Spring fever, Israeli style

Birdsong, blossoms and sunbeams -- spring definitely has sprung in Israel. Fields of wildflowers --red anemones, wild mustard and blue field iris --bloom beyond Jerusalem's Peace Forest and scent the fresh breezes. Alas, there's not much love in the air yet. Smiles are scarce in a place where rancor and mistrust rule. Blood still is the overriding odor, at least subliminally.

Down in the dunes of Holon, south of Tel Aviv, the locals are reeling after a hot-headed guy was murdered over a parking spot dispute

"Today people murder each other over anything - a dog, a woman, so what's so surprising that this happened?," one mother told a reporter.

After a brief weekend lull, the violence has ramped up again. Not a big surprise. A Qassam rocket struck Ashkelon yesterday, shortly after the departure of the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the IDF forces killed five Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank and arrested 30 more in Nablus.

Edginess is almost palpable. For days, local police in Jerusalem have refused to release the body of Abu Ala Dheim, the gunman killer who killed eight teens at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva and wounded 10 more. Authorities fear that if more than 5 family members attend his funeral, it may erupt into a media feeding frenzy or a literal bloodbath. They require burial by night with no martyr's fanfare. A fansite posted on Facebook has drawn condemnation for praising the horrific slaying as "an heroic act" across graphic photos of the dead students from the Zionist seminary.



According to television news reports,some yeshiva students have threatened to take revenge for the school shooting spree by attacking a senior Palestinian official at the al Aqsa Mosque, the volatile sacred site which Jews call the Temple Mount. An attack at this mosque could prompt a outbreak of violence across Israel and the Palestinian territories. Israeli police say they have prepared for the possibility of vengeance, but so far there have been no arrests. Demands for 100 new houses to be erected in settlements for each murdered student are frequently heard; expansion in the settlement was officially announced, much to the scorn of peacemaker Condi Rice.

So the next thing on the agenda is the arrival of America's Darth Vader... America's Vice President Dick Cheney is on the way to "prod for peace" in the Holy Land. Republican presidential candidate John McCain may show up as well, we are told, to further establish his security credentials while he woos Jewish voters.

Israelity bites

Rice, Wine, and Beer for Jerusalem's simmering summer nights

During the brief visits of Condoleezza Rice, the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem goes into security overdrive. Half of the parking structure gets cordoned off for her entourage, and so does the gym, where she goes through her power paces in relative privacy. Condi's first name may translate as "Play it with sweetness", but the trainers there marvel at her fitness and what a mean machine her disciplined daily regimen has shaped...especially compared to, say, Madeleine Albright. All those sweaty repetitions won't necessarily yield the same result for Condi on the diplomatic front, however; it's difficult to see anything especially encouraging this time around, with the weaklings Olmert and Abbas weighing in on the Middle East's future. If the Saudis do participate in autumn talks with the State of Israel, which Riyadh has yet to recognize, it would certainly mark a diplomatic breakthrough. But no one is holding their breath that Israel will agree to speak about only "core issues."
To offset this discouraging political and physical workout, lots of Jerusalemites this week quaffed wine beneath the stars at the Israel Museum's Billy Rose sculpture garden. There were spittoons for proper wine tasting during the three-night wine fest, but most people tossed back entire glassfuls. Izzy Bee even spotted a smiling haredi baby lapping up the dregs from his papa's wineglass. Avi Ben, one of Jerusalem's premier wine shops, was a co-sponsor and laid on classic jazz quartets as well as discounting cases.

Kosher Israeli wine is a a far cry from the cough-syrupy Manischewitz clones that I was dreading, and sipping pinot grigio or syrah varietals while strolling around statues by artists such as Oldenberg, Picasso, Botero, and Henry Moore made us feel very sophisticated for a measly outlay of 55 shekels, which included a stemmed wineglass. Towards the end of the evening, you really had to cajole the pourers for a splash of higher-end wines, but there were 25,000 litres of the stuff on offer. So no gripes about these grapes. For the past two decades, wineries have been a growth industry in what ought to be considered a Mediterranean country.

Tasting stands for Tulip, the boutique Kaslov, Saslove, and Teperberg were popular. Yatir and Recanati, Galil Mountain Wineries and Golan Heights drew a trendy younger crowd, many wearing yarmulkes. Thankfully, we could detect no after-tang of Katyusha smoke or gunpowder in the wines harvested from northern vineyards under rocketfire last summer.

For the hoi polloi like me, there was a competing beer festival in town for just half the entry fee. Everyone toted around plastic pints that resembled test tubes, and some competed in spontaneous belching contests. Apparently boutique beer is due to be the next craze, but this event had more the spirit of a keg party than a tasting. An inflatable corona bottle loomed over the grounds, a jolly reminder that West Jerusalem is a very motley mix.
If you want to making a meal out of such comparisons, let's consider what you might wash down with the Mexican beer. A typical Jerusalem menu might include
Arab salad, Romanian kebabs, Iraqi pita, French fies and Bavarian Cream.
If Israelis devour the same food as anti-Semites with such gusto, then maybe we ought to challenge the old adage that you are what you eat.

I'll drink to that, Condi!

It's Official: Blair's the new Mid-East Peace Envoy

It took 24 hours for the Quartet to sing from the same page, but the job of Middle East Peace Envoy has been accepted by Britain's Tony Blair, the man who took ten years to convert Cool Brittannia to Cruel Brittannia in the view of most Middle Easterners. It remains to be seen whether he waives the rules for conflict resolution in this seething troublespot. Will he deal with Hamas? (Mahmoud Abbas, the West's choice for Palestinian President insists on 'no dialogue with putschists, murderers and terrorists') Will the man who helped quell the troubles in Northern Ireland make any difference in the land of Guns and Moses?

"He's not superman, doesn't have a cape," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters.

"He's not designed to be doing that. What he is designed to do is to work as an aggressive facilitator"

Ah, so that's what Blair is meant to be. Bush assured a London tabloid that "Blair ain't my poodle", and now the White House has clarified what kind of cute animal tricks it has in mind.

One of Blair's last meetings as Prime Minister was office with California's musclebound Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is as close to a superhero as US politics can get. His Austrian father famously was in the SS. The wartime exploits of Gustav Schwarzenegger, a brownshirt and "Chained Dog", have caused critics to hound the Republican politician, who clinked glasses with the ex-Nazi Kurt Waldheim at his own wedding banquet. Arnie has been able to make nice with conciliatory visits to Jerusalem, after these revelations, and even can negotiate family feasts with a bunch of Kennedys (his in-laws). The larger-than-life politician may be able to lend Blair some handy diplomatic catch phrases, ie "Hasta la Vista, Baby..." to replace that one that Ms Condi Rice seems to have worn out: "I'll be back!"
Tony is eagerly changing hats for this new role, says the BBC.