Filed under: arts/culture, movies/television | Tags: animation, bashir, movie, posted by beanieman12, waltz
The strikingly beautiful and tragic Israeli animated film “Waltz With Bashir” has been selected as the Israeli film to compete in the Foreign Film category at the Oscars. Set in the present, the film composed of a series of flash backs to Avi Folman’s the director, experiences during the First Lebanon War in 1982.
Filed under: opinion | Tags: Add new tag, basketball, maccabi, posted by ronShapiro, sports, Tel Aviv
There is a stereotype often referred to that Jews can’t play sports. Jews are slow, they can’t jump, and they are weak. Is this true? Well, from a genetic point of view, obviously this is not true because no person is born bigger, faster, or stronger than another.
Can this stereotype be proven wrong by statisical analysis? The European basketball might have proof that this statement is incorrect. Israeli franchise Maccabi Tel Aviv has been in the finals of the Euroleague 13 times, winning 5 championships. Furthermore, in the 2009 European Championship, 4 of the 16 teams will be led by Israeli coaches. That is 25%, or a quarter of the BEST EUROPEAN TEAMS. 1 of these 4 is Israel itself, with Russia, Poland and Bulgaria also having an Israeli Coach.
Aside from being one the 16 best teams based on physical ability, Israel has gone beyond that and has the intelligence of sports needed to constuct a team and its gameplans. No longer can people say that Jews can’t play sports, or that they aren’t smart enough. At least not in basketball.
for more click here
Filed under: opinion, politics | Tags: Add new tag, Kadima, labor, likud, Livni, netanyahu, posted by joshman91
The first point to be made is one that people on both sides of the spectrum can agree with: Israel is in desperate need of new leadership (more so than the United States).
However, does Israel, like America, need “change,” or more of the same? Some on this blog would argue that the issue is not so black and white. They would say that although Livni is a member of Olmert’s disastrous Kadima Party, she is a promising, pragmatic leader that can unite Israel once and for all.
When people get excited about Livni, as I have on certain occasions, they are oblivious to the fact that she is not in touch with the majority of the country. She only won the nomination by 431 votes, and received around 20,000 votes, which is, according to the Jerusalem Post, only 1.1% of the general electorate. According to the New York Times, the Kadima Party is only made up of about 70,000 voters, and only half or so made it to the polls. All of these statistics mentioned above have caused Likud leaders (the right-wing party) to call for general elections. They argue that it is undemocratic for a small party like that to be determining the path Israel shall follow.
Filed under: politics | Tags: Election, Kadima, Livni, Mofaz, posted by zionismilves, Primary, Tzipi
Today, in Israel, there were primaries for the Kadima Party. This was the first primary for the young Kadima Party, who will now have its third Prime Minister in as many years. The winner of the primary was Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Livni. She faced off against Shaul Mofaz, current Transportation Minister and a former military chief and defense minister. She is Israel’s first female Prime Minister in 34 years, but will receive no break; she has just over a month to form a new coalition in the government or there will be new elections in 2009.
To me, Livni was the best choice for Kadima and will be the best choice for Israel if—and when, in my opinion—the coalition cannot be formed and there is a general election. This is partially because the alternatives are very bad.
Filed under: opinion, politics | Tags: brainwash, Cartooning for Peace, children, Peace Players
Many people that read the headlines and see that little progress is made whenever the Israeli Government negotiates with Palestinians believe that peace will never come. But then amazing stories such as Cartooning for Peace [the previous post] and Peace Players come up. Peace Players is an program that brings over 2,000 Jews and Arabs together to play baskteball with each other. These programs make so much progress so that someday, the next generations might be able to make peace.
What is so sad though, is when stories of brainwashing children come up in the news. According to ynetnews.com, Palestinian children as young as 11-years-old are being trained to kill Jews. As one child says, “I am learning how to fight the Jews and kill Jewish children.”
From the outside, many volunteers from other countries and from inside Israel are trying to bring the youth together so that generations to come will be tolerent of each other. But do Palestinians even want to be tolerent? Stories where children are being taught to shoot guns that are larger than themselves are just scary.
We can only hope that this is affecting only a small percentage of children in Gaza and the West Bank. Hopefully, there are more acts like Cartooning for Peace and Peace Players, and less brainwashing
Filed under: politics | Tags: child, France, Israel, Marie, murder, News, posted by aklionsky, Ronny, Rose
Most of us don’t associate “murder” with the type of news coming from Israel that make newspapers around the world.
Unfortunately, this has been the big news coming out of Israel for the past two weeks. It’s a very complicated story, involving twisted and abnormal family dynamics:
A four-year-old French girl, Rose, was murdered by her grandfather, Ronny Ron. The Rose’s mother (a French immigrant to Israel named Marie Pisam) had left her husband, Rose’s father. Marie left her husband after falling in love with her husband’s father–Ronny Ron. Then, Rose’s father took her back to France with him, while Marie and Ronny remained in Israel together. Marie won custody of Rose in December, after hearing that her father was negligent back in France.
Due to some severe learning disabilities, Ronny and Marie didn’t know how to care for her properly. Instead, Ronny’s mother (Rose’s great-grandmother) took care of her. After having a dispute with his mother, Ronny came to take Rose back. Two months later, after having not seen Rose since Ronny took her back, Ronny’s mother came to Israel’s child welfare authorities with her concerns.
Ronny has admitted to killing Rose (although there are alternate details to the story), stuffing her body in a bag, and throwing it in the Yarkon River. Ronny and Marie are currently on trial.
Needless to say, Israel is shocked—but more shocked than another country might be.
The general sentiment in response to the developing case is disbelief: “Israelis like to tell each other that in America you can fall in the street and nobody will care. Now we fear this is happening to us here,” a New York Times article quotes Israel’s channel 2 news broadcaster Oded Ben Ami as saying. The sentiment is particularly strong, because the missing and neglected girl had gone virtually unnoticed by Israeli society until a gag order was removed on August 26.
Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry official, says, “We think of [Israel] as a place where everyone is in everyone else’s business. Yet this happened here.”
Though Israelis and Palestinians might have differing views, when it boils down to it, the majority of each side is rooting for peace. Centuries of history have proven that the more conventional means for reaching a harmony (such as attempted negotiations and conferences) do not always have the desired outcome, or even a strong effect on the general public. Fortunately, many projects in recent years have focused on bringing the effort of reaching peace down from a national level to a personal one; in other words, rather than make this endeavor a heavy diplomatic one, it is being made more relatable to the people, who ultimately control the result.
One of these projects, called “Cartooning fore Peace,” took place this past June in Israel. The workshop included a diverse group of cartoonists, among them Israelis, Turks, Palestinians, Americans, French, Algerians and Egyptians. These artists had the opportunity to present their work to one another, and take part in educational sessions (whose audiences included diplomats). Israeli political cartoonist Michel Kichka, who helped to found “Cartooning for Peace” explains that the event was important because it gave these people an opportunity to talk. He says that this allows us to discover “how much we have in common and how similar is our fight.”
He also emphasizes the relevance of peace to cartooning; while it is an art, it is too often used to ridicule certain ethnicities and religious groups. He explains that the beauty of the workshop is that it teaches to not take democracy for granted. Freedom of speech is a powerful right; it can either be used forcefully for the worse, or tremendously for the better.
By appealing to the hobbies of individuals, these projects help the more unlikely of people to connect by highlighting their shared interests, and perhaps even achieving peace along the way.
