Me? I'm slow to anger. Usually. When bad things are on their way, I tend to peek around the corner to find the good somewhere. And then as I pass around the corner, it hits me like a ton of... Bibis winning an election on a platform of fear. Unlike me, usually, I was pretty... Continue Reading →
A day in the life
7:50 Find out about the breaking news from a friend on Whatsapp 8:05 Make sure to give huz and kid #3 a solid goodbye 8:10 Have sinking feeling about letting your kids go for the day 9:45 Pick up kid #2 for speech therapy, feel excited because it's bonus kid time 10:45 Drop kid #2 off at gan... Continue Reading →
What do Palestinians think this month? A public opinion poll
A friend of mine at Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Jerusalem sent me these findings of a new Palestinian public opinion poll (conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, September 25-27, 2014). Coming a month after the end of the latest Gaza war, and a couple... Continue Reading →
Video marketing: so you *can* teach an old man new tricks
I watched a lot of videos tonight. And they all made me happy. But none so happy as this: Ex-President of Israel (and ex-every other job) Shimon Peres goes job hunting. I'm extra happy there are subtitles so you can enjoy if you're not from around here.
Welcome to the wartime TMI challenge
It turns out, when you're reading everything with a grain of salt, you end up absorbing some pretty bad-tasting discomfort.
The 4th kidnapped boy: that’s called disgust – go ahead and feel it.
Disgust. There are a lot of things to be utterly disgusted with around here. I feel disgust constantly. It's usually aimed at opinions that differ from mine; minute triggers related to lifestyles that differ from mine; ways of communicating I don't agree with. Shame. That is something I feel less often, but it does come... Continue Reading →
Never normal.
Living here is not normal. Life here pushes through - the normal, the stubborn, the ups, the downs - the not normal, the horror, the grief, the methods, the madness. Life here is limbo. Life here is business as usual. Life here is waiting. Life here is death. Life here is moving on. Life here... Continue Reading →
What’s more complicated than kidnapped teens, baby heart surgery, and life in Israel?
Day 10. My god. This country. What is more complicated than this goddamn country? This is a news segment on Channel 10 [Hebrew] profiling a father of a Makor Chaim schoolmate of the two 16-year-old kidnapped boys. He is also Dr. Dudi Mishali, a 20-year Tel HaShomer baby heart surgeon. He opens the chests of... Continue Reading →
We’re waiting for you.
Day 7. I believe you are alive. I believe you'll be ok. I hope you do, too. We're waiting for you. We're doing the age-old Israeli dance - living a disrupted, regular life. Go to work, go to school, put the kids to bed, kiss each other goodnight. While we hope for you. We think... Continue Reading →
Not normal (part 2)
It's day 3. When it comes to processing, sometimes it takes a while. I think the closer to home it is, the slower it goes. To put it another way: maybe it's a bit too twisted that I'm reading the insanity playing out in Iraq in an effort to not read the no-news from back... Continue Reading →
Not normal.
It's sadly a familiar feeling. Refreshing the news every hour and every hour thinking, 'fuck.'
#tomorrow13: The missing demographic; the outsiders left further out
From the first couple hours I spent at the Israeli Presidential Conference on Wednesday, throughout the end of my attendance today, I had a nagging thought I couldn't shake. Someone was missing. I had the same thought last year, when it was awkwardly clear there were barely any women speaking (though the ones who did... Continue Reading →