An open path to Lake Kinneret
Haaretz, Friday, December 8, 2006
By Haaretz Editorial
It does not happen often that clerks in the Interior Ministry and in the country's planning bodies respond positively to an initiative with mass appeal. It happened Tuesday, at a meeting of the National Council for Planning and Construction - the country's supreme planning body. The council approved an amendment to the National Master Plan for Beaches for the construction of an open, contiguous walking path along the shores of Lake Kinneret, without fences or gates. Its decision marked the completion of an initiative launched by youth under the aegis of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, which began forging such a path about two years ago.
This is an important achievement for the country's environmental organizations that proves that concerted action with an educational character can effect change even within national institutions. It complements the recent success by "green" organizations to suspend construction projects in West Jerusalem, in which the public also played a large role.
The sad state of Lake Kinneret is known to all, and the environmental organizations have done much to change it. Its shore has become a string of beaches to which entry fees are charged. Fences have been erected in defiance of the law and the collection of fees was carried out without the supervision of the Interior Ministry, and frequently in violation of legal guidelines regarding the collection of fees.
In effect, the state ceded its responsibility over the beaches of the Kinneret, despite the fact that there is no argument over its significance as a national resource. In addition to failing to enforce the Planning and Construction Law, the state suspended its financial aid to the local authorities for cleaning the beaches. The local authorities exploited this situation to charge entrance fees on the grounds that it was necessary to keep the beaches clean.
The attitude of the state began changing over the past two years in response to the public battle waged by environmental organizations and harsh criticism of its actions in the State Comptroller's Report. Nevertheless, the change appears to be slow and incomplete. A few fences have been removed and legal steps have begun against those who built them and charged fees illegally. These measures, however, have not yet changed the situation around the lake. Open and free access is still nearly impossible to find.
The national council's decision to adopt the Round the Kinneret initiative proves that at least the country's planning bodies realize the importance of free access to the beaches and that this path is a convenient way to open up many of them.
However, it must be remembered that creating the path is the real test. To do so, the state will have to provide financial resources. In addition, the enforcement authorities will have to be active in every place where the construction work is challenged by those who seek to preserve the fences and obstructions.
The law enforcement agencies must step up their prosecution of construction scofflaws even in places where the path does not pass, and resume giving money to the local authorities to keep the beaches clean. This will lessen the economic burden on the local authorities and take away their excuse to charge people to enter the beach.
Friday, December 08, 2006
The Cab Ride - making the world a little kinder
Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, and then drive away.
But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.
So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.
By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.
There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.
She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.
She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated".
"Oh, you're such a good boy", she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?"
"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.
"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice".
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. "I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long." I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.
"What route would you like me to take?" I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.
We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.
Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now"
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.
Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.
I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse.
"Nothing," I said.
"You have to make a living," she answered. "There are other passengers," I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
"You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said.
"Thank you."
I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?
What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.
But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT 'YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, ~BUT~THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.
You won't get any big surprise in 10 days if you send this to ten people.
But, you might help make the world a little kinder and more compassionate by sending it on.
Thank you, my friend...
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.
Kind Words is a free weekly e-mail distributed by Partners In Kindness. Although the content of these e-mails contains copyrighted material, Partners in Kindness allows users who register at our website to reprint them in print, on a website, or on an e-mail distribution list at no cost.
If you have permission to reprint this e-mail, please ensure that you reprint the entire e-mail (including this notice).
Kindness is like music, art, sports or any other discipline -- it can only be mastered with practice, training, and lots and lots of encouragement.
That is what PartnersInKindness.org is trying to promote.
The archive for Kind Words e-mails is located at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PartnersInKindness
For further information, please visit our Website http://www.PartnersInKindness.org
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But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.
So I walked to the door and knocked. "Just a minute", answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.
By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.
There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.
She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.
She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated".
"Oh, you're such a good boy", she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?"
"It's not the shortest way," I answered quickly.
"Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice".
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. "I don't have any family left," she continued. "The doctor says I don't have very long." I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.
"What route would you like me to take?" I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.
We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.
Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now"
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.
Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.
I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, reaching into her purse.
"Nothing," I said.
"You have to make a living," she answered. "There are other passengers," I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
"You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," she said.
"Thank you."
I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?
What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.
But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT 'YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, ~BUT~THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.
You won't get any big surprise in 10 days if you send this to ten people.
But, you might help make the world a little kinder and more compassionate by sending it on.
Thank you, my friend...
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.
Kind Words is a free weekly e-mail distributed by Partners In Kindness. Although the content of these e-mails contains copyrighted material, Partners in Kindness allows users who register at our website to reprint them in print, on a website, or on an e-mail distribution list at no cost.
If you have permission to reprint this e-mail, please ensure that you reprint the entire e-mail (including this notice).
Kindness is like music, art, sports or any other discipline -- it can only be mastered with practice, training, and lots and lots of encouragement.
That is what PartnersInKindness.org is trying to promote.
The archive for Kind Words e-mails is located at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PartnersInKindness
For further information, please visit our Website http://www.PartnersInKindness.org
e-mail: info@PartnersInKindness.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To un-subscribe send a blank e-mail to: Kindness-unsubscribe@PartnersInKindness.org To subscribe send a blank e-mail to: Kindness-subscribe@PartnersInKindness.org
Thursday, December 07, 2006
"Gazelle Valley" in Jerusalem to remain!
Jerusalem urban park may protect free-roaming gazelles
Haaretz, December 7, 2006
By Zafrir Rinat
After defending the little valley next to their homes against development, the residents of the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Givat Mordechai and Katamonim will now become partners in the plan to turn the valley into an urban nature park, the first of its kind in Israel.
A few weeks ago, a group of environmental organizations, headed by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and the residents' committee of the two neighborhoods presented the plans for the park to the planning and construction commissions.
A herd of gazelles has made the park its home. "The sight of these gazelles moves me every time," Michal Regev, a resident of Katamonim, says. "Sometimes you sit at the bus stop and watch them in their natural surroundings."
Some years ago, real estate developers sought to take over part of the area to build 1,200 housing units. They were staved off by a successful grassroots campaign following which the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Commission withheld its approval for the plan.
The residents and the ecological groups have now initiated a plan that will seek statutory protection for the area in the future and open only part of it to visitors.
"We had meetings and handed out flyers to the residents with the plans," Regev says, "There were tough discussions between those who thought the area shouldn't be touched and those who thought it should be opened so people could enjoy it," she said.
Regev says the residents were given a number of options, and the one ultimately chosen conserves most of the area in its present state, but creates a city park in one section.
"The idea of an urban park is known elsewhere in the world, but it is new in Israel," SPNI Jerusalem landscape architect Yael Hammerman says.
The park will have paths and bike trails, as well as a periphery trail, with lookouts on the gazelles, which now number 22 and have managed to persevere despite the small area they inhabit. The park will also have a cafe with a view of the valley. Ancient agricultural terraces will be conserved and restored in part of the park.
Several obstacles still threaten the plan, among them desire by developers to build along edges of the valley. The city planning commissions have recognized the urban park in the new Jerusalem master plan, defining it as an area set aside for the protection of urban biodiversity.
According to the plan, five different sites in the capital have been pinpointed to protect the capital's flora and fauna and strengthen the concept that human beings are a part of a wider natural system; "gazelle valley" as it is known to the locals, is one of them.
If the park is approved, its founders will face a major task: ensuring that large numbers of visitors do not wreak chaos and make it impossible for the gazelles to continue living in the area in tranquillity.
In another location in Israel, gazelles that inhabited a small area in the Sharon Beach National Park were killed by dogs whose owners let them run loose in the park.
"The main threat to the herd of gazelles in the valley are the jackals that roam all over the city, " Amir Balaban, the SPNI expert on urban nature sites, says. "The city has tried to keep them from getting into the valley, so far with only partial success."
Balaban says the main advantage of the establishment of the park is the ability to manage the area. The park will contain buffer zones between the areas inhabited by the gazelles and those open to visitors. With regard to the risk to the herd from dogs, he says, "we will do what we do now. We will explain and ask people not to come near the herd with their dogs. We have been holding activities in the park for six years, and we only had to call the police once when somebody came into the park with a dog clearly for the purpose of hunting."
Haaretz, December 7, 2006
By Zafrir Rinat
After defending the little valley next to their homes against development, the residents of the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Givat Mordechai and Katamonim will now become partners in the plan to turn the valley into an urban nature park, the first of its kind in Israel.
A few weeks ago, a group of environmental organizations, headed by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) and the residents' committee of the two neighborhoods presented the plans for the park to the planning and construction commissions.
A herd of gazelles has made the park its home. "The sight of these gazelles moves me every time," Michal Regev, a resident of Katamonim, says. "Sometimes you sit at the bus stop and watch them in their natural surroundings."
Some years ago, real estate developers sought to take over part of the area to build 1,200 housing units. They were staved off by a successful grassroots campaign following which the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Commission withheld its approval for the plan.
The residents and the ecological groups have now initiated a plan that will seek statutory protection for the area in the future and open only part of it to visitors.
"We had meetings and handed out flyers to the residents with the plans," Regev says, "There were tough discussions between those who thought the area shouldn't be touched and those who thought it should be opened so people could enjoy it," she said.
Regev says the residents were given a number of options, and the one ultimately chosen conserves most of the area in its present state, but creates a city park in one section.
"The idea of an urban park is known elsewhere in the world, but it is new in Israel," SPNI Jerusalem landscape architect Yael Hammerman says.
The park will have paths and bike trails, as well as a periphery trail, with lookouts on the gazelles, which now number 22 and have managed to persevere despite the small area they inhabit. The park will also have a cafe with a view of the valley. Ancient agricultural terraces will be conserved and restored in part of the park.
Several obstacles still threaten the plan, among them desire by developers to build along edges of the valley. The city planning commissions have recognized the urban park in the new Jerusalem master plan, defining it as an area set aside for the protection of urban biodiversity.
According to the plan, five different sites in the capital have been pinpointed to protect the capital's flora and fauna and strengthen the concept that human beings are a part of a wider natural system; "gazelle valley" as it is known to the locals, is one of them.
If the park is approved, its founders will face a major task: ensuring that large numbers of visitors do not wreak chaos and make it impossible for the gazelles to continue living in the area in tranquillity.
In another location in Israel, gazelles that inhabited a small area in the Sharon Beach National Park were killed by dogs whose owners let them run loose in the park.
"The main threat to the herd of gazelles in the valley are the jackals that roam all over the city, " Amir Balaban, the SPNI expert on urban nature sites, says. "The city has tried to keep them from getting into the valley, so far with only partial success."
Balaban says the main advantage of the establishment of the park is the ability to manage the area. The park will contain buffer zones between the areas inhabited by the gazelles and those open to visitors. With regard to the risk to the herd from dogs, he says, "we will do what we do now. We will explain and ask people not to come near the herd with their dogs. We have been holding activities in the park for six years, and we only had to call the police once when somebody came into the park with a dog clearly for the purpose of hunting."
"Perception of rot" - corruption in Israel"
Poll: Four percent of Israelis say they've paid bribes in last year
Haaretz, December 7, 2006
By Asaf Rothem
Four percent of Israelis claim that they themselves or a member of their households paid a bribe during the last 12 months. That's double the rate in the U.S. and Britain, according to a Transparency International survey of corruption.
The survey measures the perception of rot in various countries. It also seeks to elucidate how well citizens feel the authorities in their countries fight corruption.
The survey, now in its fourth year, covered 59,661 adults aged 15 and up in 62 countries.
Susanne Tam, general manager of Shvil - the Transparency International organization in Israel - defined corruption as "abuse of political or other power to advance personal interests".
The Israeli part of the survey questioned 500 adults. It found that 66 percent feel the government isn't doing enough to stamp out corruption, or that it isn't doing it effectively.
No less than 16 percent of the respondents feel the government actually encourages corruption, and 55 percent felt that corruption impacts their lives personally.
81 percent feel that corruption influences the business environment, and 86 percent say it influences politics.
Despite the problems in the last wear and the gargantuan defense budgets, most Israelis feel that the army is the least corrupt organization in Israel, despite the absence of transparency in use of its huge budget. One has to wonder how the people think the budget is used, and compare it with the reality.
This year too, the political parties were considered to be highly corrupt, with a mark of 4.2 out of 5 (that being rotten to the core). After it comes the Knesset with the disheartening score of 3.8.
Religious institutions are also not highly respected, with a score of 3.6. The police force got a score of 3.3.
Israel is one of 78 countries that refused to ratify the UN anti-corruption treaty, partly because of its section against corruption in international deals, which could hamper the Defense Ministry's arms business, which often involves bribes.
Haaretz, December 7, 2006
By Asaf Rothem
Four percent of Israelis claim that they themselves or a member of their households paid a bribe during the last 12 months. That's double the rate in the U.S. and Britain, according to a Transparency International survey of corruption.
The survey measures the perception of rot in various countries. It also seeks to elucidate how well citizens feel the authorities in their countries fight corruption.
The survey, now in its fourth year, covered 59,661 adults aged 15 and up in 62 countries.
Susanne Tam, general manager of Shvil - the Transparency International organization in Israel - defined corruption as "abuse of political or other power to advance personal interests".
The Israeli part of the survey questioned 500 adults. It found that 66 percent feel the government isn't doing enough to stamp out corruption, or that it isn't doing it effectively.
No less than 16 percent of the respondents feel the government actually encourages corruption, and 55 percent felt that corruption impacts their lives personally.
81 percent feel that corruption influences the business environment, and 86 percent say it influences politics.
Despite the problems in the last wear and the gargantuan defense budgets, most Israelis feel that the army is the least corrupt organization in Israel, despite the absence of transparency in use of its huge budget. One has to wonder how the people think the budget is used, and compare it with the reality.
This year too, the political parties were considered to be highly corrupt, with a mark of 4.2 out of 5 (that being rotten to the core). After it comes the Knesset with the disheartening score of 3.8.
Religious institutions are also not highly respected, with a score of 3.6. The police force got a score of 3.3.
Israel is one of 78 countries that refused to ratify the UN anti-corruption treaty, partly because of its section against corruption in international deals, which could hamper the Defense Ministry's arms business, which often involves bribes.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Thoughts on dogginess and dog "owning" from New York
My Life as a Dog
By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
New York Times, November 27, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
FOR the last 20 years, New York City parks without designated dog runs have permitted dogs to be off-leash from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Because of recent complaints from the Juniper Park Civic Association in Queens, the issue has been revisited. On Dec. 5, the Board of Health will vote on the future of off-leash hours.
Retrievers in elevators, Pomeranians on No. 6 trains, bull mastiffs crossing the Brooklyn Bridge ... it is easy to forget just how strange it is that dogs live in New York in the first place. It is about as unlikely a place for dogs as one could imagine, and yet 1.4 million of them are among us. Why do we keep them in our apartments and houses, always at some expense and inconvenience? Is it even possible, in a city, to provide a good life for a dog, and what is a “good life?” Does the health board’s vote matter in ways other than the most obvious?
I adopted George (a Great Dane/Lab/pit/greyhound/ridgeback/whatever mix — a k a Brooklyn shorthair) because I thought it would be fun. As it turns out, she is a major pain an awful lot of the time.
She mounts guests, eats my son’s toys (and occasionally tries to eat my son), is obsessed with squirrels, lunges at skateboarders and Hasids, has the savant-like ability to find her way between the camera lens and subject of every photo taken in her vicinity, backs her tush into the least interested person in the room, digs up the freshly planted, scratches the newly bought, licks the about-to-be served and occasionally relieves herself on the wrong side of the front door. Her head is resting on my foot as I type this. I love her.
Our various struggles — to communicate, to recognize and accommodate each other’s desires, simply to coexist — force me to interact with something, or rather someone, entirely “other.” George can respond to a handful of words, but our relationship takes place almost entirely outside of language. She seems to have thoughts and emotions, desires and fears. Sometimes I think I understand them; often I don’t. She is a mystery to me. And I must be one to her.
Of course our relationship is not always a struggle. My morning walk with George is very often the highlight of my day — when I have my best thoughts, when I most appreciate both nature and the city, and in a deeper sense, life itself. Our hour together is a bit of compensation for the burdens of civilization: business attire, e-mail, money, etiquette, walls and artificial lighting. It is even a kind of compensation for language. Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness? And why does it make one feel, in the best sense of the word, human?
It is children, very often, who want dogs. In a recent study, when asked to name the 10 most important “individuals” in their lives, 7- and 10-year-olds included two pets on average. In another study, 42 percent of 5-year-olds spontaneously mentioned their pets when asked, “Whom do you turn to when you are feeling, sad, angry, happy or wanting to share a secret?” Just about every children’s book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?
In the course of our lives, we move from a warm and benevolent relationship with animals (learning responsibility through caring for our pets, stroking and confiding in them), to a cruel one (virtually all animals raised for meat in this country are factory farmed — they spend their lives in confinement, dosed with antibiotics and other drugs).
How do you explain this? Is our kindness replaced with cruelty? I don’t think so. I think in part it’s because the older we get, the less exposure we have to animals. And nothing facilitates indifference or forgetfulness so much as distance. In this sense, dogs and cats have been very lucky: they are the only animals we are intimately exposed to daily.
Folk parental wisdom and behavioral studies alike generally view the relationships children have with companion animals as beneficial. But one does not have to be a child to learn from a pet. It is precisely my frustrations with George, and the inconveniences she creates, that reinforce in me how much compromise is necessary to share space with other beings.
The practical arguments against off-leash hours are easily refuted. One doesn’t have to be an animal scientist to know that the more a dog is able to exercise its “dogness”— to run and play, to socialize with other dogs — the happier it will be. Happy dogs, like happy people, tend not to be aggressive. In the years that dogs have been allowed to run free in city parks, dog bites have decreased 90 percent. But there is another argument that is not so easy to respond to: some people just don’t want to be inconvenienced by dogs. Giving dogs space necessarily takes away space from humans.
We have been having this latter debate, in different forms, for ages. Again and again we are confronted with the reality — some might say the problem — of sharing our space with other living things, be they dogs, trees, fish or penguins. Dogs in the park are a present example of something that is often too abstracted or far away to gain our consideration.
The very existence of parks is a response to this debate: earlier New Yorkers had the foresight to recognize that if we did not carve out places for nature in our cities, there would be no nature. It was recently estimated that Central Park’s real estate would be worth more than $500 billion. Which is to say we are half a trillion dollars inconvenienced by trees and grass. But we do not think of it as an inconvenience. We think of it as balance.
Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We’ve never claimed more, and we’ve never had less. There has never been less clean air or water, fewer fish or mature trees. If we are not simply ignoring the situation, we keep hoping for (and expecting) a technological solution that will erase our destruction, while allowing us to continue to live without compromise. Maybe zoos will be an adequate replacement for wild animals in natural habitats. Maybe we will be able to recreate the Amazon somewhere else. Maybe one day we will be able to genetically engineer dogs that do not wish to run free. Maybe. But will those futures make us feel, in the best sense of the word, human?
I have been taking George to Prospect Park twice a day for more than three years, but her running is still a revelation to me. Effortlessly, joyfully, she runs quite a bit faster than the fastest human on the planet. And faster, I’ve come to realize, than the other dogs in the park. George might well be the fastest land animal in Brooklyn. Once or twice every morning, for no obvious reason, she’ll tear into a full sprint. Other dog owners can’t help but watch her. Every now and then someone will cheer her on. It is something to behold.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author, most recently, of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”
By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
New York Times, November 27, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
FOR the last 20 years, New York City parks without designated dog runs have permitted dogs to be off-leash from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Because of recent complaints from the Juniper Park Civic Association in Queens, the issue has been revisited. On Dec. 5, the Board of Health will vote on the future of off-leash hours.
Retrievers in elevators, Pomeranians on No. 6 trains, bull mastiffs crossing the Brooklyn Bridge ... it is easy to forget just how strange it is that dogs live in New York in the first place. It is about as unlikely a place for dogs as one could imagine, and yet 1.4 million of them are among us. Why do we keep them in our apartments and houses, always at some expense and inconvenience? Is it even possible, in a city, to provide a good life for a dog, and what is a “good life?” Does the health board’s vote matter in ways other than the most obvious?
I adopted George (a Great Dane/Lab/pit/greyhound/ridgeback/whatever mix — a k a Brooklyn shorthair) because I thought it would be fun. As it turns out, she is a major pain an awful lot of the time.
She mounts guests, eats my son’s toys (and occasionally tries to eat my son), is obsessed with squirrels, lunges at skateboarders and Hasids, has the savant-like ability to find her way between the camera lens and subject of every photo taken in her vicinity, backs her tush into the least interested person in the room, digs up the freshly planted, scratches the newly bought, licks the about-to-be served and occasionally relieves herself on the wrong side of the front door. Her head is resting on my foot as I type this. I love her.
Our various struggles — to communicate, to recognize and accommodate each other’s desires, simply to coexist — force me to interact with something, or rather someone, entirely “other.” George can respond to a handful of words, but our relationship takes place almost entirely outside of language. She seems to have thoughts and emotions, desires and fears. Sometimes I think I understand them; often I don’t. She is a mystery to me. And I must be one to her.
Of course our relationship is not always a struggle. My morning walk with George is very often the highlight of my day — when I have my best thoughts, when I most appreciate both nature and the city, and in a deeper sense, life itself. Our hour together is a bit of compensation for the burdens of civilization: business attire, e-mail, money, etiquette, walls and artificial lighting. It is even a kind of compensation for language. Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness? And why does it make one feel, in the best sense of the word, human?
It is children, very often, who want dogs. In a recent study, when asked to name the 10 most important “individuals” in their lives, 7- and 10-year-olds included two pets on average. In another study, 42 percent of 5-year-olds spontaneously mentioned their pets when asked, “Whom do you turn to when you are feeling, sad, angry, happy or wanting to share a secret?” Just about every children’s book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?
In the course of our lives, we move from a warm and benevolent relationship with animals (learning responsibility through caring for our pets, stroking and confiding in them), to a cruel one (virtually all animals raised for meat in this country are factory farmed — they spend their lives in confinement, dosed with antibiotics and other drugs).
How do you explain this? Is our kindness replaced with cruelty? I don’t think so. I think in part it’s because the older we get, the less exposure we have to animals. And nothing facilitates indifference or forgetfulness so much as distance. In this sense, dogs and cats have been very lucky: they are the only animals we are intimately exposed to daily.
Folk parental wisdom and behavioral studies alike generally view the relationships children have with companion animals as beneficial. But one does not have to be a child to learn from a pet. It is precisely my frustrations with George, and the inconveniences she creates, that reinforce in me how much compromise is necessary to share space with other beings.
The practical arguments against off-leash hours are easily refuted. One doesn’t have to be an animal scientist to know that the more a dog is able to exercise its “dogness”— to run and play, to socialize with other dogs — the happier it will be. Happy dogs, like happy people, tend not to be aggressive. In the years that dogs have been allowed to run free in city parks, dog bites have decreased 90 percent. But there is another argument that is not so easy to respond to: some people just don’t want to be inconvenienced by dogs. Giving dogs space necessarily takes away space from humans.
We have been having this latter debate, in different forms, for ages. Again and again we are confronted with the reality — some might say the problem — of sharing our space with other living things, be they dogs, trees, fish or penguins. Dogs in the park are a present example of something that is often too abstracted or far away to gain our consideration.
The very existence of parks is a response to this debate: earlier New Yorkers had the foresight to recognize that if we did not carve out places for nature in our cities, there would be no nature. It was recently estimated that Central Park’s real estate would be worth more than $500 billion. Which is to say we are half a trillion dollars inconvenienced by trees and grass. But we do not think of it as an inconvenience. We think of it as balance.
Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We’ve never claimed more, and we’ve never had less. There has never been less clean air or water, fewer fish or mature trees. If we are not simply ignoring the situation, we keep hoping for (and expecting) a technological solution that will erase our destruction, while allowing us to continue to live without compromise. Maybe zoos will be an adequate replacement for wild animals in natural habitats. Maybe we will be able to recreate the Amazon somewhere else. Maybe one day we will be able to genetically engineer dogs that do not wish to run free. Maybe. But will those futures make us feel, in the best sense of the word, human?
I have been taking George to Prospect Park twice a day for more than three years, but her running is still a revelation to me. Effortlessly, joyfully, she runs quite a bit faster than the fastest human on the planet. And faster, I’ve come to realize, than the other dogs in the park. George might well be the fastest land animal in Brooklyn. Once or twice every morning, for no obvious reason, she’ll tear into a full sprint. Other dog owners can’t help but watch her. Every now and then someone will cheer her on. It is something to behold.
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author, most recently, of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”
Thursday, November 30, 2006
An inspiring tale about Itzhak Perlman
Work with what you got - and then with what you have left
On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.
He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.
By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.
But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.
The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.
Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.
You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.
He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."
What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.
So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.
On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.
He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.
By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.
But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.
The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.
Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.
You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.
He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."
What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.
So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.
Don't talk to me about justice... Israel's "black hole"
Justice / The railway station ministry
Haaretz, November 30, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz
More than any other ministry, the Justice Ministry has suffered in recent years from an insufferable turnover, with ministers coming and going at a train station tempo. Haim Ramon put his finger on it in the speech he gave when taking office, just seven months ago, telling senior ministry officials that "this is the fifth inauguration of a justice minister in seven years. Ministerial handovers at that pace harm the government's ability to perform." Since then, there has already been another inauguration - for acting minister Meir Sheetrit.
Moreover, in appointing Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is essentially announcing not one, but two, new justice ministers. Cabinet members declare they are waiting for Ramon to return to office, if and when he is acquitted. But not every acquittal will let him walk back through the doors of the ministry.
So formally Livni has only been appointed for one month, leaving us questioning why Sheetrit - who is familiar with the office - didn't just stay on. The conclusion seems to be that even Olmert's circle is not entirely convinced that Ramon will be back, making this an important appointment: not a one-month job until the Ramon verdict, but a minister for the next four years.
But Livni is the only cabinet member of whom "four more years at Justice" cannot be said: while Sheetrit and Isaac Herzog could hold the portfolio in conjunction with their other functions, Livni can clearly not serve both at the justice ministry and as well as Israel's foreign minister. She doesn't even want to.
In this sense, Olmert demonstrated his loyalty to his friend, handing the portfolio to the one member of his cabinet who isn't interested in holding it more than a month. Ramon benefits from this, the public and the professional performance of the ministry benefit less when the cabinet really does appoint a permanent minister in another month. Not to mention the criticism from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz of the "black hole," in which no one held the portfolio for a full week.
The great unknown is what kind of justice minister Livni will be as the sand slips through the political hourglass. Will she take an active stance and, for instance, appoint her kind of Supreme Court justice? From her last stop at the justice train station, we learned that Livni decided to push appointments just when she found the timing to be inappropriate.
Haaretz, November 30, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz
More than any other ministry, the Justice Ministry has suffered in recent years from an insufferable turnover, with ministers coming and going at a train station tempo. Haim Ramon put his finger on it in the speech he gave when taking office, just seven months ago, telling senior ministry officials that "this is the fifth inauguration of a justice minister in seven years. Ministerial handovers at that pace harm the government's ability to perform." Since then, there has already been another inauguration - for acting minister Meir Sheetrit.
Moreover, in appointing Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is essentially announcing not one, but two, new justice ministers. Cabinet members declare they are waiting for Ramon to return to office, if and when he is acquitted. But not every acquittal will let him walk back through the doors of the ministry.
So formally Livni has only been appointed for one month, leaving us questioning why Sheetrit - who is familiar with the office - didn't just stay on. The conclusion seems to be that even Olmert's circle is not entirely convinced that Ramon will be back, making this an important appointment: not a one-month job until the Ramon verdict, but a minister for the next four years.
But Livni is the only cabinet member of whom "four more years at Justice" cannot be said: while Sheetrit and Isaac Herzog could hold the portfolio in conjunction with their other functions, Livni can clearly not serve both at the justice ministry and as well as Israel's foreign minister. She doesn't even want to.
In this sense, Olmert demonstrated his loyalty to his friend, handing the portfolio to the one member of his cabinet who isn't interested in holding it more than a month. Ramon benefits from this, the public and the professional performance of the ministry benefit less when the cabinet really does appoint a permanent minister in another month. Not to mention the criticism from Attorney General Menachem Mazuz of the "black hole," in which no one held the portfolio for a full week.
The great unknown is what kind of justice minister Livni will be as the sand slips through the political hourglass. Will she take an active stance and, for instance, appoint her kind of Supreme Court justice? From her last stop at the justice train station, we learned that Livni decided to push appointments just when she found the timing to be inappropriate.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
New strategy - first provide your own service...
No clinic? No school? We'll open one
Haaretz, November 28, 2006
By Aryeh Dayan
At the end of the period of Jordanian rule in East Jerusalem, and even during the early years of Israeli control, many Palestinians referred to Kafr Aqab as "millionaires' row." The neighborhood has deteriorated since then. Today, three years after the construction of the [security] wall there, the signs of neglect and disorder are clearly apparent, even at the entrance of the neighborhood, which is right after the Qalandiyah checkpoint. That checkpoint, and the wall that runs south and north of it, give the once-fashionable Palestinian suburb the look of a slum in a Third World city.
Kafr Aqab, with its current population of 25,000, is officially within the municipal jurisdiction of Jerusalem, and is supposed to receive services from the city. As part of the Israeli decision in 1967 to annex East Jerusalem, the redrawn northern extremity of the municipal boundary was the northern edge of Kafr Aqab, giving those who lived there the status of Jerusalem residents. As a result, they hold "blue" Israeli identity cards, pay taxes to the city of Jerusalem, are eligible for the services of the National Insurance Institute, and are entitled to travel and work anywhere in Israel.
The separation fence has left Kafr Aqab outside Jerusalem. To reach other parts of the city, its residents need to go through the Qalandiyah checkpoint. They can get to the West Bank cities of El-Bireh and Ramallah, on the other hand, without encountering any Israeli checkpoint. In this way they have fallen between the cracks: the Jerusalem Municipality (and the State of Israel) have stopped providing services to a neighborhood that is beyond the wall; while the municipality of El-Bireh to the north, whose jurisdiction borders Kafr Aqab, refuses to provide services to a neighborhood that is part of Jerusalem.
The reaction of the residents of Kafr Aqab to the situation in which they found themselves was completely different from that of other Palestinians in similar situations in other areas. Initially they did exactly what the others did: appealed the land-seizure orders for the construction of the wall, petitioned the High Court of Justice against its construction, organized demonstrations, sent demands to the Jerusalem Municipality and organized various lobbying activities. They soon realized, however, that they could expect to gain no benefit from all that, and opted for a different strategy.
At the initiative of several groups of young residents, a new neighborhood committee was established, which elbowed aside the existing, more conservative representative body. The new committee established a new organization called "the Kafr Aqab Development Company," officially registered it in Israel, and set about raising funds within the neighborhood (which is still home to quite a few well-heeled Palestinian businessmen).The company forged a connection with two associations that deal with matters concerning Arab residents of Jerusalem (the Israeli Ir Amim and the Palestinian Media and Development Institute), put its plans on a business basis, and began to promote several basic projects in fields that usually fall under the responsibility of the municipality and of government ministries.
Less than two years since the company was founded, many Kafr Aqab residents already see the results of its activity. Some 500 local children who, in the previous school year, had to be at the checkpoint before 6 A.M. to make it to school before classes began at 8 A.M., now study in a school established by the company in the center of the neighborhood.
Thousands of residents who regularly pay into the NII, and are entitled to medical attention under the National Health Insurance Law, were forced to traverse the checkpoint every time they needed to exercise their rights. Now they have at their disposable a clinic that the company has set up in the neighborhood, which operates as a licensee of the Clalit Health Services. Hundreds of local youngsters, who until recently aimlessly wandered the streets of the neighborhood, now come daily to the community center the company created. Dozens of houses, which for years the Jerusalem Municipality had refused to connect to the city's sewage system, have been connected by the company (without authorization), employing residents who work or have worked in the past for the municipal company that manages the system.
"After the wall was built, we understood we had only two choices: to live in a garbage dump or to take matters into our own hands," explained Samih Abu-Rumeileh, the moving spirit behind the neighborhood committee and the Kafr Aqab Development Company. "The wall created an entirely new situation here. Before it was built we received only a small part of what we were entitled to. After it was built, we got nothing. And the daily crossing at the checkpoint to get to school or to a clinic was simply destroying our lives."
License from Clalit
"We have no intention of giving up on the city and the state's fulfilling their obligations toward us," says Fawaz Tamimi, Abu-Rumeileh's colleague in the leadership of the residents committee, and appointed by him as vice-principal of the school. He is 38, the son of a jewelry merchant, and studies business administration at a college in Ramallah. "We pay municipal taxes like every Jerusalem resident, and the city has to give us the same services it gives everyone else. We simply decided to reverse the order of things. Instead of waiting until the government gives us services, we first provide the services ourselves and then make demands of the government."
In the many meetings they had with the municipality regarding the education system, they repeatedly heard the claim that most of the buildings in the neighborhood were illegally built, and the government is prohibited from renting an illegal structure for establishing a school.
"We have no problem renting a building that was erected without a license," says Tamimi with a smile. And that is exactly what they did. With contributions from the parents, and a large endowment from the Ford Foundation (through the mediation of Ir Amim), the Kafr Aqab Development Company rented a three-story building on the main street of the neighborhood, renovated it, furnished it and turned it into a school. Today it boasts 497 students in 15 classes, from first to 12th grade. The teachers were drawn from educators who live in the neighborhood, and who, in the past, were compelled to deal with the checkpoints to go to work. Only then, just as the school year was about to begin, did they turn to the Education Ministry and to the municipality with a demand for recognition and funding. The recognition has been given; the funding, they hope, will start coming through next month.
That is, more or less, the way they handled the clinic. The Kafr Aqab Development Company organized a group of businessmen and a few doctors from within the community. They invested $100,000 in procuring equipment for a clinic that would be able to provide most of the services that most HMO clinics provide. After they had rented an appropriate building, they approached the Clalit HMO and requested a license to operate the clinic in its name. Clalit operates several clinics on this basis elsewhere in Israel. The licensee receives a monthly payment for every member of the HMO living in its district, and the HMO determines the medical standards and supervises the professional operation of the clinic. "Economic calculations show that a clinic that serves 3,000 members can maintain itself," says Abu-Rumeileh, who once renovated buildings, then drove a truck, and is today the clinic's administrative director. "There are 3,000 members of the HMO in Kafr Aqab, so I hope it will start showing a profit in another few months."
Even if there was not a direct political motive, the "declaration of independence" of the residents of Kafr Aqab is not divorced from political considerations. "Kafr Aqab is part of Jerusalem, and we are all part of the Palestinian people, and we all oppose the occupation," says Abu-Rumeileh. "But there is no reason for us to suffer the occupation in silence, and just wait for it to go away." He believes that Israel is moving in the direction of a "long-term transfer" of Palestinian residents [out of] Jerusalem, that it hopes the Palestinians will break down and move away. He says that everything they have done in Kafr Aqab has been intended, among other things, to fight that trend.
It is a new strategy, and both Israel and the Palestinian organizations still have difficulty assimilating it. "At the beginning they accused us, especially Fatah, of collaborating with Israel," Abu-Rumeileh relates. "Later both Fatah and Hamas began to understand our activity is for the benefit of the people."
The response of the Jerusalem Municipality was that "the municipality gives the residents the best services it can under the present circumstances," and that it is the intention of the municipality "to integrate the Kafr Aqab Development Company and other local organizations in its activities.”
Haaretz, November 28, 2006
By Aryeh Dayan
At the end of the period of Jordanian rule in East Jerusalem, and even during the early years of Israeli control, many Palestinians referred to Kafr Aqab as "millionaires' row." The neighborhood has deteriorated since then. Today, three years after the construction of the [security] wall there, the signs of neglect and disorder are clearly apparent, even at the entrance of the neighborhood, which is right after the Qalandiyah checkpoint. That checkpoint, and the wall that runs south and north of it, give the once-fashionable Palestinian suburb the look of a slum in a Third World city.
Kafr Aqab, with its current population of 25,000, is officially within the municipal jurisdiction of Jerusalem, and is supposed to receive services from the city. As part of the Israeli decision in 1967 to annex East Jerusalem, the redrawn northern extremity of the municipal boundary was the northern edge of Kafr Aqab, giving those who lived there the status of Jerusalem residents. As a result, they hold "blue" Israeli identity cards, pay taxes to the city of Jerusalem, are eligible for the services of the National Insurance Institute, and are entitled to travel and work anywhere in Israel.
The separation fence has left Kafr Aqab outside Jerusalem. To reach other parts of the city, its residents need to go through the Qalandiyah checkpoint. They can get to the West Bank cities of El-Bireh and Ramallah, on the other hand, without encountering any Israeli checkpoint. In this way they have fallen between the cracks: the Jerusalem Municipality (and the State of Israel) have stopped providing services to a neighborhood that is beyond the wall; while the municipality of El-Bireh to the north, whose jurisdiction borders Kafr Aqab, refuses to provide services to a neighborhood that is part of Jerusalem.
The reaction of the residents of Kafr Aqab to the situation in which they found themselves was completely different from that of other Palestinians in similar situations in other areas. Initially they did exactly what the others did: appealed the land-seizure orders for the construction of the wall, petitioned the High Court of Justice against its construction, organized demonstrations, sent demands to the Jerusalem Municipality and organized various lobbying activities. They soon realized, however, that they could expect to gain no benefit from all that, and opted for a different strategy.
At the initiative of several groups of young residents, a new neighborhood committee was established, which elbowed aside the existing, more conservative representative body. The new committee established a new organization called "the Kafr Aqab Development Company," officially registered it in Israel, and set about raising funds within the neighborhood (which is still home to quite a few well-heeled Palestinian businessmen).The company forged a connection with two associations that deal with matters concerning Arab residents of Jerusalem (the Israeli Ir Amim and the Palestinian Media and Development Institute), put its plans on a business basis, and began to promote several basic projects in fields that usually fall under the responsibility of the municipality and of government ministries.
Less than two years since the company was founded, many Kafr Aqab residents already see the results of its activity. Some 500 local children who, in the previous school year, had to be at the checkpoint before 6 A.M. to make it to school before classes began at 8 A.M., now study in a school established by the company in the center of the neighborhood.
Thousands of residents who regularly pay into the NII, and are entitled to medical attention under the National Health Insurance Law, were forced to traverse the checkpoint every time they needed to exercise their rights. Now they have at their disposable a clinic that the company has set up in the neighborhood, which operates as a licensee of the Clalit Health Services. Hundreds of local youngsters, who until recently aimlessly wandered the streets of the neighborhood, now come daily to the community center the company created. Dozens of houses, which for years the Jerusalem Municipality had refused to connect to the city's sewage system, have been connected by the company (without authorization), employing residents who work or have worked in the past for the municipal company that manages the system.
"After the wall was built, we understood we had only two choices: to live in a garbage dump or to take matters into our own hands," explained Samih Abu-Rumeileh, the moving spirit behind the neighborhood committee and the Kafr Aqab Development Company. "The wall created an entirely new situation here. Before it was built we received only a small part of what we were entitled to. After it was built, we got nothing. And the daily crossing at the checkpoint to get to school or to a clinic was simply destroying our lives."
License from Clalit
"We have no intention of giving up on the city and the state's fulfilling their obligations toward us," says Fawaz Tamimi, Abu-Rumeileh's colleague in the leadership of the residents committee, and appointed by him as vice-principal of the school. He is 38, the son of a jewelry merchant, and studies business administration at a college in Ramallah. "We pay municipal taxes like every Jerusalem resident, and the city has to give us the same services it gives everyone else. We simply decided to reverse the order of things. Instead of waiting until the government gives us services, we first provide the services ourselves and then make demands of the government."
In the many meetings they had with the municipality regarding the education system, they repeatedly heard the claim that most of the buildings in the neighborhood were illegally built, and the government is prohibited from renting an illegal structure for establishing a school.
"We have no problem renting a building that was erected without a license," says Tamimi with a smile. And that is exactly what they did. With contributions from the parents, and a large endowment from the Ford Foundation (through the mediation of Ir Amim), the Kafr Aqab Development Company rented a three-story building on the main street of the neighborhood, renovated it, furnished it and turned it into a school. Today it boasts 497 students in 15 classes, from first to 12th grade. The teachers were drawn from educators who live in the neighborhood, and who, in the past, were compelled to deal with the checkpoints to go to work. Only then, just as the school year was about to begin, did they turn to the Education Ministry and to the municipality with a demand for recognition and funding. The recognition has been given; the funding, they hope, will start coming through next month.
That is, more or less, the way they handled the clinic. The Kafr Aqab Development Company organized a group of businessmen and a few doctors from within the community. They invested $100,000 in procuring equipment for a clinic that would be able to provide most of the services that most HMO clinics provide. After they had rented an appropriate building, they approached the Clalit HMO and requested a license to operate the clinic in its name. Clalit operates several clinics on this basis elsewhere in Israel. The licensee receives a monthly payment for every member of the HMO living in its district, and the HMO determines the medical standards and supervises the professional operation of the clinic. "Economic calculations show that a clinic that serves 3,000 members can maintain itself," says Abu-Rumeileh, who once renovated buildings, then drove a truck, and is today the clinic's administrative director. "There are 3,000 members of the HMO in Kafr Aqab, so I hope it will start showing a profit in another few months."
Even if there was not a direct political motive, the "declaration of independence" of the residents of Kafr Aqab is not divorced from political considerations. "Kafr Aqab is part of Jerusalem, and we are all part of the Palestinian people, and we all oppose the occupation," says Abu-Rumeileh. "But there is no reason for us to suffer the occupation in silence, and just wait for it to go away." He believes that Israel is moving in the direction of a "long-term transfer" of Palestinian residents [out of] Jerusalem, that it hopes the Palestinians will break down and move away. He says that everything they have done in Kafr Aqab has been intended, among other things, to fight that trend.
It is a new strategy, and both Israel and the Palestinian organizations still have difficulty assimilating it. "At the beginning they accused us, especially Fatah, of collaborating with Israel," Abu-Rumeileh relates. "Later both Fatah and Hamas began to understand our activity is for the benefit of the people."
The response of the Jerusalem Municipality was that "the municipality gives the residents the best services it can under the present circumstances," and that it is the intention of the municipality "to integrate the Kafr Aqab Development Company and other local organizations in its activities.”
Discoveries beneath the Hurva...
Byzantine arch found at renovated Jerusalem synagogue
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.
The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.
Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.
"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."
The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.
The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.
The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.
The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.
His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.
The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.
The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.
Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.
"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."
The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.
The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.
The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.
The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.
His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.
The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."
Discoveries beneath the Hurva...
Byzantine arch found at renovated Jerusalem synagogue
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.
The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.
Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.
"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."
The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.
The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.
The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.
The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.
His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.
The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.
The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.
Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.
"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."
The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.
The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.
The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.
The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.
His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.
The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."
Discoveries beneath the Hurva...
Byzantine arch found at renovated Jerusalem synagogue
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.
The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.
Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.
"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."
The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.
The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.
The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.
The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.
His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.
The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."
Haaretz, November 29, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
A high arch which had been part of the skyline of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City in Jerusalem since the Six Day War has recently disappeared. It belonged to the Hurva Synagogue, Israel's grandest, most important synagogue until the War of Independence.
The arch, a remnant of the synagogue bombed by the Jordanians in 1948, was removed due to the renovation and reconstruction of the synagogue now in progress.
Excavations at the site, directed by archaeologists Hillel Geva and Oren Gutfeld, have exposed findings from various periods of the synagogue's history. The most significant is an entire arch standing along remnants of a stone-paved street from the Byzantine period, which split from the Cardo (one of Jerusalem's main streets during the Roman and Byzantine period) and ascended east to the center of the Jewish Quarter. The arch - 3.7 meters wide, 1.3 meters thick and five meters high - is built of one row of large hewn stones. Geva believes it formed the entrance gate to the Byzantine street.
"This arch is unique, because in excavations there so far only wide domes that walled the shops along the Byzantine Cardo were found," says Geva. "It shows where the street split from the Cardo, and has been recovered intact."
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), also believes "this is a rare and important finding."
The excavations, which began in 2003, also unearthed structures and pottery from the First Temple period, remnants of rooms from the Herodian period (Second Temple), burnt wooden logs (evidence of fire that took place after the destruction of the Second Temple), and three plastered ritual baths carved in rock from the Second Temple period.
The diggers also found a small weapons arsenal, where defenders of the Jewish Quarter stashed mortar shells and grenades during the Independence War.
The Hurva's renovation ended a prolonged architectural argument about how to reconstruct the synagogue, which was the center of cultural and spiritual life in Israel and the Jewish Quarter in the second half of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Ultimately, architect Nahum Meltzer's plan to reconstruct the original synagogue was adopted.
The courtyard was purchased 306 years ago by Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid (Segal), who arrived from Poland with 300 of his students. It sat adjacent to the Ramban Synagogue, built some 430 years earlier, and was closed by the Ottomans in 1589. The Ashkenazi community in the Old City numbered a mere few hundred people in those days and Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid and his students' coming caused much commotion. He died five days later.
His followers began building a yeshiva and synagogue in the courtyard, but the construction was not completed. The Jews were late returning the loan to the Arabs for the project and in 1721 the Arabs burned the uncompleted synagogue and the 40 Torah scrolls it housed. The site remained desolate for 140 years, thus acquiring the name "hurva" (the wreck). A new synagogue was built there by the disciples of the Vilna Gaon in 1864.
The Hurva then became the most splendid synagogue in Israel and hosted important Jewish events until the 1930s. Two days after conquering the quarter in 1948, the Jordanians bombed the synagogue and the Jordanian commander reported to headquarters: "For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews' return here impossible."
Thursday, November 23, 2006
And now for something completely different - "Panda Porn"
Experts test "panda porn"
Sky News, Nivember 23, 2006
Scientists in Thailand think they may have discovered the key to the notoriously difficult business of getting pandas to mate - panda porn.
Experts in Chiang Mai say the unusual initiative has led to a baby boom among one of the world's most beloved but endangered animals.
Zhang Zhihe, a leading Chinese expert on the giant panda, said the boom was down to showing uninitiated males DVDs of other pandas mating.
Mr Zhang said: "It works."
The panda porn is one of many techniques tried over the decades to get captive pandas to mate.
The efforts to understand and simulate conditions for mating and raising cubs have paid off in China, the panda's native habitat.
Now comes the next test - getting the trick to work outside China.
The day of reckoning will come in January, when Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee hopes to bring off a successful mating between male Chuang Chuang and partner Lin Hui in Thailand.
The saucy audio-visual approach "is the same idea as chimpanzees seeing people smoke and then copying it", says the Thai researcher.
Among the roughly 20 pandas outside China, no cubs were born this year through mating, Zhang said.
But, at a US zoo in September, artificially inseminated sperm yielded an offspring.
Sky News, Nivember 23, 2006
Scientists in Thailand think they may have discovered the key to the notoriously difficult business of getting pandas to mate - panda porn.
Experts in Chiang Mai say the unusual initiative has led to a baby boom among one of the world's most beloved but endangered animals.
Zhang Zhihe, a leading Chinese expert on the giant panda, said the boom was down to showing uninitiated males DVDs of other pandas mating.
Mr Zhang said: "It works."
The panda porn is one of many techniques tried over the decades to get captive pandas to mate.
The efforts to understand and simulate conditions for mating and raising cubs have paid off in China, the panda's native habitat.
Now comes the next test - getting the trick to work outside China.
The day of reckoning will come in January, when Prasertsak Buntragulpoontawee hopes to bring off a successful mating between male Chuang Chuang and partner Lin Hui in Thailand.
The saucy audio-visual approach "is the same idea as chimpanzees seeing people smoke and then copying it", says the Thai researcher.
Among the roughly 20 pandas outside China, no cubs were born this year through mating, Zhang said.
But, at a US zoo in September, artificially inseminated sperm yielded an offspring.
Settlements built on private Palestinian lands
Blow to settlement movement
Haaretz, November 23, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
If the data published in the Peace Now report yesterday are true, the settlement movement yesterday suffered a severe blow. This is true both from a public relations point of view - for years the movement has claimed that the settlements have never stolen land - and from a legal point of view, although this has yet to be examined.
For many months now, the state prosecution has been clashing in the High Court of Justice with Peace Now over its duty under the Freedom of Information Law to publish data about ownership of land on which settlements were built. The state requested to refrain from revealing the data on the grounds that "the subject of the petition is a complex and sensitive one, and questions of the country's security and foreign relations are tied up with it. " Its representatives asked for more time. Now it seems that time is up.
The material which Peace Now wanted the state to publish was apparently leaked to it. Attorney Talya Sasson appears to have used the same database for her report on illegal outposts. Sasson's mandate was the outposts and Peace Now expanded the mandate to include settlements.
What appears to be the most significant and surprising revelation is that about the building on private Palestinian lands after 1979 - the year in which the High Court of Justice handed down what is known as "the Elon Moreh ruling. " Until that time, Israel would set up settlements by seizing lands "for urgent military purposes," which is congruent with international law. This leaves the official ownership of the lands still in the hands of the original owner and it is valid for a limited period. In order to continue holding the lands, the army must issue notification every few years, that it has taken over the lands again.
This was the custom until 1979 and dozens of settlements were built in this way. In that year, the army seized 700 dunams belonging to the villagers of Rujeib, south of Nablus, for the establishment of Elon Moreh. The land owners petitioned the High Court of Justice and the state responded that one reason for the land seizure was an urgent security need.
At that point, the settlers stated that this was not a passing security need and that the settlement was built as a permanent site that served religious Zionist, and political, ends. As a result, the court accepted the land owners' petition and canceled the seizure orders. From that point on, the state stopped issuing seizure orders when settlement building.
Now it appears from the report that settlements continued to be built on private Palestinian lands after 1979 - even the large urban settlements inside the "blocs," such as Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev and Ariel.
When the permanent borders of the state of Israel are drawn, and the government wants to annex these blocs, this new information could be a severe stumbling block.
Haaretz, November 23, 2006
By Nadav Shragai
If the data published in the Peace Now report yesterday are true, the settlement movement yesterday suffered a severe blow. This is true both from a public relations point of view - for years the movement has claimed that the settlements have never stolen land - and from a legal point of view, although this has yet to be examined.
For many months now, the state prosecution has been clashing in the High Court of Justice with Peace Now over its duty under the Freedom of Information Law to publish data about ownership of land on which settlements were built. The state requested to refrain from revealing the data on the grounds that "the subject of the petition is a complex and sensitive one, and questions of the country's security and foreign relations are tied up with it. " Its representatives asked for more time. Now it seems that time is up.
The material which Peace Now wanted the state to publish was apparently leaked to it. Attorney Talya Sasson appears to have used the same database for her report on illegal outposts. Sasson's mandate was the outposts and Peace Now expanded the mandate to include settlements.
What appears to be the most significant and surprising revelation is that about the building on private Palestinian lands after 1979 - the year in which the High Court of Justice handed down what is known as "the Elon Moreh ruling. " Until that time, Israel would set up settlements by seizing lands "for urgent military purposes," which is congruent with international law. This leaves the official ownership of the lands still in the hands of the original owner and it is valid for a limited period. In order to continue holding the lands, the army must issue notification every few years, that it has taken over the lands again.
This was the custom until 1979 and dozens of settlements were built in this way. In that year, the army seized 700 dunams belonging to the villagers of Rujeib, south of Nablus, for the establishment of Elon Moreh. The land owners petitioned the High Court of Justice and the state responded that one reason for the land seizure was an urgent security need.
At that point, the settlers stated that this was not a passing security need and that the settlement was built as a permanent site that served religious Zionist, and political, ends. As a result, the court accepted the land owners' petition and canceled the seizure orders. From that point on, the state stopped issuing seizure orders when settlement building.
Now it appears from the report that settlements continued to be built on private Palestinian lands after 1979 - even the large urban settlements inside the "blocs," such as Ma'aleh Adumim, Givat Ze'ev and Ariel.
When the permanent borders of the state of Israel are drawn, and the government wants to annex these blocs, this new information could be a severe stumbling block.
The Gaydamak system and making the government provide for its citizens
How to stop Gaydamak
Haaretz, November 23, 2006
By Uzi Benziman
In 1977, Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, a new immigrant and a kooky businessman, was elected to the Knesset. He paved his way to the legislature by promising acts of charity and telling stories of good work for the Jewish people in which he was supposedly engaged in the past. Despite his strange character, the cloud of doubt hanging over his head (in France he was considered an escaped felon) and his garbled Hebrew, he managed to win the votes of more than 35,000 people. At the time, his election was considered an insult to Israeli democracy. Since then, it has been viewed as an oddity.
Thirty years later, the state is facing a similar phenomenon, but this time the potential for damage is far greater. As things look now, it is doubtful if it will go down in the annals of Israeli parliamentarianism as a mere anecdote.
Arcadi Gaydamak is a new immigrant who spreads his money around in what seems to be philanthropy for its own sake. Unlike Flatto-Sharon, the suspicions against Gaydamak did not translate into an indictment. He has even avoided directly tying his generosity to real political moves. Flatto-Sharon failed in that he was found guilty of giving bribes that helped him get elected to the Knesset. Gaydamak gives charity to a population in distress, ostensibly with no intention of political gain.
However, Gaydamak stumbled, revealing a small portion of his intentions. In an interview with Yediot Ahronot on Sunday, he spoke of his ability to get elected to the premiership, because of his distinguished personal attributes in contrast to the operational failures of the current leaders, and about the large-scale support he enjoys among the public. "If I decide to run, I will get 40 seats in the Knesset," the lord was quoted in the paper. "Politicians know it and they are afraid.”
Gaydamak did indeed gain purchase in wide sectors of the public - among football and basketball fans, the population exposed to terror in the north and the south, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, evacuees from the Gaza Strip, and others. He buys himself amity with money, and this conduct challenges the rules of the game by which Israeli democracy has so far existed.
Even in a 60-year-old country that long ago lost its innocence, the basis for the fight over the voter's ballot has so far not been about money. Parties vied with each other over their positions, their interests, and their ways of operation.
Even an unrealistic society is aware of the connection between money and power, recognizes the custom of governments to lavish favors on election eve and knows the twisted ways by which the candidates fund their campaigns. However, even in such a society, it has not so far been considered legitimate to buy public support outright with money.
Gaydamak seems to be undermining the existing system; the question is if Israeli democracy can protect itself from him.
The solution will not come from the legal realm: there is no legal flaw in Gaydamak's conduct. It is his right to contribute money as he sees fit, and he does not link his generosity to actual political activity. Reading his statements in Yediot Ahronot, one might suspect that he is casting his bread on the water, but he can claim that his generosity is no different than that of the Joint Distribution Committee.
The law protects society from crooked fund-raising for political campaigns only when such activity is connected to elections. If the individual separates lavishing favors on the public from expecting a return on his chivalry, he has committed no infraction. Moreover, Gaydamak sets no conditions and has promised nothing to those he treats well. Thus, the component of recompense that would turn his favors into bribery is lacking. However his statements in the interview ostensibly show his intention to enter the political arena and to build himself up on the gifts he hands out to his potential voters.
The way to thwart Gaydamak's system is to make it redundant: to make the government fulfill its obligations and provide for its citizens, who are in need at this time of a patron.
Haaretz, November 23, 2006
By Uzi Benziman
In 1977, Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, a new immigrant and a kooky businessman, was elected to the Knesset. He paved his way to the legislature by promising acts of charity and telling stories of good work for the Jewish people in which he was supposedly engaged in the past. Despite his strange character, the cloud of doubt hanging over his head (in France he was considered an escaped felon) and his garbled Hebrew, he managed to win the votes of more than 35,000 people. At the time, his election was considered an insult to Israeli democracy. Since then, it has been viewed as an oddity.
Thirty years later, the state is facing a similar phenomenon, but this time the potential for damage is far greater. As things look now, it is doubtful if it will go down in the annals of Israeli parliamentarianism as a mere anecdote.
Arcadi Gaydamak is a new immigrant who spreads his money around in what seems to be philanthropy for its own sake. Unlike Flatto-Sharon, the suspicions against Gaydamak did not translate into an indictment. He has even avoided directly tying his generosity to real political moves. Flatto-Sharon failed in that he was found guilty of giving bribes that helped him get elected to the Knesset. Gaydamak gives charity to a population in distress, ostensibly with no intention of political gain.
However, Gaydamak stumbled, revealing a small portion of his intentions. In an interview with Yediot Ahronot on Sunday, he spoke of his ability to get elected to the premiership, because of his distinguished personal attributes in contrast to the operational failures of the current leaders, and about the large-scale support he enjoys among the public. "If I decide to run, I will get 40 seats in the Knesset," the lord was quoted in the paper. "Politicians know it and they are afraid.”
Gaydamak did indeed gain purchase in wide sectors of the public - among football and basketball fans, the population exposed to terror in the north and the south, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, evacuees from the Gaza Strip, and others. He buys himself amity with money, and this conduct challenges the rules of the game by which Israeli democracy has so far existed.
Even in a 60-year-old country that long ago lost its innocence, the basis for the fight over the voter's ballot has so far not been about money. Parties vied with each other over their positions, their interests, and their ways of operation.
Even an unrealistic society is aware of the connection between money and power, recognizes the custom of governments to lavish favors on election eve and knows the twisted ways by which the candidates fund their campaigns. However, even in such a society, it has not so far been considered legitimate to buy public support outright with money.
Gaydamak seems to be undermining the existing system; the question is if Israeli democracy can protect itself from him.
The solution will not come from the legal realm: there is no legal flaw in Gaydamak's conduct. It is his right to contribute money as he sees fit, and he does not link his generosity to actual political activity. Reading his statements in Yediot Ahronot, one might suspect that he is casting his bread on the water, but he can claim that his generosity is no different than that of the Joint Distribution Committee.
The law protects society from crooked fund-raising for political campaigns only when such activity is connected to elections. If the individual separates lavishing favors on the public from expecting a return on his chivalry, he has committed no infraction. Moreover, Gaydamak sets no conditions and has promised nothing to those he treats well. Thus, the component of recompense that would turn his favors into bribery is lacking. However his statements in the interview ostensibly show his intention to enter the political arena and to build himself up on the gifts he hands out to his potential voters.
The way to thwart Gaydamak's system is to make it redundant: to make the government fulfill its obligations and provide for its citizens, who are in need at this time of a patron.
It still doesn't feel like the government is governing
Olmert vs. Everyone
Haaretz Editorial, November 23, 2006
Amir Peretz is no junior official who allowed himself, despite the rules of good governance, to speak to the Palestinian Authority chairman about a cease-fire in Gaza. This is the defense minister of the State of Israel, who is supposed to deal with everything connected to security, including a halt to shooting – if only he had the prime minister's trust. Israel reacted scornfully to Hamas' stated readiness to hold its fire only because that readiness had its roots in a telephone call between Peretz and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), which was mediated by MK Mohammed Barakeh
The petty power struggle over a success that has yet to take place, and is genuinely intended to save lives, indicates failure in the way burning issues are treated, and an excessive focus on prestige and small-time politics, when cooperative and responsible leadership is what's needed.
It appears that Ehud Olmert's dissatisfaction with Peretz's independent initiative is actually an example of the prime minister's chronic dissatisfaction with all who surround him. These are people whom Olmert himself appointed and with whose assistance he is supposed to be running the country. The prime minister is signaling to the public that he himself does not see his government as suitable. If the defense minister is slated to be replaced, then Olmert must replace him. If the current acting justice minister is not to his liking, then Olmert should have chosen someone else for the job. If Avigdor Lieberman doesn't have authority on strategic affairs, as has been implied, then there was no need for Olmert to hand over these matters to him. The prime minister argues that the cabinet is not an open debating club, and in so doing buries any political initiative that arises – even if the one who suggests it is the foreign minister, a key part of whose role is to set policy.
The Qassam fire targeting Israel has not stopped, and the rockets appear likely to become ever more advanced and reach areas still further north than Sderot and Ashkelon. Talk of a cease-fire, no matter who is doing the talking, is the order of the day. It is impossible to safeguard the entire State of Israel – house by house, classroom by classroom – against threats from the north and the south, nor can citizens' safety be assured by development and acquisition of more and more weapons systems, each of which generally has its answer in some primitive and irritating response
Since even an extensive military operation in Gaza, like that which the opposition warmly recommends, will not prevent a renewal of hostile activities via new creative means, we must ceaselessly and tirelessly strive for a cease-fire. We cannot stop the use of knives, suicide bombers, Qassams or tunnels through assassinations or tanks, but only through agreements. No weapon has yet been found that is more effective than a mutual cease-fire.
In order to lead the State of Israel, one needs more than the ability to survive. The prime minister must bring together a team of ministers he trusts, and give them status and authority. A year has passed, a war has passed, and it still doesn't feel like the government is governing.
Haaretz Editorial, November 23, 2006
Amir Peretz is no junior official who allowed himself, despite the rules of good governance, to speak to the Palestinian Authority chairman about a cease-fire in Gaza. This is the defense minister of the State of Israel, who is supposed to deal with everything connected to security, including a halt to shooting – if only he had the prime minister's trust. Israel reacted scornfully to Hamas' stated readiness to hold its fire only because that readiness had its roots in a telephone call between Peretz and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), which was mediated by MK Mohammed Barakeh
The petty power struggle over a success that has yet to take place, and is genuinely intended to save lives, indicates failure in the way burning issues are treated, and an excessive focus on prestige and small-time politics, when cooperative and responsible leadership is what's needed.
It appears that Ehud Olmert's dissatisfaction with Peretz's independent initiative is actually an example of the prime minister's chronic dissatisfaction with all who surround him. These are people whom Olmert himself appointed and with whose assistance he is supposed to be running the country. The prime minister is signaling to the public that he himself does not see his government as suitable. If the defense minister is slated to be replaced, then Olmert must replace him. If the current acting justice minister is not to his liking, then Olmert should have chosen someone else for the job. If Avigdor Lieberman doesn't have authority on strategic affairs, as has been implied, then there was no need for Olmert to hand over these matters to him. The prime minister argues that the cabinet is not an open debating club, and in so doing buries any political initiative that arises – even if the one who suggests it is the foreign minister, a key part of whose role is to set policy.
The Qassam fire targeting Israel has not stopped, and the rockets appear likely to become ever more advanced and reach areas still further north than Sderot and Ashkelon. Talk of a cease-fire, no matter who is doing the talking, is the order of the day. It is impossible to safeguard the entire State of Israel – house by house, classroom by classroom – against threats from the north and the south, nor can citizens' safety be assured by development and acquisition of more and more weapons systems, each of which generally has its answer in some primitive and irritating response
Since even an extensive military operation in Gaza, like that which the opposition warmly recommends, will not prevent a renewal of hostile activities via new creative means, we must ceaselessly and tirelessly strive for a cease-fire. We cannot stop the use of knives, suicide bombers, Qassams or tunnels through assassinations or tanks, but only through agreements. No weapon has yet been found that is more effective than a mutual cease-fire.
In order to lead the State of Israel, one needs more than the ability to survive. The prime minister must bring together a team of ministers he trusts, and give them status and authority. A year has passed, a war has passed, and it still doesn't feel like the government is governing.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
The Leica Freedom Train
Here's a piece of history that I hadn't heard before.....and if you want to find more about this, go to Google..and enter "the Leica Freedom Train".
Subject: A timeless example of character
The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera.
From a nitpicking point of view, it wasn't the very first still camera to use 35mm movie film, but it was the first to be widely publicized and successfully marketed. It created the "candid camera" boom of the 1930s. It is a German product - precise, minimalist, utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.
E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews. And Ernst Leitz II, the steely eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm, as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler." As George Gilbert, a veteran writer on topics photographic, told the story at last week's convention of the Leica Historical Society of America in Portland, Oregon, Leitz Inc., founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had a tradition of enlightened behavior toward its workers.
Pensions, sick leave, health insurance - all were instituted early on at Leitz, which depended for its work force upon generations of skilled employees - many of whom were Jewish. The 'Leica Freedom Train As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country.
As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities. To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas. Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States.
Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany. Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry. Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - a new Leica.
The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press. The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes' efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?
Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.
Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe. Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.(After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970s.)
Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the "Leica Freedom Train" finally come to light. It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California- born rabbi currently living in England.
Thank you for reading this little known story, and if you feel inclined, as I did, to pass it on to others, please do so. It is a excellent example of character, human kindness and bravery.
Subject: A timeless example of character
The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera.
From a nitpicking point of view, it wasn't the very first still camera to use 35mm movie film, but it was the first to be widely publicized and successfully marketed. It created the "candid camera" boom of the 1930s. It is a German product - precise, minimalist, utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.
E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews. And Ernst Leitz II, the steely eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm, as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler." As George Gilbert, a veteran writer on topics photographic, told the story at last week's convention of the Leica Historical Society of America in Portland, Oregon, Leitz Inc., founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had a tradition of enlightened behavior toward its workers.
Pensions, sick leave, health insurance - all were instituted early on at Leitz, which depended for its work force upon generations of skilled employees - many of whom were Jewish. The 'Leica Freedom Train As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country.
As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities. To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas. Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States.
Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany. Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry. Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - a new Leica.
The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press. The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitzes' efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?
Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.
Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe. Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s.(After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970s.)
Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the "Leica Freedom Train" finally come to light. It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California- born rabbi currently living in England.
Thank you for reading this little known story, and if you feel inclined, as I did, to pass it on to others, please do so. It is a excellent example of character, human kindness and bravery.
Israel's legal system and its abuse of the young victim of abuse
10 year-old waits four years for hearing on alleged abuse
Haaretz, November 22, 2006
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent
Almost four years have passed since the sister of a ten-year-old boy filed an abuse complaint on her brother's behalf against their uncle who regularly beat and emotionally abused him. The legal proceedings in the case have been continually delayed and the uncle has not yet been tried.
The girl also claimed that she had suffered abuse at the hands of the uncle.
The uncle was charged three years ago, but a series of delays, some initiated by the defendant and some due to court foot-dragging, have put the now 14-year-old boy through a rigorous ordeal lasting years.
The uncle was charged with assault in November 2003, some ten months after the complaint was originally filed. The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court scheduled a hearing for March 27, 2005, one year and four months after the indictment.
In February 2005, the defendant asked to postpone the hearing until after the Jewish holiday of Purim, so that he could properly celebrate the holiday. The court rescheduled the hearing for April 10. The hearing took place as scheduled, but the defendant did not have proper representation, so the proceedings were again postponed.
The following hearing was scheduled for November 20, 2005, exactly two years after the indictment. On the day of the hearing, the prosecution and the defense requested another delay in order to attempt to reach a settlement. The hearing was again postponed, this time for December 6, 2005.
This hearing was also delayed because it was scheduled for the same day that the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's office was slated to participate in an education program. The hearing was once again delayed.
The next hearing was scheduled for April 24, 2006. Shortly after the date was set, the defense attorney in the case recused himself and the hearing was postponed until May 22.
At this hearing, the defendant denied the allegations against him and a hearing for the presentation of the evidence was scheduled for October 24, 2006. After the victim underwent preparation for his testimony, he was barred from testifying at the hearing due to another postponement, this time because the defense attorney had fallen ill and lost her voice. The next hearing is set to take place on December 25.
Dr. Yitzhak Kedman of the National Council for the Child in Israel wrote in a letter to the head of the court system, Justice Moshe Gal in which he condemned the repeated delays.
"One can only imagine what this boy must be going through,” Kedman wrote. "He is a victim of a crime and his interests have been postponed and pushed aside regularly by the judicial system, and his childhood is passing him by in tense anticipation of the trial."
Kedman also mentioned that children are naturally hesitant to report abuse, and the "inconceivable torture" suffered by the victim is detrimental to efforts to encourage other children to come forward and report abuse.
He asked Gal and the judicial system to find a way to expedite proceedings when minors are involved, especially in cases of sexual and physical abuse within the family.
Haaretz, November 22, 2006
By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent
Almost four years have passed since the sister of a ten-year-old boy filed an abuse complaint on her brother's behalf against their uncle who regularly beat and emotionally abused him. The legal proceedings in the case have been continually delayed and the uncle has not yet been tried.
The girl also claimed that she had suffered abuse at the hands of the uncle.
The uncle was charged three years ago, but a series of delays, some initiated by the defendant and some due to court foot-dragging, have put the now 14-year-old boy through a rigorous ordeal lasting years.
The uncle was charged with assault in November 2003, some ten months after the complaint was originally filed. The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court scheduled a hearing for March 27, 2005, one year and four months after the indictment.
In February 2005, the defendant asked to postpone the hearing until after the Jewish holiday of Purim, so that he could properly celebrate the holiday. The court rescheduled the hearing for April 10. The hearing took place as scheduled, but the defendant did not have proper representation, so the proceedings were again postponed.
The following hearing was scheduled for November 20, 2005, exactly two years after the indictment. On the day of the hearing, the prosecution and the defense requested another delay in order to attempt to reach a settlement. The hearing was again postponed, this time for December 6, 2005.
This hearing was also delayed because it was scheduled for the same day that the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's office was slated to participate in an education program. The hearing was once again delayed.
The next hearing was scheduled for April 24, 2006. Shortly after the date was set, the defense attorney in the case recused himself and the hearing was postponed until May 22.
At this hearing, the defendant denied the allegations against him and a hearing for the presentation of the evidence was scheduled for October 24, 2006. After the victim underwent preparation for his testimony, he was barred from testifying at the hearing due to another postponement, this time because the defense attorney had fallen ill and lost her voice. The next hearing is set to take place on December 25.
Dr. Yitzhak Kedman of the National Council for the Child in Israel wrote in a letter to the head of the court system, Justice Moshe Gal in which he condemned the repeated delays.
"One can only imagine what this boy must be going through,” Kedman wrote. "He is a victim of a crime and his interests have been postponed and pushed aside regularly by the judicial system, and his childhood is passing him by in tense anticipation of the trial."
Kedman also mentioned that children are naturally hesitant to report abuse, and the "inconceivable torture" suffered by the victim is detrimental to efforts to encourage other children to come forward and report abuse.
He asked Gal and the judicial system to find a way to expedite proceedings when minors are involved, especially in cases of sexual and physical abuse within the family.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Settlements violate property rights of many Palestinians
40% of settlements built on Arab land, study finds
Haaretz, November 21, 2006
By Yair Sheleg, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
A new study conducted by left-wing group Peace Now has found that approximately 40 percent of settlements, including long-standing communities, are built on private Palestinian land and not on state-owned land.
In a press conference held in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the group presented a report asserting that out of a total area of 157,000 dunams used by West Bank settlements and industrial zones, 61,000 dunams (approximately 38 percent) are privately owned by Palestinians.
The report singles out the two largest settlements, both of which have city status. It says that 86.4 percent of Ma'ale Adumim is built on Palestinian land, and 35.1 percent of Ariel.
The group says that the data presented in the report "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building."
State-owned lands amount to 87,000 dunams (including 2,000 dunams soon to be declared as owned by the state) and just 2,000 dunams are Jewish-owned.
The leaders of Peace Now said at the press conference that the report is a serious indictment of the entire settlement movement.
"Israel has violated even its own norms and laws in the West Bank, through the confiscation of private Palestinian property and the building of settlements upon them," the report says.
According to the group, the data shows that settlers are guilty not only of larceny, in stealing collective assets of the Palestinian people, they also disinherit Palestinian residents from their privately-owned property.
The report also cites the case of the settlement of Elon Moreh, which was established in 1979 on 700 dunams of land belonging to a village near Nablus, which had been seized by Israel for military purposes.
The order to seize the land was, according to the report, issued by the then-commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is now minister for infrastructure.
Haaretz, November 21, 2006
By Yair Sheleg, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
A new study conducted by left-wing group Peace Now has found that approximately 40 percent of settlements, including long-standing communities, are built on private Palestinian land and not on state-owned land.
In a press conference held in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the group presented a report asserting that out of a total area of 157,000 dunams used by West Bank settlements and industrial zones, 61,000 dunams (approximately 38 percent) are privately owned by Palestinians.
The report singles out the two largest settlements, both of which have city status. It says that 86.4 percent of Ma'ale Adumim is built on Palestinian land, and 35.1 percent of Ariel.
The group says that the data presented in the report "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building."
State-owned lands amount to 87,000 dunams (including 2,000 dunams soon to be declared as owned by the state) and just 2,000 dunams are Jewish-owned.
The leaders of Peace Now said at the press conference that the report is a serious indictment of the entire settlement movement.
"Israel has violated even its own norms and laws in the West Bank, through the confiscation of private Palestinian property and the building of settlements upon them," the report says.
According to the group, the data shows that settlers are guilty not only of larceny, in stealing collective assets of the Palestinian people, they also disinherit Palestinian residents from their privately-owned property.
The report also cites the case of the settlement of Elon Moreh, which was established in 1979 on 700 dunams of land belonging to a village near Nablus, which had been seized by Israel for military purposes.
The order to seize the land was, according to the report, issued by the then-commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is now minister for infrastructure.
Cat not to be allowed to guard the cream?
Mazuz to turn down PM request to take on Justice portfolio
Haaretz, November 21, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz will not allow Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to hold the justice minister portfolio in addition to his other duties, legal experts said.
The main reason for the likely opposition to such a development is the series of ongoing investigations of alleged corruption involving the prime minister.
Even though Mazuz has still not been asked by the Prime Minister's Office to offer a legal opinion, the matter is gaining in importance as acting Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit is due to relinquish the post by Thursday.
Olmert is seriously considering taking over the justice portfolio to avoid tension with Haim Ramon, who held the post and resigned in August when charges of indecent assault were brought against him. It is believed the portfolio will be returned to Ramon once the trial is over, on the assumption he will be acquitted.
Meanwhile, Sheetrit has threatened to resign from the cabinet, surrendering both the Justice and Housing ministries if he is not permanently appointed justice minister.
Sheetrit was named as a temporary replacement for Ramon on August 23. However, the duration of this appointment cannot exceed three months according to the Basic Law on the Government.
In a legal opinion written by Mazuz a year ago, commenting on Olmert's status as a temporary replacement of Benjamin Netanyahu at the Treasury, the attorney general wrote that the temporary post could not be extended beyond the three-month limit.
Mazuz also wrote that the prime minister was not entitled to appoint a different person as a temporary replacement, nor could he hold the portfolio as a caretaker.
The implication of such a legal opinion is that the government will have to appoint a permanent minister over the Justice Ministry after the three-month period ends.
Upon his appointment as acting justice minister, Sheetrit said he would gladly leave the post in favor of Ramon, if he is acquitted. Sheetrit added that even if he is appointed permanently to the post, he would relinquish it if Ramon comes back.
A similar announcement was made on Monday by Sheetrit's office.
However, sources close to the acting justice minister said he had not been approached by Olmert, and it is not known whether Olmert intends to give Sheetrit the post permanently.
Haaretz, November 21, 2006
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz will not allow Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to hold the justice minister portfolio in addition to his other duties, legal experts said.
The main reason for the likely opposition to such a development is the series of ongoing investigations of alleged corruption involving the prime minister.
Even though Mazuz has still not been asked by the Prime Minister's Office to offer a legal opinion, the matter is gaining in importance as acting Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit is due to relinquish the post by Thursday.
Olmert is seriously considering taking over the justice portfolio to avoid tension with Haim Ramon, who held the post and resigned in August when charges of indecent assault were brought against him. It is believed the portfolio will be returned to Ramon once the trial is over, on the assumption he will be acquitted.
Meanwhile, Sheetrit has threatened to resign from the cabinet, surrendering both the Justice and Housing ministries if he is not permanently appointed justice minister.
Sheetrit was named as a temporary replacement for Ramon on August 23. However, the duration of this appointment cannot exceed three months according to the Basic Law on the Government.
In a legal opinion written by Mazuz a year ago, commenting on Olmert's status as a temporary replacement of Benjamin Netanyahu at the Treasury, the attorney general wrote that the temporary post could not be extended beyond the three-month limit.
Mazuz also wrote that the prime minister was not entitled to appoint a different person as a temporary replacement, nor could he hold the portfolio as a caretaker.
The implication of such a legal opinion is that the government will have to appoint a permanent minister over the Justice Ministry after the three-month period ends.
Upon his appointment as acting justice minister, Sheetrit said he would gladly leave the post in favor of Ramon, if he is acquitted. Sheetrit added that even if he is appointed permanently to the post, he would relinquish it if Ramon comes back.
A similar announcement was made on Monday by Sheetrit's office.
However, sources close to the acting justice minister said he had not been approached by Olmert, and it is not known whether Olmert intends to give Sheetrit the post permanently.
Monday, November 20, 2006
The State's betrayal of its citizens
The day Gaydamak reaps the harvest
Ha'aretz, November 20, 2006
By Daniel Ben Simon
From now on let every Hebrew mother and every Hebrew father know that the state of Israel has become a holding company. The sovereignty for which Jews longed for hundreds of years and for which generations of Israelis have struggled, has begun to take on the character of a Jewish village. In recent years, it has shed its responsibility for the welfare of its residents and transferred it to private bodies.
The residents of the North know this very well. In the summer, they became aware of the new substitutes for the state. In the most difficult hours there was no state official to heed their calls for help. Tens of thousands held out during the war thanks to dozens of private companies and voluntary organizations that provided food, drink, medicines, blankets, sweets, buses and money, as well as attention and sympathy.
The residents of Kiryat Malachi also know this. The city, which is a 30-minute drive from the center of the country, has known only one growth industry over the past decade: from zero soup kitchens a few years ago, it now has five and counting. Hundreds of families are receiving hot meals once a day thanks to voluntary organizations and commercial enterprises. The existence of almost the entire city depends on contributions, grants and charity. Under the state's stewardship, Kiryat Malachi, a significant city in Israel, home of its president and 20,000 other residents, has become one big soup kitchen. The state has left the arena.
Now comes Sderot to join the circle of communities dependent on the goodwill of others. For years its residents bewailed their poverty and distress. Political leaders took advantage of their innocence to win their votes. They promised industry, livelihood and security before the elections, and disappeared after them. Over the past five years, since the first volley of Qassams, the residents have hoped to receive some protection from the state. With time and more volleys, the protection wore down along with faith in the country. But the rockets did do one good thing for Sderot that its 50 years of existence did not manage to do: they opened the hearts of philanthropists, companies, organizations, better-off communities and of ordinary people who wanted to ease the residents' plight.
In the switching of roles between the state and the philanthropists, one lord stands out above the rest. It does not matter who Arcadi Gaydamak is and his motives are not important. It does not matter what he is aiming for and how he made his money; the worrisome fact is that in abdicating its responsibility, the state has turned this man into one of the most influential individuals in the country.
He is the true welfare minister where there is no welfare minister. The great extent of his generosity has outstripped that of the Diaspora Jews, high-tech tycoons, wealthy brokers, banking chiefs, the heads of the insurance companies and all the bodies that have recently entered into the vacuum created by the state.
The sight of the buses that took the children from Sderot on vacation to Eilat should have all of us in a panic. Hundreds of children were pushed by their parents to grab an empty seat on the buses the lord brought to their town. Those who did not get on wept bitterly.
How ironic that the man who could have granted a weekend, or two or three, of fun for the bombarded children of Sderot is a Sderot resident himself, and by coincidence also Israel's defense minister. Is it a problem for the Defense Ministry to organize 100 buses, or even 1,000 buses? Is it a problem for the defense minister, who controls more than NIS 50 billion, to organize a few hundred thousand shekels for this purpose? It is hardly the monetary equivalent of a few cluster bombs out of about a million we left in southern Lebanon as a vengeful souvenir of the failed war. Amir Peretz, who preached involvement of the state in the welfare of its weaker segments, also bears the burden of responsibility for the culture of the lords establishing itself in our lives.
Therefore, let no Hebrew mother nor Hebrew father be surprised if in a few years, Gaydamak takes advantage of the state's betrayal of its citizens to reap the profits of his philanthropy business. Let no one in Israel be surprised that during elections, there will be masses who will want to reward him for his great generosity - whether as president, prime minister, or party chief. It does not matter whether he knows Hebrew or not. It does not matter who his backers are. On the day the Israelis conclude that their country has become a village, they will pave the way for the famed philanthropist to stand at its head.
Ha'aretz, November 20, 2006
By Daniel Ben Simon
From now on let every Hebrew mother and every Hebrew father know that the state of Israel has become a holding company. The sovereignty for which Jews longed for hundreds of years and for which generations of Israelis have struggled, has begun to take on the character of a Jewish village. In recent years, it has shed its responsibility for the welfare of its residents and transferred it to private bodies.
The residents of the North know this very well. In the summer, they became aware of the new substitutes for the state. In the most difficult hours there was no state official to heed their calls for help. Tens of thousands held out during the war thanks to dozens of private companies and voluntary organizations that provided food, drink, medicines, blankets, sweets, buses and money, as well as attention and sympathy.
The residents of Kiryat Malachi also know this. The city, which is a 30-minute drive from the center of the country, has known only one growth industry over the past decade: from zero soup kitchens a few years ago, it now has five and counting. Hundreds of families are receiving hot meals once a day thanks to voluntary organizations and commercial enterprises. The existence of almost the entire city depends on contributions, grants and charity. Under the state's stewardship, Kiryat Malachi, a significant city in Israel, home of its president and 20,000 other residents, has become one big soup kitchen. The state has left the arena.
Now comes Sderot to join the circle of communities dependent on the goodwill of others. For years its residents bewailed their poverty and distress. Political leaders took advantage of their innocence to win their votes. They promised industry, livelihood and security before the elections, and disappeared after them. Over the past five years, since the first volley of Qassams, the residents have hoped to receive some protection from the state. With time and more volleys, the protection wore down along with faith in the country. But the rockets did do one good thing for Sderot that its 50 years of existence did not manage to do: they opened the hearts of philanthropists, companies, organizations, better-off communities and of ordinary people who wanted to ease the residents' plight.
In the switching of roles between the state and the philanthropists, one lord stands out above the rest. It does not matter who Arcadi Gaydamak is and his motives are not important. It does not matter what he is aiming for and how he made his money; the worrisome fact is that in abdicating its responsibility, the state has turned this man into one of the most influential individuals in the country.
He is the true welfare minister where there is no welfare minister. The great extent of his generosity has outstripped that of the Diaspora Jews, high-tech tycoons, wealthy brokers, banking chiefs, the heads of the insurance companies and all the bodies that have recently entered into the vacuum created by the state.
The sight of the buses that took the children from Sderot on vacation to Eilat should have all of us in a panic. Hundreds of children were pushed by their parents to grab an empty seat on the buses the lord brought to their town. Those who did not get on wept bitterly.
How ironic that the man who could have granted a weekend, or two or three, of fun for the bombarded children of Sderot is a Sderot resident himself, and by coincidence also Israel's defense minister. Is it a problem for the Defense Ministry to organize 100 buses, or even 1,000 buses? Is it a problem for the defense minister, who controls more than NIS 50 billion, to organize a few hundred thousand shekels for this purpose? It is hardly the monetary equivalent of a few cluster bombs out of about a million we left in southern Lebanon as a vengeful souvenir of the failed war. Amir Peretz, who preached involvement of the state in the welfare of its weaker segments, also bears the burden of responsibility for the culture of the lords establishing itself in our lives.
Therefore, let no Hebrew mother nor Hebrew father be surprised if in a few years, Gaydamak takes advantage of the state's betrayal of its citizens to reap the profits of his philanthropy business. Let no one in Israel be surprised that during elections, there will be masses who will want to reward him for his great generosity - whether as president, prime minister, or party chief. It does not matter whether he knows Hebrew or not. It does not matter who his backers are. On the day the Israelis conclude that their country has become a village, they will pave the way for the famed philanthropist to stand at its head.
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