Tel Aviv Rooftop

The bright, dry winter weather we've been having seemed perfect for another trip to the Galil . On the way to our destination (thanks M&J !) we stopped off at Megiddo , known to our Christian Evangelist friends as Armageddon , site of the prophesied big battle between the forces of Good and Evil that is supposed to finish us off for good and lead to the End of Days. A sense of antiquity permeates the site, not surprising in view of its 5,000 year history. We were the only non-tourists there. The prices in the cafeteria were listed in dollars! Climbing down the impressive shaft that King Ahab (or maybe Solomon but who's quibbling?) dug to allow water from an outside spring to be collected inside the city during a siege . In nearby Park Ramat Menashe someone had thoughtfully left some public conveniences on display. Next we stopped off at two villages settled by the German Templer Christian sect in the 19 th century - Alonei Abba (Waldheim) and Bethlehem Ha- Glilit .

Since A has a deep love of elephants, oohing and aahing at them whenever they appear on National Geographic, we came up with the idea of a trip to the Safari in Ramat Gan which neither of us had ever visited. The Safari is divided into two parts a large open area where the animals graze freely and a zoo where they don't. Since today coincided with both Xmas and Eid al Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), many of the visitors were Israeli Arabs, like this family examining an African elephant. Hippo and friends at the lake on a sunny winter's day. The approximation of a real African lake is pretty convincing. For a moment there you are overtaken by the illusion that you are in , say, Kenya, and not opposite the main road to Jerusalem. Proximity to so many exotic creatures tends to clear one's mind of the issues of the day. But here and there the attitudes of the animals conjured up our human concerns. For instance, should Israel talk to Hamas or wait for it to declare a

All set up and ready to rock Last weekend Mid Life Crisis finally got together at Z & E's place in Tivon (near Haifa) for a long awaited marathon rehearsal session which we ended with a performance for friends (coming to celebrate E's birthday). For a band that manages, with difficulty, to meet every three weeks for 4 hours, this was a dream come true. The songs we had been working on sporadically began to turn into a real set, with some sort of logical order and we were finally beginning to sound tight. It was also a chance to spend some time together, relax amidst the surrounding greenery and connect to nature, to music and all that.. Danny B does yoga as the rest of the house sleeps after a long night of playing, eating and otherwise imbibing. Ageing rockers MLC in action (above) apart from Danny B (below) who seems to be playing by himself in the corner. The good people of Tivon getting on down to the raw-but-exciting sounds of MLC . Mid Life Crisis is now pois

Old arches on Salameh Street with the new police headquarters in the background. And on the fifth day of Channuka I woke up to the heartening news that racism against Israel 's Arab citizens has dramatically increased in the past year. According to a survey taken by the The Association for Civil Rights the number of Jews expressing feelings of hatred toward Arabs has doubled. According to the June 2007 Democracy Index of the Israel Democracy Institute , for example, only half the public believes that Jews and Arabs must have full equal rights. Later on I happened to be listening (it's my day off) to a phone in programme ("There's who to talk to") on the radio. A caller, young and intelligent, was complaining about the way the results of the survey had been presented in the media , "as though it was something terrible," whereas the really worrying phenomenon was the fact that the so-called "racism" figures were so low. It was extreme

A channukia a la Achbar Ha-Ir (City Mouse) , the what's on and arts guide, synthesizing the festival of lights with the festival of lighting up (click for detail). The candles on the 8 branched channukiya (or menorah as it's called outside Israel) are lit consecutively throughout the Channuka holiday. Since Channuka more or less coincides with Xmas, this extra illumination offers some compensation for the fun we are missing. Then there's the " channuka bush" - but we won't go there. That Temple oil that miraculously kept burning for 8 days, continues, every Channuka , to lubricate a small industry in Israel. Gourmet sufganniyot (traditional Channuka doughnuts) have invaded every cafe and condiotoria . Tens of thousands of kids flock to the annual Festigal childrens show , compered by the stars of the kids' TV stations. This year, the high school, students, shut out of school for over 40 days by a teachers' strike will have to spend another

Past the old factory building belonging to the Chelouche Bros . Apart from playing a very substantial role in the establishment of Ahuzat Bayit (later Tel Aviv) Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche in particular tried to mediate between Jews and Arabs in the turbulent 1920 s. Past the Suzanne Dellal Dance Centre , renovated in the 1980s, formerly two abandoned schools (originally built by Chelouche). The activity surounding the centre gave the whole of Neve Tsedek a massive boost, saving it from the bulldozers. Behind this tastefully conserved old wall lies a very expensive villa. And suddenly, just around the corner , you're in "Mexico ", an area with an apparently undecided planning future , where residents are not allowed to build. This has left this area looking like a shanty town. Down to the beach where the afternoon sunlight is having a dramatic effect on this fence put up by the contractors who are relandscaping the whole of the Clore Gardens (formerly the Arab neighbou

I've been trigger happy with the D40 and on two short forays have been knocking out an unmanageable number of photos. The photos here were taken on a sleepy shabbat morning walk down Rothschild Boulevard to Habimah (Israel's National Theatre) which is undergoing major renovations. This and other big renovation projects around the city are part of mayor Ron Huldai's attempt to exhibit an upgraded Tel Aviv in 2009 when it celebrates its centenary Habimah was never an architectural masterpiece but was recognised by its rounded, columned entrance, obliterated by an ugly glass frontage which is now being removed. Behind Habimah, and linking it to The Mann Auditorium (heychal ha-tarbut) is a green island known as Gan Ya'akov landscaped around some very old trees. Apparently, "the early settlers converged to rest on the Sabbath and to water their camels from a nearby well.". On this day the only ones converging were a few homeless people and a large number of cat