Four Views From the Roof - West

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Yom Kippur 2010

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Erev Yom Kippur, Rehov Herzl.  A family walks down the centre of the normally busy street towards the Shalom Tower safe in the knowledge that they will not be mown down by a car. Yehuda Halevi, a.k.a. 'rehov habankim' because the big three banks have their headquarters here. Bereft of human or vehicular activity - as though on the day after a mystety virus had wiped out the population - the functional office towers suddenly seem functionless and the arrows on the street are pointing to nowhere. In this tempotrary deserted world the neon lights shine for no-one. All commerce halts. Capitalism takes a day off.  Apart from the clicking of the superfluous traffic lights, silence reigns. Rehov Shabazi, Neve Tzedek. Three women, one pushing a pram, walk home from the kol nidrei service that brings in Yom Kippur. They might be a grandmother (right) grandaughter (middle) and daughter (left pushing  agrandaughter. Four generations sharing the same ...
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My Unfinished Apartheid Thriller

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                 An Israeli Prime Minister as imagined by the DALL-E AI programme     About six months ago, I was revisited by the writing bug and decided to try my hand at fiction  - a "diplomatic thriller" to be more specific. The choice of genre was not dictated by any literary preferences. I'm not a big fan of thrillers. But the idea was to use the thriller as the most suitable vehicle to write about what was really bugging me - Israel's inevitable slide into apartheid.      I also thought that my professional experience might come in handy. For more than two decades I worked as the press officer for the EU Delegation to Israel and followed the sometimes turbulent relations between Israel and the European Union from the vantage point of an Israeli working inside the EU, in other words as someone with a split identity. I believed that this familiarity with the mind-sets and decision making processes of bo...
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Day 5 of Gaza campaign. Some notes from the Rooftop

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Wake up, check the news. On Day 5 it seems as though ceasefire talks are underway. French foreign minister flying in. Hamas reps talking to the Egyptians in Cairo. Quiet night in the south and no  missiles shot down over Tel Aviv since yesterday morning. On the other hand, tens of thousands of reservists called up with the army preparing itself for a possible ground incursion. Tanks and artillery lined up to go in. Israel, like Hamas with its missiles aimed at symbolic Tel Aviv, upping the ante to deter the other side and/ improve its own starting point for setting cease-fire terms. General impression : Israel doesn't want to send in ground troops but will do if Hamas halts its fire. Hamas wouldn't mind a cease-fire but needs this round to end in a victory so demanding its own terms (opening of Rafah crossing, halt to targeted assassinations). Thankfully drink coffee. Make fruit salad, feeling uncomfortable positioned between a ceasefire and a serious escalation,  Go for a w...
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