Just for fun.

It was the 12th annual No Pants Subway Ride and thousands of people in 17 countries participated in the stunt.

This year, for the first time, people went pants-less in Jerusalem.

As Daniel Estrin reports, that was a daring thing to do in a city filled with large populations of religiously devout Jews and Muslims.

This report was produced in collaboration with Tablet Magazine.

“There’s a long heritage of theater in Russia that we don’t have in Israel,” said Israeli-born actor Yuval Yanai, who performs with Gesher. “The sets are very elaborate. And they are very big. The visual aspect of the theater is very, very important. So, you know, the things we know about theater [are] less evolved than what they know about the theater.”

Russian theater, of course, has a long and storied history: Think Chechov and Pushkin. That tradition found its way to Israel 20 years ago. Lena Krendlin, the director of Gesher, said that as the Soviet Union was collapsing, she and a group of Jewish theater directors sat in her Moscow kitchen and plotted their escape.

“I don’t think we wanted to come to Israel. I think we wanted to leave Russia. Like, you want to go out of the prison. It was the feeling. We wanted fresh air. We thought probably, we will come to Israel, we will establish some theater, and we will live like kings,” Krendlin says.

That’s not exactly how things turned out. She and the group of directors and actors all moved to Israel together. As they were preparing for their first show in 1991, the Gulf War broke out. Iraqi Scuds rained down on Tel Aviv in the middle of rehearsals. They dodged in and out of bomb shelter wearing gas masks. Not a very encouraging start to their new lives. But the war ended just in time for their debut.

“We started with “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” by Tom Stoppard. It was a very strange decision by our artistic director. Because everybody told us, you have to start with play about Russian immigrants. It’s supposed to be very familiar, very miserable, very simple. And we started from I think the most complicated play in the world,” she says.

The cast performed it entirely in Russian. Israeli audiences listened to a Hebrew translation through headsets — and they loved it. One newspaper critic hailed Gesher’s debut as “The Russian Miracle of Israeli Theater.” The cast kept performing in Russian, and a few years later, started doing Hebrew versions on alternating nights. The actors still didn’t have a firm grasp of Hebrew — they rehearsed from scripts transliterated into Cyrillic characters.

Backstage, it feels like you’re in Moscow. Stagehands and directors chat in Russian. The costume boxes are all labeled in Russian, too.

On stage, though, it’s somewhere in between Moscow and Tel Aviv. Today all of Gesher’s plays are in Hebrew with Russian and English subtitles projected on a screen above the stage. Some of the actors speak Hebrew in thick Russian accents. But half of the cast doesn’t speak a word of Russian, and neither does most of the audience.

So is it a Russian theater or an Israeli theater?

The director responds, “When we are asked ‘who you are,’ we are starting to think. It’s a sign that we are in between. Probably we are the bridge. You know, our theater, the name of the theater is bridge.” Gesher is Hebrew for bridge.

“One side of the bridge we’re in Russia, and we pass this bridge slowly slowly, and I think now we are close to another side,” Krendlin said.

Gesher Theater is hailed as one of Israel’s leading theaters. Now Gesher’s artistic staff has decided to reveal its secrets: It’s planning to launch a school for aspiring Israeli actors and directors.

Reporter Daniel Estrin speaks with Marco Werman about how the school shooting resonates with Israelis.

It’s about a small medallion that soldiers in one paratrooper battalion wear around their necks. The army says the medallion is offensive to women, and has banned the soldiers from wearing it. In protest, the soldiers wreaked havoc on their base.

In a country where most are required to serve, this has become a national debate.

You may remember hippies in the 60s wearing necklaces with tiny vials of patchouli oil. It’s amber colored and has a musky fragrance. And as the story goes, hippies would wear it to cover up the smell of smoking or drug use or not showering for a few days.

In the 202 Battalion of the Israeli paratroopers, patchouli vials are fabled to carry an entirely different liquid, as former paratrooper Eli Levy explained at the coffee shop where he works.

Now, a warning: this is a bit suggestive.

Eli Levy, 29, wears a t-shirt from his army days, depicting his batallion’s mascot: a winged patchouli vial. (Photo Credit: Daniel Estrin)

“The story tells that soldiers in the beginning would put perfume of their girlfriends, and afterwards they put something else. It’s a special liquid,” Levy said.

Levy acknowledged that some people might see the practice as disgusting or wrong, disrespectful of women.

But, he said, “I think of the thousand people who wear the patchouli, only a few do this ‘by the book.’ Some of them put alcohol. Some of them put nothing.”

But no matter what is or isn’t actually inside most of the patchouli vials, the army could no longer tolerate the symbolism of what it might be. They claim the custom is degrading to women and unbecoming of Israeli combat soldiers. This summer the army banned paratroopers in the 202 Battalion from wearing the pendants.

The soldiers’ response to the patchouli ban wasn’t pretty. An Israeli TV report showed tables and equipment that recruits had strewn around their base near the border with Lebanon. Then this month, eight soldiers were reportedly booted out of the unit because they refused to comply with the patchouli ban.

One soldier interviewed for the TV report – whose voice was garbled so it could not be identified – justified the protest.

When your soul hurts, he said, you can’t function.

Levy, the former paratrooper, agrees. When he served from 2001-2004, he filled his patchouli vial necklace with his girlfriend’s Armani perfume. Back then he didn’t have a cellphone and would go weeks without contacting his girlfriend. So when he was on guard duty, or after he returned from a mission, the patchouli vial would comfort him.
“I took a good shower, went to sleep after 2-3 days without regular sleeping, open the vial, smell it, close it, go to sleep smiling.”

Levy said soldiering is tough work, with long stretches of intense boredom or incredible fear – and often no trips home. Levy said the patchouli pendant was that one special thing that kept up soldiers’ morale.

“If they serve almost for free their country, let them do what they want. So if it makes them happy, and if it’s not that offending, because this is only a stories that men invented, okay, so let them do it,” Levy added.

The patchouli tradition has persisted for about three decades. The last time the Israeli army reportedly tried to stop it was three years ago. Soldiers revolted. After that revolt, patchouli was back in, until it was banned again this summer.

Archaeologist Emma Cunliffe at the ruins of Halibiyah, Syria, before the Syrian civil war began. The site is due to be partially flooded by the creation of a dam in the near future. (Photo courtesy of Emma Cunliffe)

Every day she goes online, sometimes for a few hours, to monitor the Facebook feeds of local Syrian groups for word about damaged sites. She’ll scroll past horrific photos of dead children till she comes across mention of a new archaeological site that was shelled or plundered. She says it’s incredible just how much you can find out from these posts.

“It’s a new world online now,” she says. “The prevalence of social networking sites like Facebook, ease of access to YouTube, and the way that most people’s mobile phones can take video, means that, all those people who are desperate to share information have a real easy way to upload it and make it accessible.”

Cunliffe did her Ph.D research on monitoring Syrian archaeological sites with satellite imagery. When fighting turned fierce in Syria, she began to consult imagery much closer to the ground – videos and photos posted by concerned Syrian citizens. Sites were being damaged and also looted.

“As much as some people in an area might loot others will be quite horrified by the fact that’s happening,” Cunliffe says. “So there are videos, for example, of looting at at least two of the dead cities.”

The YouTube video above is one she found, showing damage and looting to one of those dead cities of northern Syria. These were cities built between the first and eighth centuries and then suddenly abandoned. They’re a favorite of archaeologists.

“The preservation is incredible,” Cunliffe says. “They are like being in ghost towns. That’s why they are called the dead cities.”

A Syrian citizen shot the video, and set it to somber traditional music. It documents extensive looting to the ancient ruins there, including Roman tombs dating to the first century.

A memo from the Syrian prime minister leaked last year claimed that criminals specializing in the theft of antiquities had smuggled special tools and satellite communication devices into Syria and were planning daring thefts at museums.

And indeed, some ancient statues have been reported stolen.

“It’s hard to know where they ended up,” Cunliffe says. “They’re rumored to have been sold on the black markets of Japan, Russia and the Gulf countries. So for example a cylinder seal, a Bronze Age artifact you would find in Syria or Iraq. They’re about the size of my thumb. These used to be worth 1,000 pounds, 10,000 pounds ($16,000). There was one that went for about 250,000 [pounds] last year. The prices on these things are increasing exponentially. Which can only reflect an increase in demand.”

Cunliffe says the Syrian government’s antiquities department has started a campaign to try to educate the public not to loot. Still, the list of damaged and plundered sites continues to grow.

The ruins of Afamia in Syria. They have since been looted and damaged by tanks, military emplacements and shelling. (Photo courtesy of Emma Cunliffe)

Cunliffe’s report on damaged historical sites in Syria was published in May, but it’s already out of date. Now the table of contents runs eight pages long, single spaced. But what’s the point of all of this documenting, when people are dying and you’re so far away?

“It’s a fair question,” she says, and it’s a question Cunliffe says some of her colleagues in the archaeology world have been asking. They wonder what’s the use of observing damage from afar. Her answer is that when the fighting is over and Syria begins to rebuild, there will be a thorough list to sift through and help in deciding what to recover first.

“There will be a record of damage, it will be a place to start,” she says. “A lot of these are going to provide very necessary tourist revenue.”

It’s not just about the money. More than anything, she says, the list makes you ponder the extent of the damage to historical treasures. Along with the enormous loss of life and massive human displacement, it’s one other tragic loss for Syria – and for world heritage

Europe was mentioned only once. Support for Israel has been at the center of Mitt Romney’s campaign this year. He said the Obama administration has “thrown Israel under the bus.”

Romney may be an impassioned supporter of Israel, but his Mormon church has not had it easy in Israel. Reporter Daniel Estrin brings us this story about the peculiar relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Israeli government.

There’s a lot more to this place than what you’ll learn from the video they play on the public tour.

“Welcome to the Jerusalem center for near eastern studies,“ intoned a deep-voiced narrator. “We are pleased to show you this spectacular view of the old city, and the distinctive architecture and sprit of this building.”

People in Jerusalem call it the Mormon University

It’s a satellite campus of Brigham Young University. Each year it hosts about 200 students for study abroad programs. And it really is a spectacular piece of real estate. It’s a 125 thousand -square foot limestone building…it slopes down a hill in eight levels. And it’s got a panoramic view of the whole city – the Mount of Olives, the ancient walls of the old city, and the city’s centerpiece, the golden dome of the rock.

On a tour of the campus school official Kent Jackson walks through manicured gardens and shows off the school’s auditorium, where Mormon students and staff hold weekly prayers. It’s got a massive organ with more than 3 thousand pipes.

The Mormon center is a 125,000-square foot limestone building which cascades down a hill in eight levels. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

“Every day they were gathering in front of the building, when teddy arrived they started to shout, they raised their banners and signs. They were shouting mostly against the Mormons,” Cheshin said.

Israeli lawmakers considered canceling the multimillion-dollar project. But 154 members of Congress sent a letter to Israeli lawmakers suggesting that would put U.S.-Israel relations on the line. Israel’s government relented, but under one condition: The Mormons had to promise not to proselytize. As part of the agreement, church officials prevent Mormon students – and any Mormons visiting the country – from even talking about their faith with Israelis. Cheshin, the former mayor’s advisor, was recently on a public tour of the Mormon center.

“I wanted to hear something about the Mormons. They don’t spend one word about the Mormon community, the Mormon belief, the Mormon religion. Who are you, what are you doing, what is your belief?” he asked.

He said a Mormon official showed the tour group a framed document – a pact that the Mormon Church made with the Israeli government not to proselytize. Now, here’s the strange thing about that pact. Israel hasn’t made any other church or religious denomination sign such an agreement. Proselytizing is legal in Israel, but most churches in the country just don’t dare do it. For Mormons in Jerusalem, it’s a delicate issue. Spreading the gospel is a central pillar of the church, said Brother Jackson.

“We’ve just made promises that were taken in good faith at the time we built this facility, that we wouldn’t do anything that approached in any way which you describe rightly as being part of the central function of our church which is to talk about our church with other people,” Jackson said.

Israel isn’t the only country in the middle east – or anywhere else – that doesn’t allow Mormon missionaries. But Jerusalem isn’t just “anywhere else.” It’s different. The Book of Mormon begins in Jerusalem. The founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, professed to be a descendant of an ancient Jerusalemite called Lehi. And Mormon belief holds that Jesus will return to Jerusalem. Still, church officials say they are not going to ask Israel to revisit the non-proselytizing agreement.

“We recognize that we’ve been very blessed to be here in this country, and…it seems like it’s a pretty small price to pay for the benefits our students get out of being here in this country,” Jackson said.

Over the summer, when Mitt Romney made a high profile visit to Jerusalem, he prayed at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, but he didn’t visit the Mormon center. Jackson said Romney has been there before. Of course, Mormonism isn’t just a sensitive topic in Israel. Surveys show that much of the American public is still wary of the Mormon Church…even though, come next week, they may vote in America’s first Mormon president. And if that happens, Mormons in Jerusalem who’ve kept their belief to themselves for two decades will likely start getting a lot of questions from curious Israelis.

But before he went on air, he says, he got a sudden request from the radio administration. Your album “A Matter of Habit,” radio officials said, don’t play the title song.

Here are some of the lyrics of the song: “learning how to kill – you just need some momentum. Start off small, and then it comes…You cock your weapon and your arm trembles…they’re not men or women, they’re just an object, a shadow. Learning how to kill is a matter of routine.”

Ashdot, the musician, explained the song on Israeli TV.

“I have a problem with calling something a protest song or a political song,” he said. “This song talks about what happens to our kids when they enter the army.”

The Israeli army commander who heads the station said he censored the song from the live on-air performance because he didn’t want to celebrate a song that denounces those who have sacrificed their lives to defend the country. “Besides,” he said, “why would a station run by soldiers play a song demonizing those soldiers?”

Israeli dovish parliament member Zahava Galon protested the censorship on the nightly news.

“I am pretty astounded,” she said. “Where have we come to that in Israel we are censoring songs?”

In the same TV story, hawkish politician Naftali Bennett retorted. “This song is going to go straight to the Hezbollah station al manar,” he said, “because this is exactly the kind of ammunition our enemies need.”

It’s a tricky issue. On the one hand, Army Radio’s music station is the country’s most popular. Every artist looking for a hit hopes for airtime on the station.

On the other hand, it’s a radio run by soldiers, in a country where most citizens are compelled to serve. It’s not surprising a radio station run by soldiers wouldn’t want to air a provocative song about soldiers.

But that’s the thing. Army Radio has played the song before. They played it 2 weeks ago. They played it last week. And radio management says they may decide to play it again.

A DJ at the station said he put in a request to play the song on his show tomorrow, but the request was rejected. So, he says, he’s going to play another newly released single that’s just as critical.

Even at Israel’s army radio station, where your boss is also your commander, there are some dissenting DJs.

If and when negotiators hunker down at the peacemaking table, one of the thorniest issues they’ll duke out is the fate of the Palestinian refugees forced to leave their homes when Israel was created 60-plus years ago.

Israel is now waging a campaign to add another issue to the peacemaking agenda – the plight of Jews from Arab countries forced to leave their homes.

If you’re a Jew who moved to Israel some 60-odd years ago from Syria or Lebanon or Iraq, this is the place for you. It’s a club house in a back alley of Jerusalem’s outdoor vegetable market. No frills, just a few plastic flowers taped to the walls. And the clacking sound of Middle Eastern Jewish men playing backgammon.

Menashe Butkov moved to Israel with his family from Baghdad when he was 17. He said after the Mideast war of 1948, when Israel was established and many Palestinians fled or were kicked out of their homes, Jews were treated with hostility in Iraq.

Enjoying a card game at a Jerusalem club. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

That’s a story that’s been forgotten, Israeli diplomats say – the story of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has put together a snappy YouTube video called “The Truth About Refugees.”

For more than 2 millennia, up to a million Jews lived across the Middle East. Those numbers dwindled drastically after Israel was founded.

“I’d like you to take a look at the refugees in these photos,” Ayalon opines in the video. “Many people assume they are Arab refugees fleeing Israel. But in fact they are innocent Jewish refugees forced out of Arab countries. There were far more Jewish refugees than Arab refugees.”

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, is not at all pleased with the Israeli campaign.

“Opening up this can of worms is not a joke,” she said.

Ashrawi argued that many Jews weren’t “kicked out” of Arab countries. They came to Israel for the most part because they wanted to live in their spiritual homeland, not because they were forced to. And Israel worked hard to bring those Jews to the fledgling Jewish state.

“While same time,” she said, “it (Israel) carried out a massive campaign of expulsion of Palestinians. So who’s a refugee?”

Ashrawi said Middle Eastern Jews can try to get compensation from Iraq or Syria or anywhere else, but that’s got nothing to do with Palestinians. Demanding that restitution for Jewish properties be dealt with during Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is a dangerous proposition, she warned, because the Palestinians could demand the same. Palestinians also lost property. Property that is in today’s Israel.

“If you want to go down that path, we’ll go down that path with you all the way,” she said. “They want restitution? We want restitution. We want all our property back. This guy is opening up Pandora’s Box. If you give the Palestinians their rights, the right to return, restitution and compensation, there will be no more Israel.”

In the past, Israel actually blocked efforts by Middle Eastern Jews to seek compensation from Arab countries. The Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty explicitly prevents Egyptian-born Jews from seeking restitution. Yehouda Shenhav, a professor at Tel Aviv University, said Israel wanted to keep restitution as a bargaining chip.

“The State of Israel did block such claims,” he said, “because it wanted to save those assets, or property, to use it against the claims of the Palestinians in future negotiation over their property and assets.”

Here’s a solution Israel is putting forth: a big international pot of money for Palestinians and Middle Eastern Jews.

Float that proposal here in the backgammon club, and Middle Eastern Jews shrug. Menashe Yaakov, who left northern Iraq for Israel in 1951, said he doesn’t expect Israel to ever finagle reparations.

“How many times have Israeli officials tricked us?” he said. “They said, ‘fill out this form, sign that.’ My father, may he rest in peace, wrote letters a few times to Israel and the Jewish Agency. Now who will give anything to us? Everything is gone.

Basically Israel’s saying to its Middle Eastern Jews – “wait till we negotiate peace with the Palestinians, then compensation will come.” But around these parts, people have learned the hard way that waiting for Israeli-Palestinian peace is just like waiting for Godot.

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Tour groups get their photos taken at the start of the exhibit. Later on a large screen they see what they’ll look like when they’re 80 years old – wrinkles, sagging skin and all.

A tick-tock accompanies visitors through a zigzagged corridor plastered with questions written in English, Hebrew and Arabic: How old are you? How old do you feel? Do you look older or younger than your age?

The corridor leads to a room filled with interactive simulations that put the visitor in an elderly person’s shoes. One simulation does that quite literally: Visitors wear weighted shoes and walk up some stairs. Elderly people have trouble climbing steps – people lose muscle mass as they age.

There’s also a device that visitors strap to their hand, causing it to shake – simulating tremors – while they try to thread a key through a keyhole to open a door.

At another station, visitors pick up a phone and try to order movie tickets through an automated message, while every once in a while the volume drops – simulating what it’s like for elderly people who are hard of hearing.

The exhibit was developed by Dialogue Social Enterprise, a German organization. It designed two other museum exhibits that have toured throughout the world. Visitors fumble in pitch black at “A Dialogue in the Dark,” which simulates what it’s like to be blind. The tour guides themselves are blind.

Interactive simulations put visitors in an elderly person's shoes -- including weighted shoes which visitors wear as they climb stairs, simulating the muscle degeneration of many elderly people. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

At the other exhibit, “A Dialogue in Silence,” visitors wear earplugs to simulate what it’s like to be deaf. The tour guides there are hearing-impaired.

The tour guides at the newest exhibit, “A Dialogue with Time,” are – you guessed it – old.

“In every old person, there’s a small child who is bewildered by the fact of what happened to him,” said Emanuel Dudai, 73, a tour guide at the exhibit. “In myself, I am an old child.”

Dudai takes a group of visitors through a series of rooms that challenge common notions of aging. At one point he conducts a survey: “Do you see a male, 70 years old, as a pilot?” he asks the visitors. Most of the group says no.

“What’s his ability to focus? There are lives at stake,” says Sarah Gopher-Stevens, an Israeli visiting from California.

But then Dudai plays a short video, featuring an Israeli aviation expert who argues that older pilots are more experienced than younger ones, and, no matter their age, pilots have to pass regular tests to prove they can safely fly a plane. Many people, Dudai says, are guilty of ageism — favoring age over ability.

The exhibit doesn’t mention the most serious physical and mental degradation that many elderly people experience. Exhibit manager Moran Bodner says that’s on purpose.

“Eighty percent of old people in Israel are living a normal life, are very independent, and they don’t need help. Only 20 percent need nursing care,” Bodner said. “We wanted to show a true picture of what it means to be old in this country.”

For tour guide Dudai, and many in Israel, making it to a ripe old age takes on an additional meaning.

“I didn’t have a family. I invented a grandmother. I envied my friends who had a grandmother, because all my family perished in the Holocaust,” Dudai said. “I am part of the generation that saw this country in the making. And I didn’t have time to think that I am getting old. I became old. And I like it.”

“A Dialogue with Time,” which opened last month at the Israel Children’s Museum in Holon, near Tel Aviv, is next set to open in Germany.

There’s also interest in exhibiting it in China and France, too.

Why wouldn’t there be? By the time you finish reading – or listening to – this story, everyone on this planet will have grown just a little bit older.

Netanyahu, pointing a red marker to the top of the bomb-like chart then said: “Where should a red line be drawn? A red line should be drawn right here … before Iran completes a second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.”

He said the UN sanctions against Iran do not work and have no effect on Iran’s nuclear program.

But a new Israeli government report seems to undercut that rhetoric, suggesting that economic sanctions are hitting Iran harder than previous believed.

Reporter Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem says Israel’s foreign ministry’s internal document, leaked to the press, shows that the sanctions are crippling Iran’s economy more than ever.

Israelis have become used to the ongoing violence of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but this incident has struck a different chord.

Hasan Hasanein, a 22-year-old Palestinian who sells backgammon sets on Jerusalem’s main pedestrian mall, said he saw the Jewish teens following the Arab teens, and cursing them for being Arab.

Hasanein said he got scared and closed his shop.

“We start to close very quickly. We heard an ambulance. I don’t know what happened after that.”

According to Jerusalem police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, a 13-year-old Israeli girl told a group of Israeli teenagers that an Arab boy had sexually harassed her.

“Those youngsters looked around for someone to curse, and eventually someone to beat up,” Rosenfeld said.

The police have asked eyewitnesses not to speak to the media while the investigation continues. But the night of the attack, one woman wrote a Facebook post saying she saw the Israeli teens throw a Palestinian teen to the ground and kick him in the head. He was rushed to the hospital, unconscious.

There’s been much condemnation of the attacks in the Israeli press.

But some boys on the street where the attack took place told me that there’s a good reason for this beating – they say when Palestinian boys flirt with or harass Israeli girls, it’s intolerable.

“I walk around here a lot. I see a lot of Arab boys flirting with Jewish girls,” said one Israeli youth. “They have their own villages. They shouldn’t come into our lives here.”

Another added, “I’m not saying what happened was good, but…” A boy walking by interrupted him: “I think it what happened was excellent. I’m happy they beat him up. It’s too bad he didn’t die.”

Oren, who’s almost 19, was wearing a Real Madrid T-shirt and a white yarmulke. He’s from Pisgat Zeev – a suburb of Jerusalem in an area Israel annexed after the 1967 war. It’s near a number of Palestinian villages. Oren said Palestinian teens flirt with Jewish girls there. Mixed dating is taboo in Israel, especially in politically tense Jerusalem. Oren said his parents are upset that he supports the attack. And some other Israeli teens, like Baruch Erenberg, told me the kids who carried out the attack don’t represent them.

“I think they are very stupid. Why the hell they are doing this? They just go and punish a boy because he’s not Jewish? It’s not good,” Erenberg said.

Across the street from where the attack took place, Yaffa Yehudai works in a clothing store. She didn’t witness the violence, but she’s worked there for 45 years and she said she’s seeing more and more brawls on this pedestrian mall. She said teenage violence happens everywhere in the world, and Palestinian teens have also attacked Israelis. But she said, “We Jews call ourselves the chosen people. We need to be careful of how we speak and act.”

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This is something we cannot accept – not as Jews, not as Israelis. This is not our way.” He added that Israel would bring the culprits to justice.

Israel’s education ministry said it’s going to use the attack as a teaching opportunity. When schools go back in session next week, teachers will be talking to students about what happened here last Thursday night.

I got a flyer in my mailbox a few days ago. It said: ‘this is the absolute last chance to pick up your gas mask. Don’t be left unprotected. Get your gas masks today at a local Jerusalem mall.’ So I went to the mall. About 50 people were waiting in line. Some had been there for hours.

A man waiting for the mask said he didn’t care, but came to get the masks because his wife wanted them.
“I know nothing is going to happen. They can’t mess with Israel, it’s not a joke,” he said.

Another woman said she was getting the masks because as a parent she felt the need to be responsible and wanted to take the necessary precautions. But she said it is life as usual.

There are other signs that Israel is preparing itself for war. This week the army sent text messages to people across the country – testing its alert system in case officials need to warn civilians about incoming missiles. Tel Aviv’s city hall says it has designated 60 underground parking garages as makeshift bomb shelters for wartime. Even Israel’s main TV news channel says it is looking to build a fortified studio to continue broadcasts during wartime. All of this comes as Israeli officials ratchet up their rhetoric about the dangers of a nuclear Iran.

Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, spoke Wednesday to Bloomberg News.

“Just today an Iranian general came out and pledged to wipe Israel off the map, and diplomacy hasn’t succeeded. So we have come to critical juncture where important decisions have to be made,” he said.

The outgoing minister-in-charge of the military’s home front command is saying Israel should expect a month-long war with hundreds or more of Israeli casualties. And an official who said he met this week with Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister says they intend to make a decision about an Iranian strike before November. Pundits in Israel and a group of writers and intellectuals are accusing Israel’s leaders of warmongering. But in parliament Thursday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak defended the deliberations.

“There isn’t a subject in the last generation, not a matter of peace or war, that has been discussed in more depth and with such attention and even transparency as the Iran question has,” the Defense Minister said.

Israel seems poised for an attack. But the one thing missing is US support, implicit or explicit. Israeli papers report that Netanyahu is willing to back off on an attack if Obama promises to publicly state that the US will attack Iran if it must. Israeli officials refuse to confirm or deny such a request has been made to the Obama administration. Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld said Netanyahu and Obama are engaged in a very complicated dance.

“They don’t trust each other. They hate each other, they loathe each other,” he said. “This makes communication very difficult because on the one hand, if you are Netanyahu, how do you stoke the flames without going too far? And if you are Obama, how do you restrain Netanyahu without turning the Iranians off the hook?”

The crux of this debate is whether a nuclear Iran pose an existential threat to Israel? Some Israeli leaders say yes. Israeli military historian van Creveld says no. Israel is believed to be a nuclear power, he says, and no nuclear power has ever nuked another nuclear power. Not even the most ruthless dictators. The very real threat, van Creveld says, is what could happen if Israel attacks Iran. Iran could respond with a constant stream of missiles for a very long time, and Israel’s economy could grind to a halt.

“One missile a day, two missiles a day. Then a pause. Then another one,” he said. “Just enough to keep Israel semi paralyzed. Falling one here one there, very unpredictable. This could be the end of Israel.”

That one-missile-a-day scenario is just one of many wartime possibilities experts here are proposing. Tomorrow and the next day, we’ll probably hear a dozen more.

Yousef giggled, while the nurse secured a cap onto a small vial of Yousef’s blood. His mom, Manal Zeytoun, said a few months ago her son was diagnosed with a muscle disease. Since then they’ve been regulars at Meyer Children’s Hospital in Haifa.

“The clown help him,” she said. “When the clown come, he is not sick.”

While the clown kept Yousef distracted from the needle in his arm, a few clowns from Holland and Russia peeked their heads in the room. They’re among a group of clowns from Germany, Russia, Holland, Brazil, the US and Canada, who came to Israel in July for some intensive training; they’re studying advanced medical clowning, and Israel is a leader in the field.

In their home countries, the Dutch and Russian clowns entertain patients in the waiting room, but they won’t enter the examining room. Doctors don’t want the distraction, and Anneli Raejs from Holland said that for many years her clown colleagues also didn’t think it was right — they didn’t want to be associated with pain.

“Child say, oh help injection will come because I see a clown. But now we are changing and trying and therefore we are here,” Raejs said.

One clown named “Barambula pistitata kiss kiss hahah,” in overalls and pigtails, is trying to get a grimacing girl named Emily to walk up the stairs. Emily suffered burns on her legs and needs to practice walking again, so Barambula walks with her a step at a time, and jokes with her as she climbs each step.

There are about 70 professional medical clowns in Israel who work in about 20 hospitals throughout the country. The clowns are supported by a non-profit called Dream Doctors. But more and more hospitals are chipping in to pay the clowns. Meyer Children’s hospital, for instance, contributes half of the clowns’ salaries. The hospital keeps at least three clowns on call every day, according to Miriam Goldwaser, the hospital administrator.

“They participate in the treatment as it happens,” Goldwaser said. “Really they are important at the pediatric hospital.”

The University of Haifa’s theatre department offers a bachelors track in medical clowning. Ati Citron, the director of the track, said he believes it’s the first academic program of its kind in the world. He said Israel’s medical clowns are developing new ways to help physicians treat young patients more effectively.

Take Penny Hanuka — a clown who works with rheumatic children who receive regular injections. She is the first to encounter the patient and the family, and she’s the one who gives the cue to the medical team when the patient is relaxed enough to get an injection, Citron said.

“That is a big move on the part of the medical team to say we take our cue from the medical clown. We don’t decide. We want patient to be totally relaxed.” he said.

Another Israeli clown, who calls himself Professor Sancho de la Sponja, created a procedure that persuaded one hospital to stop sedating young patients so they stay still for a diagnostic scan. The clown connects with the child and then they make a deal that they’re both going to freeze during the procedure. Other clowns actually go into pre-op with children and help them relax before surgery.

“Medical clowning is not an entertainment tool,” Citron said. “Yes, it also entertains. But the main objective is to contribute to the healing process of the child.”

And not only children. While I was following clowns around in the children’s hospital, Israeli clown Michael Bash took some of the visiting international clowns next door to the adult dialysis ward. It was the first time they had worked with adults.

“There was one man, lying in bed, sick people, five minutes after that he started dancing in the bed. You can see the change immediately.”

Not every patient wants a clown around. If that’s the case, Bash said he leaves the patient alone.

There’s also reluctance in Israel’s medical community to recognize hospital clowning as a legitimate paramedical profession. Ati Citron said he’s trying to change that.

“We started a full time program because we thought that academization of the profession would eventually make it easy for the Israeli Ministry of Health to recognize it as a creative arts therapy.”

Citron added that if medical clowns were considered bona fide therapists, hospitals would pay them proper salaries, just like doctors and nurses.

That’s still a ways off, but that doesn’t stop Israeli hospitals from keeping Barambula and Penny and Sancho on speed dial.

But it charges right through the city’s sensitive geopolitics – and it’s upsetting locals for all kinds of reasons.

You could call it the streetcar that few desire. But Jerusalem’s new light rail does give the city a fresh look. I sat at one of the stops and watched the trains go by with Nadav Meroz, director of the planning team.

“First of all it is very beautiful,” Meroz said, “Very delicate. It has very modern shape. The color of silver. When it moves near the old city walls you can see the history of Jerusalem near the newest system in the world; you can see modern against oldness.”

Israel decided to build the rail back in the late 1990s. The goal was to provide better public transportation for the people who most rely on it. Jerusalem is one of Israel’s poorest cities, and many people here can’t afford cars. But in the year 2000, just as the plan was getting off the ground, the intifada, the second Palestinian uprising, erupted. Suicide bombers started blowing up buses in the city. Only in 2007, after the bombings had mostly stopped, did engineers break ground.

Construction did not go smoothly. The cement cracked, the tracks were installed backwards, roads were clogged. Jerusalemites were mad. Finally, 11 years after the plans were first approved, and about a billion and a half dollars later, the light rail made its maiden voyage. It’s been operating for many months now… to mixed results.

“It’s not very pleasant to drive here,” said David Felber, on his early morning commute to work. He boards the train near his house in an area Israel annexed after the 1967 Mideast war.

“I live in Pisgat Zeev, which is the biggest neighborhood in Jerusalem and maybe in the entire country. But we live near Arab neighborhoods, like Beit Hanina, which we are passing right now.”

Israeli buses stopped going through here in the 80s, when the first Palestinian uprising broke out and Israeli passengers were pelted with rocks and Molotov cocktails. A new highway was built so Israelis could completely bypass Arab neighborhoods on their way downtown. But now, they have no choice: the light rail takes them right through.

“People here are dressed like Arabs, people feel like Arabs, people behave like Arabs – some are friendly, some are not. You don’t want to find those which are not,” Felber said.

Earlier this year, a young Israeli soldier was stabbed by a Palestinian on the train. Police have also arrested Israelis accused of attacking Palestinian riders.

The train also sparked an international uproar, because it winds through disputed parts of Jerusalem which the Palestinians want for their future state. A French company backed out of the project because of a Palestinian lawsuit. The UN human rights council spoke out against the light rail too.

The planners insist there’s nothing political about the tram. They say they routed it through populous neighborhoods to maximize the number of passengers who’d ride it.

I went to a large mosque right across from a train stop in an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. After prayers I spoke with Jamal Abu Khdeir, a teacher and father of three. I told him about the Israeli man I’d met on the train the day before, and how he got jittery when the train passed through Arab parts of town.

“Well, I mean, I understand his fear, because during the Intifada and buses came through here there were rocks and things thrown at the buses,” Khdeir said. “That’s unfortunately the fault of some people that have taken to the politics of killing people on buses. The people who have done that are sick people. We’re not those people.”

I take the train back to West Jerusalem, near the outdoor vegetable market.

Devora Avidan works near the market at a community center. She’s a resident historian of sorts, collecting old photos of Jerusalem from the 1800s. She does a lot of thinking about the city.

Jerusalem’s mentality, she joked, is more suited to horses and buggies! And not a light rail.

“Jerusalem is like French cheese. French cheese has mold and that’s what gives it its quality. The same in Jerusalem. There is a kind of mold here that makes this city special. Modernity…isn’t exactly built for it. There’s something nice about something that’s old.”

Yes, old is nice. But new can be nice too. Take the train. The seats are comfy. The facades of the buildings next to the tracks have been cleaned. There are café tables lined up along the road where the train passes.

Sure, the light rail is still a pain. The ticketing machines rarely work, and passengers complain that transit police hand out unfair fines.

And when a train arrives after a long delay – which happens a lot – everyone piles in. And then the passengers start to complain that, “they’re packing us in here like sardines…”

Then again, some months ago, I got on a crowded train. And a young ultra-orthodox Jewish woman pushed her way inside with a large stroller.

She picked up her baby from the carriage and handed it over to a complete stranger, some guy in his late 20s who hadn’t shaved in a few days. Then the mother tried to collapse the stroller. She couldn’t figure out how to do it. Everyone around her pitched in: “No, fold it this way!” And, “There’s got to be a lever here somewhere!”

All the while, the stranger was holding the baby and just staring at it with the biggest grin. And I thought, this is Jerusalem. It’s brash and opinionated and tense. And it’s filled with lots of people who don’t like each other.

But there’s something comforting knowing that everyone’s squeezed in this same train car. And when times are tense, a complete stranger could hand you her baby, and for a few precious moments it seems like everyone’s in this together.