'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.

Pipes - South Sudan, Israel's New Ally

Daniel Pipes..
danielpipes.org..
The Washington Times..
03 January '12..



It's not every day that the leader of a brand-new country makes his maiden foreign voyage to Jerusalem, capital of the most besieged country in the world, but Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, accompanied by his foreign and defense ministers, did just that in late December. Israel's President Shimon Peres hailed his visit as a "moving and historic moment." The visit spurred talk of South Sudan locating its embassy in Jerusalem, making it the only government anywhere in the world to do so.

This unusual development results from an unusual story.

Today's Sudan took shape in the nineteenth century when the Ottoman Empire controlled its northern regions and tried to conquer the southern ones. The British, ruling out of Cairo, established the outlines of the modern state in 1898 and for the next fifty years ruled separately the Muslim north and Christian-animist south. In 1948, however, succumbing to northern pressure, the British merged the two administrations in Khartoum under northern control, making Muslims dominant in Sudan and Arabic its official language.

Accordingly, independence in 1956 brought civil war, as southerners battled to fend off Muslim hegemony. Fortunately for them, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's "periphery strategy" translated into Israeli support for non-Arabs in the Middle East, including the southern Sudanese. The government of Israel served through the first Sudanese civil war, lasting until 1972, as their primary source of moral backing, diplomatic help, and armaments.

Mr. Kiir acknowledged this contribution in Jerusalem, noting that "Israel has always supported the South Sudanese people. Without you, we would not have arisen. You struggled alongside us in order to allow the establishment of South Sudan." In reply, Mr. Peres recalled his presence in the early 1960s in Paris, when then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and he initiated Israel's first-ever link with southern Sudanese leaders.