Tel Aviv Diary March 9-13, 2019 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel Aviv Diary March 9-13, 2019

Karen Alkalay-Gut

March 9-13, 2019

March 9, 2019

if you don't think Hamas is messing with our heads (the heads that are messed up already), you don't know the first thing about boxing, "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." a exploding baloon here, a rocket there, a demonstration here, a infiltrator there - you never know where it's coming from. We're getting to be Goliath and they are David. And add to it that it is an election year and these polls are going wild. Bibi, as they are saying all over, is dangerous when cornered. he's going up in the polls so maybe he'll relax. but even i don't know who i'll vote for ultimately.

the Hertzlia museum turned out to be a big surprise today. Everything is critical, introspective, questioning of our political existence.

March 10, 2019

Rotem Sela, a cute little starlet, wrote on her public media that she didn't understand what the fear of Arabs was about. After all, they're citizens in our country. And she was answered directly by Bibi who pointed out that she must be confused because she doesn't realize that this is a JEWISH democratic state as per the law passed last year.

this song by Gary Clark Jr. is a hit in the States:

Imagine it translated to Arabic

March 12, 2019

silence is usually a sign of action for me. but if i don't write it down i forget...unless it was very important. and it wasn't.

i have been enjoying the fact that our minister of health is being investigated at last. the hospitals are painfully overcrowded - to the point where not only are patients sleeping in the halls (remember i wrote about Ezi in the hall 3 years ago) but they have turned the cafeteria into a ward in some hospitals. soon, you'll get into an elevator in a hospital and there will be a person in the bed with an oxygen tent. the stories about royal treatment given to members of the minister's sect have been floating around for years - to the point that the health of others in in danger.

Oh, I forgot. I also have a life here in Tel Aviv that doesn't relate to politics. let's see - the first grader had a tsunami drill in school today. the fourth grader is going crazy from allergies from the olive trees that are blossoming now. the fifth grader uploaded her grandparents' history to the web in the Diaspora museum today - Most of the other grandparents, I noticed, had pretty 'normal' histories - either they were born in Tel Aviv or they were second generation holocaust survivors. me, i've got a comparatively unique history. i mean how many kids were born in London during the bombing? Everyone else was evacuated. Even the nurses at the hospital were shocked to see my mother when she came to give birth - a hospital that had been bombed already and was working with a skeleton staff. the rest of the history she typed was equally crazy - i think it ends with my arrival in Israel, just before the Yom Kippur War.

Of course beyond children and the little ego message they were somehow assigned for grandparents, there were terrible things happening in the old city of Jerusalem, especially the Dome of the Rock. The news is never good lately -

March 13, 2019

Tel Aviv is an amazing city in every respect. you may think i live in a bubble and that's why i can say something like that but it is a very permeable bubble. in my house of 14 apartments, one is inhabited by Arab residents. most of the neighbors have been living in the same place for 40 years and are quite close. there was no discussion when the new neighbors moved in last year, and it took me a little while to notice but then i don't see much about what is around me. And when we had our annual tennants meeting, the situation was easily accepted. our building definitely displays the collegiality that characterizes most of the city.

this afternoon i was chauffering school kids - not necessarily my own - there are always a few other kids that the mother is stuck at work or the partner has disappeared ... the kids adjust in groups as well as families.

yes.im too tired tp write clearly. = i don't usually play much basketball.

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