Over at One Jerusalem, my friend Eyal has blogged about a fundraiser for an indisputably worthy cause – an  organization that provides a caring, supportive environment for homeless and/or at-risk children. Orr Shalom recruits highly-qualified, unusually giving people to provide loving homes for children who have left or been taken from abusive homes. Take a look at their well-designed website for detailed information about Orr Shalom, including personal stories from children and details about how you can donate.

Over the coming month, there will be two fundraising events for Orr Shalom – both should be really enjoyable.

On May 19 Mashina, Israel’s uber-rock group, will give an unplugged performance at Tel Aviv’s north port, Reading 3.

The second event will take place on June 16, when comic actors Eli Yatzpan and Yaakov Cohen play The Odd Couple in Tel Aviv at Habimah, Israel’s national theatre.

Noam Sheizaf, journalist and proprietor of the ever-interesting and often provocative Promised Land blog, brings us a hilarious post about the super-sensitive issue of Jewish-Arab sex in Israel. It’s a subject that often elicits Faulkner-esque responses in our otherwise liberal society; luckily, we have people like Yedioth Aharonoth columnist Karin Arad to poke hilarious, irreverent fun at our prejudices.

Arad answers questions about sex for Blazer, a wanna-be Gentlemen’s Quarterly that’s owned by the Yedioth group. Noam translated part of her answer to a man’s discomfited query about his feelings regarding his girlfriend’s admission to having once had an Arab lover. In her fabulous response, Arad reminds the reader that she (Arad) is half Arab. Who knew? Well, Noam did, and he assumed that most people were similarly well-informed. But based on the responses of my Facebook friends, Noam is better informed than we are.

In response to the request of reader Doshka, I agreed to translate the rest, which I’ve patched together with Noam’s excerpt, below. The original in Hebrew is here.

If you are offended by frankly sexual talk, curse words or any type of discourse that muddies the boundaries of the politically correct, stop here. Do not click on the page jump. Seriously.

Question for Karin Arad:

“My girlfriend has a very rich sexual history. I’m totally cool with that. Recently, however, I discovered that she also slept with an Arab. That is, they went out for awhile and also had sex. I’m finding this kind of disturbing. I’m not racist at all, so is it normal that this bothers me?” Micha.

Answer from Karin Arad:

Normal, racist, what a bunch of nonsense. Racism is a natural human trait.  Your racism is normal, but you should try to get over it. Why? Because it’s Neanderthal and disgusting. Besides, what is a racist? Lieberman? Someone who has no problem killing people that don’t belong to his social class? General hatred of the other? Believe me, they are all racists and they are all abnormal. I don’t know a single guy in the universe, tolerant though he might be, who would remain indifferent upon discovering that his girlfriend had some kind of triple digit past. Which is understandable, since there’s a high probability of his falling short in the comparison department.

Your specific case is much worse, since rumour has it that Arabs have much bigger dicks than Jews. And as long as we’re on the subject, there’s a chance she’s gone out with an Arab from the Bakri family, who are known to have quite an attraction for Jewish women. If that’s the case then you’re in for a whole lotta trouble, because then you’ve got to add to the impressive equipment an elite education at an English boarding school, intelligence, perfect manners, totally hot looks, and incomparably gentlemanlike politeness.

Palestinian-Israeli actor Salah Bakri

Regarding your feelings of discomfort, calm yourself. You are not alone. Arabs are fashionable. I might even go so far as far as to say that Arabs are the new blacks – that everybody is fucking these days for nationalistic reasons, and in search of exotica. This is totally acceptable. In fact, most of my good friends have slept with Arabs. I don’t know if it bothered them. Perhaps it bothered their Yiddishe mamas, but I am the last person to whom they would admit this.

You see, Micha, most of my friends are guys I slept with, and the sum total of the Arabs they slept with is, more or less, me. And since they are not complete morons, they tend to hide their racism from me. They don’t greet me with “ahalan wa-sahalan”; they don’t ask for baklawa; they don’t hide Palestinian flags in my wallet next to my Palestinian ID; and they don’t joke about vibrating Molotov cocktails in my bed. They are extremely sensitive.

This can’t be said about you, Micha. You see, I understand that you’re in genuine distress, and that your friends in Yisrael Beitenu don’t return your calls, but what the hell gave you the idea to ask this question of the only girl you know whose mother’s maiden name is Suleiman? There are simply no words to describe your stupidity. In summary, I hope the whore you’re sleeping with gives you gonnohrea and syphillis, amen. Oh, sorry: I meant, “Allah hu-akbar.”

Sarit, one of the cafe owners, took the photo off the wall so that Paula could take a closer look. She identified each of the people in the photo and told me, “This neighbourhood was where all the important people lived. I used to make deliveries to them, so I knew them all. Do you know how I felt when I came in here and sat down, after all these years? My heart was going like this! Poom, poom, poom.”

This is Cafe Noach today, as captured by the fabulous Idan Gazit.

Last night my friend D came down from Jerusalem for a night of eating, drinking, gossiping and giggling. Below are a few photos I took between glasses of Shiraz (never leave home without your compact digital camera).

Rothschild Boulevard, all dressed up for Tel Aviv's 100th birthday

Tapas bar

Inauthentic, overpriced yet tasty TLV interpretation of tapas.

Tel Aviv turns 100 on April 9. To celebrate, I’ve written a paean to my beloved city for the Forward. It starts like this:

“Every few weeks, gay Arab men from all over Israel gather for a party at a rented nightclub on Tel Aviv’s Herzl Street. The highlight of the evening is a drag show, with heavily made-up amateur performers dressed as sexy, pouting Arab pop stars. They are followed by Raafat, a performance artist from Jaffa, who lip-syncs old-fashioned Palestinian nationalist songs. Nearly all these men lead double lives; if they were to reveal their sexual orientation in their conservative communities, they would risk ostracism or even death. But in Tel Aviv they are free to celebrate their Palestinian, gay identity — at a club located on a street named after the founder of modern Zionism.

This scene probably wasn’t exactly what Tel Aviv’s founders had in mind when they envisioned the first Hebrew city. But when one recalls that their intention was to build a truly modern city, informed by the ideals of 19th-century European liberalism and of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, it makes perfect sense. They laid the groundwork for the Middle East’s most forward-looking and culturally vibrant metropolis.”

Click here to read the rest.

“I am Greta,” said the woman seated in the aisle seat. “And this is Helga.” They shook my hand firmly, gazing at me with pale blue eyes. “We are Swedish.” Helga added, “But we speak Finnish between ourselves.”

They told me they were going on an organized tour of the holy sites with their church group. It was Helga’s fourth trip. “I love Israel! I love it so much!” she said. Greta was visiting for the first time. She turned pink with emotion as she described her excitement. “We are going to the places where Jesus walked,” she said, as she showed me the itinerary.

“You know,” said Greta. “We pray for Israel all the time. When the Swedish newspapers and television report bad things about Israel, it makes us angry! We write them letters and we complain.  We know that Israel belongs to the Jews; it says so in the Bible!”

The flight attendant began the pre-takeoff announcements. “She is speaking Hebrew!” Greta said reverently. “No,” I smiled. “That is Dutch.” Greta turned pinker.

In the row in front of us, three Israeli teenage boys with fashionable, spiky haircuts spoke idiomatic Hebrew, filled with Arabic and English slang, as they played with hand-held electronic games.

“Please tell your people,” Greta said, as she looked at me intensely, “That there are people in Europe who love them. We don’t want Israelis to think that those terrible Swedish reporters represent us. They don’t understand anything about God and the Bible. Tell the Israelis that we love them and we pray for them!”

As the airplane lifted off the tarmac, Helga squeezed her eyes shut and raised her open palms off the armrests in an expression of exultation.

Before turning back to an article in the International Herald Tribune about a religious war in the Israeli army, I said to Greta and Helga, “I hope you enjoy yourselves in Israel, and that it meets your expectations.”

“Oh it will!” they chorused. “It is the holy land.”

NOTE: Scroll down to the bottom to read the first comment; they appear “backwards” – I’m working on fixing that soon. Lisa

Last week I traveled to Oslo and participated in a media seminar that examined the coverage of Operation Cast Lead, the recently ended IDF military operation in Gaza. The ministry of defense’s refusal to allow the international media into Gaza during the war, despite a high court order, is not much discussed in Israel, but it is of great interest abroad. I have been invited to speak about the subject at yet another conference later this month, and I’m writing an article about it for the upcoming edition of the Columbia Journalism Review.

My post about the Oslo seminar will be up in a day or two. Meanwhile, I received a link to an animated video clip about the closure of Gaza that happens to be an apt introduction. Closed Zone has been picked up pretty quickly in the blogosphere, so you might already have seen it; in that case, check back on Sunday for something new.

The clip was created by Yoni Goodman, the man who did the animation for Waltz with Bashir – the critically acclaimed film, directed by Ari Folman, that was the favourite to bring home the Oscar for Israel at this year’s Academy Awards (we wuz robbed). Closed Zone was commissioned by Gisha, an Israeli NGO that works to protect Palestinian rights under international law.

Goodman started working on Closed Zone more than a month before the IDF entered Gaza; but the war affected his vision of the project, as he explains to Ynet:

“It began as something naïve and slowly explosions and a deeper, darker atmosphere were added. I couldn’t stand the growing incitement during that period and today. I think we must not forget that on the other side there are civilians who get hurt.”

For the past 18 months, Israel has imposed an almost-complete closure on Gaza. Only a lucky few can obtain permission to travel through Erez Crossing to travel abroad – usually for study or medical care, but sometimes because the individual is very well-connected, either in Israel or the West Bank. The Israeli navy prevents Gazan fisherman from traveling more than 4 kilometers from the shore; and the Egyptians open the Rafah border crossing only intermittently, for a couple of days here and there.

Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, the closure has been complete: the ministry of defense, which controls Erez, has decided that no one can leave via the crossing, except for urgent humanitarian reasons. That is why there were no Gazan journalists at the seminar in Oslo. Two were invited, but the Israeli ministry of defense turned down the Norwegian foreign ministry’s request to allow them to travel through Erez Crossing.  Phone calls and emails to the foreign ministry, the president’s office, the Peres Center for Peace and the ministry of defense, plus many personal contacts, turned out to be a waste of time. In the end, the panel called “eyewitnesses from Gaza” had no actual Gazans.

Gaza is not the poorest or the most crowded place on earth. Anyone who has visited the slums of Cairo, Mumbai or Delhi can tell you that. But it is certainly unique in being a big, open air prison. For some reason, the closure is not really discussed in Israel. As one journalist told me recently, Israel seems to have written Gaza off. The people have been dehumanized into a bunch of Hamas voters – i.e., terrorists or de facto terror supporters – rather than ordinary people who aspire to live, raise their children and have hope for the future, just like us. On the rare occasions when Palestinian suffering is discussed, someone immediately counters by decrying the suffering of the children of Sderot, or by placing the blame on Hamas. Many want Egypt to take responsibility for Palestinian movement abroad, via the border at Rafah. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, Egypt has not demonstrated any interest in taking on that role.

So what does it feel like to be trapped inside a tiny strip of territory, with no way out? What about when you’re bombed from the air and the ground, and there’s no place to run or hide? Yoni Goodman gives us an idea in the following clip. When you’ve finished watching it, scroll down to watch “making of Closed Zone.”

Palestinian-Israeli rapper Saz, performing at Tel Aviv’s Levontin 7, which hosted a fundraiser for Physicians for Human Rights. A diverse group of Israeli (Arab and Jewish) artists performed, attracting a much-larger-than expected audience on a Friday afternoon. The money went to buy medical supplies for hospitals in Gaza.

A poster in the underpass at Jerusalem’s central bus station. The photograph is of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, who left no heir – which is why some of his followers think he will turn out to be the messiah. The caption read, “The messiah warns: a Palestinian state is a danger to the Jews!”

Abu-Dhabi Hummus in Tel Aviv. Note the spelling: Abu Dubi. Photo by DH.

This is the hummus that DH and I ate for lunch. It was a gorgeous, warm afternoon in the middle of a Tel Aviv winter week. We soaked up the sun and enjoyed the break from the war and the elections.

Hummus is very important in Israel. It’s fair to say it’s a national obsession – to the point that my friends in Tel Aviv were shocked to hear from Mohamed that Egyptians don’t actually, um, eat hummus. How can this be?!

I know a documentary film maker whose next project is a documentary about hummus. Because non-Israelis just don’t understand this national obsession, so he wants to explain it.

Jews from Middle Eastern countries (Mizrachim) compose more than half the population of Israel. Sometimes they argue about who makes the best hummus. Once there was an episode of a popular comedy show (Naor’s Friends) that featured a hummus war between the Mizrachi owner of a north Tel Aviv restaurant, and the Arab owner of a well-known place in Jaffa. But the other characters in the show – the hummus eaters who were torn between loyalty to the Mizrachi hummus man and preference for the Arab man’s hummus -  were mostly Ashkenazim. Watch the episode here (sorry, no English subtitles).

For more about hummus, please consult this excellent blog by local hummus fanatic Shooky Galili (I think he’s Ashkenazi too).

Israelis pronounce hummus like this: “khoomoose.”

Before I acquired wisdom and discontinued my cable television subscription, I sometimes engaged in the masochistic practice of watching Israeli political discussion shows, like Politica or Wisemen’s Council. It’s sort of like watching the verbal equivalent of mud-wrestling – there’s a total lack of civility. Prominent journalists, politicians and academics gather around a table, usually with the moderator symbolically seated between the right and left-wingers, and they just go at it: they yell, they interrupt, they indulge in personal insults and they occasionally let loose a racist or sexist remark.

And we’re talking about a group of people with a common language and history here.

So imagine what it would be like to watch an Israeli face down three people who support the program to boycott his country, in a round-table discussion on Iran’s PressTV. Do you think it would be possible to maintain a civil discourse?

Yishay Mor, an Israeli living in London, proves that it is possible to have an “honest, respectful and open debate” even when there is no pretense of balance on the part of the host. Read Yishay’s short background description of the discussion on his blog, and watch the embedded video while you’re there. Yishay comes in at about 11 minutes. And I’m sure he’d be interested in your feedback, too.

Amir Cohen/Reuters

I know I said I’d be writing a series of four pieces on the election, but in the end they asked me for one more – a wrapup of the results.

It’s called, The election result no one is happy with.