Shai Tsur, who nearly made me cry when he decided to stop blogging, has written a post for the Guardian Newsblog in which he explains why Israelis have reacted so strongly to the kidnappings of Gilad Shalit and Eliyahu Asheri, whose body was found last night.

Kidnappings affect us much more strongly than rocket attacks or even suicide bombings. Over the years, we have developed coping mechanisms for bombings that allow us to pick up and move on. But when an Israeli is taken prisoner the whole country gets wrapped up in the drama.

Read the rest here. And please, intelligent commenters of the world - unite! The Guardian Newsblog attracts some serious nutters, including a quite a few who are rabid haters of the Zionist entity and/or Jews in general. It'd be great to have some sensible voices out there as a counterweight.

The other Shai blogs about Utopia at Israel2046. In his most recent post he takes us on a trip from Tel Aviv to Beirut, forty years from now. There's the rapid rail option (the Pilgrim Express from Jerusalem),  the Israrail option and the scenic route. Check out the links - as usual, they are all real. Utopia need not be fantasy.

Update: Ooh, and lookee here: Keith Porter has written a lovely plug for Israel2046 on about.com.

There are two Israeli blogospheres - one is in Hebrew, the other in English. And they are two parallel - er, spheres, if you will. They are concerned about different subjects, have different worldviews and are really barely aware of one another. The only Hebrew blogger who has tried to bridge the two is Hanan Cohen (my shining star), who once wrote an article for the Maariv news portal NRG about Anglo-Israeli bloggers and recently created the bilingual aggregate; and the only English blogger who has made the effort is Allison (my other shining star), with this translation of a touching post by a popular Hebrew blogger.

When a reporter in London asked me if I could define the difference between the two Israeli blogospheres, I told him that Anglo bloggers are mostly concerned with "explaining" Israel to the outside world, whereas Hebrew bloggers rarely write about politics - preferring to concentrate on personal issues and tech issues. The reporter found that hard to believe: Isn't Israel a highly politicized society? he asked. Yes, I answered. In a way, it is. But it is also a society that is exhausted by politics. In fact, I almost never discuss the subject with my native-born Israeli friends. We talk about everything but - and that is not a conscience decision.

Right now, the biggest issue in the English-Israeli blogosphere is Gaza. In the Hebrew blogosphere, however,  it is the suicide of a famous blogger - Rapunzel. The story was covered in the Hebrew mainstream press last week, and today there's a summary on Haaretz's English site, here.

Amongst the Hebrew bloggers who have written about Gaza, some are against the IDF invasion, others are in favour and still others are indifferent. I haven't found anybody who is concerned about what the rest of the world thinks - whether they be mainstream media, Arab bloggers or other. Below are some translated excerpts of posts about Gaza that I read today. Disclaimer: These are not necessarily my views. I'm reporting, not making a statement - political or otherwise.

From a blogger who calls himself The Consumer ("consumerism, quality of life and all that falls between") there's this post:

The IDF is going to try to pressure the local population into pleading with the terror organizations to cool down. It's never worked in the past and it won't work this time.

The situation in Gaza resembles Somalia. The territory is controlled by warlords who have no desire to stop the conflict against us. They make a living from it. They make their money in several different ways: budgets from states that support terror; criminal control of their territory; and smuggling from Egypt. The last thing they need is an organized state. By getting involved in a military operation we will end up increasing the power of those gangs. A lack of order is their daily bread.
...
I just hope they [the soldiers] get home safely.

From Benny Ziffer, who blogs for Haaretz (Hebrew edition) there's a long post about why he's indifferent to the news of the invasion. Excerpts below:

I'm observing the mourning period for my father-in-law and I'm not watching television, so when Ran told me this morning that the IDF had "entered Gaza," I received the news with the indifference it deserves. And I say "deserves" because my father-in-law, who survived the second world war, was one of the most sober, realistic people I knew, regarding everything connected with manipulation and government brainwashing. And he did not believe in slogans.
...
I seriously believe that, beyond all the considerations upon which the decision to invade Gaza was based, there is one, much more basic and much less rational factor that no-one is talking about. And that is our wounded pride. So we take revenge on them for wounding our masculine pride and they take revenge on us for wounding their masculine pride and this cockfight just continues without end.
...
I have decided that I am not going to get all worked up about the invasion of Gaza and I'm not going to express a strong opinion. Let them do whatever they want. I have my own life and I refuse to live it according to the pace of events set by the army or the state.

From a blog called Anecdotes ("a geek blog"), this post was written a few days after the Israeli Air Force bombed a van carrying missiles that was being driven by Islamic Jihad militants through a crowded area of Gaza. The van was on its way to the site from which the missiles were to be launched at Israeli civilian population centres across the border. After the first IAF bomb hit the van, a crowd of civilians gathered around; the second IAF bomb had already been launched and could not be stopped (duh). When it landed, it killed 11 people - including children - and wounded another 20:

This is not a political post. The following statement is not political.

I cannot, as a human being and as a Jew, continue to stand by silently while the state of Israel and the IDF pursue a military policy that results in the continued killing of innocent civilians. There is no point in my demanding that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad stop launching missiles at Israel. Those are terrorist acts which are directed at innocent civilians in Sderot and the rest of the communities in the western Negev. They also put the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza in danger from an Israeli military response. The demand to stop the launching of missiles from Gaza must come from the Palestinian public. When it comes from me it has no meaning. But I can and must demand of the Israeli government and the IDF: No more! Enough "targeted killings" with missiles or shells into civilian populated areas. As the father of two children, I cannot live with the thought that the only crime that [Gazan] girl committed was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, precisely because that is my greatest fear: that my children will be hurt by pure chance, by a terror attack, by a car accident, or for any other reason. Just because they were in a certain place at a certain time.

*****************************************

Anyway, that's what some Hebrew bloggers are saying. I'll leave the comments and analysis to you.

There are two reasons, I think, that Israelis tend to be beautiful when they're young and then age rapidly starting from early middle age. The harsh sunlight is one. This is the other.

Recently, someone asked me to translate the following piece, by Meir Shalev, from the original Hebrew. More information about this prominent Israeli author is here, and Hebrew speakers please don't be too hard on me for the translation. It's a wee bit awkward, I know.

State and Homeland

By Meir Shalev

 

I have visited Jordan several times since the signing of the peace agreement with Israel. The journey to a neighboring country, which to every European is something very normal, causes me new joy each time. The Jordanian border official stamps my Israeli passport, I cross the border and travel in a country that was once an enemy.

Jordan interests me very much. It is part of my historical homeland. This is where Elijah the Prophet was born and Moses was buried. This is where Jacob struggled with the angel. Ruth the Moabite came from here and gave birth to the grandfather of King David. I visit all those places and read the relevant passages from the Hebrew bible. But after that I cross the border again, show my passport and return to my home, to my state, to Israel.

There are Israelis who feel otherwise. According to them, all the places in which Jacob and Elijah lived and died still belong to us today. And now, when the issues of disengagement and convergence and the return of territories are coming up for discussion, they are not willing to give up their proximity to the tomb of Rachel or the valley through which David walked on his way to meet Goliath.

Our foremother Rachel is dear to my heart, but I don’t need national sovereignty over her tomb. I can visit it as I visit Jordan – by showing my Israeli passport at the border and traveling there. Because even if Rachel’s tomb is part of “the land of our forefathers,” of my spiritual homeland, it does not have to be part of my state.

The State of Israel and the “land of our forefathers” are not the same thing, but the difference is not clear to many people. The state is a tool of management; it has pragmatic considerations, legal borders and policies. The homeland does not. Homeland is a historical and spiritual idea, and those who love it are inclined to sentimentalism and extremism. In the Middle East, however, there is another difference. The citizens of the state are living beings. Citizens of the homeland, on the other hand, are dead. But their influence is far greater.

And thus, to me and to the rest of Israel’s citizens it is difficult to compete with King David, Jesus, the Matriarch Rachel and Salah a-Din. It is difficult for our houses to compete with their tombs. That is why we must be resolute and strong. We must understand that the next generation, like every generation, will have the right to decide in which state and according to which borders they are willing and able to live. And so, after a 40-year struggle of belligerence and stupidity, Israel has finally understood that it must return the territories it conquered in the Six Day War. We are giving up part of our homeland in order to have a better and more normal state.

To all this there is an additional aspect: Most of our history took place without a state, but with a homeland. A very strong, virtual homeland. One of its symbols, the burial place of Rachel, has become a real place, an object of love and longing. Now, with our return to that place, it has become a fortified bunker, surrounded by guard posts, checkpoints, floodlights and soldiers. It is time to decide if that is the Rachel in whom we are interested. It is time to decide whether ownership of her tomb justifies the sacrifices we have made and will continue to make.

Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem

After the destruction of the First Temple and the dispersion to the Diaspora, Jeremiah the prophet wrote: "A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children. ” Since then 2,500 years have passed, and there are still people amongst us who want Rachel to continue to weep. But this time she is weeping for the children who will die in order to keep her tomb fortified within the domain of Israel.

Okay, I confess: I stayed home tonight to work, but instead ended up watching Kochav Nolad (A Star is Born), the Israeli rip-off version of American Idol.

I'm rooting for David Salam,** the adorable 26 year-old French guy with the broken Hebrew  who flew in from Paris to audition. He fell into his wife's arms and nearly broke into tears when he was informed, via video chez l'agence Juive en Paris, that he'd passed.

David, who works in a furniture store but lives for music, said in one of his interviews that he dreams of moving to Israel with his wife and 3 year-old son. Yet alas, a week after he arrived to stay at the home of his cousins in Ashdod, someone broke into his car and stole his laptop. One is tempted to ask if David would have left his laptop in his car in France.

But fear not!  David was informed on live television, after he performed his first solo, that Bezeq is buying him a new laptop. Such is the enthusiasm of Israel's nefarious monopoly telephone company for all the positive PR represented by that sweet, handsome young French Zionist with the gorgeous voice.

David and another charming-and-handsome contestant, Amir Haddad, competed successfully on the Thursday night episode. But both were absent from the Friday night show because they are Sabbath observant, making them the only non-secular contestants. Interestingly, Amir and David are both French Jews of North African extraction, although Amir has lived in Israel since he was a child.

 
David Salam                               Amir Haddad


During the commercial break, a trailer for the upcoming Israeli version of Wife Swap (British version here, American version here) was broadcast. And wow, high drama of the most local kind! The first episode of the new season features a swap between a Muslim family and a Jewish family.

The Muslim woman is shown telling her Jewish husband-for-a-week that she wants to watch Al Jazeera when they settle down for an evening of television viewing. His response: "Let's not go too far." In another scene he discovers her listening to Arabic music on the radio while she washes the floor. "We only listen to Galgalatz (Army Radio) in this house," he says.

Meanwhile, the Jewish woman arrives at the home of her Muslim husband-for-a-week and remarks nervously, "Oh! There's no mezuzah on the door!" Later she is shown tucking the children into bed and telling them in Arabic, with a heavy Hebrew accent, "Bukra, bukra madrassa." (tomorrow, tomorrow is school.)

There's no way I'm going to miss that show. (damn, I'm becoming a reality TV addict. Scary).

**The videos are not Firefox compatible. (grrr)

I was supposed to go with Rinat to Ramallah yesterday. We were going to watch a football/soccer match at Stone's Cafe, hang out with a few friends and get some local colour for an article Rinat wanted to write about World Cup fever in the West Bank.

But in the end, to my regret, I had to cancel because I had an important work-related meeting with Yoda and Dalit.

Yoda, by the way, happens to be the only private investor in the controversial film Paradise Now, although he'd laugh in your face if you called him a leftist. "I'm a businessman," he says. Then he adds that he only invests in projects he believes in. Yoda is descended from an old Jewish family that has lived in this part of the world for a few generations more than a Maronite Christian friend of mine from Nazareth; her family migrated down from Lebanon about six generations ago, during the Ottoman period. Which does not, of course, mean that she is somehow less rooted here.

Yoda, Dalit and I met at Cafe Noach, where I ran into a non-Jewish Italian friend (we first met at yoga class) who lives in Tel Aviv just because he likes it here. His job requires him to travel frequently and he says it really makes no difference whether he lives in Tel Aviv or Europe. He just prefers the Tel Aviv lifestyle  -  the weather, the people, the beaches, the cafes. He can live much better here than in Europe, for far less money.

Shortly after I returned home, Rinat called. I knew that something was "up" because she spoke to me in English, not Hebrew. "Lisa, are you near a computer? Could you check and see if anything is happening in Ramallah right now?"

Sure. I clicked through all the Israeli and Palestinian news sites, but there were no news flashes.

"Nothing," I said. "Why, what's going on?"

Rinat explained that a bunch of armoured IDF vehicles had just entered Ramallah and that there was a shootout going on outside the shop in which she and her friend had taken cover. She didn't know what kind of forces they were or why they were in Ramallah. So I told her I'd call a few reporters for more information and get back to her. I tried all the Israeli reporters I knew who covered the West Bank and Gaza but they had turned their mobiles off (weird!), so I called Samer in Ramallah.

He was at home.

"Yeah," he said, smothering a yawn. "Some IDF special forces are after a couple of wanted men. They're shooting each other, one of the guys is dead and another wounded. Tell Rinat that it will be over in about 30 to 45 minutes, maximum, and that she shouldn't worry. If she needs help, tell her to call me and I'll come pick her up in my armoured car." (the car is courtesy of Samer's employer, a North American television broadcasting company).

I called Rinat back to update her and heard a couple of shots in the background while we were talking. "Don't worry," I said. "It'll be over soon. Is anybody panicking?"

"No," she said. "They are behaving exactly as we would if there were a pigua in Tel Aviv. Everyone is calm."

After three consecutive 15 day terms of detention without charge, Alaa was released today. (new readers: my post about his arrest is here).

Egyptian Sandmonkey has more information, including details about Alaa's horrific last night in jail, here.

Elijah Zarwan summarizes the posts about Alaa's release for Global Voices, here.

Right - I'm off to remove the Release Alaa badge from my sidebar. And to breathe a sigh of relief for someone I've never met.

The Perpetual Refugee has written a compelling new post, here.

How do you imagine the Middle East 40 years from now? A brilliant friend of mine put together a few ideas on a blog he calls Israel2046.

My friend imagines a light railway in Rishon LeZion, a Club Med in Gaza, flying to Dubai on Palestinian Airlines and doing business at the Karni Hi-Tech Zone on the border with Gaza.

Sounds like a dream, right?

Well, sort of. But not quite. It almost was and perhaps could be reality.

Click on the links and you'll see what I mean. They paint a pretty amazing picture.

Oh, and my friend isn't sure he wants to continue with this blog. I'm hoping that a little positive readers' feedback in the comments section will encourage him.  ;)

A couple of weeks ago an acquaintance asked me what the Palestinian politicians I had interviewed said about the intifada. I told him that I had never spoken with Hamas politicians about the intifada, only Fatah people, and that they all told me the terror attacks had been a mistake. Actually, what they said was that taking the intifada to a violent level had been a mistake.

And why do you think they believe it was a mistake? asked my acquaintance.

Well, look at the consequences, I answered: The 2002 IDF invasion of the West Bank, the separation barrier, the ruined Palestinian economy, the -

Actually, interrupted my acquaintance, I don't think that's the reason.

So what is? I asked.

I think they figured out that terrorism just doesn't work, he responded. Look at Tel Aviv, for example. Business is booming, real estate prices are higher than they ever were, the nightlife and culture life are thriving, there's growth and optimism everywhere. Even at the height of the suicide bombings the nightlife and the culture life were thriving. And look at New York, London and Madrid. They're all booming too, despite the Al Qaeda attacks. Terrorism didn't make a dent.

The way I see it, he continued, those terrorists must be completely frustrated. They must be wondering what the hell they have to do to cause some real damage.

Then he leaned back in his chair, puffed quietly on his cigar, and said: It's just something I've been thinking about lately.

Later I recounted this conversation to Noorster via IM.

Who is this Yoda? she asked.

Sorry, I am still swamped with work and have no time for serious blogging - so consider the clip below a "commercial break."

When I was at the Dead Sea in Jordan last March, Nancy Ajram's  Einteh Eh (What Are You) was played over and over at the Movenpick Hotel's outdoor cafe. It was a great accompaniment to nargileh smoke, mint tea and conversation. Nancy's rather interesting Wikipedia entry is here.

Enjoy the beautiful people and glamorous clothes. A translation of the lyrics is here.

Rania al-Oqbi (centre)                              Credit: Danny Makhlis/Ynet

That woman with the dark, curly hair and the gorgeous smile is Rania al-Oqbi. On the left is Avishay Braverman, the former president of Ben Gurion University; on the right is Rivka Carmi, who replaced Braverman when he decided to go into politics. The 26 year-old Bedouin woman just completed her medical degree at BGU. Now she's the first female Bedouin physician in Israel.

Haaretz published the story a couple of weeks ago, here, when Dr. al-Oqbi was still reluctant to be interviewed by the Israeli press. According to the Haaretz story, she didn't want people to think that her success was based on affirmative action; the Ynet reporter claims that she was really concerned about intimidating potential husbands.

"Traditional Bedouin men find it hard to accept my profession, which is extremely demanding. This work involves long hours, including nights. And still, there are many working Arab women," she explained.

The Haaretz article offers some interesting information about Cultivating Medicine in the Desert, the program initiated by BGU Prof. Riad Agbaria (also a Bedouin) to attract Bedouin women to medical school. The list of obstacles they have to overcome is pretty sobering.

Just one of those stories that deserves a lot more publicity than it's likely to receive. (I like to share).

Yes, I do have something more to say about what happened on the beach in Gaza. The post will have to wait another day or two, though, until I make a dent in the outrageous amount of work that has taken over my life.

Noorster (who completes my sentences with discomfiting frequency) has pretty much summed up my thoughts in this brilliant post.

Norm Geras has some wise thoughts on the matter here.

Yonatan makes this observation.

And I'll be back soon.

Take a look at the football below and then read Saudi blogger Farah's hilarious post about the controversy it caused.

Then go read Aya's  very interesting article about the Saudi blogosphere, here.



I'll be back to more substantial blogging in a couple of days.

At last! Via Hadas, I just watched the trailer for Eytan Fox's soon-to-be-released movie, The Bubble.

I saw the filming going on around my neighbourhood for months, whetting my appetite. According to early (word of mouth) reports it's not a great film, but I'm willing to risk my 30 shekels to find out.

It's opening in Tel Aviv on June 29.

Fox's previous hits include Yossi and Jaeger and Walk on Water.

The video is below, but be warned - not for office viewing.

Today I spent a lot of time talking with three friends about the unspeakable tragedy that happened yesterday in Gaza. A 7 year-old girl named Hadeel Ghalia lost her entire family - mother, father and siblings - when an "errant" Israeli shell hit the beach where they were having a picnic.

I don't have any words, I told Noorster, Jill and Stephanie, who were all equally horrified. As is Sarah and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's daughter, Dana. I feel as though I should write something, I said, but I am blocked.

I would like to say to the people who are using Hadeel's tragedy to score political points, to call for violent revenge and to condemn an entire nation: please stop it.

And I would like to say to the people who attempt to mitigate the horror with relativism, by drawing up a list of violent tragedies that have been visited upon Israelis in this conflict: please stop it.

A 7 year-old girl just saw her parents and siblings killed. She is an orphan. She is traumatized for life. Can't we just respect her grief with compassion and dignity? Must we watch the horrible video footage of her weeping near the body of her father over and over, making her grief into pornography?

Amongst the Arab bloggers who wrote about what happened yesterday, the only one I could relate to was this one, from Ahmed. The rest were
predictably disheartening. Just like so many of the posts written by Israeli and Jewish bloggers after a suicide bombing - the ones that demonize the entire Palestinian people for the actions of a few.

Today I received this email from Ramzi Sfeir, a Palestinian from Bethlehem:

This post is dedicated to Anglosaxy, in honour of his much-loved homo sapiette series (right sidebar, under the photo of Anglosaxy junior ;) )

When I was growing up in the 1980s, Paris Match used to run a lot of photo essays of Princess Diana and Princess Caroline, often with some variation on the question "who's more elegant?" or "who's more beautiful?"

Here's my Mid East version of the Caroline v. Di contest. It's called Haifa v. Shiri.


Haifa


Shiri

Recently I discovered Haifa Wehbe, the sexy Lebanese pop star whose current hits include "I'm Haifa," and "Kiss the boo boo," (check out these photos on Haitham's blog).

For some reason, Haifa reminds me of Israeli singer Shiri Maimon. Below is a video of each pop star moaning her way through her signature song. Click on the arrow to view, and state your preference (or abhorrence, if you want) in the comments. ;)

Haifa Wehbe: "Ana Haifa" (I'm Haifa)




Shiri Maimon: "Ahava Ktana" (Little Love)

Well, it's not exactly my street, but it is about 10 seconds' walk away from where I live. Sheinkin is synonymous with all that is trendy and cool in Israel, 'though there are some who use the term "Sheinkin types" as a derisive synonym for artsy-fartsy bleeding heart leftists.

That image is pretty outdated, 'though. Sheinkin has seen quite a few incarnations over the last 60 years. Once, during the 1930s and 1940s,  it was elegant;  then it was seedy and rundown for a long time. During the late 1980s it was discovered by the bohemian crowd and became a central meeting place for actors, musicians and writers. Now it' s roughly equivalent to - oh, West Broadway in Manhattan, Notting Hill in London or Queen Street West in Toronto. Briefly edgy but now mainstream trendy and somewhat commercialized.

I try to avoid Sheinkin on Fridays, the first day of the weekend, when half the teenagers from greater Tel Aviv gather to see and be seen.  Traffic - both pedestrian and vehicular - slows to a crawl on that day as Yossi, Yoni, Osnat and Merav stop to greet all their friends.


Sheinkin on Friday

Anyhow, check out the site. It's got a history of the street, links to various shops, video of the day and more - so much more. You can even buy stuff online and have it sent to you.

The most popular explanation for blogging silences is "busy busy," which is also usually a lie-lie. I am very busy lately, but mainly I'm suffering from the blogging blahs. I have lost my blogger's mojo and I don't know where to find it. But fear not:  it's like Lassie - it'll come home again.

Today, though, I will allow my (bad) mood to hang out for the world to see with one rant and one snark.

Then I'll offer partial compensation with some links at the end.

The rant

Let's start with the criminally irresponsible actions of the  Israel Electric Corporation. Three days ago they announced rolling brown outs throughout the country, explaining that they were unprepared for the sudden heat wave and the corresponding high demand for electricity. (in a country that experiences at least four months of temperatures in the mid-to-high thirties, with up to 80% humidity, every year?! Is that a sick joke?) Each power outage was supposed to last 30 minutes, although the two I experienced lasted 45. Read more here.

But that's not the point of my rant.

The point is, these were planned outages - but the IEC didn't bother to share the schedule with the already outrageously overcharged and underserviced public. The result: old people were caught for hours in elevators, in 34 degree heat; some poor guy was hospitalized when his respirator stopped working;  and worst of all, a young man was killed in a car accident - evidently as a direct result of a non-working traffic light.

You know what I think? (that was a superfluous rhetorical question). I think there should be an investigation into that traffic accident. And if there is sufficient evidence of a direct connection between that young man's death and the non-working traffic light, the person who took the decision to keep the public uninformed should be arrested and tried for murder. I am quite serious.

This is a country that takes pride in its ability to mobilize its reserve army in one day, or evacuate dozens of wounded from the site of a suicide bombing in less than one hour and clean the site up in a day. Surely it can dispatch police officers to direct traffic at intersections in advance of each power outage!

I am really completely outraged. Can you tell?

The snark

Via my sister, I just watched the trailer for Oliver Stone's summer blockbuster release, World Trade Centre. Adina calls it a "disaster porn flick." I love her synopsis:

Scored with a treacley, bombastic soundtrack, it stars Nicholas Cage as a tough and tender cop in a moustache with his second-in-command, played by Michael Pena from Crash, who writes, while trapped in debris, I (heart) U on a crumpled piece of paper. "On the Day the World Saw Evil," read the hubristic title treatment, ending with an ambiguous: "Two men saw something else."

Would it be hugely insensitive of me to ask Americans, nearly five years after 9/11, to please get over it already?*  Really, I think it's time. There have been many disasters all over the world - of both the natural and the terrorist variety - since then, and the ability to feel empathy is truly more admirable than perpetual navel gazing.

*Update: A number of people suggested gently, in emails and comments, that I meant "get past," not "get over." And yes, that is really what I meant. Thank you for saving me from myself. ;)

The links

Haaretz has an interesting article, called Lebanon comes out of the closet, about the gay and lesbian convention that was held in Beirut a couple of weeks ago. Mustapha, who by the way recently got engaged (photo!), blogged about his take on the convention here.

While the Haaretz reporter, Zvi Barel, acknowledges that homosexuality is still illegal in Lebanon, he sees the Beirut convention as a sign that our neighbour to the north is taking a leading role in what he calls "a new trend of permissiveness in the Middle East." Barel also mentions that Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East, besides Israel of course, to have a gay community organization. It's called Helem, which is the Arabic acronym for Association for the Protection of the Rights of Homosexuals and Lesbians. Helem also means "tolerance."

[The article includes some interesting information about contemporary Lebanese society, including a passing mention of the fact that Lebanese author Hoda Barakat's book, The Stone of Laughter,  was recently published in Hebrew.]

Mustapha is a bit more critical than Barel in his post, "It's legal, but keep it quiet." Excerpt:

Our government is liberal enough to accept homosexuals (unlike the commercial sex issue which is simply one of Lebanon’s secret touristic cash cows), but the way the Lebanese system handles tricky social issues can be summarized as: Do it, we will regulate it, but let’s all try not to talk about it.

Interesting contrast in perspectives, no? The Israeli reporter is all rah-rah, while the Lebanese blogger is more "yes, but..."

More links:

My latest GVO roundup.

The Perpetual Refugee's most recent post - and his best yet, IMO.

Russell Merryman (online editor of Al Jazeera.net) has posted his contribution to the Media Centre blog - here.

Ksenia Svetlova wrote an interesting article (for the JPost, which I love to hate but grudgingly give credit for occasionally publishing something worthwhile) about a controversial novel by a 24 year-old Saudi woman, Rajaa as-Sanaa, called Banat al-Riyadh (Riyadh Girls). The novel, which has four female protagonists, apparently deals with all sorts of taboo subjects - like homosexuality, pre-marital sex and the Saudi attitude to divorced women. I write "apparently" because Banat al-Riyadh, which is a huge bestseller in the Arab world, has not been translated into English (or Hebrew). It is, however, available in French, German and Italian. This 18 year-old Saudi girl writes that she identifies strongly with the characters in the novel.

AhmedT, an Egyptian ex-pat blogger living in "greater Toronto," happens to live directly across the street from the house in which 17 suspected terrorists were arrested a couple of days ago. He was home when the SWAT teams arrived - read about what he saw and take a look at the photos he took, here.

(Reuters article here, Toronto Globe and Mail article here).

That's it! Back soon...

Harry photographed me in front of  Delicatessen Boutique on Barzilai Street, in Tel Aviv's formerly seedy and now very trendy Gan HaHeshmal area (just a few minutes' walk from my place, which is important 'cause - you know - I need to be in the centre of the action at all times).

I was tagging along on the Youth Media tour - a press junket for American journalists who write for edgy publications like Paper and Bust. The idea was to get away from the cliched destinations like the holy sites in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem and the Knesset, and to show the Israel that very few (you can read that as close to zero) foreign correspondents bother to check out - let alone write about.

It's far away from the hothouse atmosphere of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, where most of the correspondents hang out - when they're not attending press conferences with politicians or rushing off to find those violent stories that grab the headlines.

Allison (who blogged about the trip here and here) and Harry worked incredibly hard escorting the group around the country. Me, I just showed up a couple of times for the food and the company. Both were great.

Here's a photo of the boutique's interior:




And below is Idit Barak, the designer/owner who studied at FIT, trained with Norma Kamali -  and then decided that New York was great and all, but Tel Aviv is home.

Now she's one of the movers and shakers in the cooperative of ultra-hip boutiques, cafes and bars that have sprung up around Gan HaHeshmal over the last year or so.



Harry's photos taken during the tour are on his Flickr account. Check 'em out, he's a really good photographer.