I'm quite fascinated by the international media interest in this summer's hit song Shirat haStickerim (The Sticker Song), by Israeli hip hop group Hadag Nachash. First Adina's friend Sarah Fulford wrote this article for Toronto's Globe and Mail, then the French daily Liberation published this article, and now the New York Times has come out with a two page story about the song.

It's certainly true that Israelis are mad about bumper stickers - which they are more likely to stick on the rear window rather than on the actual bumper. Political slogans are the most common, but there are plenty of stickers that proclaim faith in God, that admonish you to love your neighbour or be kind to animals. A couple of days ago I even saw a sticker that proclaimed "A friend of mine was killed in a car accident" - a reference to the appalling carnage on Israel's roads; with the exception of 2002-2003, when terrorist attacks were at their peak, many more Israelis are killed annually in car crashes than in bombings.

It's also undeniable that politics is a big deal in Israel. As Gadi Taub, a well-known local cultural critic, says in the New York Times article, ''Israel is such a small place that taking a political position is like declaring the very core of your identity. For many years it was unthinkable for Israelis that if you're a Likud voter you could marry someone from Labor. It would be a battle over every dinner and every breakfast. So your car, too, will declare your identity. You don't think you can even make friends across bumper stickers.''

This is an interesting statement, but it's not the whole truth about Israeli society. More and more, people here are concerned about universal issues - like the environment, finding a balance between career and family demands, love, intimacy and so on. For example, a friend of mine recently told me, during a conversation about what is called in Israel "the situation" - "Listen, five years after the Nazi Holocaust ended, West Germany had an embassy in Israel. Ultimately, there will be a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians - because there is no other choice. What really worries me is whether my two little girls will have clean air to breathe and water to drink when they grow up."

This trend towards universal concerns is reflected in two recent Israeli films that deal with family relationships, both of which received a lot of international recognition and critical praise - Dover Koshashvili's Late Marriage and Nir Bergman's Broken Wings. I was living in Tokyo when Broken Wings won the prize for best film at the Tokyo film festival (in fact, I lived just up the street from the cinema where the films were shown), and I remember emailing a friend in Tel Aviv that I felt sort of...proud (of what? it wasn't my achievement!) when the winner was announced. I also remember that a couple of articles about the film insisted that it was about the Israeli search for normalcy - a statement that anyone could see was absolute nonsense. I thought it ridiculous and strange to assume that Israeli films must, simply because of their provenance, be about politics.

Okay, now I get to tell a gossipy little story that concerns Mr. Taub. A few months ago I met him at the opening of Noga Gallery's exhibit of Israeli New York-based photographer Elinor Carucci's work. Taub was accompanied by a friend of mine from France who now lives in Tel Aviv, and her friend - a striking black model from Paris. The model was then in Israel to pose in a controversial photo shoot for the catalogue of Comme il Faut, an upscale (translation: bloody expensive) Israeli fashion house, at the separation barrier in Abu Dis.

My French friend introduced me to Gadi, and we exchanged just a couple of pleasantries; I sort of had the impression that he was more interested in talking to the model ;). Before I and my plastic wine glass could move on, however, a photographer from Time Out Tel Aviv popped out of nowhere and snapped our picture. The photo was published in the next issue of the magazine, in the section called "The most interesting events of the week". There was French girl number one, French girl number two, Gadi Taub and...the border of the photo. They airbrushed me out! And thus I was deprived of my 15 minutes of fame. Ah well...