My little Corner of the World

Downtown. I crossed the street just to take this picture. I had to figure out how to get a focused picture in the dimming light, no tripod or anything. A beggar walks by, holding a plastic cup, asking for a shekel in russian accent. I mutter "just a second", finding a lamp post to lean on while clicking. "Oh, that's really more important" he says acidly, and hurries away.  

Well, apparently someone else had my idea - only they bothered to actually make it happen - two local comic artists have anounced an antisemic cartoons contest. Notice the Muhammad-as-Jew cartoon.

Maybe I can find whatever artistic residue I have in me and enter the contest myself.

BTW, not all Israelis have a healthy sense of humor, so this competition is quite a brave thing.

In 1942, it was possible to transfer about 1000 Jewish refugee children from Russia (they got there with their families from Eastern-Europe) to different ports in Iran, and they were gathered in a special camp in Teheran, to be transported to India, Yemen and finally Palestine about a year later. Those children are known as "The Teheran Children" . Iran, of course, had nothing active to do with this operation, organized by Jewish institutions and funded by Jewish philantropists, but the irony is there all the same.
Pictures (sorry, Hebrew)
And more on the subject from Yad Vashem (the Israeli holocaust memorial and archive).

Seems like the only place where Jerusalem's different ethnic groups can co-exist is... the mall. We have our own "day of love" sometime in the summer, but why settle for one when you can have two?

Today was Tu-Bishvat, a Jewish holiday that has eating dried fruits as part of its tradition.

Tomorrow is Valentine's day, which somehow became the international day for buying stuff for your spouse.

The latest manifestation of the bad trip Iran seems to be going through these days is the Mshahari newspaper's holocaust cartoon competition. My first reaction is - why? what did we do now? How is this our fault again?

My second reaction - it has been done before. Not in the form of competition, but humor and the holocaust have met before. The holocaust isn't "holy", it's a tragedy, and dealing with it was done in many different ways - building memorials, writing its history, making movies (some of them comic - like Roberto Benini's or Mell Brooks's The Producers), in arts and yes - in jokes as well. There's a whole genre of Holocaust jokes which won't translate well to English, but are extremely dark humored.

So mixing humor and the holocaust is not a new thing, but I don't think that it's postmodernism that inspired this campaign. there's an attempt to get a reaction from Jewish organizations and show the double face of "free press", but whatever reaction they'll get won't be the burning of Iranian embassies. There isn't one in Israel, and Jews outside of Isael are too sissy to do that. Something else might happen - something they don't expect - reaffirmation of the idea of the freedom of the press, the arts and expression.

And I say, send your cartoons! My contribution to the the contest, had I been talented in this field, would be a drawing of a huge boot about to crush a very small creature, with a bubble coming out from him saying "please don't kill me". I realize it's not very funny, but I guess so was the holocaust.

We won't be so cooperative when it comes to the bomb, though.

For those who read Hebrew - a wonderful commentary about the one-dimensional, caricature-like Holocaust related art, which oversimplifies the tragedy into a black and white, good versus evil cartoon instead of deling with a more complex reality.

Gamla - up on the Golan heights, overlooking the sea of Galilee lies this fortress. The most famous story involving this place is its part in the Jewish revolt against the Romans around 68 A.D. After a long seige and some bloody fighting the city was taken by the Romans, and the remaining Jewish population threw themselves down the cliff. This is a story that echoes the one of Massada, both of them are myths which modern Zionism adopted as stories of bravery. Thanks to post modernist thinking, fighting lost causes to the death is not a common theme here any more, but anyone wanting to understand the recent settlers' behaviour should keep that in mind - these myths were a part of our education, but to them the part of the Romans is played these days by their own state.
More about the history of this place: http://mosaic.lk.net/g-gamla.html