Nobody takes Eilat too seriously — which is a good thing. Poised on the cusp of the Red Sea, this resort city at the southern tip of Israel is where Israelis and others go to unwind. During the short, cold days of winter, northern Europeans by the planeload come to soak up the guaranteed sunshine.
There were more police than customers in Jerusalem\’s Mahane Yehuda market last Friday morning, when Jewish families would normally stock up for the weekend. Downtown, the strolling, shopping and coffee-bar crowds had deserted the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall for the fashionable German Colony.
Six months into the Palestinian uprising, Israeli doves and hawks are displaying a rare unity in the face of repeated Palestinian onslaughts.
Standing with the crowd in Netanya where, hours before, a Palestinian suicide bomber had killed three Israelis and himself, local carpenter Ya\’acov Ohayon was asked if he thought the public — the home front — was ready for more of the same, or worse.
In less than a week, whatever was left of the mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians appeared to come tumbling down.
There are a thousand stories in the naked city of Los Angeles, but when it comes to nannies, there are at least a million – nannies who have a free reign of the household, nannies who make good salaries, nannies who get help from their employers to buy cars or put a down payment on a house. But there are the other stories as well – the nanny who works long hours for little pay, with no holidays, no sick days, no breaks. \”I knew when I was here without papers, I didn\’t deserve to be here,\” says nanny Carmen Davis, \”but still, that didn\’t mean I deserved to be treated without respect.\”
Some of you may have caught last week\’s New Yorker (May 25) with journalist David Remnick\’s profile of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. If not, I urge you to call the magazine\’s offices in New York and order a back copy, or simply visit your local library.\n\nRemnick offers us a portrait of Bibi as The Outsider.
These are three experiences that have made me most hate being Jewish:
It\’s a long way from an Israeli combat platoon to Newport Beach,but Inbal Adar and Tsahi Levi are trying to bridge the geographicaland cultural gap.\n\nBoth Adar, 20 years old, blond and in a miniskirt, and Levi, 22,ruggedly handsome and in jeans, are lieutenants in combat infantryunits of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
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