Tel Aviv: Picture of the Day

BY CARMIA

I came across this store on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. The sign on the right-hand sign reads, "Keep and remember the Sabbath day holy (because it is a source of blessing)". On the left-hand side, "Viagra pills may be obtained here," and below the sign, a row of bongs disguised as "air fresheners".

Anarchists Bring Roadblocks to Tel Aviv

The "roadblock" set up in Tel Aviv (Ha'aretz).

Activists from the "Anarchists against the Fence" movement brought the roadblocks of the territories to Tel Aviv today - albeit only for a few minutes. The protesters set up barbed wire and military warning signs, apparently taken from pieces of the security fence in the West Bank, on fashionable Basel street in the north of the city. The twenty or so demonstrators wanted to inform Tel Aviv residents of the daily reality in the Palestinian territories only a few kilometers away from them. A traffic jam quickly developed at the location (though this is not a rare occurrence even without protests) and drivers contacted the police. The anarchists fled the scene before the police arrived.

The anarchist action seems like a smart modification of the anti-disengagement protests two summers ago, which infuriated so many Israelis. Unlike the settlers, the anarchists are conveying their message creatively without getting arrested. The inconvenience (and danger) to motorists is negligible compared to what transpired in the "orange days" of 2005. It is good to make Israelis aware of the suffering caused to Palestinians by checkpoints and roadblocks. I wonder though what the protesters would say to those who insist (rightly) that the fence and checkpoints have saved and continue to save hundreds of lives. The dramatic decrease in suicide bombings over the past year is proof of that. The often cited argument that checkpoints create terrorists, on the other hand, is hard to verify. Surely, suffering by itself does not create suicide bombers.

There is a police station just one block south of Basel on Dizengoff, so the cops must have taken their time.

This is the second Basel Street protest that has made it onto Kishkushim. Last summer, Arab Israelis demonstrated in front of the Egyptian embassy down the street.

NEXT: Palestinian leftists blow up mini van loaded with effigy passengers on Ramallah street to protest suicide bombing. Or: Gaza anarchists fire model Qassam at Palestinian houses. Oh wait, that's already happened.

Business as Usual in Tel Aviv

I can't say that people have changed their routines here in Tel Aviv. Of course, everyone has a friend or family member in the North, and many people are hosting relatives who have fled south. One of my friends is currently having two of her sisters (plus children) staying at her house, together with her mom. The only person not there is the father who is taking care of the family's chicken farm, which is in katyusha range.

At the shuq here the vendors were selling as briskly as ever, and the mood was not terribly different from normal. Of course some of the vendors worked the war into their banter. One man pitching mangos and apricots told me that the "tsfonim" (lit. people from the North, but also slang for fashionable, yuppie types) had been buying from him all day, that they had left everything in Haifa to come to Tel Aviv. Also, apparently the fact that there is a war going on is an incentive to buy more tomatoes - or maybe some people will try anything to convince you to get your vegetables from them.

European Condemnation of Tel Aviv Suicide Bombing

Obviously a condemnation of the bombing, but this time it is coupled with an indictment of the Hamas and the PA government that preceded it. The op-ed argues that Hamas, unlike its predecessor, has made its support of terorism clear and open. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung argues that Hamas's claim that the bombing was "self-defence" characterizes the organization's misanthropic worldview, which is shaped by the "crude assumption, that the land of the Middle East has been polluted through its settlement by Jews."

Das Gute an der palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde ist die Klarheit, die von ihr ausgeht: Sie wird von der Terrorgruppe Hamas geführt, die Israels Existenzrecht und somit jegliche Friedensverhandlungen ablehnt. Jassir Arafat hatte es stets verstanden, die Weltöffentlichkeit hinters Licht zu führen. Die Hamas aber lässt nun keinen Zweifel mehr an ihren Absichten.

Der Terroranschlag am Ostermontag, exekutiert von der Palästinenser-Miliz „Islamischer Heiliger Krieg“, wird von der Hamas als „Recht auf Selbstverteidigung“ gerechtfertigt. Darin drückt sich das menschenverachtende Weltbild der Hamas aus, das von der kruden Annahme geprägt ist, der Boden der Nahost-Region werde durch die bloße Besiedlung durch Juden verunreinigt.