Israeli Mom

My previous end-of-month post roundups were a bit too long. Let’st ry making this one shorter.

Cat Blogs and Posts

I launched a brand new cat blog in 2010 and it’s actually a photoblog. If you want to enjoy beautiful pictures of furry felines, just hop over to the Cat Pics Blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.

Four new posts on Cats Go Shopping too. My favorite is the one featuring these awesome cat cookies.

I also posted about the Super Sleeper Cat Scratcher, a Wagging Cat Tail Clock and the not so glamorous but still important DermaPet MalAcetic Otic – Ear Cleaner For Pets.

And while talking about the cat blogs, on the blog on TheCatSite.com, other than the usual site updates, I did write about Cats and the Blues.

Gifts for Kids

Just a couple of posts on the Gifts for Kids blog. No image provided on the Blinky Light Toys post – and I had to include a warning in the body of the post too. The Crystal Growing Set post is much safer

Fitness Notes

Three new posts on my Fitness blog. I shared my insights about  Finding Time to Exercise, shared some food ideas on Four Healthy Vegan Sandwich Ideas and finally, recommending a website I really liked on Weight Loss Motivation.

BS6.net Webmasters Blog

Almost a dozen posts on my webmasters/bloggers blog B6S.net! A few were web news and reviews posts. Here’s a quick list of everything else:

Where to Find People to Follow on Twitter

China Vs. Google – The Battle of the Giants

The Next Big Google Algorithm Update

Does Skype Owe You Money? They’re Willing to Pay

Keyword Synonyms and Google

The Next Big Thing in Social Media

Download Links in Wordpress

Know of a Good Program for Domainoholics?

Voila!

Managed to write a quick recap in under 300 words. Well, ok, 309.

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And no, it’s not the Palestinians’ country either.

That we people, any people, own a country is a misconception. The places have been here long before we ever had any national identity. The landscape, the flora and fauna were here long before us. Despite what various holy books tell you – they do not belong to us. At the most, we can say that we belong to a place.

Common misconception though.

Take the movie Avatar. The beautiful Na’avi, in tune with nature to the point of being able to hook up with trees and animals via their built-in natural USB devices. They respect all living beings and try to melt into the forest in perfect harmony. All nice and poetic, until the are threatened by Terrans and encouraged by Jake’s avatar to fight back. How does Jake end his call to battle? “Let’s show them that this is OUR land!”

Doh! So suddenly the Na’vi are land owners?

On Human Right Activists and Peace Activists

I am all for human rights, and yes that includes civil rights and the right to form your own national movement. That said, if peace is what we want, encouraging fascistic trends and the “our land” line of thought is just so wrong. Whether it’s on the Jewish or Palestinian side.

Take Edna Kanati, for example. She’s one of the new participants of Big Brother Israel. She’s a left-wing activist and a member of  ”Mahssom Watch”. That means she goes out to IDF roadblocks and does her best to monitor the soldiers’ behavior towards Palestinians. So far, so good. I admire and appreciate the work she and her friends are doing.

On a recent Big Brother episode, Edna stated what she thinks Palestinians ought to do. She called out for Palestinians to refuse to cooperate with the roadblock system. Fair enough. Not practical, but whatever. Then she added something that really bugged me. She said Palestinians should tell the soldiers they refuse to cooperate because “this is OUR land”.

Doh! Again.

We Belong to This Country

Both us and the Palestinians belong to this country. Not only have both nations been formed here (less important IMO), but both share a deep affinity with this place and a sense of belonging.

The problem begins when we feel that we own the country. We feel this gives us the right to do whatever we want to the place. With horrible consequences.

Both nations have little ecological awareness. It begins with the governments and municipalities, who don’t think twice before designating what little non-cultivated natural areas we have left: new roads, new settlements… new agricultural projects.  You name it. Rarely do they perform any wildlife survey first and it takes a LOT of public pressure from Israel’s weak green organizations to try and save a place.

Then it’s commercial polluters. They still spray the fields and orchards from the air (and there are always people living next to the fields). They pour pollutants and sewage into the streams. Arabs and Jews united in their lack of care for environmental considerations.

The people themselves are just as bad. Yes, this is a generalization. Yes, we recycle batteries, plastic bottles and paper in our household and we’re not the only ones. It’s all you can actually recycle in Israel, and on the whole, not enough people do it.

What’s worse, many people just dump their trash outside towns. Got a truckload full of junk? Head out towards the nearest field or forest and you’ll find a nice pile of trash to which you can add. It’s not legal and you can get fined. In theory. In practice, our police force is overtaxed as it is and environmental issues are probably at the bottom of the list.

There’s so much more… People driving their off-road vehicles and ruining habitats;  hunting, fishing and picking up wild plants (not flowers, we did good with educating the public about those, but Palestinian and Druze people pick a lot of edible natural plants). There’s so much more.

The results? Polluted streams, fewer natural green areas, trash everywhere and more and more animals disappearing from view. When I was growing up, we often saw turtles, hedgehogs and chameleons. You’d be very lucky to see them today (not as roadkill that is). No more leopards in the deserts either. No more otters in the rivers. Very few big birds of prey in the sky.

Many people here, both Arabs and Jews, will tell you we’re too busy “fighting over our land” to worry about the environment. At this rate, there won’t be much left worth fighting over.

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April 2009. Our first visit to the US and we’re driving through the streets of suburban Tuscon, Arizona. Morning time, almost no traffic, lanes so wide you’re not sure if you’re going forward or sideways, and our GPS is making us confused. Naturally, I pull over, so we can have a look at the map.

A lone cyclist is coming from behind us. He goes past the car, then stops, and drives back towards us and knocks on my window. Ok, this is America, where they shoot people on the streets, so naturally I’m timid, but I’m thinking he probably wants to help us seeing as we are looking at a map, so I roll the window down.

“Excuse me, your car is in the bicycle lane.”

Duh. I knew that – not like I can’t see there’s a picture of a bicycle drawn on it.

“Well, do you expect us to be standing in the middle of the road? We’re only stopping for a couple of minutes to check the map and there’s no problem for you to past us.” Yes, I am a bit annoyed. What is he now? a policeman?

Fortunately, IsraeliDad intervenes, apologizes to the cyclist and makes me drive on away from there.

I was reminded of this incident, driving through the streets of my town this afternoon. I’m going through a roundabout and there’s a car standing pretty much in the middle of it. I think she was checking for something in the newspaper. And nobody honks, everyone just maneuvers around her.

We have a different, and much more flexible concept of driving here. Cars move between lanes, drivers pull over in the weirdest of places. I know foreigners find this intimidating at first, and I imagine it could be if you’re used to people driving strictly by the rules. For myself, I prefer the Israeli style and here’s why -

Accuracy of Movement

Over here, you can pull over where you really need to. After all, as long as you don’t actually block others, and leave them some room to maneuver around you, no harm done. So what if that American cyclist had to go around the car? what is the big deal with that?

Problem Solving and Taking the Initiative

When there are traffic problems, people sort them out more efficiently.  When you have to, you move to the lane across from you, go off road when necessary and do whatever it takes to move forward. It means less gridlocks on the road, if you react properly and quickly enough. Initiative, folks, is what makes Israel such a great country and why we have such a high percentage of start-ups. We use it on the road too.

The Extreme Sports Factor

The way we drive here makes for a more challenging driving experience. Let’s face it, driving in America was too easy. LA was the only place where it posed a little bit of a challenge and even that was nothing compared to Tel Aviv. In Israel, every time I get my kids to school, it’s like one of those off-road 4WD races: an extreme driving challenge (especially on days like today when you have to guess which water-filled pothole is shallow enough for a family car to go through).

I am guessing since most of the people reading this blog are native speakers of English, i.e. learned to drive in one of those cautious boring driving cultures, they may disagree. Well, go on, share your insights and tell me why you think driving in Israel is or isn’t fun.

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I think almost anyone living Israel knows Tnuva. Literally meaning produce, it’s the name of the largest and strongest marketing corporation for agricultural produce, specifically dairy products, eggs, and poultry.

Tnuva’s well-known logo evolved with its cottage cheese: a pastoral home in a green meadow. You can find it on many other kinds of dairy products as well.

In commercials, the popular slogan goes “Tnuva – Growing Up in an Israeli Home”.

How Israeli is the Israeli Home?

I read an article today about Tnuva’s new advertising  campaigns. Being in a printed newspaper in Hebrew I don’t have a direct link. The closest I could find is this piece (in Hebrew) -

http://www.news1.co.il/Archive/0020-D-226762-00.html?tag=20-10-24

Apparently, Tnuva’s market research shows that there are several segments within Israeli society that do not identify with the term “Growing up in an Israeli home”. They had to come up with new slogans for them, roughly translated as -

For the orthodox Charedi Jews: Tnuva – Growing Up in a Mehadrin Kosher Home.

For Israeli Arabs: Tnuva – Growing up in a Good Home.

For Russian Immigrants: Tnuva – Growing Up in a Home in Israel.

What’s more, according to the article, these three markets combined actually make up more than 50% of the market. So, what does it mean when most homes in Israel no longer identify themselves as Israeli homes?

Food for thought.

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Tornadoes are so rare in Israel most people don’t believe they exist here. In fact, they are so rare, your average Israeli doesn’t know the difference between a tornado and a hurricane and they two are almost synonyms here.

So, when my brother-in-law from Kibbutz Ortal called us to say he was within tens of meters away from a real tornado, we couldn’t believe it at first. Turns out he was right. According to the Fujita scale, it was a genuine F2 Tornado. Short in duration, it touched the ground for what was probably under one minute, leaving a trail of under one kilometer of damage. Fortunately, it did not hit any major buildings, skipping the cow sheds by a couple of hundreds of meters.

I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a while, so far only mentioned it on Twitter when it happened. Better later than never! This happened in Kibbutz Ortal in the Golan Heights on November 1, 2009.

Here are pictures taken on the following day -

That is where the stables shed used to be – the only actual building hit. It was torn from the ground, with people inside, and carried across the area.

Machines and tractors overturned.

The fence, including some posts, were uprooted and carried in the air.

About a month later, we went to visit, to view the ground. We hiked along the tornado trail, outside the Kibbutz area, along the uprooted and broken trees:

I posted more pictures in a public album here – it’s available to all to see on the IsraeliMom Facebook Fan Page (join if you’re on Facebook!)

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That’s it! December has officially ended here. In fact an entire year, and an entire decade, are over as well, so let me start by wishing everyone all the best for 2010!

I knew December would be difficult when it came to my blogging. Hannuka here meant the kids were at home for a week, during which we had lots of fun and little work time. Ok, enough excuses, time for this month’s post roundup from across the blogs I manage, and some more.

Cat Blogs

Cats and the Holidays was the only post on The Cat Blog at TheCatSite.com this month. On CatsGoShopping I posted two new items: Purrfect Cat Cabinet and a timely reminder to buy the TCS calendar. Note to self: more cat posts in 2010!

Gifts For Kids

Only three posts on that one, with More Personalized Gifts For Kids in early December, followed by a gift idea for very last-minute shoppers and a cool post about Educational Science Toys For Kids.

Fitness Notes

I added a couple of new posts to this blog, first one explaining the C25K – Running Program for Beginners, so now I can provide people with my own link when they ask me about it! Went on to share my own running shows tips – not an expert post, just bringing together a few of the things I’ve learned online and on the trail. I actually took a break from training and from blogging about fitness due to a head cold. I did finally do some reading about Running or Exercising when You Have a Cold and not only blogged about it, but went on my first cold run today!

B6S.net – Webmasters Advice Blog

Once again, B6S turned out to be my most prolific blog this month. Not only have I done weekly Web News updates, but also wrote about Nine Types of Blog Posts to Get Your Writing Juices Flowing, shared My Best Blog-Only Marketing Tips, added an illustrated tutorial about Adding Plugins to Your Wordpress Blog and threw in my tip about How to Recognize Comment Spam.

The “Dofollow vs Nofollow” controversy reared its head once more on some blogs I follow, so I also blogged about Why I Support Dofollow. And speaking of fellow bloggers, if you’re not yet familiar with Blog Engage, read my post Blog Engage – What’s in it for You, to learn why you should join now and not later.

Last, but not least, having seen Avatar in 3D last week, I just had to blog about it and so I wrote a post about How the Movie Avatar Will Effect the Internet .

Most Amazing Blog

I actually launched a new blog this month. This one is dedicated to all those cool videos you get forwarded via emails. The ones you absolutely want to share with your friends, even without accessing your email account. My criteria for choosing the videos are fairly simple and you can read them here. Basically, it’s cruelty-free, family friendly stuff that makes you go “Wow”. The Wow effect is what made me post the trailer for the movie Avatar there. Other than that, posts this month included:

• Amazingly Detailed Origami Art
• World’s Tiniest Snowman
• Amazing Sand Art Video
• The Amazing Killer Fungi
• The Biggest Truck in the World
• The Most Amazing Surf Wave Captured on Video
• Touching Dance of Amputee Dancers – Simply Amazing
• Amazing Video: Seal Trying to Teach Human to Hunt Penguins
• Most Amazing Basketball Trick Shots

I won’t even recap the latest on Israeli Mom blog here, just scroll down to see what I blogged about when I finally got around to it or check out the December Archives.

Let me know what you think about these posts. Like them? hate them? And once more, Happy New Year everyone!

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A family oriented post today, but everyone is welcome to share. Since I am posting this on a public blog, I guess a few introductory words are required.

I am third generation in Israel. My mother’s grandparents are from Tunisia, and my father’s grandparents are from Poland. Their stories vary, at many points, but for all four of them, coming to Israel was a deeply emotional and idealogical thing. For them all it was “returning” home after two thousands years. Their stories are amazing, involving starvation, antisemitic physical attacks, wars, illegal (and legal) immigration a la Exodus, more wars, prisoner camps, refugee camps and yes, more wars. I confess, my grandparents’ history and their resolve to come here is the source of my own private version of Zionism.

Anyway, back to own private Grandpa. He’s just turned 97, and is still in relatively good health, physically and mentally. My father just made him this nice clip, bringing together pictures from the earliest ones we have, until today. This is an entirely private journey of one man, one family. The titles are in Hebrew, but they are mostly the names of people in the pictures and places where the picture was taken.

The pictures start with my grandfather’s family in early 20th century Poland, on mandatory Palestina (to which he came with a legal certificate and worked with the British and Australian armies deployed here), and to little young Tel Aviv and the center of Israel, where my Grandpa ran his own little shop of electric supplies and raised a family – one daughter and one son – my father. Towards the end of the movie, you get to see pictures of all of us, six grandchildren (and spouses) and so far nine great grandchildren (and one on the way!)

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Some interesting people and “issues” in this season’s Big Brother in Israel. In my posts about Big Brother Men and Big Brother Women, I reviewed the “special” people. We had one guy with Tourrette syndrome, one girl who used to be a guy, one deaf person (and a bit crazy too), one Polaniya (Polish woman – see my post for more info on that particular syndrome) and so on.

Oh, one of the women is an Arab. The beautiful 37 year old Futna Jabber  is even a Muslim, prays to Allah five times a day and sells hummus for a living. Combined with two ex-combat-soldiers (one of them priding himself on taking part as an officer in the Jennin operation), it seemed like a recipe for disaster (or high ratings).

Surprisingly, or maybe not so much so, Futna found her way right into the heart of Big Brother’s slightly dysfunctional family. Without losing her national/ethnic identity, and with making her political views very clear, she managed to get out of the “Arab” square right away and get herself into the “House Mama” role.

Futna and Ayala Reshef

She’s been voted by other tenants as a candidate for removal twice already – for being too dominant in the kitchen – and each time the audience voted for her to stay on the show. She still makes sure to bring up the Palestinian issue every now and again, pray daily and throw in Arab slang, coining a new national slogan: Walla Eeshy.

In case you missed it, here are some notable Futna moments from this season of Big Brother -

Good Morning Palestine

Deaf participant Erez De Drezner starts each morning with gathering all the people of the house for a “positive energies” session outside where everyone chants and signs a multi-participant dance of good vibes. The morning speech he came up with ends with: “Good morning and positive energies to the State of Israel”. Pretty common expression in Israel.

Futna interrupted and asked to replace the State of Israel with a good morning wish to Palestine. Normally, you’d expect this to ignite a debate, if nothing worse, but after a couple of seconds of shock, Erez played along and said she could wish positive energies to anyone she wants.

The Arab Candidate for the House Elections

Big Brother wants the tenants to elect a “Head of the House” and asks them to provide the names of three candidates. Futna is chosen one of them. Her campaign slogan (which the tenants help her formulate) is “One Futna for Two People”, a take on “One State for Two People”. Not a single tenant says anything about the political connotation or the fact that her campaign jingle and poster are distinctly Arab. Multi-culturalism at its best.

With Goel and Sarah

The Hookah

Many of the participants smoke cigarettes and it’s considered part of the house’s needs, much like food. Futna brought in a different kind of smoking: she’s hooked on her hookah, and Big Brother allowed her just that. Multi-culturalism again, as Futna prepares and smokes her hookah in the traditional way on prime time television.

Joining the Israeli Police Force

Arabs in police uniform aren’t that uncommon in Israel. Some policemen and police officers are Arabs (and some druze). Still, seeing Futna in police uniform, as part of the interrogation team with Sa’ar the IDF officer in the hotseat, was a funny TV moment.

With Yosef, playing cops

Futna and “The Guys”

Which brings me to Futna’s relationship with “the guys”, namely Sa’ar and Eliraz. Both are typical macho guys, reservists in combat positions, and overall nice guys. Both have done their share of military service in the occupied territories.

The interaction between them and Futna is fascinating. This strong friendly woman has no qualms about addressing anyone at eye level, and she has had some interesting talks with the guys about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The interaction is always friendly, often seasoned with laughter and jokes. The general tone between Futna and these guys is one of mutual appreciation. In fact, fairly early in the show, both guys agreed between themselves that she’s the best lady in the house and they can only wish to someday have a wife like that. Walla Eeshy.

Pictures in this post are from Futna’s page on the official Big Brother website where can read more about her in Hebrew and watch her clip.

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Headed back from Eilat, we managed to reach the Hai Bar Wildlife Center in Kibbutz Yotvata on time both for the feeding of the predators and for booking our night at their campground. Later on, as I was walking around the campground, I noticed there were still some people hanging around and a ranger was calling them to join him. Turned out he was taking them on an unscheduled nighttime tour of the preserve! I jumped up and down in excitement and he was kind enough to let us tag along with our car. We didn’t get to see a lot of animals, but driving there at night was cool!

We were also the only campers in the campground, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. You can hear the road from the campground, but at least I got to hear the nocturnal predators twice during the night too. Not even sure if I was hearing hyenas, wolves, leopards or whatever, but it was nice.

Some pictures from our daytime tour of the wildlife center -

Note, if you open your windows to the ostriches and reach out, they do bite, as our Dan found out!

After our morning tour, we headed out to Timna (which is about 10 minutes away from Yotvata, so a very short drive). It’s a beautiful area with amazing geological features and a rich history as the site of the world’s earliest copper mines. The Pharos ran those mines, so there’s a ancient Egypt theme to the place.

Timna is a fairly large park, with lots of trails and places of interest. We decided to follow the arches trail, recommended to us by a local guide. It was great – not easy, with lots of climbs and some crawling through caves.

Our campground for the night was within Timna park itself and was right by the artificial lake they have there. The boys and their Dad had a blast pedaling on the lake for over an hour. Again, Friday afternoon and we were almost the only campers there, so they almost had the lake to themselves at some point.

The Timna visit includes filling up tiny bottles with layers of colorful sand as a souvenir. We have two of those now – and the kids had fun making them.

On our way back, we went through Makhtesh Ramon again, and this time stopped at a different point to see the Wall of the Ammonites, where you can see fossilized giant sea snails.

That’s about it! I have more pictures to share but didn’t want to put too many into a blog post. So, instead, I set up a page for Israeli Mom on Facebook. You can go there and view the full album, without becoming a friend or doing anything at all. I think you can even view the album without being a member of  Facebook.

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Hannuka isn’t just candles, dreidles and latkes – it’s also a week long school vacation. We started it with a day up in the Golan Heights, followed by a day in Tel Aviv. We’re trying to make plans for the rest of the holiday, wondering whether we’ll stay at home and try to work, or summon up our nerves and actually go out with the kids to visit the Dead Sea and Massada.

The weather forecast sent us out heading south. The storms and heavy rains meant the Dead Sea area was off (there’s a danger of flooding there), so we decided to go for the Negev Desert instead. Four days later we’re back with lots of wonderful memories and nice pictures to share.

First Day – Makhtesh Ramon

We headed out driving through road six for a couple of hours, then through Be’er Sheva all the way down to Mitzpe Ramon. The only town that resides by Makhtesh Ramon.

Makhtesh means crater, and the Ramon Crater is a unique geological phenomenon. Located about 80 kilometers south of Be’er Sheva, it was created by geological movements combined with natural erosion (no meteors in this story). It’s the largest of its kind, over 40 kilometers long and contains a huge variety of geological strata and formations.

First stop was at the gas station, where we noticed one of the tires got a huge bump and had to be replaced -

Right next to the gas station was the Ramon Visitors Center (hardly surprising, considering how tiny the town is), so this is where we went to next.  It was a very hazy day outside – so the panoramic view from the center wasn’t available – and we settled for enjoying the exhibits and the movie.

The Visitors Center included a zoological center. We didn’t get to see its open area, and just visited the small animals area -

It was getting late and the haze made it look even darker, so we headed to the Be’erot campsite at the bottom of the crater, where we set up our tent. It’s a fairly basic campsite, where you can set your tent under a “roof” of dry palm branches, or like we did, in a large stone walled circle.

The campsite was not that crowded, but too noisy for us, as a large group of teenagers was there for the night as well. It had what we needed though – running water, hot showers and clean toilets, so we were happy. We brought a gas cooker with us, but it broke down so we had to cook our dinner on an open fire. I made noodles for the kids and a rice and chickpeas dish for us.

Day 2 – Eilat

We started our morning with a visit to Ein Saharonim. A nice little spot in Makhtesh Ramon that actually has some water puddles in the winter, so local wild animals can sometimes be seen there. We didn’t get to see any animals, but we did visit the ancient Roman campsite -

Our original plan was different, but we didn’t want to roam the desert with no spare tire, so we headed for the next big city – Eilat.  On the way we stopped at Kibbutz Yotvata, the Israeli capital of chocolate milk. Dan was very impressed with their huge selection of flavored milk drinks and both boys enjoyed the cows.

Eilat is just half an hour away from Yotvata and once we reached it, we had a new tire within 30 minutes. We decided to make the most of it and visit the one attraction we (ok, the kids. Ok, and me.) wanted to see.  So off we went to the underwater observatory for a few hours.

The feeding session was accompanied with setting up an underwater Hannukia/Menorah. The diver didn’t actually light up the candles, but the kids ad a blast watching the little candles get loose and float up, with the diver trying to grasp them and hook them back into the hannukia.

The kids loved the underwater observatory itself, where you can watch the surrounding reef.

And we also sailed in the glass boat, which didn’t exactly have a glass bottom like I thought it would. It’s more like its underwater part is shaped like a little narrow bus. The water was hazy due to high waves the previous day, but the sail itself was a lot of fun.

In the screening of the shark-themed we met a kid from Ron’s class. Turns out his family was doing a very similar trip to ours, so we decided to meet again the next day.

More about the rest of our trip in my next post!

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