Lizrael Update

Category: conflict management/negotiation

  • Playing the PeaceMaker… from your desktop.

    Not sure I’ve ever mentioned this ‘out loud’ here before, but I maintain a second blog called Better Than Misery which covers my journey as a mediation student. The latest post I wrote is actually relevant both here and there, so I thought I’d bring some attention to it here: Yesterday, Haaretz newspaper did a…

  • Cancel the semester, will stab myself.

    I don’t like waking up on my one-day-a-week of school and seeing this headline: University presidents: Semester may be canceled And I don’t like reading this in the first paragraph: As the third week of the university lecturers’ strike gets underway, professors are not optimistic on the chances of the protest ending anytime soon. Representatives…

  • Organizationally challenged.

    I’m taking a class this semester on conflict in organizational structure. Doesn’t seem like it’ll be that difficult; the professor is friendly and the material is familiar. So far I’m finding it quite entertaining, actually: being taught organizational conflict – in Israel – by a middle-age tzabar, a gever-gever who served more than his fair…

  • Conflict students vs. WordPress geeks.

    I’ve been spending today at WordCamp Israel 2007, a conference focused on bloggers, blogging, and of course, bloggers blogging using WordPress. It’s being held in Michlelet Afeka, a small engineering college in Tel Aviv, so part of me feels like I’m in school. I don’t mind, as long as it’s not a university located in…

  • Israeli ping pong.

    It’s amazing how quickly intolerance, distrust and disgust ping pong in this complicated Israeli society. I find myself going back and forth between seething at the secular and religious; at least it’s equal, right? Example #1 Last Friday I bought a copy of Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper with a left-secular orientation. On the front page…

  • The differences between dancing, parading and rioting.

    It’s nearly a year since our wedding, and we still get the same reaction when the topic comes up around friends or family: Your wedding was really something – everyone danced together, it was so fun. Everyone was just so happy, for the same reason, and dancing all together. It really was something. The reaction…

  • Topic diving.

    About 6 months ago the time to start developing a thesis topic arrived. I’m at my fifth idea after four have been rejected by either my overseeing professor or myself. At this point, I’m even minus an overseeing professor and I have no idea where to turn for assistance. I will say, though, that my…

  • Salt treaties.

    Ok, I know this is weird. We bought a gift, this set of salt and pepper shakers that are two – things – hugging each other. C’mon, it was cute… …enough for me to do a little salt ‘n peppa photo shoot. And it fits so well with my budding mediation schemes. Hugging? Black and…

  • Mediator-love goes 'round.

    Part 1 Wow, I got blown away this morning when I checked my email to find a message from Geoff Sharp, a commercial mediator in New Zealand. First of all, his name sounds so familiar and I’m fairly sure I’ve come across it in my mediation studies several times. Second of all, a big fancy…

  • Mediation on the brain.

    So my intense last-minute focus on this narrative mediation paper has really got me thinking again; at least, thinking about mediation. While I don’t necessarily agree with all narrative mediation has to say, I do think looking at the world as a series of stories – lacking any one truth to prove – has its…

  • Dead for deadlines.

    Bar Ilan University is officially out for between-semesters break. That is, unless you have finals. Then you’re screwed. I don’t have finals, but I have tons of fun in the form of papers. I owe two papers from last year: One on narrative mediation and the other covering the Jewish language war in pre-1948 Palestine.…

  • Can't buy me happiness (with your revenge).

    I’m not Iraqi, so I’m certainly not an Iraqi victim of Saddam Hussein’s reign of horror. But I can say this: in the following quote I found in Haaretz just now, you can find the major misconception apparent in too many conflicts that people sloppily attempt to patch up. “Now all the victims’ families will…