It's  up. Go here to read chapter two of her adventures in Tel Aviv.

Here we are, posing in front of Darna Restaurant (Ramallah's finest), where we consumed a well-deserved meal after a long day spent covering the opening of the Palestinian Legislative Council at the Muqata. Wonderful Dani took the photo.

There are lots more photos (about 7 pages' worth, actually!)  here - including a few famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) faces from the nightly news.

As you can see, Rinat decided to leave the scarf at home this time. (sorry, couldn't resist).

More about our adventures coming...soon. (I've learned to avoid committing to a date).

Karim Elsahy, who blogs at One Arab World, was outraged to discover that a Pakistani cleric has announced a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew the prophet Muhammad (AP story here). He sent out a group email to all the Global Voices contributors, asking them to link to his post that explains how to take action against the cleric. Karim writes that this is important to him, but of course this should be important to everyone. So be outraged. And take action.


My gorgeous, smart and talented friend Jill has finally agreed to share the extraordinary story of how she, a non-Jewish Englishwoman, ended up in Tel Aviv. Part One has been up on One Jerusalem for less than a day, but it's already getting a lot of attention - and for good reason. Go read about how she learned Hebrew, convinced the irascible David Landau, editor of Haaretz, to give her a job and kept her sanity through the second intifada - even when the cafe down the street from her apartment was hit by a suicide bomber.
(full disclosure: I was recently hired to edit One Jerusalem).

A Danish paper publishes a cartoon that mocks Muslims. An Iranian paper responds with a Holocaust cartoons contest. Now a group of Israelis announce their own anti-Semitic cartoons contest!

"We'll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!"

No, this is not a joke. I mean, it's funny - but it's for real. Read the whole story here.

Part 1: Gaza

Sayed was filming some footage near a huge open sewer in Gaza’s Jabalyeh refugee camp. It was mid-day in August, the temperature was about 35 Celsius, the humidity was around 80 percent and there were no trees in any direction. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was in its second week.

The area around the sewage lake was dotted with enormous piles of rubble that had once been homes. They had been bulldozed by the IDF because they’d been used as a vantage point for Palestinian gunmen who shot at the nearby (now evacuated) Israeli settlements. A Bedouin man and his small sons sat in the dirt under a makeshift shelter of an old tarpaulin held up by sticks; their donkey was tethered nearby, but there was no tarpaulin to shade him. Across the street was a hospital and next to it was a school, with a UNRWA flag flapping from a pole in the courtyard.

The smell of the heat-baked sewage made my gag reflex jump. I walked around, clambering over piles of rubble to get a closer look, took photographs, tried to avoid breathing through my nose and swallowed hard.

Suddenly a young man, a local, appeared over a ridge and began walking toward me. His hair was slick with shiny gel and he was dressed in black from head to toe – black cowboy boots, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. He smiled and tried to chat me up in English, but it was no good – I couldn’t understand a word. 

 “Do you speak any other languages?” I asked. “French, Hebrew?”

“Oh,” he said, breaking into a relieved grin. “You speak Hebrew! Where are you from?”

“Tel Aviv,” I answered.

“Tel Aviv! I miss it so much. I used to go there all the time. I was a model for Castro Men in 1999.”

 I didn’t believe that he had modeled clothes for Israel’s largest clothing chain. But I thought it was interesting that he wished he had.

And so we stood under the hot sun in that desolate place that was devoid of trees and full of hopelessness and we spoke in Hebrew about Tel Aviv. About his favourite café and about the beach.

A few minutes later Sayed folded his tripod, lifted his camera to his shoulder and called out to me, “Lisa, we’re going.”

The young man trailed after me as I walked toward the air-conditioned Mercedes and the waiting driver. He muttered something to Sayed in Arabic. Sayed grunted something I didn’t catch in response.

As we piled into the car the young man waved at me and said wistfully, “Bye…”

“What did he say to you?” I asked Sayed.

“Nothing. He just wanted to ride in a Mercedes.”

Later that day we had lunch in a seafood restaurant. It was a hole in the wall, really – just a few Formica tables in a drab room. But the food was great – crispy fried calamari, freshly caught fish baked in a shell of rock salt and some local specialty that was a sort of fish stew baked in a paprika paste. I sat with Sayed, his friend - who was a local “fixer” for a big-time American newspaper - and the friend’s uncle, who was our driver. I spoke English to the fixer, and a mixture of Hebrew and English to Sayed, but the driver spoke only Arabic and Hebrew. So he and I spoke Hebrew.

 At the next table a young blonde woman sat with two local men. They had arrived in a Jeep painted with the logo of a well-known western NGO; I could see it through the window, parked just below. They spoke softly, laughing occasionally, as they ate and smoked Gauloises Blondes cigarettes. Each of the men got up toward the end of the meal, one after the other, unrolled a small rug in the corner, knelt to pray and then returned to the table.

A couple of times I tried to catch the young blonde woman’s eye and smile – especially when I got up to take some photographs of the beach from the second story window, which was close to her table. I figured that two western women having lunch with Palestinian men in Gaza might be curious about each other. But she did not look at me, let alone return my smile.

We were still eating when she and the two men got up to leave. The western woman came over to our table, smiled at each of my companions in turn, and said ma’as salameh. She did not look at me or say goodbye to me.

Later I asked Sayed if he knew the woman. He said he’d never seen her before.

 “I wonder why she ignored me?” I asked.

“Did she? I didn’t notice,” answered Sayed.

 Part 2: Tel Aviv

“I just got permission from the army to cross the checkpoints and come into Israel without restrictions,” said Sayed, via phone from Ramallah. “And the first person I’m coming to visit is you. I’ll be in Tel Aviv in two hours. We’re going out for lunch, so pick someplace nice.”

 Two hours later we were strolling down Rothschild Boulevard toward Neve Tzedek. It was winter, but the sun was shining and it was warm here on the coastal plain  – much warmer than Ramallah, which is up in the hills. Sayed slung his winter jacket over one arm and pushed the sleeves of his sweater up past his elbows.

 Breathing in deeply, he said, “Ah, Tel Aviv. How I love this city. I haven’t been here for four years. Four years! Since the first year of the intifada… Four years. I can’t believe it.”

 He told me that he’d first visited Tel Aviv when he was a teenager, when he ran away from his West Bank village after fighting with his conservative grandfather over some aspect of religious practice that Sayed had stopped observing. He’d lived on the beach for two weeks, selling ice cream and flirting with the girls. He told me that the city symbolized freedom for him.

 “Nobody cares who you are or where you’re from in Tel Aviv,” he said. “As long as you don’t bother anyone, you can live your own life.”

After lunch on the outdoor patio of Suzanna Restaurant, we walked down to the beach and strolled along the tayelet, the beachfront promenade, in the direction of Jaffa. Sayed threaded my arm through the crook formed by his. Just as we passed the Etzel Museum he said, “This is the happiest day I’ve had in four years. Really.”

 I laughed and said, “Sayed, your youngest daughter was born less than three years ago.”

 “I know,” he answered.

Just then the wind started to blow, which meant that rain would begin to fall in a minute. I grabbed Sayed’s arm and pulled him in the direction of a nearby pub/restaurant, called Pini baHatzer.

Brushing raindrops off our clothes, we sat at the bar so that we could watch through the window as the rain fell and the colour of the sky changed from purple to gray to black, because it was evening by then. It was warm inside the pub, and quiet. Sayed drank whiskey, I drank mulled wine and we joked with the handsome young bartender, who had fashionably close-cropped hair and a tiny silver loop in one earlobe. He gave us some dishes of homemade snacks on the house. I received a couple of phone calls on my mobile – one from an English speaker and one from a Hebrew speaker. Sayed’s phone rang and he spoke in Arabic.

While Sayed was in the washroom the smiling young bartender put another dish of snacks on the bar and said, “Where are you from? I hear English, Hebrew, Arabic. I’m confused!”

 “I’m from here,” I said. “But my friend lives in Ramallah.”

 “Cool,” said the bartender laconically. “Do you want some more wine?”

After we’d left the pub Sayed said to me, “I saw everyone staring at me when I spoke Arabic. But I didn’t care.”

“Sayed,” I said. “We were two minutes’ walk from Jaffa. It’s not unusual to hear Arabic around here. No-one was looking. No-one cares.”

“You just didn’t notice,” he answered.

Part 3: Ramallah

A group of American students, in Israel for a year on a fellowship, asked me to join two Palestinian journalists in discussing how the media cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The students, who were Jewish, were based in Jerusalem but had organized a daylong tour of Ramallah, including meetings with some prominent Palestinian politicians.

After the discussion I was invited to join the group for dinner at Darna, Ramallah’s poshest restaurant, where the atmosphere is basically -  "Occupation? What occupation?" Crisp white tablecloths, smartly uniformed waiters, an array of gorgeous Middle Eastern salads, the best baby lamb chops I’ve ever eaten, well-dressed diners, the sweet, pleasing smell of nargileh smoke – and the wall of fame: framed photos of the restaurant owner with all sorts of VIPs, from Jimmy Carter to Yasser Arafat.

 I enjoyed talking to the students. They were bright, thoughtful and idealistic – the kind of super achievers who manage to graduate from Ivy League schools and go on to major law schools but still find time for all sorts of impressive pro bono projects during and in between their studies. One of them, a young woman who’d achieved impressive proficiency in Hebrew in less than a year, stuck to the vegetarian dishes because she kept kosher.

Raja, a Palestinian-American who was at Yale the same year as a couple of the Jewish students, joined us for dinner. He’d become friends with the Jewish students when they were on opposite sides of the divest/don’t divest from Israel student debate. Today he works for the PLO negotiation team.

We were still working our way through the main courses when two young women walked in. One of them, it turned out, had been on the same programme the previous year and knew the group. She had decided to stay on and work for a NGO. Raja looked at the other girl, snorted with surprised laughter and muttered, “That’s the English girl who was kidnapped with her parents in Gaza last month!”

The former hostage didn’t stay, but the American girl joined us. She sat beside me, and we fell into conversation. She told me about her work with the NGO and asked me where I lived.

 Tel Aviv, I said.

Oh wow, she said. I love Tel Aviv so much. I’m based in Jerusalem, and I just hate it there – but it’s so convenient for work, because I’m in Ramallah a lot. I wish I could live in Tel Aviv.

Then she talked about the easygoing atmosphere of Tel Aviv, the cafes, the beach, the people, the cultural life. We agreed that it was one of the most interesting cities in the world, and one of the most pleasant.

Then she sighed and said, “But sometimes I’ll be sitting in an outdoor café, surrounded by people having a good time, using the free WiFi to work on my laptop, and all of a sudden I remember the occupation and I feel guilty."

“Guilty?” I said. “Why should you feel guilty? You didn’t occupy the territories. You don’t support the occupation, and you’re doing volunteer work to help Palestinians.”

Then I said, “You know there’s unhappiness, injustice and misery everywhere in the world. In Manhattan I ate meals in restaurants while homeless people sat outside. In India – well, you know… You can’t waste your time feeling guilty. You just have to do the best you can to make things better. You mustn’t make a fetish out of the occupation.”

She stared at me for a second and then she said, slowly, “I guess you’re right.”

Later she gave me a ride as far as Jerusalem, where I would catch a minibus back to Tel Aviv. There was a long queue of cars waiting to get through Qalandiya checkpoint. Finally, there was only one vehicle in front of us – a van, with three Palestinian male passengers. They had to get out of the van, one by one, open their coats, raise their shirts and expose their bare torsos to the soldiers. To show they weren’t wearing explosive belts.

Ninety minutes later I was back in Tel Aviv, drinking coffee with friends at the 24-hour coffee bar on Rothschild Boulevard.

I made Ronen's day today. And he made mine. The gruff-but-sweet owner of Ginzburg cafe saw the photo of Hossein that was taken for the Haaretz article open next to my laptop (see the photo in the Hebrew version, here) and said, "Hey, that's my cafe!"

I pulled out the Hebrew edition to show him. Delighted, he took it into the kitchen to show his wife and the rest of the staff, then returned to my table and, indicating the English article, asked, "So what paper is that one?"

"It's Haaretz in English," I said. "I have a subscription for an American newspaper and they come together."

"So you can read English easily? Whole articles, just like that?" asked Ronen, incredulously.

"Um, Ronen... English is my native language," I said.

"It is?" he asked. "You never told me that!"

Ladies and gentleman, I have arrived. I may look foreign to some but - ha! - I fooled a native. I plan to bask in the glow for a few more hours - or until the next time I watch a native-born Israeli friend's lips twitch with suppressed laughter as he reads something I wrote in Hebrew.

 Monday was a looong day, but a very interesting one. We went up to Jerusalem with grand plans to do an interview with the Jerusalem Post, tour the Old City, go see the separation wall in Abu Dis and meet a Palestinian journalist friend of mine, but of course there simply wasn't enough time to do everything. The interview with Orly Halpern, the JPost reporter, was fun but took three times as long as planned (article here). By the time we finished it was nearly dark, so there wasn't much point in touring. Instead we went directly to meet my friend Sayed* for coffee.

Sayed lives in Ramallah, but he's frequently in Jerusalem because he works for a foreign broadcasting corporation. We went to chat in a cafe, where we were joined by Jamal*, an Arab-Israeli journalist who works for an Arab television station that's based in the Gulf region. During the course of the conversation we gave Hossein a succinct-as-possible explanation of the difference in status between what some call "1948 Palestinians" and "1967 Palestinians" - those who are Israeli citizens and those who have Palestinian Authority identity cards. I was particularly pleased that Sayed, Jamal and I were able to give a neutral - and at times funny- summary of this very controversial, very loaded subject.** We also talked a bit about how common it is for Israeli and Palestinian journalists to work together - that many have good relations and routinely share information.

Sayed wouldn't let us pay. As we left he called out in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic to the owner of the cafe, "Yalla, habibi. Ma'as salameh. Put it on my bill."

[Sayed never lets me pay for anything - whether he visits me in Tel Aviv or I visit him in Ramallah. He insists that this has nothing to do with machismo. Hmmm...].

Hossein met a few Iranian Jews who own shops along Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. In striking contrast to the Iranian Jews he met in Tel Aviv - particularly through the Centre for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, where he gave a presentation last week - the Jaffa Road shopowners were a suspicious, surly bunch. Hossein was less-than-impressed. A couple of the younger guys made some nudge-nudge-wink-wink comments about how to find girls in Israel, but the rest were barely civil. One guy, upon hearing that he was being introduced to an Iranian Muslim, muttered an inaudible excuse, ducked out of the shop and disappeared. I gathered that they were suspicious of Hossein - perhaps they thought he was a spy. But they weren't the only ones who were suspicious: one Israeli reporter friend told me that a colleague was convinced Hossein was a foreign agent. (to which Hossein asked, "Foreign agent for whom?") Then again, the colleague has a reputation for seeing conspiracies all over the place.

On the other hand, the trendy Tel Avivis who gathered that night at Lima Lima, a lounge bar on Lilienblum Street, were very warm and receptive.


Hossein giving a talk at Lima Lima. (more photos on Flickr)

Neither Hossein nor I had anything to do with arranging this event, by the way. It happened like this: one of the founders of ilcu.com read Hossein's New York Times opinion piece, saw that the dateline was Tel Aviv, got his email from his blog and invited him to sign up on ilcu. Within a few hours someone who does public relations for ilcu had arranged the event at Lima Lima and posted it on the site; within half a day nearly 40 ilcu.com members had confirmed that they would attend and in the end more than 60 showed up.

By the way, I really recommend checking out the event page on ilcu. Scroll down to find photos taken at Lima Lima (much better than mine), profiles of ilcu.com members who attended and comments - including comments from a couple of those new Iranian members.

After Hossein and I posted a link to the event at ilcu.com on our blogs, several Iranian men signed up on the site and, according to one of the founders, have been happily making friends with several Israeli women who are also ilcu members. Now I'm waiting for some Iranian women to sign up and become friends with Israeli men.

The event was basically a casual Q&A session, with questions ranging from cultural to political. People wanted to know if Ahamdenijad had the power to wage nuclear war; whether the Iranian government was as sophisticated as the Chinese at censoring the internet; whether there is serious poverty in Iran; what young people in Tehran did in their spare time; and why Hossein can't go back to Iran right now (it's not just because he's visited Israel).

Afterward a group of us (including Rinat, looking particularly lovely here) went off to nearby Nanouchka (video of "a day in the life" at Nanouchka here), a Georgian restaurant that becomes a major "scene" after midnight. A meal and more drinks were followed by a photo session and interview for an upcoming cover story on The Iranian for this week's Ha'Ir (The City), a weekly supplement that is distributed in the Tel Aviv area with the Friday edition of Haaretz. I think there is also supposed to be an article in this week's Time Out Tel Aviv, and on Thursday he will be interviewed for Voice of Israel's Persian-language broadcast.

More links about Hossein's visit:
Ynet article (Hebrew link)
BBC Radio interview (me and Hossein)
MetaFilter

Oh, by the way - quick clarification in response to some emails I received: It is true that some Iranian Jews who live in Israel do manage to visit Iran, and that Iranians have visited Israel in the past and returned to their home country without facing any serious consequences. But those visits were always made very discreetly, almost clandestinely, usually via Turkey. The point of Hossein's visit is to break the taboo by breaking the silence. Given that his website is censored by the Iranian government and that he was warned by a government official following his last visit not to return to his country, I guess his visit falls into the category of "gutsy".


*Not their real names.
**Some people reject the term "Palestinian" for Arabs who have Israeli citizenship. Instead, they prefer the term Arab-Israeli, which is most commonly used in Israel. Jamal said he preferred Palestinian of Israeli nationality. This is just one example of how complicated the whole subject can become.