaker onto the roster. The turnout for the event was unexpectedly large, said Miriam Shler, one of the organizers of the rally.

3) Yehuda Poliker concert. At the same time as the rally in Tel Aviv I went with a friend to a wonderful concert of Yehuda Poliker, whom I had not heard before, at an event sponsored by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, at the Hechal ha-Tarbut in Tel Aviv. It was great, full of energy, towards the end everyone was on their feet dancing. He sings in Greek and Hebrew. His parents were Holocaust survivors from Salonika, Greece, who went to Israel after the war. (He made a movie that came out in 1988, "Because of that war," about being the child of survivors - which I must now see, because I want to know more about him and also because his music appears in the movie too).

Michael Totten has put up a couple of posts on the subject of whether another war is imminent this summer between Israel and a variety of enemies - Syria, Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, or Al Qaida. He's relying on an intelligence estimate by Amos Yadlin, the head of Military Intelligence. As an update to the latest post, he includes this:

UPDATE: A reader emails: My daughter just came from spending five months at Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheva. She had a wonderful time studying, hiking, camping, student demonstrations, working in soup kitchens, skiing up north, petra...etc. She came home two weeks ago and just matter of factly stated that "everyone knows there is a war coming."

That is pretty much how the "Israeli street" feels right now according to just about everything I've heard and read lately.

An article in Haaretz on June 6 reports on a number of troubling developments on the border with Syria:

Syria is in the midst of an effort to strengthen its forces, at all levels, through multibillion-dollar arms procurements, mostly funded by Iran. Ties between the two countries have been strengthened, and Israeli intelligence sources describe this as a strategic alliance. Senior officials from Damascus and Tehran have held frequent meetings lately.

The arms purchases, mostly from Russia, include short-range ground-to-ground missiles, advanced antitank missiles and anti-aircraft systems. In addition, the Syrians have acquired short-range rockets with satellite guidance systems, whose precision capabilities are very high. The Syrian army is trying in one fell swoop to upgrade itself from a force whose hardware had deteriorated into rusty hunks of metal to a modern army.

In addition, for the first time in many years, the Syrians have greatly expanded their training and invested in defensive fortifications on the Golan Heights. They are giving special attention to their civil defenses, including hospitals, sirens and bunkers.

Israeli security sources believe that these Syrian preparations are mainly defensive, at least for the time being. Nevertheless, they say, such preparations require a higher level of alert on Israel's part. For some months, Israel has deployed added forces in defensive formations on the Golan Heights and intensified its training of ground troops. Since the Golan Heights is one of the IDF's main training grounds, these exercises have a double effect: They improves preparedness while also allowing for greater alert levels.

Another Haaretz article from the same day reports on the establishment of ministerial committee to discuss "the security threat posed by Syria." Here's an interesting analysis of the situation that discusses both the Syrian offers for talks with Israel and Syrian military preparations.

Before I got to Israel two weeks ago I was worrying myself about the threat of war with Syria, since it would certainly not be any fun to be here during a war, but since I've gotten here, no one on the "Israeli street" that I've spoken to thinks that there's a war coming. On the other hand, when I was in Israel last summer at this point, and the subject of Lebanon and Hizbollah never came up in conversation with my friends and acquaintances, so what the Israeli street thinks now may be just as uninformed as it was last summer.

Ancient cats & the Bible

Today's New York Times has a great story on the origin of the domestic cat - and as we all suspected, cats domesticated themselves, we did not domesticate them.

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.

The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.

At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.

A scientific basis for this scenario has been established by Carlos A. Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and his colleagues. He spent more than six years collecting species of wildcat in places as far apart as Scotland, Israel, Namibia and Mongolia. He then analyzed the DNA of the wildcats and of many house cats and fancy cats.

Five subspecies of wildcat are distributed across the Old World. They are known as the European wildcat, the Near Eastern wildcat, the Southern African wildcat, the Central Asian wildcat and the Chinese desert cat. Their patterns of DNA fall into five clusters. The DNA of all house cats and fancy cats falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor, Dr. Driscoll and his colleagues said in a report published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.

The wildcat DNA closest to that of house cats came from 15 individuals collected in the deserts of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. The house cats in the study fell into five lineages, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, a type that is passed down through the female line. Since the oldest archaeological site with a cat burial is about 9,500 years old, the geneticists suggest that the founders of the five lineages lived around this time and were the first cats to be domesticated.

Wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated in the Near East by 10,000 years ago, so it seems likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats, and that the settlers welcomed the cats’ help in controlling them.

Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.

Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.

Last week at Shabbat lunch with friends and fellow cat-lovers, we were discussing the puzzling fact that the Bible does not mention domesticated cats, although there surely must have been cats living in Israelite towns and villages. There are a number of words in the Bible for larger cats - more than one word for lion, and for leopard - but not for house cats. This discovery only deepens the mystery. Other animals are mentioned - dogs and mice, for example - but not the cat.

Such a topic naturally comes up in Jerusalem because the city is overrun by feral cats. Thin cats and their kittens can be found near every rubbish bin, and it can be quite startling to walk by one and suddenly hear and see an explosion of cats fleeing in all directions.

מצאד הגאוה בירושלים - Gay Parade in Jerusalem

Balloon arch

The gay pride parade yesterday in Jerusalem was a success, at least for the people who went to it (obviously not for the Haredim who opposed it). A few thousand people came to march (I've read varying estimates in the newspapers from about 2,000 to 3,500), and there were many thousands of police on alert throughout the city (apparently about 7,000). In addition there were hundreds (it seemed) of photographers and other media people at the parade itself. It was quite colorful - lots of rainbow flags, intermixed with Israeli flags, rainbow balloons, and a huge rainbow banner brought by Meretz Youth. I saw banners for the Open House (the organizer of the parade) and the Israeli Religious Action Center (of the Reform movement), in addition to the Meretz banner. Apparently there were other organizations there, but I was pushed up right at the beginning of the march and couldn't see them.


Meretz flag - rainbow flag of Jerusalem

From about 2:00 p.m. yesterday most of the streets in the center of the city were closed off by the police, so the easiest way to get to the beginning of the parade (on King David St. near the Hebrew Union College campus) was to walk from Katamon. The closer, the more police I saw. By the time I got to King David, there were police barriers blocking the way. A policeman asked me where I was going, I told him I was going to the demonstration - he corrected me by calling it a march - and I was on King David.


"Colors don't divide between man and man, between blood and blood"

That was about 4:30. Already there were a few hundred people, the balloon displays and the flags, and hundreds (if not more) of police and Mishmar Ha-Gvul (Border Police). It was quite funny to watch the very serious faces of all the police, who formed long lines with their backs to the crowd in the street facing the buildings on the street. There were not very many watchers, since the street is mostly hotels - the protection felt quite over the top. (But nonetheless, it was important, since elsewhere in the city there had been violent protests against the march, and apparently there was a Haredi protest on Jaffa St. whose participants attempted to march over to the gay march to protest us directly).


Border policemen

The crowd built up slowly and we finally set off at about 6:00 p.m - for our very short march down King David St. to Gan ha-Pa'amon. One of the funny things about the march is that right in front there was a row of Mishmar Ha-Gvul police, and right behind them either one of the arches of balloons or the banner of the Open House - so it looked like they were actually participating in the parade. What they were most useful for was keeping back all of the photographers. Right in front there was a group of three men wearing pink and holding pink umbrellas - their t-shirts read מג"י - מפלגת הגייז בישראל - Mag"i - Israeli Gay Party. The photographers loved them and kept crowding in front of them and holding the parade back, which annoyed the Mishmar Ha-Gvulniks.

The mood was very cheerful. There was very little of the explicit sexuality that often occurs at other gay parades (for example, in Tel Aviv). I was reading something this morning that described it as "very Jerusalem-like" - modest, restrained, and happy. People were walking hand in hand, occasionally shouting out a slogan in Hebrew (or even English), and singing. The Meretz Youth sang many songs about Jerusalem (not gay rights!) including Naomi Shemer's "Jerusalem of Gold" - which gave the parade the feeling of a youth movement gathering rather than a political march.

There were quite a few straight supporters associated with human rights groups who came - for example, Shatil, set up by the New Israel Fund to support NGOs in Israel working for democracy, tolerance, and social justice in Israel.


On Emek Refaim - "God loves everyone"

When we got to the intersection just before Gan Ha-Pa'amon, it turned out that there was not going to be a "happening" there as originally planned. Instead, there was going to be a party later at a club. The crowd dispersed very slowly - the police kept hemming us in until they were convinced it was safe. Then I walked down to Emek Refaim with a friend. She had to go home to see to her daughter, but I kept strolling around. Emek Refaim, which is a main street usually choked with traffice, was still closed to cars by the police, so people were walking down the middle of street. I ran into another few friends and we sat on a bench talking and watching people from the parade walk by, holding gay pride flags, Israeli flags, and wearing stickers saying "love" in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. I only saw one hostile response during the whole time - just as we were entering Emek Refaim St., a religious woman saw the people coming from the parade, and was spitting at people and cursing them. Unpleasant, but there was only one of her.

All in all, a lot of fun.

Gay pride today in Jerusalem

Gay pride flag on King David St. (photo by Lior Mizrahi/BauBau)

I've been listening to the reports on Reshet Bet of Israel Radio about the preparations for today's parade. It's really quite amazing. The police are closing many of the main streets in the center of the city - not just along King David St., which is the path of the parade, but others around it. The center of the city is apparently full of police. I haven't ventured far today from my house, but since I'm planning to go to the parade I'm sure I'll see all the police on my way to the place where people are gathering before the march.

Pashkevils for Gay Rights

Ynet has an exquisite story about a pro-gay pashkevil - the big posters put up in Haredi neighborhoods to exhort people to act against what the authors consider to be immoral - pasted all over Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem, probably by the Meretz youth organization (Meretz is an Israeli leftwing political party).

Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox residents thought they were dreaming Monday morning, when they encountered an unlikely sight on the city's public notice board – a "pashkevil" endorsing the gay pride parade, scheduled to take place in the capital on Thursday.

The flyer, signed by "Citizens for an equal, sane Israel" called upon all citizens of Jerusalem to take part in the parade, caused an outraged among the ultra-Orthodox community.

Beginning in the traditional pashkevil manner, the flyer called upon its readers to "hail the call of the shofar," but continues in the none-traditional way by "warning against the hate and incitement…God have mercy of those who slander against their brethren.

"…Let us come with our masses to this great, peaceful, dignified and democratic march and defy the minority inciting us to violence," continued the flyer. "Hatred is a dangerous, infections disease. Let us all prove that Judaism does not mean fascism and bloodshed."

The pashkevil, illustrated with a drawing of two men holding hands, ends with a call to the city's residents, of all religious affiliations, to take part in the parade.

Ynet has learned that the "Citizens for an equal, sane Israel" group is believed to be associated with Meretz youth.

This Week in Palestine ... Behind the News with Hanna Siniora

This is a commentary on the current situation written by Hanna Siniora, who is the co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. I received it because I'm on their e-mailing list.

The damage that many Palestinians feared - took place, no excuses; we all share in the blame. Hamas heavily tarnished its image, as a democratically elected movement, by resorting to brute force to resolve the power struggle resulting from its sweeping electoral victory in January 2006. Up to the military putsch that led Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, the movement had the democratic and moral high ground. The impatience of its radical elements and its alliance with extremist regional partners might bring about the possible demise of the first Arab Islamic party that came to power through the ballot box.

Hamas now, although it has military supremacy in Gaza, has lost the support of civil society in Palestine. The public was horrified at the barbaric atrocities committed by the military militias. Hamas has undermined the democratic process and allowed a combination of forces, internally and externally, to seek its elimination.

President Mahmoud Abbas was constantly blamed for indecisiveness, but Abbas knew that whoever resorted to force will lose legitimacy and the backing of his people, as well as the Arab world and international community. Hamas radicals have committed political suicide by allowing civil war and usurping power by force. President Abbas with the backing of the majority of his people was finally forced into action.

Abbas dismissed PM Ismail Haniyeh and appointed a new cabinet headed by Dr. Salam Fayyad to repair the damage that divided the future Palestine into two entities, Gaza under the military domination of Hamas, and the West Bank under the legitimacy of the presidency and the PLO. PM Salam Fayyad emergency government, according to the basic laws of the PLC, have a mandate of 30 days that can be renewed up to 90 days by avoiding a constitutional showdown with Hamas majority in parliament. Ninety days are not enough for the emergency government to repair the damage of the past fifteen months. President Abbas and legal experts have to look for legal means to extend the mandate of the emergency government, at least, up to the end of the presidential term in 20 months. This the period necessary for Fayyad to deal with the political and economic damaged, also in order to repair and stabilize the internal collapse. PM Fayyad immediate concern and full attention should be focused on preventing the collapse of the security in the West Bank, institutionalizing the security force to serve the nation and not individuals and parties, provide the basic needs and services to the Palestinian people in Gaza, irrespective of the illegitimate Hamas control, to work on preserving relations with Gaza despite the political nuances. The Palestinian economy should receive the primary attention, plans prepared while Fayyad was Finance minister should be implemented, as international sanctions are being lifted.

Hamas as emotions simmers down has to revert to rational behavior, should remove weapons and masked militias from the streets of Gaza and observe and implement the rule of law. Assassinations of political and security rivals should cease immediately. As soon as possible Hamas should accept the dismissal of Ismail Haniyeh and his cabinet to begin to seek reconciliation. Hamas has two alternatives. to preserve its place as a political movement. In the first place Hamas future is not as a military force, its strength is political, it has to renounce violence to prevent Gaza from sinking deeper into violence, otherwise it will give the hard line military in Israel the perfect excuse to try to eliminate the Hamas movement by force, already such plans are being discussed by the new Minister of Defense Ehud Barak.

Secondly if sane forces in Hamas prevail, it should avoid further radicalization and military confrontation, to prevent being snuffed out by force. The Algerian experience should be fully understood by Hamas and Fateh, everybody loses in a civil war situation The Palestinian supporters of Hamas as well as the Palestinian people at large will become the victims, if the present rift is allowed to deepen. The national aspirations of the Palestinian people for self determination and independence will receive a major setback and the suffering will escalate.

Now, Hamas has to work in earnest with the special Arab League committee that was set-up recently to repair relations and heal wounds. Hamas have to consider seriously early elections to avoid a constitutional impasse, in order to regain public confidence. If Hamas is so sure of public support, it should support the process of early elections. In addition, seek the release of the BBC journalist from captivity should be one of its first acts of restoring law and order in Gaza. Hamas, if it is serious to show that it supports the recent statement of Ismail Haniyeh that Hamas accepts a Palestinian state in the borders of June 4, 1967, should release the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, via the good offices of President Abbas, it will help it to reverse negative public opinion worldwide and internally.

The President, should be firm and resolute, he was forced to act, but should keep in mind that he was elected to look after the welfare of his people, all his people. Abbas has to work toward reestablishing internal dialogue, economic reconstruction, massive reforms and an end of occupation. This is a tremendous agenda, no one except the President has this mandate, let us all support him and pray that he may succeed.

Jerusalem morning with protests

I'm sitting here in my apartment listening to the flute playing coming in through the open window, on one side, and the birds singing, on the other side - a very pleasant morning, and I hope to go to the library today and get some work done on my paper on the images of demons in the Babylonian magical bowls.... but before leaving I was reading the news online and came across the Ynet article on the Haredi protest last night against the Jerusalem gay pride parade.

According to Ynet, about 10,000 people protested in Haredi neighborhoods - there was some violence (burning of trash bins, stoning of policemen) but it was quickly squelched. Apparently the police had a number of undercover officers dressed as Haredim in among the protesters. The gay parade is still on, as of now - with 7,000 policeman planned to be deployed to protect the marchers. We will see....

Updates on the Palestinians

Abu Mazen has dissolved the Hamas-led Palestinian government and established a new government with no Hamas ministers. He has also outlawed the Hamas armed groups - the Executive Force and the military wing, Izz A Din al-Qassam. Even though I'm listening to Israel Radio and reading the newspapers, it's not very easy to figure out what this means. Some blogs are providing some very good analyses, however. Yael, at Oleh Girl has been following events very closely. She is part of a group blog, Good Neighbours, which includes bloggers from the Middle East, including Ramzi S., from Ramallah - the comments on this post are particularly interestingn. Through Yael I also discovered a new blog - Conflict Blotter, written by Charles Levinson, the Mideast correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, who has been reporting directly from Gaza. His latest post is on the 48 hours leading up to civil war.

"So lange bist du hier"

As part of gay pride this week in Jerusalem, the Cinematheque is showing a couple of gay films - I'm going with a friend on Wednesday night to see one of them: So lange bist du hier.

"While You Are Here,” the first film by promising German director Stefan Westerwelle, was noted with distinction at the International Film Festival in Locarno. It‘s about a friendship between two men who widely differ in age, but are brought together by shared feelings of loneliness and alienation. Sebastian is a hustler. Georg is one of Sebastian‘s regular clients. The men are so different yet so similar, trying to find some last moments of happiness together. Of special note: Bernadette Paassen‘s humble yet heart-wrenching photography. Courtesy of The Goethe Institut, Tel-Aviv

In other news, Haaretz is reporting that the police are going on high alert for the parade - "The police have announced plans to declare a state of very high alert throughout Israel and to bolster police presence in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, and the North this Thursday to field the possible violence that may result from the Gay Pride Parade planned to take place that day in Jerusalem."

Gay Pride in Jerusalem

Next Thursday, the gay pride parade is scheduled for Jerusalem (organized by the Jerusalem Open House), and the haredim, on schedule, have threatened to stop it by force. According to an article in yesterday's Jerusalem Post, which I can't seem to find online, a protest is planned for Sunday evening - with the expectation that it will turn violent.

When I was here last year it was considerably before the planned Worldpride gay march, but nonetheless all over the city haredi protesters had put up disgusting signs denouncing the march. Those signs have reappeared, even in areas of the city that are not predominantly haredi, such as Emek Refaim St. They read "God hates immorality." A clever person rewrote one of the signs on Emek Refaim, so that it reads instead "God hates hatred."

From Mystical Poli...

It's busy here in the Middle East

Well, since I got here on Wednesday afternoon Ehud Barak was elected chairman of the Labor Party, and will be taking over the Defense Ministry on Monday from the incompetent Amir Peretz. And Shimon Peres has finally been elected to something - he will be the new president of Israel, replacing the disgraced Moshe Katzav.

Hamas has taken over Gaza in spectacularly bloody battles against Fatah, and over in the West Bank, Fatah gunmen (Al Aksa Brigades) have in turn taken over various government ministries that were in the hands of Hamas. It sounds like the only thing preventing running gun battles between Hamas and Fatah in the West Bank is the presence there of Israeli forces. For a good roundup of coverage and analyses, see Noah Pollak in Fatahland & Hamastan. Although he is a bit right wing for my taste, his analysis seems much more realistic than the New York Times idiotic editorial from yesterday, which calls for strengthening Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas):

It should also include an offer of regular, substantive talks with Mr. Abbas on issues related to a final peace settlement, like borders and provisions assuring the economic viability of an eventual Palestinian state. Obviously, there can be no final peace agreement until Hamas either changes its policies or is chased from power. But excluding Palestinian statehood from the negotiating agenda can only help Hamas.

Isn't it obvious that Abu Mazen has no power to negotiate anything? Gaza is completely out of his hands, and probably a good many West Bank Palestinians also support Hamas. I don't see the point in negotiating with someone who has no, or very little power. One signal sign of his weakness in Gaza before it fell to Hamas was that he waited to the last minute to order his Presidential Guard to fight against Hamas. Why did he wait so long? Honestly, it seems that he didn't take seriously the possibility that Hamas would defeat Fatah in Gaza. Or maybe it's simply that he wasn't in control of the Fatah forces either. (Some of the articles I've read in the Israeli press suggest that the Fatah forces in Gaza were so divided among themselves that they couldn't defend themselves effectively against Hamas).

It's unnerving to be here with Hamas taking over Gaza. It doesn't affect my life personally, but it does give me a sense of increased insecurity - and I'm sure that the residents of Sderot, an Israeli city very close to Gaza which has been repeatedly hit by Qassam rockets for the last several years have an even more increased sense of danger.

Finally in Israel

I finally arrived yesterday afternoon in Jerusalem. My flights from Boston to Milan and Milan to Tel Aviv were uneventful, marked only by the lack of the kosher meals that I had ordered (I'll have to be more persistent about that for my return flights). At the airport I managed to get minutes added to my Israeli cellphone (miraculously, the battery had not drained over the course of the year so I was able to use it). I got to Jerusalem at about 6 p.m., and to the apartment that I'm renting for the summer, which is very nice. I'm sitting here and listening to the birds and looking out my porch onto a garden. In the distance I can hear the sound of someone inexpertly practicing a piano.


The view out the mirpeset (porch)

I'm staying on Ithamar ben Avi St. in Katamon, one of the older neighborhoods of Jerusalem outside the walls of the Old City. Before 1948 this was a predominantly Arab neighborhood, but as a result of the 1948 war, the Arabs left and the Jews came in (other nearby neighborhoods were largely Jewish before 1948). Some were Jews who had been living in the Old City until they had to leave when it was taken over by the Jordanians. This apartment building, however, is not pre-1948 - I think it was probably built sometime in the 1960s.


The garden outside my door.

I went out this morning for one of my favorite Israeli activities - sitting in a cafe, drinking cappuccino, and reading the newspaper (in this case Haaretz in English). The big news is that Ehud Barak is now (again) the head of the Labor party and Shimon Peres is now President of Israel (this is a largely ceremonial post). Other big news is that Hamas seems to have defeated Fatah in the fighting in Gaza. What this means for Israel I don't know, probably nothing good.


The path leading to Ithamar ben Avi St.