A decorated concrete bomb shelter on the roadside in the Israeli town of Sderot. A MIXED BAG OF PIQUANT BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT GLEANED FROM THE HEBREW MEDIA. Keep your Spirits Up and Your Head Down!
Courtesy of Chelm-on-the-Med Online
Daniella Ashkenazy:
Columns One and Two
Some of you may be deplored: How can I laugh in the middle of a war when people may be maimed or killed. Have I no respect?
First of all, outrageous and very funny things continue to go on even at the height of hostilities, whether connected to the conflict or not. In 2001 a visitor at the Tiberius lockup brought his closest buddy four piping hot falafels filled not only with the usual condiments but also laced with 45 gram of heroin stashed inside the balls that left the bearer of gifts in a genuine pickle. And there’s the Ramat Gan resident whose life caved-in in an Iraqi missile attack during the 1991 Gulf War when the shock of a nearby explosion hit home – knocking a nondescript jewelry box off a shelf exposing some very revealing photographs of his wife in the arms of a stranger. There is nothing ‘inappropriate’ about quirky news about Israel in such times.
Secondly, believe me, humor’s therapeutic: I penned the stories that make up Chelm-on-the-Med’s Dec 2008/Jan 2009 columns during the Cast Lead campaign and the November 2012 Pillar of Defense campaign – between the ‘thud’, ‘Thud’, and ‘THUD’ of incoming Grad rockets falling east, west, north and south of the village where I live, near Ashdod, plus the ‘BOOM’ of some intercepted rockets literally over our heads. In 2012 I wrote and published a humorous piece in the Times of Israel entitled “Report from Grad Alley” for those like myself who don’t have a mamad (‘safe area’) in their homes (parallel to a serious piece that explained “Why I Won’t Budge”).
Why?
Because laughter gives us the wherewithal to prevail, and it has been a thread in Jewish culture throughout our history – yes, even during the Holocaust!
In 2002, at the height of the Oslo Terror War (in which 1,500 Israelis died), there was a satire program of mock newsroom satires called Only-in-Israel that drew an average of 500,000 viewers – one broadcast literally on the heels of a terrorist attack (including live coverage from the scene) registered the largest audience ever – 750,000.
The ability to almost defiantly laugh off despondence at unbearable moments and embrace life to the fullest most of the time is one of Israel’s secret weapons. To do so, Israelis have synergized laughing and crying into one verb: bochek – from boche (cry) and tzochek (laugh).
So read the weirdest and wildest news reported in the Hebrew press during the past week, and pass this and the previous column on to others. Recommend they read Chelm columns in normal times, as well, as reminders that we Israelis live lives beyond conflict. Besides, there is a lot in the subtext that explains how Israeli society ticks.
Keep reading and keep laughing…and to my fellow Israelis: Keep your spirits up and your heads down,
Daniella Ashkenazy
Kfar Warburg, Israel
CLIFF NOTES
Although the IDF is much more savvy than the past when it comes to media management, the Israeli military continues to pull names for military campaigns out of a hat…or out of a computer at random as the case may be, without considering whether the machine-generated name make sense in English or can further Israel’s narrative: Take, for example Operation “Cast Lead” (Oferet Yetzuka) which sounds heavy-handed and brutish although the name for the December 2008 operation originates in a vintage children’s Hanukah song in Hebrew about a dreidel* cast in lead…
That’s apparently why the current confrontation is named Operation Tzuk Eitan – literally ‘mighty cliff’ (which sounds pretty ominous, to be honest). The IDF endowed the Operation with the no-less-puzzling title in English “Protective Edge” making it sound like a campaign to launch a new Gillette™ razor.
What does all this mean for half-a-dozen Israeli males who bear the name Eitan Tzuk? One Eitan Tzuk is presently in London. Safe and sound? No, his mom is worried someone will do him harm, assuming her son orchestrated the whole thing. Another Eitan Tzuk whined that if the Operation was a fiasco he’d be branded for life. (Israel HaYom)
* spinning top
TALK OF TIMING!
The dovish HaAretz daily hosted a one-day Israel Conference on Peace in downtown Tel-Aviv on…July 8th, boasting as its logo a pair of Palestinian and Israeli doves jointly holding an olive branch under the slogan “It’s time for peace.”
After the audience heckled and booed speaker Minister Naftali Bennett for suggesting many in the audience were terribly misled by illusions that were totally out of synch with Middle East realities, the participants were treated to a ‘reality check’ not on the program: Sirens went off as Palestinians fired Fajr rockets at Tel-Aviv, sending Conference participants scurrying to find the closest bomb shelter leaving an empty hall that said it all.*
* In a cynical talkback under the photo, an Israeli observer quipped dryly: “HaAretz reports that ‘in the event of a real conference, a rising and falling siren will be heard.”
Daniella Ashkenazy
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TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT
Under prevailing circumstances, should couples engage in sex?
While studies show that normal libidos plummet along with the rockets, with 90 seconds flat to throw something on, grab the kids and head for the stairwell for an impromptu ‘block party’ with the neighbors – a newspaper advice column suggested that Tel-Avivians who pride themselves as ‘the city that never stops,’ would do well to ‘save the sex’ and stick to hugs for the duration.
* Ir l’lo hafsaka, in Hebrew
COINCIDENCE N COEXISTENCE
Yafa Solomon recalled her experiences in the 2008 Cast Lead campaign on the Five O’clock Roundup with Rafi Reshef.* When her house in Ashkelon took a direct hit, the occupants’ first reaction was to burst out laughing, and not just from relief.
One of her seven children, she related, had a dream the night before that a rocket would fall in their laps, so his father took his son to the Western Wall early the next morning. Were his prayers answered? Yes if you accept that the Almighty has an absurdly ironic sense of humor: The minute the Solomons returned from Jerusalem, their house was demolished, but they came out unscathed.
So this time, declaring “rockets don’t fall in the same place twice,” Yafa Solomon hung a sign outside her house inviting perfect strangers caught on the sidewalk, to walk right in. The front door would be unlatched.
And who were the first two strangers to take up the invitation?
Two Arab laborers. (Channel 10)
* a topical chat and TV news program hosted by a prominent journalist.
ASSAULT AND BATTERY
According to a Palestinian joke going around, “after Hamas fired a Fajr rocket from Gaza that landed on the outskirts of Ramallah on the West Bank, Mohammed Abbas asked Israel for an Iron Dome battery.” (Channel 10 News)
SECOND TO NONE
A family from kibbutz Nachal Oz adjacent to the Gaza Strip decided to take a time-out by going to stay in kibbutz Ma’agan Michael near Hadera for a few days, only to find that all they had gained was the difference between a minus 15 seconds mad dash and a 90 seconds sprint to take cover – all things considered, the equivalent of a walk in the park.
CLOSE SHAVE*
Surgical strikes against Gaza – targeting military bases and rocket launchers, operatives on the move, and homes of terrorist leaders (after warning occupants by telephone that they have five minutes to vacate the building) – minimize collateral damage to life and limb of non-combatants in Gaza, forcing Palestinians to ‘borrow” horrific footage of ISIS barbarism from Syria and try to peddle them to the BBC as Israeli war crimes – giving a unique twist to the Hebrew idiom “to barbar** on someone else’s beard. (l’hitgale’ach al z’kano shel acher).” (Israel HaYom)
* The BBC failed to swallow the bait
** ‘To barber on someone else’s beard’ means ‘to gain experience at someone else’s expense’
Column Two:
THE SECRET OF ISRAEL’S SUCCESS
On Friday July 11th when Major General Yoav (Poli) Mordechai was interviewed at length on al Jajeera television in Arabic (a genuine ‘first’) and asked why the ‘body counts’ were so lopsided – no Israeli fatalities at the time compared to one hundred Palestinians, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories opened his lengthy reply* in fluent Arabic saying, apparently without any intention to be ironic: “First of all, alchamdul’ilah (‘praise to Allah’) we have Iron Dome, and a strong army.”
* which the moderator didn’t interrupt
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
Magen David Adom (Israel’s ‘Red Cross’) announced it was changing the ambulance sirens signaling motorists to clear the way.
Why? The rising-and-falling sirens on ambulances carrying injured persons from road accident and heart attack victims and the like to the hospital are jangling the nerves of tone deaf citizens who can’t differentiate between the ambulance sirens and the siren warning of a rocket salvo.
The new siren comes with all the bells and whistles…well, at least the bells, similar to the jingle-jangle that heralds the arrival of Israeli ice cream trucks – only louder… http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4541774,00.html (Yediot, Israel HaYom, Mada)
TWO STRIKES YOU’RE OUT
Some legalists warn international law forbids Israel from cutting the juice to Gaza even through Hamas has refused to pay the Strip’s electricity bill for years*…not even when Palestinians launch dozens of rockets daily against Israeli civilian.
When a Palestinian rocket ‘took out’ one of ten major power lines feeding Israeli electricity to Gaza leaving 70,000 Gazans without power, it seemed fate had finally intervened, or after a thousand rockets the laws of probabilities had kicked in.
While initially linemen said they really shouldn’t be expected to risk their lives to restore power while Gaza lobbed mortars and rockets at them, incredulously, by the next morning linemen had nevertheless repaired the damage wearing helmets and ceramic flack jackets to protect themselves from falling fragments from Palestinian rockets!
After Hamas rejected the Egyptian call for a cease-fire, a second high voltage line to Gaza came tumbling down. This time the IEC isn’t fixing the damage ‘til peace is restored. (Israel HaYom)
* see who received Gaza’s bills instead – HERE.
A LOT TO ANSWER FOR?
All the Israeli media spoke of the plight of 12th grade seniors in the south who were forced to cram for and take their math matriculation exam – a stressor under any circumstances – with mortars and rockets flying.
The principal of an Ashdod high school figured with everyone at least mildly distracted (the exam in Ashkelon was actually interrupted by a salvo of rockets), he could stealthily help his daughter pass the exam with flying colors. The educator (who also happens to be a math teacher) quickly filled in all the answers on a spare exam in the school safe, then deftly switched answer sheets, slipping his own answers to his daughter…without anyone noticing.
Or so he thought…
* Strangely enough, the principal’s daughter was only a 10th grader and had plenty of time to take the exam again. And again. And again.
GAZA’S THUGOCRACY AT WORK
Unidentified persons blasted a hole in the front door to a Gaza bank – orchestrated so that a nighttime Israeli air strike on a Hamas military target would muffle the sound. The bank robbers then walked in, helped themselves to the ‘merchandise’ and walked out without anyone taking notice.
Elsewhere, some masked and armed ‘public servants’ on Hamas’ payroll threatened at gunpoint rank-and-file Gazans withdrawing cash from ATMs, saying ‘if they didn’t receive their salaries to buy food, nobody else in Gaza would eat.’
WHAT WAR?
Is no news good news?
Nation-wide television ratings show the World Cup Championship placed second in popularity to non-stop news programs…except for viewers in Or Haner in the Western Negev, a kibbutz founded by Argentinean Jews, and neighboring rival Bror Hayil founded by Brazilian Jews who, war or no war, crammed into bomb shelters* and remained glued to the tube throughout the world soccer championship – the Mondial. While Germany beat Argentina in the finals 1-0, fans in Bror Hayil took a double beating – watching in dismay as Brazil got creamed by Germany 7-1 in the playoffs, just before the Palestinians began to try and turn them into pulp.*
* instead of the open-air broadcasts on the lawn as they planned.
ANYONE FOR KABAB?
Despite an inescapable love of grilled meat and though it never rains in the summer in Israel, many Israelis have taken a ‘rain-check’ on picnics. The spoiler is the prospect of the picnic being ‘rained out’* by falling shrapnel.* But trust the inventive Israeli:
A patriotic importer from a firm called Electrogal took out a full-page ad in Israel HaYom to offer his fellow countrymen a smokeless charcoal-brick grill under the heading “From today, it’s possible to ‘charcoal grill’ even inside your home!”
* I have a rounded chunk of an Iron Dome missile from 2012 about the size of an 11 kilogram (24,2 lb) wheel of Vermeer cheese, serving as a bookend in my office, along with three twisted pieces of a Grad rocket.
RIGHT ON TARGET…
Tel-Aviv residents, in typical fashion, turned their sharp sense of humor into a weapon. Out of all the humorous material flying about the Internet, the best is the plum coined by HaPitzutzia that spotted a golden opportunity to target the outrageous cost of parking in the Big Orange’s municipal parking garages, posting a spoof announcement from City Hall:
| The Tel-Aviv Municipality has opened the city’s bomb shelters for the welfare of Tel-Aviv residents:First hour – 20 NISEvery additional 15 Minutes – 7 NIS. |
The best graffiti? A ‘slight adjustment’ on Tel-Aviv’s signature logo below. CLICK HERE to see it. . (Globes and Hapitzutzia)
TIDINGS
Israelis don’t flee when rockets start flying. They cling together to weather the storm, canceling and cutting-short their vacations abroad.
The result is not only registered in the way the national airline El-Al accommodates, time-and-again allowing everyone with a ticket to cancel their flights and reschedule with no penalty fee – including Israelis vacationing abroad who want to go home as fast as possible.
Delta offers the same – through August 15; El-Al says the offer is good for six months, begging the question: Do El-Al pilots, almost all of them reserve officers in the IDF, know something we don’t know about the length of this ‘round’???
Are there good tidings, too? Definitely! The rates of vacation packages at overpriced Israeli hotels – the subject of a scathing article days before things escalated into a full-blown war – plummeted by 30 percent. (Israel HaYom)
Daniella Ashkenazy
