At last! Something we all agree on! Last week rabbis, imams and priests got together to jointly pray for rain. If ever there was an occasion that might have prompted me to re-think my belief that it is most unlikely there is a greater force up there looking down on us, then the successful combined prayers of the ‘Big Three’ religions to the ‘man upstairs’ might have been the clincher.  

If I tell you that since the three wise men got together in the West Bank village of Walaja we have seen temperatures shoot up to an astonishingly high 39 degrees centigrade, (that’s 102 degrees farenheit), in mid-November, about 13 degrees above the seasonal norm, you will appreciate that I have had no reason to revise my opinion. Over here, it’s drier than ‘Happy Hour’ at the Betty Ford Clinic!  

And all this after my blog of last month celebrating the few drops of rain that came our way for half an hour or so. That was it. That was the only rainfall we’ve had here since the end of March. Things are getting a little desperate. Only yesterday one of the Chief Rabbis called for a day’s fast to pray for rain. My petunias are a miserable sight and my limes have shrivelled! It’s not funny, believe me. If you go in for all that praying business, do remember to make mention of our drought situation over here and put in a good word for us. 

And now a few brief stories that have cropped up since my last missive.

Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio is reportedly thinking of building a home in Israel to share with his long-time girlfriend and Israeli-born supermodel Bar Rafaeli. He was over here this week looking at places to build and has apparently decided against the usual locations such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Herzlia etc in favour of building his own pad out in the Negev desert. Good for him. It’s an astonishingly beautiful area and his presence there might encourage others to populate the part of the country that David Ben Gurion insisted, and more recently Shimon Peres highlighted, as the one area where there is no shortage of space and plenty of room for development.

Israeli university students were involved in violent clashes with local police in Tel Aviv earlier this week as a demonstration against the passing of a bill allowing payments to yeshiva students at the expense of university students was passed by the government. As mentioned on the blog a few weeks ago, Israel’s main religious parties effectively blackmailed the Netanyahu coalition into continuing the payments - which were declared illegal by the Israeli High Court earlier this year – insisting they would leave the government and force the collapse of the Netanyahu administration if their demands to continue funding people who make little or no contribution to mainstream society were not met.



Eight arrests were made at the Tel Aviv rally and four policemen were reportedly injured in the clashes.

There was a bit of a shemozzle in the Sea of Galilee town of Tiberias last week when animal rights activists and local police  joined together to condemn and a local electrical goods store that was giving away a free sheep to every customer who spent over 1000 shekels. The offer coincided with the Muslim festival of Eid –El Adha, an occasion when the distasteful and cruel spectacle of sacrificial slaughtering of a sheep is seen as a very big deal.

There are lots of Israeli Arabs in the Tiberias area and apparently the store was overwhelmed with customers buying a vacuum cleaner, fridge or cappuccino maker, then putting their purchase in the boot of their car and the newly acquired sheep on the back seat! A couple of our woolly friends, (acting rather unsheepish in thinking for themselves), got loose in the centre of Tiberias and brought traffic to a halt before being caught and subsequently saved by animal campaigners and taken to a safe location. 

And finally...Ramle, a poor Jewish/Arab town only 15 miles from Tel Aviv, is reported to be seeing an influx of curious tourists who are making a beeline to the War Graves cemetery where the resting place of one Private Harry Potter has been causing something of a stir.

Only noticed recently by a tour guide, the grave is that of an 18-year-old British soldier who was killed in 1939 after a skirmish with local bandits. It transpires that this original Harry Potter had gone into the army at the age of 17 and lied about his birth date in order to sign up, only to sadly meet his death at such a tender age a very long way from his home town of Birmingham. Fanatical fans of the Harry Potter books and movies have now started making a pilgrimage to the graveside.

That’s all, for now. Shalom from Israel.

 

 


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