'State of Levinsky' - South Tel Aviv

The dark side of Tel Aviv

Danny Adino Ababa..
Ynet Magazine..
07 June '12..







(Assuming the description by the author is reasonably accurate, one must conclude that this has become a problem that required attention yesterday, and can no longer continue being unattended to. Not only for the residents of South Tel Aviv, but for the State of Israel itself. Y.)

“First, you must steal or find Saharonim shoes,” James instructed me. “Otherwise, the people at the park will immediately suspect you.”
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James is a veteran infiltrator, fully aware of the balance of power in the parallel universe of Levinsky Park, the Sudanese and Eritrean stronghold in southern Tel Aviv. This universe has its own codes of dress, language and behavior, and in order to fit in I had to receive comprehensive instructions. Wearing the right clothes wasn’t enough. For the purpose of the journalistic assignment I faced – posing as a refugee for a week – I had to cut my long hair and shave my beard, my two trademarks in the past seven years. In the State of Levinsky people notice the finest details, and James (pseudonyms are used throughout this story) asserted that I couldn’t have arrived from the desert with my dreadlocks and a well-groomed goatee.

“Ok, but what the hell are Saharonim shoes?” I ask James. Listen,” he replies, “when the infiltrators cross the border and are nabbed by the IDF, all of them – men, women, children, babies – are taken to Saharonim, the new detention center at the Negev. There, they get new shoes, sort of slippers, which they use when they arrive at Levinsky Park. Saharonim shoes are the trademark of every refugee in his first days in the park. If you arrive without them, they’ll suspect you. Be careful. As it is, you don’t look like an ordinary refugee.”

Eventually I met an infiltrator who agreed to sell me his Saharonim shoes for seven shekels. “When you go to sleep, put them under your head; otherwise you won’t find them in the morning,” he said. “You should know that they steal everything; anything that moves.”

Kushner - From Israel: Transcending the News

Arlene Kushner..
25 May '12..

There comes a time when it is important to move beyond the trap of current events and look higher. Such a time is coming with the holiday of Shavuot, which will be celebrated on Sunday here in Israel, and also on Monday outside of Israel.

Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.

It was a transformative and singular moment of direct revelation. It involved all of the people of Israel, who were present and received the word of the Almighty with fear and trembling.

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I rather like this Aish video about Shavuot, and so share it here:

http://www.aish.com/h/sh/video/The_Day_that_Shook_the_World.html

The world is decidedly reluctant to give us, as Jews, our rightful place. But the reality is that through the transmission of a code of values at Sinai, the Almighty set into action the process by which Am Yisrael (the people Israel) would become a light unto the nations.

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The struggle of how to be true to that heritage, marks, I think, one particular painful and difficult controversy in which Israel is currently embroiled: That is, the controversy over what to do with the thousands of African immigrants (currently about 80,000) who have made their way illegally into Israel.

Regional Outreach

J.E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
27 October 09

Iranian ships loaded with weapons keep turning up in the darnedest places. The latest report is that Yemeni authorities on Monday seized an Iranian ship in their waters trying to deliver anti-armor rounds to Yemen’s Shia Zaidi rebels. Especially noteworthy is that the ship was seized on Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Yemenis say the ship is not the first to pull into the Eritrean port of Asmara and then cross the Red Sea to deliver weapons to the Zaidi insurgents. The Yemeni press, in fact, reports that Iran is training Zaidi rebels in Eritrea. Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh insisted earlier this year that the Zaidi (or al-Houthi) rebels are being trained by Hezbollah.

Iran’s 2008 basing agreement with Eritrea has received minimal attention in the West, in part because there is little new information on any developments related to it. Radio France International reported in May that Iranian warships and a submarine had been observed in Asmara along with a unit of Iran’s Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary force. If a submarine were actually present, it would have been one of Iran’s mini-submarines, small one- or two-man submersibles with a very restricted range of operations. Iran has long cultivated a mini-submarine threat to shipping in restricted waters. As for the warships, Iran is using Asmara for the replenishment of its antipiracy patrol ships.

Israel, of course, has expressed concern over this Iranian Red Sea presence, and analysts have connected it with the overland arms route for Hamas, interdicted in a dramatic air raid over Sudan in February. Somalia watchers continue to warn that Iranian arms are flowing to al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgency in southern Somalia, through Eritrea. Riyadh is now increasingly concerned about Iran’s support to the Yemeni rebels, whose stronghold in western Yemen is on the poorly guarded border with Saudi Arabia. The rebels claimed last week that they came under attack from Saudi forces when operating near the border, a credible claim given the level of Saudi disquiet.

The evidence is relentless: arming regional insurgents and terrorists is what Iran commits its limited resources to. Arranging forward logistics for the effort in a strategically positioned port is a measure of that commitment. The same commitment is to be expected to threats like holding global shipping at risk and deploying ballistic missiles to the Red Sea coast. We are already seeing the regional initiatives Iran will feel even freerto mount once it has nuclear weapons. It is a fatal error to suppose that we will feel just as free, under those conditions, to oppose them.

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