Four Views From the Roof - West

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Small green shoot

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As you can see from this shot of the wintry rooftop it's an usually foggy day in Tel Aviv. The weather matches the mood of many people in Israel (although not necessarily the majority) saddened by the Gaza war, especially by the huge toll it has taken in civilian casualties and material destruction. Despite everything there a few positive results from the whole catastropohe might be emerging. From Israel's point of view, the world now realises that arms smuggling from Iran to Gaza via Egypt is a real problem that needs to be dealt with and might even take real action. Another is that there are hopeful signs that that the US administratioin will place us high on the agenda. Meanwhile an article in Ha'aretz's wekeend magazine cast some light on the way that the international law department of the army accompanied and advised the military before and during the operation. "not crossing red lines but not stopping at grey ones" . The relatively free interpretation o...
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Zoltan Kluger

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A Hagana despatcher in the 1948 War of Independence on what seems to be a stationary motorbike. I took the photos in this post at today's exhibition. Went to see an exhibition at the Eeretz Yisrael Museum. Zoltan Kluger, Chief Photographer 1933-1958." These are official Zionist propaganda photos, some of them staged, but many of them impressive nevertheless. He also photographed Palestinian refugees (although not for the Zionist institutions) and workers clearing the rubble from abandoned Palestinian villages after the War of Independence. Although a staunch Zionist, the Hungarian born Zoltan also had an uneasy relationship with the Zionist institutions that provided his livelihood and, like many Israeli artists even today, fretted about being unnoticed because he was working in a Levantine backwater. Well to do residents of British Mandated Palestine taking a flight from Haifa to Tel Aviv (1930s) "I'm suffocating," he was quoted as saying. "I'll die....
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The only matkot museum in the world

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Meet Amnon.  We met him on a stormy Shabbat morning on the side of a steep side road in Neve Tzedek. He was putting away his bicycle after giving up the idea of playing matkot on the beach, something he does on a daily basis and has been doing for at least 50 years. He invited us to see his apartment otherwise known as the Only Matkot Museum in the World. Amnon was born and bred in Neve Tzedek and is a major figure in the matkot community. There are some 350 matkot (beach paddles) of every conceivable size and colour in Amnon's matkot museum interspersed with large paintings of the northern European forest scenes so popular among people who live in hot countries. His devotion to the sport is boundless. Amnon, still sprightly now, thanks to matkot, is surrounded here by photos of him in action in younger days (click to enlarge). Now he and his fellow matkot-obsessed friends play on a concrete strip underneath one of the hotels on Gordon Beach where they have been gr...
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