This week in Israel: elections in three weeks? (yawn) · Global Voices
Lisa N. Goldman

So here we are, three weeks before national elections – and nobody in the Israeli blogosphere has anything to say. This, despite all the upheavals of the past few months: The surprise election of Amir Peretz, the former leader of Histadrut, Israel's largest labour union, as leader of the Labour party; despite Prime Minister Ariel Sharon‘s decision to leave the Likud party and found Kadima; despite the fact that Sharon is now lying in an apparently irreversible coma after suffering a massive cerebral hemmhorage two months ago; and despite the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian national elections.
Given all that drama, you'd think that people would be really fired up about the elections, wouldn't you? But nooooo……
Perhaps next week, once the television broadcasts of the campaign messages are in full swing, Israeli bloggers will have something to say about the elections. Meanwhile, this week I've just put together some random posts that, taken as a whole, give readers a sort of intimate snapshot of what's going on in Israel – behind the headlines.
Stephanie Fried, a freelance journalist who blogs at Stefanella's Drive Thru, illustrates the complexity of life in Israel in this description of the people she met at a Tel Aviv hospital ward, where her son was hospitalized following a fever-induced seizure. Stephanie's son is half Danish; two of his fellow patients were children from Gaza, accompanied by their mothers; and a third was a 12 year-old Israeli girl whose father was an undercover agent in the occupied territories during the first intifada. And there they were, all being treated in the same ward of a Tel Aviv hospital. This post is required reading for anyone who thinks that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be defined in absolute terms.
Or, as Stephanie puts it,
“With perpetual conflict and enmity in abundance how do Gazans end up sharing a Tel Aviv hospital room with a part American/part Danish kid (he doesn't draw cartoons. Yet) and a former undercover agent?
Grey grey grey. The closer you get the blurrier the view.”
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Stephanie just wrote another fascinating post about the refusal of a London-based dance magazine to publish an article about an Israeli dance troupe that just returned from New York, where it performed an originally choreographed piece about breaking down boundaries between cultures and people . The dance troupe is scheduled to perform next in Cuba and around North America. This is what happened when Stephanie called to make her story pitch:
“The head of advertising answers and immediately launches into a quiet but resolute political diatribe upon hearing where the company is based. I'm thinking: ‘WTF? Why is a dance magazine guy talking politics to me?’ And never mind my interjections on artistic director Sally-Anne's behalf…that she broke away from apartheid South Africa, that her most recent creation is called Borders and addresses breaking down boundaries both personal and political….
He basically tells me that because of the occupation the magazine doesn't run stories on dance companies out of Israel. He also assures that he is in no way, shape or form racist because he's a Sikh from Northern India. But of course.”
Meanwhile, Shai Tsur of Shaister comments on the Israeli couple whose insane decision to set off firecrackers in Nazareth’s Church of the Annunciation, during prayers, led to violent demonstrations by the Christian Arab residents of the city.
Shai points out that there is ample evidence showing that the Havivis, the couple who set off the firecrackers, are not exactly the most mentally stable people in the world.
“Havivi is in fact certifiable. He is also somewhat infamous. A few years ago, he and his family showed up at the Muqata’ah in Ramallah and begged Yasser Arafat for permission to settle in the Palestinian Authority. That, as it turns out, was a publicity stunt geared to draw attention to the Havivis’ economic problems and their battles with social services. So was the little attack in Nazareth.”
Shai then goes on to criticize Israeli Arab leaders for taking advantage of the event for political gains.
“No sooner had the incident in Nazareth started to cool down that Ahmad Tibi and other Arab MKs rushed to the news studios to decry Havivi’s act as representative of institutional racism in Israel.
In response, acting PM Olmert called for calm and suggested that the incident — “the act of a spaced-out couple”, in his words — not be used to rile up race relations. So, today Hadash MK Mohammad Barakeh attacked Olmert as a racist.
Clearly, it’s election season and the Arab parties have decided to use this incident as a campaign issue. Which is a pity, because it doesn’t deserve to be. There are many legitimate examples of problematic policy (both de jure and de facto) when it comes to Israel’s Arab minority. This isn’t one of them.”
Bert de Bruin, of Dutchblog Israel, echoes Shai when he writes:
Almost all religious officials, political leaders and security forces behaved in a very responsible way, and they did a good job of crisis management and cooperation. The only ones who should be ashamed of themselves, since they showed an absolute lack of responsible leadership by trying to use this incident – which was caused by troubled individuals, not by political or religious fanatics – for their own political gains, are men such as Mohammad Barakeh, Ahmad Tibi, Sheikh Salah and Azmi Bishara.
Further on the subject of Israel’s Arab minority, Don Radlauer, of On the Contrary, takes another Israeli blogger to task for writing a racist post about the rights of Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin.
And over at Slightly Mad, the leftist blogger Purple Parrot confesses to being rather satisfied that Paradise Now, the Palestinian movie about suicide bombers, did not win the Academy Award for best foreign film.
“So for any of you who were assuming I'd be seething at being “robbed”, I will surprise you by saying that I was actually satisfied with this outcome: I do stand by my previous contention that people – Israelis and Jews in particular – should not boycott Paradise Now. But I don't think it deserved this particular statuette, and certainly not the accompanying hype which would have degenerated into a nasty PR war between bereaved families, propagandists on both sides, and the like: I shudder at the very notion.”