I RECENTLY SPENT ABOUT 10 days visiting kin in Israel: Yavne, Kiryat Atah (near Haifa), and Bet Shean.
Along the way, in addition to the ubiquitous cranes putting up new high-rise buildings, I noticed that many — most? — older buildings had old-style barrel solar water heating units. This “style” dates back to at least the 1950s.
No big deal, except . . .
Except that adjacent to the 50 gallon or so tanks were the latest and greatest dishes for tv reception.
The Middle East being what it is, one of the most popular shows, a soap opera, is from Turkey. (Until Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took over the country, Israel and Turkey enjoyed a decent commercial relationship. Erdogan’s rule may be coming to an end; his party just lost control of Istanbul by a large margin.)
In “my day,” Israel had ONE tv station. Depending on where you lived and the antenna on the roof, you also could watch Lebanese, Jordanian, Egyptian, or Cypriot stations. (I used to watch, c 1976, news from Israel and from Jordan. Interesting.)
Israel now has multiple stations — my Haifa-area host insisted on constantly switching between Channels 12 and 13. I’m a “news freak” and that drove me nuts.
After several days in Haifa my host drove us to Bet Shean where most of the kin work and live.
Same scenario — tanks and dishes. Where you don’t see dishes, the cable guy had customers.
Almost every Israeli has a “smart phone” and most of my kin are hooked on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is to smart phones as pre-Microsoft Skype was to laptops. (WhatsApp is so far not on computers.)
Penguins
Everywhere I went I wished I had brought a jacket and heavy socks.
Air conditioning is in almost every home; certainly in every place I visited.
The standard setting is 24oC; for me, that’s uncomfortably cold. 2
In Yavne: 24C
In Haifa: 24C
In Bet Shean: 24C
It was like being in a hospital where temperatures are germ-chilling low.
Traveling by train (Israil) was warmer.
I like trains even if a change (or two) of trains is necessary, but wait times between trains are brief.
The coaches are clean, have wi-fi and AC. The trains are, with rare exception, ON TIME.
I took the train from Bet Shean to Yavne; cost: ₪52.501 for the 4-hour trip. It might have been less time if I had changed trains when I should have, but all-in-all, not bad. (See route map, below.)
Getting on and off the trains can be challenging for the mobility impaired — which I am. On the other hand, most travelers are patient and helpful. They can be “pushy” — think about any metro rail system — but a person with an obvious disability is treated kindly.
Ethiopians
During my stay the cops shot and killed an Ethiopian youth.
Many in the Ethiopian community hit the streets, blocking traffic, burning tires.
TO BE FAIR, I lack all the information I need to properly report the incidents.
UNLIKE in the U.S., these people did not damage local merchants.
The Ethiopians were quickly joined by non-Ethiopian (read “white”) supporters.
The police promised to investigate the shooting and the actions that led up to it.
Two days later the police cleared their officer of any wrong-doing.
According to the Jerusalem Post,3 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on protestors to halt blocking the roads, saying that he knew there were “problems that still need to be solved” which he said would be addressed, but that the rule of law must be preserved.
Question to the politician: When? Perhaps blocking politicians’ access to the Knesset building or the PM’s residences (plural) might be more effective without aggravating the average Israeli.
The leftists were too busy holding internal elections to comment.
Meanwhile, some ignorant people are making sick anti-Ethiopian “jokes,” just as the Ashkenazim did about Sefardim and Mizrachim.
Israel goes from one integration difficulty to another.
Some of the local media tried to fan the flames by “selective” reporting … just like the rest of the world’s free press.
Sources
1. http://tinyurl.com/y334lmnd
2. http://tinyurl.com/dpc24
3. http://tinyurl.com/y5nzog2y
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
