The city’s also got a complicated historical past. One entrepreneur has decided to showcase the hidden parts of his hometown’s history – and the way he’s done it has ruffled a lot of feathers.

Yurko Nazaruk helped found Kryjivka, a basement bar designed to imitate the underground kryjivkas – bunkers – where the Ukrainian Insurgent Army hid while battling Soviet invaders in World War Two.

To get into the bar, you have to first get pass the bouncer. He’s a burly guard in fatigues who cracks open the door and asks for the password – “Glory to Ukraine”.

Then he hands you a shot of vodka and opens a false bookcase, leading you downstairs to the secret bunker bar.

Musicians serenade diners as they munch on typical Ukrainian fare like pig ears and salty curls of pig fat. In the back there’s a BB gun shooting range, where you can take your best shot at a portrait of Stalin. It’s all good fun, right?

“For me it was not very easy to open such a restaurant,” said Nazaruk, the 29-year-old co-founder of the bar.

In many parts of Ukraine, the Ukrainian guerilla fighters are remembered as Nazi collaborators who helped murder Polish citizens. But Nazaruk considers the underground fighters as heroes who defended their land from Soviet invaders. He says the black and white photos, and guerilla army memorabilia on the walls, aren’t on display anywhere else in the country.

“All this material you can show in a museum. But still, how many people come to museum?” Nazaruk asked. “We are trying to help people understand better their own history.”

One Ukrainian lawmaker has called for the basement bar to be shut down. But it’s really popular with locals and tourists, and its success convinced Nazaruk to tackle other parts of Lviv’s touchy past, like Lviv-born writer Leopold van Sacher Masoch, whose gave Masochism its name.

Nazaruk opened Café Masoch, a kinky bistro with leather-clad waitresses. If you’re willing, they’ll greet you with masochistic flair – they’ll chain you to the chair and whip you on your back.

Nazaruk also opened a restaurant dedicated to Ukraine’s Freemasons, who were driven underground during Soviet rule. The restaurant has upset some modern Masons – particularly because of its bathroom. The toilet is shaped like the throne which figures prominently in Mason rituals.

Out of all of the restaurants, Nazaruk’s Jewish restaurant has probably provoked the most vocal criticism –from local historians and the city’s small Jewish community.

At the Under the Golden Rose restaurant, diners are offered black hats with curly artificial sidelocks attached –the traditional look of an Eastern European religious Jew.

“I am not Jew. But in this hat, I am a Jew,” says one diner, and laughs.

The menu features Jewish delicacies like gefilte fish and tsimmes – and also not-at-all-kosher pork sausage, and a cocktail named the Funny Jew.

The waitress explains that one thing is missing from the menu: the prices.

“It’s Jewish restaurant,” she says. “You eat…and after, bargain. It’s Jewish tradition.”

Meylakh Sheykhet, a leading figure in Lviv’s small Jewish community, is furious. The restaurant reinforces the negative stereotype of Jews being cheap, he said.

“In none of the Jewish restaurants all over the world, you will not find anything like this,” Sheykhet said.

Even more appalling, he said, is that the restaurant overlooks the ruins of Lviv’s once-famous Golden Rose Synagogue, which the Nazis blew up.

“It is a great pain that they make the Jewish traditional life so cheap,” Sheykhet said. “They exploit the Jewish feelings in favor of their business. This is a mockery.”

Before WWII, Jews were a third of Lviv’s population. During the war, nearly all of them were sent to death camps and a nearby labor camp. After the war, the Soviets took control of the city, eventually closing down synagogues and burying whatever was left of Lviv’s once-vibrant Jewish life. The same thing happened all over Ukraine.

So Sheykhet decided to take matters into his own hands: he goes out nearly every day to forgotten, destroyed Jewish graveyards around the country and works to preserve them. It’s the right way to honor Ukraine’s Jewish past, Sheykhet says.

Yurko Nazaruk insists that his restaurant also honors his city’s Jewish history.

“Some Jews say, ‘It’s not Kosher restaurant, you have no right to speak about our history, about our culture.’ And I say to them, ‘Yes, I have no right to discuss your history or culture, but still, I am making a restaurant about my city. And it’s not only your history. It’s the history of my city. And I want to show it.’”

Historians in Lviv say the restaurant franchise amounts to a kitschy, irresponsible and offensive commercialization of Lviv’s sensitive past.

Nazaruk defends his restaurants. They teach history, he says, and without the controversial gimmicks, nobody would care to learn.

Gabriel Birenbaum is a senior researcher at the Academy of the Hebrew Language. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

Now, it’s become a household expression after Orthodox Jewish soldiers refused to attend events that involved women.

Daniel Estrin reports that the phrase has also been used to segregate the men from the women.

Gershon Baskin says the deal he helped broker between Israel and Hamas is the pinnacle of his career, and even more than that. “This is the biggest and most important thing I have ever done in my life,” he said.

Which is funny, because Baskin was never supposed to get involved in the negotiations in the first place. He’s a peace activist, a Long Islander who moved to Israel in 1978. He has a bushy beard and a non-profit think tank, the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information.

Israeli newspaper reporting that "Gilad is returning home." (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

Still, every time Baskin offered to help with the Shalit case, the official Israeli response was “no, thanks.”

“I refuse to take no for an answer,” said Baskin, in his Jerusalem home. “I will be the persistent pest, and I decided I was going to bring Gilad Shalit home.”

In 2006, right after Hamas kidnapped Shalit and Israel responded with airstrikes, Baskin’s Palestinian friend in Gaza called, saying that they had to find a way to get things back to normal. He put Baskin in touch with the Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister, Ghazi Hamad, and Baskin got Hamad to talk to the Israeli soldier’s father, Noam Shalit.

“Shalit said, ‘I want my son, I want to know that he’s alive,’” Baskin remembered. “Ghazi told him, ‘Your son is well, he’s being taken care of, he will be treated well by the Hamas. We will issue our demands to Israel, and when Israel meets our demands, he will be released.’”

It was kind of like in the movies: Hamas demanded ransom – in the form of a prisoner exchange.

But at the time, Israel wouldn’t talk to Hamas. Baskin wanted to relay the message to the then-Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. He didn’t know the Prime Minister, but he knew the Prime Minister’s daughter, Dana, was also a peace activist. She agreed to pass messages from Hamas to her father.

“She said, ‘I will, of course I will, but you shouldn’t expect anything from him. He’s not going to listen. He won’t change his mind,’” said Baskin. “I said, ‘Let’s try.’ And as expected, her father’s response was, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’”

Baskin kept trying – but he got in trouble. Baskin said Israeli intelligence heard Hamas officials tossing around Dana’s name. Olmert was furious – and he let Baskin know.

Still, the peace activist persisted. He faxed a list of Hamas’ demands to the Prime Minister’s official envoy for the Shalit case. The envoy called him.

“He says, ‘You’re out of the picture now. There are official channels, official tracks working now. Thank you for what you did, we don’t need you anymore,’” Baskin recalled him saying.

At that point, the Egyptians had also become intermediaries between Israel and Hamas. Baskin’s contact at the Egyptian embassy told him not to give up.

Baskin recalls him saying, “We need someone who is independent, who will be there, who can pass messages. Just ignore him. Keep doing what you are doing.”

Baskin kept pushing. A new Israeli envoy took on the case; he also wanted Baskin out. But after two years, that envoy stepped down, and in May of this year, current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed a new emissary to the Shalit case, former Mossad agent David Meidan.

Gershon with the Hamas document presenting their final demands, and the Israeli document acknowledging his role as an officially recognized Israeli negotiator. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

“But in the last paragraph, it had the names of the arch-terrorists. The worst. The baddest and the worst. David said to me, in no uncertain terms, ‘Israel will not negotiate on these names,’” recalls Baskin.

Baskin relayed the news to Hamas. “I was very harsh, direct, categorical. They could not expect to get all they wanted. If they were serious about the idea of negotiating, they had to understand, that first thing they had to remove was these names.”
And in the end, they did.

On July 14, Hamas sent Baskin a document outlining their final demands for an agreement. The most senior prisoners weren’t on the list. Baskin immediately faxed the document to David Meidan.

“David called me back, saying, ‘This is exactly what we need. This is a breakthrough.’”

Baskin agreed to help facilitate final negotiations, but Hamas wanted proof that Baskin really represented Israel. So David Meidan typed out a letter, in Hebrew, on a plain white sheet of paper, with the words “private” and “sensitive” on the top.

It’s the document that turned Baskin from a freelance nudge with a fax machine, to an official Israeli mediator.

Since the deal was signed last week, Baskin has received a flood of emails from peace activist colleagues, thanking him for proving that the peace camp is still relevant.

And he was all smiles when Ghazi Hamad from Hamas called him on a recent morning. This deal succeeded, Baskin said, because of their rapport.

“Ghazi Hamad and I are friends. We may not agree on things politically, we don’t see lot of things eye to eye, but we’re friends. And we trust each other. And his happiness today is not just because a thousand Palestinian prisoners have been released. I know that he is sincerely happy because Gilad Shalit is going to be reunited with his family. And that makes a big difference. There’s the human element here which goes beyond everything.”

Ghazi Hamad declined to confirm Baskin’s version of the negotiations, and preferred not to comment on his relationship with the American-Israeli peace activist.

Now, Baskin has his eyes on the big prize: joining the official Israeli Palestinian peace-making team.

“There is no trust between the two parties,” he said. “And I guess, that’s what I have to do, is work on building trust.”

Building trust – one fax at a time.

Pedazur Benattia – everyone calls him Pedi – has a trim white beard and eyes that light up when he reminisces about his parents’ life in Libya. Or when he talks about his Or Shalom Center for Libyan Jewish Heritage. Or when he shows off the enormous collection of manuscripts and Torah scrolls he has collected from Libyan immigrants who brought them to Israel fifty-odd years ago.

Pedi has never been to Libya himself; Gaddafi never allowed Israelis in. So ten years ago, Pedi started asking others to go there for him, to see how Jewish properties were holding up.

That’s how this jolly man started his very own freelance espionage ring –though he’d never call it by that name.
“I don’t think I cooperated with spies…Kind of,” Pedi said.

It started off as an innocent quest. In 2000, Pedi contacted a Muslim man in Tripoli, through a Libyan web forum. He told the man he was the son of Libyan Jews, and really wanted to see the condition of the old synagogue there.

“So he went out of his house, took a picture with a digital camera, and sent it,” Pedi recalled.

Benattia with 1943 Libyan Torah scroll. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

No, Greenberg wasn’t an Israeli spy. But whether he liked it or not, if he wanted to document Jewish history in Libya, he had to do it secretly. Like a spy.

When they confiscated his film and kicked him out of the country –he still sneaked out four rolls of film.

“That was the first time we got about 100 pictures of other places we haven’t had before,” Pedi said.

Pedi was on a roll. Recruit number three was an Israeli journalist who flew to Libya on his German passport and shot video of Jewish properties. Recruit number four was a French man who went to look for the old Jewish cemeteries of Khoms, the seaside town where Pedi’s parents grew up.

“From an internet café, he sent me picture after picture of broken gravestones,” Pedi said. But the French messenger, too, was caught by the secret police and thrown out of the country.

It didn’t stop Pedi from sending his fifth recruit. This one, however, paid a heavy price. In 2010, Rafram Chaddad, a Tunisian-Israeli photographer, agreed to go to Libya, on Pedi’s dime and traveling on his own Tunisian passport.

“I went all over Libya,” said Chaddad from a Tel Aviv café. “I had a list of places. I had to make some investigations there, talking to old people: ‘Where is the graveyard, where are the Jewish schools.’”

Chaddad ended up making international headlines: Secret police rounded him up.

Rafram Chaddad, a 35-year old Tunisian-Israeli photographer, was sent by Benattia to photograph Jewish sites in Libya. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

They accused Chaddad of spying for Israel, and threw him in a dark cell, alone, for five months, until secret talks were held to secure his release.

And still, he wasn’t the last person Pedi sent on a Libyan scouting mission. When Libyan rebels took over Tripoli, writer-photographer Tsur Shezaf went to report for Israeli TV, using his British second passport and without revealing his Israeli identity, to avoid any anti-Israel sentiment.

“As I walked and I start filming, two people came out and stopped me,” said Shezaf. “They asked, ‘Who are you, what are you doing here?’”

One of the men told Shezaf that he couldn’t trust anyone –Libyans or foreigners. He asked him why he was interested in the Jewish graveyard – and whether he himself was a Jew.

“I hesitated for second or two, and I said, ‘Yes, I am a Jew,’” Shezaf recalled. It worked – Shezaf was told to go ahead.

The neglect of Jewish history in Muslim lands has been a source of concern in Israel for decades. Up until 1948, there were around a million Jews in Middle Eastern and North African countries. But with rise of Arab nationalism and the war that led to Israel’s founding in 1948, Jews left in the hundreds of thousands, mostly ending up in Israel.

Tsur Shezaf, a journalist and photographer for Israeli and foreign media, reported from Libya as rebels took over Tripoli. (Photo: Daniel Estrin)

“Why would a secret organization be involved in such an activity? Because Mossad has a variety of responsibilities unprecedented in any intelligence service in world,” said Ronen Bergman, senior military and political analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. He is working on a book about the history of the Mossad.

“Mossad is also in charge of keeping safe the Jewish communities in the world, and also keeping their property safe,” and in some cases, it meant taking some properties of Jewish heritage, and smuggling them to Israel, Bergman said.

In the late 70s and early 80s, Israeli intelligence helped smuggle out important Torah scrolls from Egypt, one of them so precious that its identity remains classified.

In the 90s, Israeli agents helped Jewish immigrants smuggle important Hebrew manuscripts out of Syria. Details of that operation have also mostly been kept secret. Bergman says he knows of no new operations that have taken place recently.

Pedi insists he’s not working in connection with Israeli intelligence, and he doesn’t like thinking of his work as espionage.

“For God’s sake, it’s just gravestones. Places, streets. What’s the problem? Why we can’t get it normally?” Pedi said. “I am sending people there because now what was left, maybe tomorrow will not be. Every year fewer places exist. Ten, fifteen years from now, maybe nothing will be there.”

Jewish graveyards in Libya, Pedi says, acted as an historical record of that community. Under Gaddafi, many Jewish and Muslim graveyards were destroyed to make way for urban development.

Pedi says he’s operating rescue missions, before that history is erased. That’s why he asked Shezaf to bring back any shards of gravestones he found on the ground. It’s probably against the law –but he did it.

“If it has no importance but to the Jews, and the place is going to be eliminated, why not take it?” Shezaf said. “The graveyard of Khoms is going to disappear in few years. It’s a garbage dump. It’s either, I take it, or it is buried in heaps of garbage and other things.”

This isn’t the end of the story. Pedi’s quest has just begun.

He sees a window of opportunity now, while the Libyan government is in transition, and the borders aren’t under tight control. He’s trying to plan his own way in, to finally see his parents’ home country –not through the eyes of his agents.

In Israel, Pedi’s building a museum to house all the Libyan Jewish artifacts he’s collected over the years.

Israelis have been waiting for this moment for the past five years, but no one expected it to come Tuesday night. Not even the senior news anchors of Israel’s two main TV networks. One was on vacation. The other was getting married. But suddenly, Israel’s cabinet ministers were hurrying to the Prime Minister’s office to approve the exchange. Even before the vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was confident it would pass. He spoke in a nationally televised address.

“Gilad will return to Israel in the coming days, to the bosom of his family and his nation,” Netanyahu said.

Israelis have been celebrating in front of a tent next to the Netanyahu residence. The parents of the captured Israeli soldier pitched the tent last year to press the Prime Minister to strike a deal to release their son.

Ohad Kaner isn’t related to the Shalit family. He is just a regular Israeli who dropped everything, left his home, and sat with the soldier’s parents in this tent every day for the past year. Now, he and the Shalit family are packing up their things.

“The next step is to destroy this tent,” Kaner said. “Everyone has to go back home and start his life.”

Dina Fogel has been a regular visitor at the tent, spending time with Shalit’s mother. She said she saw a smile on Shalit’s mother’s face for the first time in five years.

“I was here many times. I never saw her smiling,” Fogel said. “It’s a great day. I am so happy. It’s terrific, it’s wonderful.”

Nadiv Deutch, a soldier himself, took leave for the weekend. He heard the news Tuesday night during a military exercise in the West Bank. As an Israeli, Deutch is elated. As a soldier, He fears it will be more dangerous.

“It’s a good feeling to know that the government takes care of you. The army doesn’t forget its soldiers and returns them home,” he said. “Hamas and terror groups know this is what we fall for. They will try to do it again. They will try to do it again.”

Deutch means that Hamas could capture another Israeli solider to exchange for more prisoners. So he said he is going to be a lot more careful. No more hitchhiking from the base back home, and he’ll make sure he is always armed when he leaves the base.

“Before I wasn’t so worried about these things,” Deutch said. ”But now I know this is what they are looking for. They are after soldiers and it’s dangerous.”

In Gaza there were celebrations too. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh threw candies to a crowd of cheering supporters. He promised this won’t be the last prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel.

Israelis largely support the deal to free Gilad Shalit, though some say it could have been done years ago. Still, there is some strong opposition among Israelis whose relatives died in Palestinian bombings and attacks. Some of them took to the streets Tuesday night, holding photos of their dead loved ones. They said some of the Palestinian prisoners have blood on their hands, and they’ll carry out more attacks once they’re freed — attacks like the one that happened in a café, right across the street from the Shalit family’s tent, where 11 Israelis were killed and dozens injured in a 2002 suicide bombing.

Chavi Gliksberg, a local resident, said she hopes the days of terror attacks in Jerusalem are over, even after Israel frees the prisoners.

“The fact that I’m sitting here is a celebration of life in Jerusalem,” she said. “There were years I was scared of driving behind bus, in case it blows up.”

The Israeli Supreme Court is now accepting petitions from those who oppose the prisoner swap, but the court is expected to allow the deal to go through. Five years after he was captured, Sergeant Gilad Shalit could be home with his family sometime next week.

Prospectors in Israel say hundreds of feet below the ground lies shale rock that can be converted into billions of barrels of oil. But environmentalists say it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

“This is the distinct smell I’m talking about when I talk about oil shale.”

So says Texan oil man, Scott Nguyen, as he sniffs a handful of rock fragments – not back in Houston where he used to work for Shell – but in the lush Valley of Elah in central Israel, about 50km (30 miles) from Jerusalem.

Mr Nguyen wants to prove that oil and gas can be extracted cleanly from Israel’s underground shale, using a technology that heats the earth to more than 300C.

The project could be lucrative. The World Energy Council estimates Israel is sitting on enough shale to produce around four billion barrels of oil, enough at today’s usage to keep the country in oil for more than 40 years.

Mr Nguyen claims there is much more. That’s why he and his colleagues at Israel Energy Initiatives, based in Jerusalem, are lugging rigs around the valley, carrying out prospective drilling.

Shale has been exploited in small quantities in Israel before, but only in a surface-mining operation which generated electricity for local use.

An Historic Quest

The eager search for home-grown energy in Israel is nothing new.

In recent years, big natural gas deposits were discovered off the coast, but the country still imports much of its gas from its neighbour to the south, Egypt. That supply is precarious. This year it was interrupted by a string of attacks on gas pipelines running through the Sinai desert. And concerns remain about future relations with Cairo, after the fall of Hosni Mubarak – an early victim of the Arab Spring.

In terms of oil, Israel imports nearly all it uses – about 100 million barrels a year – mainly from Russia and the former Soviet republics. Those imports were curbed in 2006, during the war with Hezbollah, prompting the Wall Street Journal to say Israel was “perilously close to running out of fuel”.

But despite this hunger for locally produced energy, support for Nguyen and his team is not universal. Some local residents, environmentalists and politicians, are harshly critical.

Back in the US, which has vast shale deposits, drilling was halted in Colorado because the so-called “fracking” method of pumping chemicals into the earth to produce the oil, raised concerns about possible effects on drinking water.

Area Licensed To Israel Energy Initiatives For Drilling

Similar issues are being debated in Israel, where Rachel Jacobson is active in a local committee opposed to Mr Nguyen’s project.* “It’s really one big experiment,” she says, “a foreign company saying we want to make you wealthy. What you are really doing is trying to pull a fast one on us.”

Jacobson’s concern is, in part, because the drilling area is also the site of a vital and politically sensitive water aquifer shared by both Israel and Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

Mr Nguyen and his team try to calm these fears. In town hall meetings, company representatives tell residents that an impermeable layer separates the shale from the aquifer below. The method of extracting the oil, by heating up the shale, won’t have any impact on the aquifer, the company insists.

That doesn’t mollify area resident, Meirav Oren. “The company will come in and give really honorable statements like, well, if anything goes wrong we will stop. No-one is asking how will you stop.”

Experts seem to disagree on the potential dangers to water supplies of the extraction process. “It sounds scary heating this rock up like this” says John Corben, a senior adviser to the International Energy Agency, “but effects on layers close by are usually not large.”

But Mihkel Harm from the World Energy Council says, “the process is hard to control and it might pose a risk for groundwater”.

Mr Nguyen’s company claims Israel may turn out to have oil deposits comparable to Saudi Arabia, which sits on an estimated 260 billion barrels. Corben says it may not be a fair comparison. He says in Saudi Arabia “oil is actually oil” whereas in Israel a lot of money needs to be spent heating the rock and recovering the oil. And there’s a long way to go before the company proves its technology will work, and before it gets all the necessary government permits.

Mr Nguyen’s forecast for commercial oil production is 2018 or later. “Still, ” says Mr Corben “if it is even 4 or 5 billion barrels, that would be an awful lot of oil for a country the size of Israel”.

Additional reporting by Rob Hugh-Jones

*A previous version of this report incorrectly suggested Rachel Jacobson started the Save Adullam group. Instead, Jacobson is active in the group. We regret the error.

Last month marked the 17th anniversary of the death of a very influential rabbi. Called simply “The Rebbe,” Menachem Mendel Schneerson was the last leader of the orthodox Jewish Hassidic movement known as Chabad.

From his headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Rebbe Schneerson expanded the movement into what it is today – arguably the most prevalent face of Judaism around the world.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Chabad’s educational arm, oversees the Chabad representatives – 4,124 married couples located on every continent except Antarctica. He whittled off a list of their locales by heart: Thailand, Kaosamai, Chang Mai, Phuket, Pataya, Nepal, Kathmandu, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Uganda, and more.

“There are Jews in places where you wouldn’t imagine,” Kotlarsky said.

In many of those places, though, there is no rabbi or active Jewish community. That’s where the Chabad representatives come in. “It is our job to set an example,” Kotlarsky said.

Setting an example isn’t always easy for the emissaries; recently it was tragic. In the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, a Chabad center was targeted and the local emissaries lost their lives.

In many places, the emissaries are the only recognizably Jewish people around – the man wearing a long beard and black fedora, and his wife covering her hair with a wig for modesty. They don’t always get a warm welcome either; some local Jews call them proselytizers.

“We don’t have a right to impose,” said Rabbi Kotlarsky, “We do have a right to set an example.”

Chabadniks, as they’re known, try to bring Jews into the fold; they don’t look to convert outsiders. On Hannukah, emissaries light jumbo menorahs at the Champs Elysees, the Kremlin, and the Great Wall of China. In South America, they host thousands of backpackers for the traditional Passover meal, many of them young Israelis looking for a spiritual fix.

When they’re stateside, though, there’s one address in Brooklyn to which the emissaries always migrate.

At 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn is an old gothic mansion, and Chabad world headquarters. Most call it simply “770.”

“On many levels, it’s a profound space,” said Rabbi Simon Jacobson, once a scribe of the Rebbe and now a teacher and head of the Meaningful Life Center.

Rebbe Schneerson prayed, lectured, and worked at 770 until his death in 1994. Many people still flock to the building, so many years after the Rebbe’s death, Jacobson said.

“From a more mystical perspective, when a holy man spends time in a place, prays and cries there … we believe that the physical stones and bookshelves and desk become saturated with holiness,” Jacobson said.

As the Rebbe transformed the movement into a global network, the building began to take on a life of its own. Duplicates of 770 started popping up around the globe. Today, there are replicas in Milan, Melbourne, Sao Paolo, Ukraine, and Israel, and more are in the works.

Some Chabad adherents believe there’s a hidden meaning in the address of Chabad headquarters. Standing outside 770, Rabbi Joseph Spielman of England explained it through Gematria, a kind of Hebrew numerology in which letters have numerical value.

“Beis Mashiach — house of Messiah — is the numerical value of 770,” Spielman said. “The Rebbe is Mashiach (Hebrew for Messiah). This is his home.”

When the Rebbe was alive, some of his followers believed him to be the long awaited messiah. Seventeen years after his death, there are still those who fervently believe that, especially those who pray at 770. On a recent afternoon in the synagogue in 770, a group of men finished the traditional prayers by clapping and singing, “Long live our master, our teacher, our Rabbi, King Messiah, forever and ever.”

Leaders of the movement do not support this belief, said Baila Olidort, editor in chief of Chabad’s official news service. She prefers a different interpretation of 770; she said the number is the numerical equivalent of faratzta, a Biblical word meaning “to spread out.”

That was the Rebbe’s legacy: not just a headquarters at 770, but branches of the movement around the world.

“He did not leave his followers with nothing,” said Maya Balakirsky Katz, author of The Visual Culture of Chabad. “Instead of naming an heir, he named a building. Everyone’s like, why didn’t he name an heir? He did: 770.”

That global network of Chabad centers, Katz said, is helping keep the movement alive without him.

There’s a new revolt brewing in the Middle East. It’s not about bringing down a dictator, like in Syria or Egypt. It’s about bringing down the cost of living.

In Israel, one young woman, fed up with unaffordable rents in Tel Aviv, started a Facebook page calling on people to pitch tents on a downtown boulevard.

On Thursday night, hundreds of tents lined the center island of Rothschild Boulevard.

Thousands of Israelis, mostly in their 20s, milled about. Musicians played without asking for tips. Some banged on drums next to a big teepee marked “The Revolution of Love.” But Shay Soffer, who’s staying in a tent, said not to be fooled by the carnival atmosphere.

“It is fun, but along with that fun, is coming a big sense of change,” Soffer said. “Change must be done.”

Soffer sat in front of his tent with a few friends, including 28-year-old Tami Ben Tzvi, a fifth-grade teacher. She makes about $1,500 a month after taxes. It’s not enough, she said.

“If I want to become a mother, I can’t. I can’t afford myself,” Ben Tzvi said. “It’s a luxury for me.”

At one ATM outside a bank in an upscale part of Tel Aviv, some Israelis were overdrawing on their accounts — taking out more than they actually have.

Even Or Nahshon, a bank teller who works at that very bank, said he has to borrow the bank’s money to get by. His salary doesn’t cover his cost of living, Nahshon said. He makes 4,000 shekels, about $1,170 a month, but his rent is almost 3,000 shekels, or about $880.

The next woman in line was Rosanne Sigliano Mersand, an American expat who owns a well-known Tel Aviv cafe.

“I have been living here for 14 years,” she said. “In New York, I was never in overdraft, and now I am living in minus 1,300 shekels. And that’s nothing. Being an American going in to overdraft, my stomach gets tightened. It’s hard for me.”

(Photo: Daniel Estrin)

“A car, a simple Toyota, costs what a Cadillac would cost in America,” said Doron, founder of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress.

On average, Israelis make half of what middle class American workers make, but prices are double, Doron said. Part of the reason, he said, is that much is monopolized in Israel.

That centralization in large part has roots in the idealistic spirit upon which the country was founded.

“The founding fathers of Israel – David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir – thought themselves to be socialists,” said historian Tom Segev. “The basic belief was the state is responsible for the basic needs of its inhabitants.”

The government and the trade union federation used to own nearly everything in Israel; there was only a very small private sector. But that started to change in the late 1970s.

The current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been one of the biggest champions of a free-market economy. But the protests over the past two weeks have forced his government to scramble to offer some quick solutions, including a promise to free up government-owned land for affordable housing. Protestors say it’s not enough. Despite Israel’s new economy, Segev said, these young Israelis expect their government to take care of them.

“I think it’s a generational thing. These people are sons and daughters of people who grew up in country that expected the government to provide them, the leftovers of social democracy,” Segev said.

The housing protest is quickly becoming a catch-all for all kinds of gripes about the cost of living here. Thousands of mothers have marched with strollers to protest the high costs of raising a family. Doctors marched to Jerusalem and set up tents of their own, to demand higher wages.

And the tent dwellers on Rothschild Boulevard? They’re not going anywhere yet.

The controversy that’s erupted in Israel over a new law was entirely predictable. The law allows Jewish settlers in the West Bank to sue Israelis who promote boycotts of their products.

The controversy reflects a growing chasm in Israel. On one side are those who support the country’s 44-year-long occupation of the West Bank as an historic Jewish right. On the other are those who view the presence of soldiers and settlers in the Palestinian territory as a national calamity.

The new law says an Israeli can be punished if they boycott an Israeli company or institution that’s in Israel, or in an area under Israel’s control. That last clause –- an area under Israel’s control – is a reference to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. If an Israeli calls for a boycott of products made by settlers, those settlers can sue her.

The law passed at night, and immediately, the Israeli organization Peace Now started a Facebook page. Danielle Blumenstyk is one of 4,000-some Israelis who joined. The first thing they did was to defy the new law.

“We are blatantly saying on our Facebook page,” Blumenstyk said. “We are calling out to a boycott of settlements. Sue us. That’s what it says, black on white.”

Blumenstyk and other activists with Peace Now frantically worked the phones today in their cramped basement office, urging celebrities to support a boycott of products made by Jewish settlers.

The Peace Now logo on their Facebook page. It says "Sue Me: I boycott settlement products"

“We’re hoping that this protest will … create a situation in which the law will be revoked,” Blumenstyk said.

Emotions about boycotts run high in Israel. Last year, more than 60 actors and directors from six major Israeli theater companies refused to perform at a theatre in Ariel, a West Bank settlement.

The theatre troupes are government subsidized. But the actors said they couldn’t perform in Ariel in good conscience because they consider Israeli settlements an obstacle to peace. That infuriated Israeli politicians like Danny Danon.

“When we heard about major groups who decided not to perform in Ariel, we decided enough is enough,” said Danon, who co-sponsored the new law.

“You cannot receive funding from the government and decide that you are not performing,” Danon added.” I think that it is part of democracy to put limits. In democracy, when someone is hurting someone else, you have to put limits.”

The other co-sponsor of the law, Zeev Elkin, insists that it’s “not meant to muzzle anyone, but to protect the citizens of Israel” who are settlers.

Parliament member Yohanan Plesner, however, predicts that the law, which seeks to impede boycotts, will only encourage them.

“As a result of this legislation, and as a result of the protest that it will give rise to, they will probably begin all sorts of boycotts,” Plesner said. “So obviously it will backfire because it’s a stupid piece of legislation.”

An Israeli civil rights group says it will challenge the boycott law in Israel’s Supreme Court in the coming days.

By Daniel Estrin

There were unprecedented clashes on the Israeli border Sunday, on three fronts. On Israel’s western border with Gaza, Palestinians marched towards the Israeli border wall. On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, Palestinian refugees swarmed the border. But what especially caught Israel’s attention was on the Syrian-Israeli border, when more than 100 Palestinian refugees jumped the border fence into Israel.

The mass marches marked the Palestinians’ annual Nakba Day. Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe, and it’s how Palestinians refer to their people’s mass displacement by the founding of Israel 63 years ago. More than a dozen people were reportedly killed in the skirmishes, and it left Israel pointing fingers, but also worrying this might not be the last time this happens.

At the start of the day, Israeli troops had been expecting violent demonstrations in the West Bank, and were mainly stationed there to confront stone throwers on the Palestinians’ annual day of mourning. But the West Bank was relatively quiet. Meanwhile, according to Israeli media, on a portion of Israel’s northern border with Syria, there were just two military cars, with only 10 reservists patrolling the border.

Hundreds from Syria

There, hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Syria raced through a minefield and reached the Israeli border fence unharmed. Then, men jumped over the fence and ran into Israel. Arabs from the Druze minority living in Israel greeted them with hugs, and brought them bread and yoghurt. A local videotaped the event and uploaded it to YouTube.

It was the first time a mass of refugees from neighboring Syria had ever infiltrated the border. Israeli troops shot at the crowd, reportedly killing four and wounding dozens. Troops escorted the rest out of Israel back into Syria.

The march, and recent events around the Arab world, are a big boost to Palestinians, said Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh.

“There’s no question that the Arab Spring has created a new mood in the area,” said Shehadeh. “What happened … is very, very distinctive, because it is coordinated activity amongst Palestinians in various parts of the region. So it’s a very significant turn of events.”

The Israeli delegation to the United Nations said Monday it would file a complaint against Syria and Lebanon for violating UN Security Council resolutions. Earlier the Lebanese delegation to the UN filed its own complaint against Israel. The Lebanese army said 10 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when demonstrators approached the Lebanon-Israel border Sunday.

Israel’s army blamed bigger forces for orchestrating the events, especially in Syria. Army spokeswoman Avital Leibovich said the Syrian regime used to prevent people from approaching the border.

“This time, 150 meters (about 164 yards) from fence, Syrian policemen were sitting down, not doing anything about it,” said Leibovich. “Our assumption is that this violent protest was directed by the Syrian regime.”

Israeli officials, and the White House, said Monday that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad encouraged the crowd to gather at the border to divert attention away from the uprisings in his country.

Lessons Learned

That tactic won’t work, said Syria expert Moshe Maoz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but that’s not to say the stunt wasn’t instructive. It taught Syria a few lessons, Maoz said, including this: Israel’s border is more vulnerable than it might have thought. Not one mine exploded when the masses approached the border. This tactic could be used again.

“Surely it can teach the Syrians that this is an option – we can do it sometime in the future,” Maoz said.

Israel learned the same lesson. Maoz believes that for masses of Palestinians to march to Israel’s borders again, they’ll need another pretext or symbol to get people revved up. That pretext could come in September, if peace talks don’t happen in the coming months; the Palestinians have threatened to ask the UN General Assembly in September to recognize a sovereign state of Palestine. At that point, many more Palestinians could rush to Israel’s borders, said Maoz.

“Then what happens? Shoot them? It can happen,” Maoz said. “But it would put Israel in bad light in international community. What would Israel do if thousands would march on its borders – civilians, women and children?”

If there’s one lesson Israelis and Palestinians have learned from yesterday’s border skirmishes, Maoz said, it’s that the young generation of Palestinians is courageous. The refugees in Syria knew they were about to cross a minefield, but they did it.

“It shows they didn’t care,” Maoz said. “The barrier of fear has collapsed vis-à-vis Israel in this respect.”

• Palestinian Protests: Arab Spring or Foreign Manipulation?
• Middle East crisis
• Palestinian reconciliation deal signed

Read tweets about the Palestinian protests

]]> http://www.theworld.org/2011/05/palestinian-protest-gaza-lebanon-syria/feed/ 3 05/16/2011,Daniel Estrin,East Jerusalem,Israel,Jerusalem,Lebanon,Nakbah,Palestine papers,Palestinian Authority,Palestinians,peace process,Syria The United States has accused Syria of inciting Palestinian protesters to cross into the Israeli-held Golan Heights. Palestinians from not only Syria but from Lebanon and the West Bank clashed with Israeli soldiers yesterday on the anniversary of the c... The United States has accused Syria of inciting Palestinian protesters to cross into the Israeli-held Golan Heights. Palestinians from not only Syria but from Lebanon and the West Bank clashed with Israeli soldiers yesterday on the anniversary of the creation of Israel. The Palestinians call it Nakbah Day. Nakbah is Arabic for catastrophe. Daniel Estrin reports. Download MP3 Video: West Bank Protest PRI's The World no 7304105162011Daniel EstrinMarco WermanPakistan protestMiddle Eastreportpolitics305257388http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/051620111.mp3 162 audio/mpeg http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/samaritan-community-in-the-west-bank/ http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/samaritan-community-in-the-west-bank/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:25:54 +0000 The World http://www.theworld.org/?p=70829 Download audio file (042220114.mp3)
The good samaritan is alive and well and living in the West Bank. Daniel Estrin visits one of the oldest and tiniest religious minorities in the Holy Land as they celebrate the Passover holiday. Download MP3 Audio Slideshow: The West Bank Samaritan community ]]>

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By Daniel Estrin

According to the parable that Jesus tells in the New Testament, the Good Samaritan was the one who lent a hand to a Jewish traveler found beaten on the side of the road.

Two thousand years later, the Samaritans are still around. They’re one of the oldest and tiniest religious minorities in the Holy Land, and their community is split between Israel and the Palestinian territories.

One a recent evening, the sun was setting over the hills of Samaria, deep in the heart of the West Bank. On the top of one hill, young boys and their fathers dragged fifty very nervous sheep to the center of the village.

“For us this is a great event, a happy event,” said Samaritan elder Benjamin Tzedaka. “But from the other side it is very, very sad festival for the sheep.”

Tzedaka is a man with a white mustache, a sense of humor, and a deep devotion to his tradition.
“We are just fulfilling the commandment of the Almighty, like it is written in the story of Exodus. Chapter 12, 13, 14 and 15,” he said.

A rough version of that account goes like this: And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron in Egypt, tell the Israelites that each family is to take a lamb, and on the 14th of the month Nissan, they must slaughter the lambs at dusk. And they shall eat the flesh that night, in haste – it is the Lord’s Passover.

This community says it’s been reenacting the Biblical exodus every single year since the Israelites left Egypt and entered the Promised Land – exactly 3647 years ago, according to the Samaritan calendar.

As dusk falls, men cut the lambs throats and smeared a bit of blood onto everyone’s foreheads. Everyone clapped. The inner parts of the animal were burned, the lambs roasted and a few hours later the community feasted — just like the Bible commands.

“It is not Charlton Heston, the Cecil B. DeMille Ten Commandments movie,” said Tzedaka. “It is the real thing.”
What exactly is the real thing – and who are the real heirs to the Biblical tradition – has been the subject of debate for centuries. Both Jews and Samaritans claim they descend from the Biblical tribes of Israel. But there’s one major difference. The ancient Jews offered their Passover sacrifice in Jerusalem. Samaritans say God’s chosen holy site isn’t Jerusalem — it’s Mount Gerizim in Biblical Samaria, what is today the northern West Bank. Unlike Jews, they still reenact the Passover sacrifice.

During the time of Jesus, these theological differences made Samaritans and Jews bitter enemies. And in the late 80s, during the first Palestinian intifada, the Samaritan community in the Palestinian city of Nablus feared persecution and fled their homes. But today, said elder Benjamin Tzedaka, both Israelis and Palestinians want to be the Samaritans’ best friends.

“Actually the Samaritans became the only entity in the Middle East respected by Arabs and Jews in the same respect,” said Tzedaka. “They are making a competition, who will come to visit the Samaritans.”

Who came to visit this year for the Passover sacrifice? People who usually don’t mix. The Palestinian mayor of Nablus sat near a prominent head of the Jewish settlers’ movement. Israeli medics and Palestinian firefighters stood by the fire pits in case of injury. Palestinian police and Israeli army commanders shook hands. Jewish settlers and Palestinians and tourists from around the world were all there for a glimpse of this small community.

“I think it’s fantastic that there is such a multicultural diversity here in Israel,” said Ilan Ben Zion, an American immigrant serving in the Israeli army who was moved by the motley crew of visitors. “Despite all the conflict particularly in this area, things like this can still happen. In this sacred space people can mingle peacefully.”

Nearby stood Palestinian filmmaker Diana Alzier.

“ I have to say, this is the only place where I am in the same neighborhood with settlers, Israelis, Palestinians, Palestinian security forces, and Israeli security forces,” said Alzier, “And nobody is trying to show their authority, or power over you….it’s confusing.”

The Samaritan community itself is also confusing. There are only about 750 of them. About half live in an Israeli town near Tel Aviv, speak Hebrew and serve in the Israeli army. The other half are Arabic speakers who live here in the West Bank. They send their kids to Palestinian schools, and some even work in the Palestinian Authority government. Still, the Israeli and Palestinian Samaritans gather together on festivals like this, as one community.

Politicians on both sides seek to curry favor with the Samaritans as a way to stake their own claims to the Holy Land. Israelis see them as living historical proof of Jews’ ancient roots, while Palestinians emphasize their centuries-old relations with the community as proof of their historical connection to this land.

The Samaritans, for their part, say they don’t pick sides. Tzedaka said they often host Palestinian and Israeli community leaders together on their holy mountain.

“They feel free to come here and speak about peace and also (open) themselves to the Samaritan issue, which is most important to us,” said Tzedaka. “We see any activity as ensuring the existence of the community, a long time ahead.”

There were a million and a half Samaritans in the fifth century. A hundred years ago, there were only 146. The community wanted to prevent inbreeding and to boost their numbers, so the high priest started allowing men to marry non Samaritan women. Tzedaka’s grandfather was the first Samaritan to marry outside of the community.

Last year on Passover, for the first time, the high priest took another bold step: He welcomed a single mom and her four kids in to the fold as individuals, without marrying in. Sharon Sullivan grew up as a non-practicing Catholic in Michigan. Some in the community are still getting used to her family, she said.

“There’s a little bit of surprise on their part: What are these Americans going to be able to do here?” Sullivan said. “I see sometimes they laugh when they hear my kids reading in ancient Hebrew.”

This tiny community may be holding onto its most ancient customs, but it’s also adopting new ones too – like welcoming outsiders like Sullivan. Samaritan Elder Benjamin Tzedaka said with a smile that he hopes, little by little, the Holy Land’s oldest and smallest religious community will someday number a million again.

]]> http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/samaritan-community-in-the-west-bank/feed/ 3 04/22/2011,Daniel Estrin,passover,religious minority,Samaritan,West Bank The good samaritan is alive and well and living in the West Bank. Daniel Estrin visits one of the oldest and tiniest religious minorities in the Holy Land as they celebrate the Passover holiday. Download MP3 - The good samaritan is alive and well and living in the West Bank. Daniel Estrin visits one of the oldest and tiniest religious minorities in the Holy Land as they celebrate the Passover holiday. Download MP3 Audio Slideshow: The West Bank Samaritan community PRI's The World no 04/22/2011Daniel EstrinKaty ClarkMiddle Eastreportreligion286191598http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/042220114.mp3 162 audio/mpeg http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/passover-diet-causes-problems-for-israeli-animals/ http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/passover-diet-causes-problems-for-israeli-animals/#comments Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:45:07 +0000 The World http://www.theworld.org/?p=70140 Download audio file (041520118.mp3)
Jews around the world will refrain from eating grains next week as part of the Passover holiday. But in Israel, animals have already begun their passover diet. Daniel Estrin reports. Download MP3 Slideshow: Passover feed for animals ]]> Download MP3

By Daniel Estrin

No, the animals in Israel aren’t Jewish. But their owners are. So, according to the Israeli rabbis who certify kosher food, if you’re a devout Jew, you’re not only prohibited from eating grain. So that means you can’t eat food that came from an animal that ate grain. So what’s the solution? Put the animals on a Passover diet.

“This is not hay,” said Ilan Reitish, a dairy farmer at a kibbutz near Jerusalem. “It’s corn. And other stuff that it’s not wheat. It’s something else that looks like wheat. But its not.

Reitish’s cows provide milk for Israel’s largest dairy producer. A week before the holiday, he rounds up the wheat-based feed he usually feeds his cows — and gives them a mix of corn and alfalfa-based feed instead.

Reitich isn’t religious. But a big chunk of the market in Israel is religious — and only buys kosher for Passover milk on the holiday. He’s also stopped feeding his cows one of their favorite foods — chicken manure.

“They cannot eat chicken manure in Passover — because you don’t know what the chickens eat,” Reitish said. “That’s why no one takes chances.”

Daniel Estrin: “Do they like the Passover food?”

“They don’t like it,” Reitish said. “Cows need to have all the time the same kind of food. If you change it, the bacteria have to change too, takes time. So, they have problems. They have problems, they have gasses.”

For more details click on Show Info

Flatulence is no excuse for irreverence. Israeli cows have been made to keep a Passover diet for decades. But each year, rabbis re-examine the biblical prohibition on eating grains during Passover … and sometimes they harden their interpretation. This year, one leading rabbi said that cow’s usual Passover feed isn’t good enough.

“I dare say that past dynamics show that one isolated stringency introduced one year will become a trend next year,” said Rabbi Uri Regev, who direct Hiddush, an organization that promotes religious freedom in Israel. “I suggest we’ll see, other kashrut authorities will feel that they can’t be outdone by this stringency.”

Things are different in the US. Most American Kosher certifiers don’t require their animals to give up grains for the holiday. But some observant American Jews do buy special kosher for Passover pet food. There is even some who don’t let their kids feed the animals at the zoo on the holiday, because you can’t touch pellets that aren’t kosher for Passover. That isn’t a problem at Israeli zoos.

“Today we are preparing the zoo for Passover,” said Dr. Amelia Turkel, the curator of the Safari Park in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. “And that means we must do a very through spring cleaning in every single department of the zoo.”

Turkel said they wash down the animal bins and replace their normal food with special Passover pellets. They also drain out the penguin and bear pools. Then they get a final approval that there are no errant grains lying around.

Turkel said Rabbi Katz a rabbi who comes to the zoo to see that all the preparations for Passover are correct. The lions and tigers and bears only eat meat, so they don’t have to give up grains. Who does?

Turkel said elephants giraffes, hippos rhinos, zebras, different kinds of antelope give up grains. And the chimpanzees get a special treat. Zookeeper Yael Baker said they go bananas for the Matzah, the flat Passover wafer.

“We’re gonna throw a few piece of matzah into the chimpanzees enclosure … you can see that as soon as I opened a package of matzah, all came running towards me waving their hands that they want some,” Baker said. “So you can see that they have absolutely no problem with eating matzah.”

Well, except for the stomach aches. The Turkel said the chimps sometimes get constipated from the Passover food. But as Jews who follow the weeklong Passover diet of unleavened foods know, that problem isn’t limited to the animals.

]]> http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/passover-diet-causes-problems-for-israeli-animals/feed/ 0 04/15/2011,Daniel Estrin,Israel,Jewish holiday,Kibbutz,passover,passover diet for animals Jews around the world will refrain from eating grains next week as part of the Passover holiday. But in Israel, animals have already begun their passover diet. Daniel Estrin reports. Download MP3 - Slideshow: Passover feed for animals Jews around the world will refrain from eating grains next week as part of the Passover holiday. But in Israel, animals have already begun their passover diet. Daniel Estrin reports. Download MP3 Slideshow: Passover feed for animals PRI's The World no 04/15/2011http://www.flickr.com/photos/pritheworld/sets/72157626379869397/show/Daniel EstrinMarco WermanMiddle EastIsraelreportreligion70140http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/041520118.mp3 162 audio/mpeg280494136 http://www.theworld.org/2011/03/facebook-caught-in-the-israel-palestine-conflict/ http://www.theworld.org/2011/03/facebook-caught-in-the-israel-palestine-conflict/#comments Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:15:45 +0000 The World http://www.theworld.org/?p=67902 Download audio file (032920114.mp3)
Daniel Estrin explains how the technology wizards behind Facebook have found themselves caught in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Download MP3 A new Facebook page that came up after the original was taken down ]]>
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By Daniel Estrin

The technology wizards behind the social networking site Facebook are finding themselves flung from their cozy offices in Silicon Valley into the thicket of political drama halfway across the world.

The Third Palestinian Intifada is a Facebook page calling for just that – a third Palestinian uprising against Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. The anonymous founders of the page have called for neighboring countries on May 15 to “march towards Palestine.”

Israelis have taken notice.

“Are social media paving way to potential Palestinian revolutions – not directed to their own leaders, but against Israel?” said an Israeli anchorwoman in a recent TV news report on the booming popularity of the Facebook page which attracted more than 340,000 followers.

Some users wrote anti-Israel epithets on the page. Others posted video clips, including one of a little boy reciting world capitals by heart.

“What’s the capital of Israel?” the boy’s father asks from behind the camera.

“There is no Israel,” the boy says. “It’s all Palestine.”

The page caught the attention of Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s minister of public diplomacy.

“When we looked at the page, there were direct calls for violence, incitement against Israel, death to Israel, death to Israelis, things that are unbearable and far beyond the lines of free speech,” Edelstein said.

The Israeli minister sent a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to immediately remove the page from the site.

“Facebook is a wonderful and very positive invention,” Edelstein said. “It’s very important for us to see that Facebook is a place where people argue about things, discuss things. But it shouldn’t be violent.”

Navigating global politics

Facebook’s stance has typically been not to take a stance. But certain photos and comments started disappearing from the Intifada site yesterday, and Tuesday, the Facebook page was gone without a trace.

It’s the latest example of Facebook’s tech geeks trying to figure out how to navigate a completely different terrain: Global politics.

Jillian York, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, said when it comes to defining inappropriate content, Facebook’s judgment can seem spotty.

The site allows pages promoting Holocaust denial, as a matter of free speech, “but on the other hand, Facebook has taken down content that I would consider far less offensive, such as photographs of mothers breastfeeding children. It’s a strange line that Facebook tries to walk on this,” York said.

Facebook has been reticent to publically address its vital role in the recent revolutions sweeping the Arab world. Others, like Twitter and Google, have taken a different approach: When Egyptian authorities shut down the internet, the online behemoths launched phone lines so Egyptians could leave voice messages that were translated into text on Twitter.

Facebook is different for a reason, because if it were “to come out and identify as political tool or advocacy tool, there’s a strong chance that more countries block them,” said York.

China and Vietnam are the only countries left to block Facebook, after Syria unblocked the site about a month ago, York said.

Just because Facebook is staying tight lipped on Middle Eastern events doesn’t mean the site’s not getting involved. At the height of protests, the Tunisian government set up a fake Facebook page. Tunisian users unknowingly revealed their passwords to the government. Soon after, Facebook rolled out an option to ensure Tunisian users safe login – before the service was offered worldwide.

There is, however, one cause Facebook has embraced publically: peace.facebook.com, a site that tracks Facebook friendships divided by conflict. According to the site, in the past 24 hours, there have been 15,604 new friendships between Israelis and Palestinians on Facebook.

If there’s something the social networking giant is willing to take a stand on in the Middle East, it’s getting Israelis and Palestinians to be friends or, at least, Facebook friends.

• A new Facebook page that came up after the original was taken down

]]> http://www.theworld.org/2011/03/facebook-caught-in-the-israel-palestine-conflict/feed/ 0 03/29/2011,conflict,Daniel Estrin,facebook,Intifada,Intifada Facebook page,Israel,Palestine Daniel Estrin explains how the technology wizards behind Facebook have found themselves caught in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Download MP3 - A new Facebook page that came up after the original was taken down Daniel Estrin explains how the technology wizards behind Facebook have found themselves caught in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Download MP3 A new Facebook page that came up after the original was taken down PRI's The World no 03/29/201167902Daniel EstrinMarco WermanNorth AmericaUnited Statesreport266122466politicshttp://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/032920114.mp3 162 audio/mpeg http://www.theworld.org/2011/02/gaddafi-in-ahip-hop-remix/ http://www.theworld.org/2011/02/gaddafi-in-ahip-hop-remix/#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:10:38 +0000 The World http://www.theworld.org/?p=64646 Download audio file (02282011.mp3)
The internet is ablaze with a racy hip-hop remix poking fun at Gaddafi's infamous balcony appearance last week. The DJ behind the anti-Qaddafi song is Israeli. And the video is a mix of Gaddafi's speech and American hip-hop hit "Hey Baby" by rappers Pitbull & T Pain. Daniel Estrin reports. Download MP3 Video: Gaddafi-Zenga Zenga Song ]]>
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By Daniel Estrin

Gaddafi has long been known for his flamboyant fashion and rambling rhetoric. But as opposition forces have taken control of much of Libya, Gaddafi’s public appearances have gotten increasingly aggressive and bizarre.

Last week he delivered a nearly hour long speech, replete with fist pounding and threats to clean Libya inch by inch, street by street.

Now a hip hop remix of the speech has gone viral on the Internet and has become a sort of anthem of the Libyan opposition. And if that alone doesn’t sting Gaddafi, here’s another twist: the DJ who made the song is from Libya’s arch enemy.

This Israeli-fuelled revolution is no Mossad spy operation. It’s the brain-child of 31 year old musician Noy Alooshe.

“This is amazing. I am number 10 most viewed musicians in the world. And number one in Israel. It’s amazing,” Alooshe said.

It was all premeditated. When Egyptians started taking to the streets, Alooshe would sit on his couch in his small Tel Aviv apartment and watch for good clips he could turn into hip hop mashups.

He watched Mubarak’s televised speeches, but thought they were too monotone. Then Gaddafi gave a quick speech from under an enormous umbrella: Good visuals, but not much else. And then, on the evening news last Tuesday, Alooshe watched Gaddafi’s fiery balcony speech.

“I will call upon millions from desert to desert,” threatened Gaddafi. “We will march to purge Libya inch by inch, house by house, alley by alley.”

Lady Gaga from the Arab world

Alooshe saw the speech, transfixed. “And it was like, before the mixing, it was funny and looks like a parody,” he said. “When he (Gaddafi) raises his hand like he is at a party, and his clothes look like Lady Gaga from the Arab world.”

The Lady Gaga of the Arab world not for his violence towards Libyan protestors, Alooshe said, but for his over the top clothing and his theatrics.

“It was like a dance track,” Alooshe said. “When I first listened to it, zanga zanga, der der, like someone put a tempo and Gaddafi said, zenga zenga. ‘Okay, it’s funny in the first place,’ I thought. ‘Let’s make it more funny. And let’s make it something that people can dance or sing to.’”

And so Zenga Zenga – literally “alley by alley” – was born.

Alooshe mixed the speech with the beat from Hey Baby, the hit song by American hip hop artists Pitbull and T-Pain. He uploaded two versions of the video – one without go-go dancers, for conservative Muslim viewers – and sent the link to Arab websites, including Al Jazeera’s Facebook page and the Twitter feed of a Libyan youth movement.

Within hours, he says, it was all over the Arab world. Even the official Facebook page of the Libyan opposition reposted the clip.

’Zenga Zenga’ goes viral

All together, Alooshe said about a million viewers have seen it. Not all of them have been happy about it. There have been vigorous debates: “the artist is Israeli,” much of the chatter says, “is it ok to like his video?”

“When some from Arab world found out I am Jewish, some wrote really bad stuff. Death to Jews, death to Israel. But after that I got a lot of good comments,” Alooshe said. “I’m from Egypt, you’re from Israel. I don’t like you, but I like remix.’ Someone from Saudi wrote me, ‘even though I’m a Muslim and you’re a Jew, I really like your mix, and I hope world will be free and there will be peace’”

Now that he’s an Internet sensation, Alooshe’s number one piece of advice to aspiring DJs who want to fuel a national revolution on the internet: don’t wait.

“If you are not the first person to do this stuff, you are gonna lose the game,” said Alooshe. “It was like, with Gaddafi, I’ve gotta mix it right now. I am not going out for a beer with my friends; I am sitting at computer and doing it and uploading it. I was first.”

Alooshe has been spending the last few days granting interview after interview to Israeli and international media. He’s sold the remix to a company that produces cell phone ringtones in Israel.

The young DJ said Gaddafi is obviously a bad guy who has to go — but as an artist, he’s indebted to the dictator for providing great material.

]]> http://www.theworld.org/2011/02/gaddafi-in-ahip-hop-remix/feed/ 2 02/28/2011,anti-Gaddafi song,Daniel Estrin,hip-hop song,Israeli DJ,Libya,Muammar Gaddafi,rappers Pitbull,T Pain,zenga zenga The internet is ablaze with a racy hip-hop remix poking fun at Gaddafi's infamous balcony appearance last week. The DJ behind the anti-Qaddafi song is Israeli. And the video is a mix of Gaddafi's speech and American hip-hop hit "Hey Baby" by rappers Pi... The internet is ablaze with a racy hip-hop remix poking fun at Gaddafi's infamous balcony appearance last week. The DJ behind the anti-Qaddafi song is Israeli. And the video is a mix of Gaddafi's speech and American hip-hop hit "Hey Baby" by rappers Pitbull & T Pain. Daniel Estrin reports. Download MP3 Video: Gaddafi-Zenga Zenga Song PRI's The World no http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.theworld.org/audio/02282011.mp3 161 audio/mpeg0228201102/28/2011Daniel EstrinLisa MullinsMiddle EastLibyamusicmusicpop242198376