"Ajami" goes to Hollywood

And now for some local patriotism: Last night the movie "Ajami" received the Ophir prize for "Best Movie" and it will be the official selection to tthe academy awards (as in Oscars).  It's the first time a predominantly Arabic spoken movie is the official candidate.
Good luck to Scandar Copti, Yaron Sheni and all the other crew & neighbours!!

About the movie  Ajami in Arabic

The Kishle: A Victory

Tonight the plenary session of the municipal council decided by a small minority not to allow construction on top of the Kishle (Jaffa's ancient police station, a protected building).

A few years ago the Jordache company bought the "Kishle" compound, a series of buildings at the northern entrance of Jaffa on clock tower square.

The square is a lovely location, surrounded by ancient sand stone buildings. The company wants to turn the building into a hotel and applied for a construction permit which would have allowed them to build a huge addition on top of the ancient protected structure. The addition would completely change the view of Jaffa when arriving from the north.

The company used some rather dodgy techniques to hide their intentions from the public, so no one would oppose the plans.

Initially they almost succeeded and received the permit. However the appeal filed by Omar Siksik and Ahmad Mashrawi succeeded and the appeal was accepted. Oh the sweet taste of victory :) .

Rain

It's literally pouring now. I hope it  forebodes a rainy year  as we absolutely need it after such a prolonged dry period. Of course my alley is flooded, an ugly black fast flowing river carrying with it the debris and accumulated dust of the long dry season. But it makes me happy, this first rain.

Ajami, not the movie

Cinema reality.

I woke up because of the rain, the first rain of the year, the "yore" as we call it in Hebrew, after the long dry season.. I love its smell, but of course i have to open the "floodgates" of the roof so my rooftop balcony won't get flooded because of the blocked drains. The first rains bring with them everything that has gathered on the roof during the long dry summer (imagine tons of guano, feathers, dead leaves, dirt, whatever). My neighbours are out as well, doing the same little necessary job.

Then the news starts going from roof to roof:  A 22 year old guy from Jaffa was shot and killed last night at the beach. His friends took him to the nearby Wolfson Hospital, but there they could do nothing.

We don't know yet who it is. There are various rumours.  As usual, the police are investigating.
Normally we have the doubtful honour of being among the first to know, the gravedigger lives on the  corner of our alley and bad news travels quickly. I think the family may have gone for the holiday as already on Thursday they brought me a batch of Id el Fitr cookies and talked about perhaps going somewhere.

It's the first day of Id el Fitr, "Have mercy", is all i can think of. Yet another family are crying. More people in danger. Enough.

Later on i learned of the guy's identity; Samir Moghrabi.

Jaffa, New Year, Id El Fitr.

Happy Id El Fitr & Happy New Year

The Jewish New Year and Id el Fitr coincide and there can never been too few parties, Diets will be postponed, too many good home made cookies in the neighbourhood, happy New Year and Happy Id El Fitr!

Ajami, the movie

It hits you in the face, Scandar Kopti's and Yaron Sheni's movie "Ajami"' bluntly. It's overpowering.

And yes, this is where i live. It's about "my" neighbourhood.

Of course this is not going to be an objective film review. I know most , no, almost all of the actors, at least by face and some are very good friends. The cast  has been trained, but they are not professional actors, just my neighbours, more or less playing themselves, playing situations they know, reacting naturally as they would have done were the story real. It could have been real.

However, before continuing, honesty demands i admitting being ever so slightly being involved in a very very early production stage of Ajami.

The film opens with a murder scene, a case of mistaken identity, shot in HaDudaim Street. The scene sent me back to some 7 years ago, Saturday afternoon. Enjoying a glass of wine on my balcony overlooking that  street. The street is packed with children, playing outside, enjoying themselves. A motorcycle drives by, on it someone wearing a dark helmet. A few shots ring out, loud, then screams and crying, a young guy lays badly wounded on the street. It all went so fast it took me a few seconds to understand what i had just witnessed. The opening scene takes place at almost the same spot. Only on the other side of the street. In this case the guy survived. They say the murderer was someone from Ramle or Lod, and he didn't know the intended victim well enough and thus mistook him for someone else. Just like in the movie. The similarity is chilling and it doesn't stop with this scene either.

The movie is made out of a few story lines which initially seem not entirely connected, but over time they do, as in real life, as in Ajami.

Many in the audience were from Ajami, so some scenes were funny to us in a way they may not be to others.

I highly recommend, run to your nearest movie theatre.

Municipal thugging

Q. is in his seventies. A good humoured elderly man from Jaffa. His wife died several years ago, his children no longer live near by. He lives on social security (payment for the elderly)  in addition to a tiny income from selling pencils on Jaffa's streets.

Whenever i see him i buy a pencil or two. Not that i need them, but i enjoy the talk, the smile, the "salamat habibti" at the end of our conversation.

The Tel Aviv municipality has its own goon squad of controllers. Selling on the streets is not allowed. Usually Q. notices them before they see him. If it's the other way around, they will take his pencils away and warn him.

Lately they have started fining him. After all it is a punishable crime to sell a pencil n the street. His income is very low, so a fine means hunger. If you don't pay, the municipal goon squad can actually break into your home and take whatever pleases them.

Q. has very little money. He cannot afford the fines.

Of course he could stop selling pencils. But selling pencils is what he enjoys. He LIKES selling pencils.

He does not like the clubs for the elderly. For him selling pencils is part of his life as a travelling salesman, something he did when he was younger. So, NO he cannot stop selling pencils. He enjoys it, it's has become a necessary part of his life.

The simplest solution would be to make the thugs look into the other direction when they see the friendly old man and his pencils. Or maybe a friendly doctor could prescribe selling pencils as a medicine.

Iftar at my friends' home

Friends of mine, who live at Jaffa's "Arab Housing Estate" also known all over Jaffa as the "shikunat", the jungle or the zoo, invited me to share the iftar dinner.  We just sat down when the door was opened by a very scared young guy. "There's police downstairs, can i come in?". Sure, sit down, join us for iftar." 

A few seconds after, loud knocks on the door. "Open up, police". Three policemen, hands on their loaded semi-automatic rifles stand in the doorway. "Show us your ID's". 

X. who opened the door, shows her ID and that of her husband. The large family with many friends, the older daughter's husband and young child all sit around the table and watch the policemen, their hands on the triggers of their guns. "Do you live here?" they ask. Strange question, the family sitting around the dinner table makes it rather obvious. 

They leave for the neighbours' door. Nobody home there, but the door is open, so they just go in and leave with the motor helmets they found inside. 

The police are all over the neighbourhood and on the roofs of the buildings and stay there for a long time. We all stay inside, although normally we would have gone outside after dinner to enjoy the cool evening air.

My friend is worried about her teenage son. In situations like these young guys can be arrested "just for being there". 

The young guy sat with us and we talked. He is just a regular kid, but he knows the "rules". In this area you can get arrested for anything.

Jaffa, Ramadan 2009

Chasing a driver

Like a noisily buzzing fly a police helicopter has been hovering at a very low altitude above Ajami for at least half an hour now.

Somewhat earlier a policeman tried to stop a motor cyclist for a regular check somewhere in the south of Tel Aviv in the area of Giborim street. The motor cyclist didn't stop and the policeman was left badly wounded and taken into the Tel Hashomer hospital.

The cyclist wearing a dark helmet and short pants has managed to get away so far. The search for the cyclist appears to be going on, noisily, right above my head.

Shooting nearby, right now

Being at home, a little ill, i was woken up by the sound of fighting near by about half an hour ago, then shots and shouting just now.

A young guy climbing over the wall and running away over the roof of a neighbouring house, while hiding something (a gun? a knife? or maybe just his cellphone?) in the top of his pants.

Screaming. The muezzin is singing out the last sentences and my neighbours are about to sit down for dinner.

A police car arrives. Another neighbour pulling something from under his shirt and hiding it.

More shouting. Another siren getting closer. It could be police or it could be an ambulance, although in Jaffa victims are usually transported to nearby Wolfson hospital by the first available car.
Another police car arrives close to the house of my neighbours.

Several policemen are now carrying out a search outside my neighbours' house and some climbed over the wall, to search inside the yard and the house itself. They seem to know where to go. But not exactly.
The search goes on.
They are taking the house apart or so it  seems. One of the children just returned home. Not a pleasant situation.
All the neighbours stand outside on the balconies and rooftops to watch the show.

In case someone was wondering, this is the police climbing over the wall to search the yard.

Thursday morning update: police are searching all over the nearby roof tops.

Housing Demo in Kfar Shalem (Salameh)

Until 1948 Salameh was a fairly prosperous Palestinian village, close to Jaffa. Its original inhabitants and home owners were violently turned into refugees, to be replaced by mostly Yemenite immigrants. Soon after 1948 it was renamed "Kfar Shalem" and became a far away suburb of quickly developing Tel Aviv, to be engulfed by that city's new neighbourhoods after a few years. But the villge stayed the village. Lovely one and two storied houses on plots of land, encircled by fruit trees and chicken coops.

The unused mosque in its busy center. Small crooked streets. Muddy in winter and a dustbowl during the hot summer months,

Children were born, then grand children. Rooms were added, bathrooms fixed, new gardens planted. The village developed. Families shared laughter and sadness.

Suddenly the village became attractive, green, low-rise housing, romantic. And housing prices started to go up. The municipality realized there was money to be made, as did the Israel Land Administration, who had become the "owners" of the refugees' "absentee property in 1948 and rented it out to the Yemenites.

As in Jaffa, demolition and eviction procedures were started.

Some years ago, the original Yemenite inhabitants and their children were left very angry, yet almost defenceless, after one home owner was killed by the police after having barricaded himself on the rooftop of his home, in order to protest his eviction.

Two years ago several families were evicted from their homes which were then destroyed in order to make place for construction for the wealthy, just like in Jaffa. Political activities and a court case seemed to stop the process.

But now the evictions have been renewed. And a bond has been formed between the Jaffaites and the people from Kfar Shalem, Salameh, almost as in the old days. 

Like in Jaffa, people are tired of being treated like so much dirt. They are putting up a struggle and today's demo is only the opening shot in that struggle.

Several hundreds marched from the village to the nearby Moshe Dayan 4-lane highway, which they barricaded  in order to protest against the renewed evictions and demolitions. The police, for the time being, were surprisingly considerate. Or maybe i have become used too much to the Jaffa police's violent standards?

Another Jaffa family out in the streets

When R. and her 5 children came home this afternoon, they found all their furniture out in the street, much of it severely damaged and broken. The doorlock had been changed.
The house owner, well known and very wealthy Jaffa property tycoon Walid Aboulafia (of bakery fame), had abused R's absence from the hovel she had been renting from him for some three years, to evict her, illegally, without a court order.
R. asked the police to come, but the sinlge police man did not help her. "There was nothing he could", do he said. R. was under so much pressure by then, that she forgot to take his details.
In fact, it is Mr. Walid Aboulafia who broke the law by evicting her illegally, without a court order.

The flat R. rented was a 2 1/2 room affair in Jaffa's Al Ajami neighborhood. Damp, it's walls blackened by fungi. In the winter the rain entered through the cracked walls. The kitchen sink was not connected to the sewage, so R. used a bucket instead.
For over a year she and her kids had their daily shower at R's mother's tiny house, as the shower in R.'s house didn't function and the owner, rich Walid Aboulafia, refused to repair it.

R. who paid a very high rent relative to the ugly state of the house she lived in, stopped paying the rent. The owner cut off her water and electricity supply. It was easy for him to do so, because in the past, the flat had been larger and he subdevided it, one assumes without a permit. As a result R. shared the electricity and water bill with her neighbors, so it was very easy to punish her.

R. started looking for a new place, but the rents in Jaffa have gone up and all she has is her social security payments. Also many houseowners want all kinds of guarantees, which when you live on social security, you cannot easily get.

The beds were literally broken, as if they had been thrown from the second floor where she lived. Maybe they were.

Due to the Ramadan, Jaffa's streets are very quiet, so we have no witnesses to the method of furniture removal. The broken aquarium says it all, i will not ask questions about the fish. Volunteers from the Islamic movement helped R. to move her stuff (or rather that part worth salvaging) to Esther's house. Esther who's always there to help each and everyone. But the damage has been done. Five children out in the streets. Next week the schoolyear starts. I wonder how R.'s children will cope. We could not find their new schoolbooks in the mess.

Ramadan, Jaffa 2009

What the.....

Over the last several days large groups of armed soldiers have been seen walking around Ajami and GanTamar every evening, going into the small alleys, only known to locals who live there.

Carrying enlarged arial photographs, they walk around, often loosing their way and backtracking. When asked, they say they are doing "urban navigation" exersises. Really?

In Liebermanland i start to feel more and more uncomfortable.

Ramadan Karim

The Siksik mosque, originally constructed in the 1880-ies, partially demolished by a bomb during the Naqbe, abused by the Keter Plastic Factory between 1960-2006 and reconstructed by the community in 2009, was inaugurated last wednesday, just before Ramadan.

Jaffa's Palestinian community was deeply involved in the reconstruction and building. At the same time the community was built by the concentrated effort of reconstructing a lovely mosque.

The inauguration was attended by over 500 community members, as well as Sheikh Raed Salah of the northern section of the Islamic movement and knesset member Ibrahim Zarsur of the southern section of the Islamic movement..

The tension which often exists between those two sections was not present. There was a feeling of pride and unity.

Ramadan Karim to the Jaffa community and all those to whom it applies.

Mum & three kids became homeless today

Manal Haj is a single mother of three school age children. They are all out on the street , homeless.

Three days before the onset of the Ramdan and two weeks before the beginning of the school year, Manal and her children have nowhere to go after Halamish, the public housing company evicted them from their home today.

The story is one of those burocratic flipflops, as Manal has been eligible for public housing for over 13 years, but due to change in the type of social security she receives, the payments were stopped for some three months, after which she started receiving a different category of social security.

In order to be elegible for public housing, you need to be dependent for at least two years on social security. Manal receibed social security for 13 years, but during 3 months last year she didn't receive a thing and as a result lost her housing rights.

Quote of the week, by Robert Paxton

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline......... a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

From: Robert Paxton, emeritus professor of History at Columbia University, The Five Stages of Fascism

Hmmm, sounds a lot like Israel.

A New Home for the Marzouk Family

The Marzouk family from Jaffa were living in a dangerous building, that was about to fall down.
The public housing company, Halamish, offered them another home, but due to burocracy and municipal stupidity, the family were stuck in the old home.
I wrote about the family's ordeal a few weeks ago, after one of the children was almost killed by a huge piece of concrete that fell from the ceiling.
The story was picked up by Yediot Ahronot, Israel's favorite daily and this week the family finally moved into their new home.

On chasing humans

The migration police was/is at it, once again, chasing refugees and labor migrants in order to expel them.

And, legally speaking, anyone who gives shelter or otherwise assists "illegal aliens" , can be tried and sent to jail for up to 20 years!. Although i suspect the law is meant for traffickers, it applies to anyone assisting an "illegal alien". I wonder if it applies to the social workers of "mesila", the municipal social services agency for migrant laborers, to the volunteer teachers of the "noar oved velomed" youth movement, who run a wonderful educational project for migrant and refugee children in Jaffa, to the teachers of the Bialik rogozin school where many of the migrant and finally to myself, as i am part of a project of volunteers who go out and try to warn migrant laborers and refugees whenever the police carry out their nasty hunt parties.

When ever we hear about the hunt activities, we come quickly and notify people in the area to be careful. We also make photographs of the activities, so people can familiarize themselves with thefaces of the undercover migrant police and stay out of their way as much as possible.

Today it was my turn. I got an SMS message and was off. The area of the central bus-station. By now the migrantion ;olice have become aware of our presence so they try to trick us, by diverting us to "non-actions" while the real "hunt" takes place in the next street. But this was no game. People are being hunted down, imprisoned and sent back to countries where they may be in severe danger.

Small children, many of them born here, who have never known any other place can be jailed and eported to a place they do not know. Loose there parents in the case of parents coming from different countries.

Yet at the same time the country brings in more and more migrant laborerers, through private labor agencies who make huge amounts of money on each migrant worker.

Corruption and a disregard for basic human rights go hand in hand.

The shakshuka method

Miki Rozental and Ilan Aboudi made a documentary film exposing the alleged abuse of wealth and power by the Ofer brothers, called "The Shakshuka Method".

The Ofer brothers are the owners or main shareholders of various companies, some of which were sold to them by the state below their actual value, so it seems. Some of these factories are heavily poluting the country, yet nothing is done against it. As they are also media owners, it's very difficult to say anything against them. We are not talking about "slight" polution, but about truly poisoning the country and affecting our health.

Miki Rozental and Ilan Aboudi have been sued by the Ofer brothers, who started to threaten them with a lawcase even before the movie was finished.

The lovely brothers have also been doing everything they can to prevent the movie, which was finished about 1 year ago, from being screened. Miki (and Ilan maybe too) are facing a 3 million NIS lawsuit and Mati Shmuelof has started an interesting online campaign to assist the movie makers in their legal defence. Even if they win, having to fight such a lawsuit in court is very expensive for the moviemakers.

the Ofer brothers are among the 20 rich families in the country and their relation with the political elite appears to be very problematic. Money buys power and big money buys control.

The Ofer brothers also donate to hospitals etc. in order to make a "nice" impression. (Donations are recognized for tax purposes, so it is worthwhile donating: you receive a lot of free PR and pay less tax).

The "Shakshuka method" (which has hardly been screened) will be screened by channel one this tuesday, July 28, at 20.30 . It will be followed by another film, made by the Ofer brothers as a reaction.

It should be noted that the "Yes" channel, who partially fuded the making of the movie, copped out after the makers refsued to carry out modifications in their movie as demanded by the channel. One wonders why...

I guess i have to find someone with a TV. Youtube shows only bits and pieces.

The Etrog market, a temporary victory

The Israel Land Administration has been legally ordered to not hand over the 20 appartment plot on Mendes France street to "beemuna", the contracter who wants to sell only to nationalist religious buyers.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel appealed the sale of public land to the ultra right wing group on behalf of the Jaffa Coalition of Organizations protecting the land and housing rights of the Palestinian community.

As a result the sale has been -temporarily- frozen. A small victory in the fight against gentrification and land theft!