Tel Aviv Rooftop

Taken on Saturday night at the ever growing tent city on Sderot Rothschild and later at the march to the square outside Tel Aviv Museum. The organisers hoped for 5,000 people. 20,000 turned up. Mahapecha  (Revolution) says the sign above the shack and behind it, 'Rothschild corner Tahrir' It's hot ... Gathering by the square. At least in Tel Aviv, this is a revolution of nice middle class young people who have been squeezed too hard and aren't going to take it any more. Nor are the hard pressed doctors. The head of Israel's doctors' association has just embarked on a march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, while fasting and vowing not to break his fast until the doctors' demands are met by the government. Today, small groups of protestors blocked traffic at busy intersections throughout the country. more revolutionary images here

After the "cottage cheese revolution" on Facebook which forced the big dairy cartels to reduce prices or face the wrath of the consumer, a new protest movement has emerged and is camping out on swanky Rothschild Boulevard. Young people, some families with children, are protesting against prohibitively high rents which, combined with their low wages, make it impossible to make ends meet. Economists say that 70% of Israeli wage earners would have to pay more than one third of their income to repay their monthly mortgage repayments. In other words, they can't afford to purchase an average apartment. The "new homeless" have jobs, iphones and laptops but not enough disposable income to pay their constantly rising rents . "It drives me crazy" said one activist."Half of my wages goes on rent." "Add electricity, rates, water, internet and food and there's nothing left," said the mother of a son who was camping out. The Rothschil...

Early morning, Cafe de Renaissance, 18th Arondissement, Paris.  A young woman sits hunched over a book and cafe creme.  This regular was happy to be photographed with his first expresso of the day.  Most of the clientele look fashionably crumpled, the music is from the sixties but the decor remains meticulously untouched. In the Montparnasse Cemetery we came across the grave of Serge Gainsbourg  and after a meal and wine at a local bistro we tippsily catch up with his wild legacy on Youtube.

We took a pleasant diversion from trying to figure out the significance of Obama's speech (and Netanyahu's response) by means of Batim MiBifnim (Buildings from Within), the annual two day event in which scores of public buildings, studios, businesses and private apartments throw open their doors to thousands of the curious - us included. We arrived at a project on a rooftop in Florentin where a group of artists had put together a creation built of wood scrap and other discarded junk. Not exactly a completed building, more an exercise in creative recycling. Inside one of the newly created rooms a candelabra made out of upturned salt shakers. In an old flower mill turned into a design studio we found another creative use for an ordinary household object. Later, on Rothschild, I noticed that someone had knitted some socks onto the feet of Dizengoff's horse. On Rabin Square, Tel Aviv's equivalent of Cairo's Tahrir, the newly renovated 'ecological pool' (wat...

Yes, we had to get up at 3.30 a.m., gulp a Turkish coffee on the Rooftop and hit the road. But by about 6.30, this was the scene. Moran , our trusty 'pilot' is shooting blasts of hot air into the balloon that will take us over 'bitronot Ruhama' (the Ruhama Badlands). Anticipation among the ballooners - a mixed bunch of young couples, friends, a father and daughter (and us) - is running high.     With the balloon beginning to rise, we clamber into the padded cubicles that make up the basket - and, almost imperceptibly, the whole contraption rises into the air.   At first you are at tree top level. Then, without noticing, a little higher, and able to make out the patterns on the mosaic floor of a Byzantine church.  And before you can say Phileas Fogg, you are several hundred metres up and looking down on a smaller balloon (the honeymoon flight) and across a wide vista of shifting clouds, the landscape suddenly illuminated by the rising sun (worth...

Another Pessah, the theme of which is "me-avdut le-herut" (from slavery to freedom), a motto with rich potential. Of course the traditional discussion around the seder night table on this mighty theme is supposed to revolve on the story of Exodus from Egypt but the theme is too big to be contained by just one story, however epic. On one radio programme, a lot of people were using the Pessah motto to express the hope that they would find their way out of job slavery or possibly into a better paid version of it. Another association this Pessah is of course what is happening in modern day Egypt. Shimon Peres wished the Egyptians well in their Exodus out of the repression of the Mubarak regime but also expressed the hope that this wouldn't lead "in the wrong direction". Meanwhile a group of distinguished recipients of the Israel Prize demonstrated outside the site of Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where Israel's Declaration of Independence was made, to expr...

A big, airless balloon lying on a field near Kibbutz Ruhama In honour of our "120th birthday" kind and generous friends bought us a special present - a trip in a hot air balloon, including an overnight stay in a 'tzimmer' (guest house), a champagne breakfast and a massage. This weekend we finally got round to using the voucher. Since what our friends had bought us was what's called chavila (parcel of services), this first involved coordinating with every contact person  in the chain: Hadar for the balloon trip, Gil for the tzimmer, Guy (who turned out to be a lady) for the evening meal, and Hanita for the massage. To cut a long story short, yesterday we took the massage (deeply satisfying), ate Hanita's supper and drank wine (excellent), stayed at Gil's tzimmmer (delightful in its stylish simplicity) and at 5.45 this morning were racing along the deserted, misty roads of the northern Negev towards Kibbutz Ruchama. The "ground crew" there had a...