atlanta craigslist > housing wanted (part 2)

staying with relative since i got back from iraq but she lives middle of nowhere snellville...

i had more fun in iraq. this place sucks... need a break

Less than three weeks ago, I posted atlanta craigslist > housing wanted to share — no, really more to cry out — my horror and sorrow on reading the ad of a fellow's exquisite pain on being rejected as a candidate for housing on account of the color of his skin. (Craigslist, the mother of all online urban communities, is among many ways and places I advertise to sublet my home . . . and comb ads of housing seekers while I live the next months in Tel Aviv.)

Visitors who read that post and left comments resonated with what the housing seeker spoke to — injustice, unfairness, violence, and cruelty we witness (and, sometimes even perpetrate) in our society.

Yet I don't know what to make of the advertiser who identifies himself as military male, the human being who wrote: i had more fun in iraq.

• What kind of a military or civilian person, male or female imagines this perversion?
  
• What kind of life has he lived that shaped the sentence: i had more fun in iraq?
  
• What was he doing in Iraq? Where is he going?
  
• What is the USA doing in Iraq? Where are we going?
  
• What can I do to help stop this obscene war, expose the vulgarity of the enterprise, push back the dogged ignorance, greed, hell-bent arrogance, and mean spirit of its champions, decision-makers, and cannon fodder — destroying a country, and calling it fun?

Zichron Menachem in "Green" Holland refreshes Ohad

You haven't already met my cousin Ohad in person or via these three previous blog entries?

• When a child starts to go bald כשילד מתחיל להקריח (English and Hebrew versions) on Ohad's health crisis and his thoughts on becoming bald temporarily
• Ohad is Bar Mitzva!
  
• Ohad's timely email on my flight from Tel Aviv to Atlanta to resume my other "other" life

No problem. This update can inspire you to claim as your shining light the bright, sensitive, and loving 13-year-old from the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem, Israel.

With his Zichron Menachem pals, counselors, and a bevy of Zamzamiot (B’not Sherut Leumi [National Service Girls] volunteers), our hero spent a week in Holland this summer!

Zichron Menachem, an internationally recognized prize-winning organization that has been supporting kids with cancer and their families in Israel since 1990, led the odyssey for scores of participants — free to this special population, without discrimination to religion, ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status. (I culled these photos of Ohad from the many hundreds on the trip that the organization posted to its web site.)

Q&A via Skype

"The experience was brimming with attractions, and there were solutions for all [to participate] — crippled and wheelchair-bound kids, among them," Ohad related in our conversation on Skype the other day. "The counselors were so devoted. Nothing was lacking."

• Me: About Holland — how did you find the country?
  Ohad: It's amazing. Everywhere it's green — trees, plants, bushes, everything is green!
  

• Did you get homesick?
  Not at all. It was nice taking a break from everything.

• How was the Dutch food?
  We brought everything from Israel because many participants keep kosher, and we needed easy access [to food that fulfills requirements of Jewish dietary law].

• What was the best part?
  The go-carts!

• Uriel [eldest brother] told me you were recently featured on Jerusalem radio. What was that about?
  Zichron Menachem asked me to talk about the organization.
  

• No surprise they picked you!
  [never one to boast] Because I am the oldest in the group now.

• Your dad told me you played guitar and sang at a recent commencement ceremony.
  That was for a big graduation for the Zamzamiot, and I played the popular Israeli song, Achshav Tov [Now, it's good].
  

Achshav Tov [Now, it's good]

Oh, is it ever good when this young man chooses to sing this song.

And in just a few weeks, Ohad will resume his school studies with his class after an amazing summer that concluded an amazing twelve months.

During this year, close to when he became a Bar Mitzva, Ohad shared with me some meanings and messages he formulated since he has been fighting leukemia.

Life experiences shape us. When I meet children as young as age four in the hospital, I have great compassion for them because they don't understand why they must get treatments and take medicines they don't like. OK, I am young, too, though I understand, and it helps.

As is his name — in Hebrew, "will sympathize," so is Ohad. In the photo shown below, a sympathetic young man, in the red sweater, shares his feelings openly, understands those of another easily, and expresses compassion freely.


NOTE I dedicate this post to a dear friend, Rabbi Dr. Michael Berger who, on learning of Ohad's health crisis, immediately included Ohad in his personal prayers during the daily prayer services. He also added Ohad ben Ditza to the list for the MiSheberach blessing for healing at the Young Israel, Atlanta. Michael, who has not yet met Ohad, is among the righteous souls who walk this earth.

atlanta craigslist > housing wanted

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Bookmarked: Israeli English-language blogs

So where in the blogosphere do I turn for news on life in Israel?

• Independent Israeli journalist Lisa Goldman recently made a couple of trips (passport in full view of government airport authorities) to Lebanon, causing no small amount of buzz, horror, gratitude, and awe on both sides of the border and beyond. Lisa lays out her tourist goals and itinerary in recent On the Face posts and in her replies to scores of comments on those posts and in some traditional media. For a random sample of what became a cause celebre, and the attendant conversation, watch Lisa dialog with a Lebanese professor on CNN's "International Correspondents" on his (and some others') criticism about the journalistic ethics of her coverage of life in Beirut, one year after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. Then browse her blog.

Uploaded by zenith87

• At Not a Fish (profile: The meaningless chatter of your regular split personality Israeli mother no longer trying to make sense of current insanity) Imshin shouts, pouts, mourns, laughs, opines, doubts, and questions goings-on where she lives (with her husband and daughters Eldest and Youngest). To bring home her points, she shares personal stories and family history along with Israel's stories and history. Her captivating writing and images (verbal, visual, and sound) that cover what's on TV, in the market, on the streets (for example, bicycle helmets . . . she disses them), and in the fields make Imshin an incredible credible voice of a political view more conservative, or closer to the "right," than where my instincts usually lead me. Why does this difference draw me here when so many other different voices repel? Perhaps clues can be found in these labels, among several by which she organizes her posts: pretending to know something and politics - yuck.
  
  Or in this example post: Monday, May 10, 2004
  Israel is not all about abusing Palestinian rights, you know
  
  . . . Anti-Zionists don’t seem to realize, or care, that abolishing the State of Israel, would create terrible suffering and misery, and it would probably not even alleviate all the suffering of the Palestinian people (at least part of which is self-inflicted, and will continue to be so, until they learn to take responsibility for their fate, regardless of Israel). . . .
  
  
• Poet, performance artist, Tel Aviv University professor, traveler, restaurant goer, recreational shopper, and tireless advocate for survivors' rights, Karen Alkalay-Gut's Tel Aviv Journal reads in staccato-like scream [yes!]-of-consciousness on exactly how she sees, understands, and responds to teeny and huge issues as they impact Israelis and their neighbors one person, neighborhood, balcony, and bunker at a time.
  
  Example: August 5, 3007. My friend calls up to invite me to join her in the march in Jerusalem in protest of the lack of government support for Holocaust survivors. They've been waiting for the money that was supposed to be given them years ago, and are dying out. Since they are always with me, the survivors, it seemed natural that I should join. And I've never been a friend of this government. . . . I want to know what happened to that money. I want to know what has taken so long and now that the government has finally made the first offer ever, why it is so low (84 shekel per month). And I continue to believe that the survivors were never compensated properly by this society which rejected the whole image of the victim, even while we based our national identity on the fact of these very victims. We don't like victims.
  
  
• Immediately below the header, Occupied, Yudit writes, The word "home" carries many associations. Mine is located in Jaffa (Yafo), once (meaning before 1948) "The Bride of the Sea," now a slummy southern Tel Aviv suburb. Yudit, a photographer who illustrates her work with text, covers Middle East politics, human rights, community involvement, and things right smack in front of you: street names, explosions, demolitions, nature's course. Yudit's exquisite sensibilities sometimes veer to the "left" of my responses, and I welcome the resulting tension. She makes me think or rethink, especially so-called moral or ethical issues. At the companion blog, Occupied Image, Yudit explains her mission: שלוש מאות ששים וחמשה צילומים בשנה כל יום תמונה חדשה . . . [my translation] 365 photographs in a year, every day a new photograph. What grabbed me on a random first visit to this blog pair? The photograph shown below, titled: Monday, May 2, 2007, In the neighborhood.
  

So where else in the blogosphere can you turn for English-language news on life in Israel? English-writing Israeli-bloggers lists pages of blogs of every stripe, persuasion, style, message, focus, and look and feel.

And when you find a voice that, as in my four bookmarked blogs, is free from nonsense, self-absorption, stridency, and dogma, let me know. Oh, and I would also be grateful for recommendations of male voices.