Usually, your average every day news here in Israel has to do with war in this part of the country or another. Of course, it’s not that it’s not that THAT situation has changed or anything (i.e. siege on the Gaza strip, Kassam rockets, etc.), but suddenly I find myself at a position where, for a change, the most immediate danger I am facing has to do with me being a woman.

One week ago, one of the most dangerous rapists this country has known (probably the most dangerous in the past 10 years) escaped, in central Tel Aviv (and no, I’m not talking about our president). Benny Sela, a vicious and extremly violent serial rapist, terrorised Tel Aviv (and central Israel) women for 2 years before they caught him and brought him to trial about 7 years ago. He recieved the longest prison sentence ever given to a sex offender. Thanks to the disproportional stupidity of Israeli police, he managed to flee on the way to the courthouse in Tel Aviv, a week ago, and has yet to be traced. Sela is highly intelligent and highly psychotic. His M.O. consisted of finding the most practical victim (single women or young girls on their own) and stalking his prey, breaking into their apartments when they were most vulnerable – deep in sleep, alone in the house. He attacked all over Tel Aviv, even at its very hub, as well as other cities in central Israel. His profile indicates it is only a matter of time before he is unable to help himself and starts attacking again. Right now, he could be anywhere.

So, being a young single woman living in a ground floor apartment in the very centre of central Tel Aviv, within about 15 minutes radius of the spot where Sela fled, you can imagine I am feeling a bit hunted these days. Walking home just now from visiting my flatmate at the cafe where she works, I have never felt so jumpy – and most harrowingly, have never yearned more for the presence of (friendly) male company. This perhaps pisses me off the most, being a fairly feminist and independant chick, to find myself feeling so dependant on males.

Sexual terrorism is so rampant in the middle east and yet it seems to get much less attention than political terrorism – is being picked out and namelessly victimized for your gender any less outrageous than being victimized for your nationality?

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Following up on previous posts regarding Darfur, I thought I’d add my bit. The subject of Darfur is actually rather unfamiliar here in Israel – which is extremely ironic. Perhaps even more ironic and cynical is the fact that some refugees from Darfur have ended up in Israel, coming via Egypt – and they have been imprisoned for being citizens of a so called enemy state. So a state that has been founded by survivors of genocide, legitimized in part by that genocide, is paying attention to the victims of another genocide solely by treating them as criminals and locking them up. Nice.
What is worst is that I find that hardly anyone knows about this (hardly anyone knows what Darfur is), seems we are selfishly preoccupied with our own internal problems, when we are the people who have the biggest moral obligation to aid in this matter.

I did this simple composition as part of a Photographics class assignment last week, and hung it it up in the design school hall with some other compositions, with intent to be provocative and insert the name Darfur into people’s conciousness, make them research what it means, and make them think about who we are and what are the moral duties stemming from our roots. The image should be quite familiar, I think, and the text translates to “Darfur is here” which is also a bit of a paraphrase on an Israeli slogan from a few years back about the Occupied Territories (yesha) “Yesha is here”.

Hi. I’m Lilu (Liora), 25 years old, a Visual Communications Design student from Tel Aviv. I’ll kick off with an apology to Esra’a and everyone else, I got my invite to write here ages ago but have only now finally sat down to publish already… if it’s any consolation I’ve been plagued with guilt for over a month now

Here’s a little background on how I ended up here in the first place – I spent last year, my first year of university and my first year living independantly, in a small bubble of denial. I pretended I could live my life within a comfortable distance of the political problems of my region. Summertime came and proved me wrong.
The war kicked off for me a venture in communications – I started blogging on Ramsay Short’s blog Beirut Live, which led to a friendship I developed with a Lebanese, Bashir, which then developed into joint blogs we co-authored (not to mention an open channel of discussion). The war ended and the discussion slightly withered, as people went back to re-building their everyday lives and living them. The productive dialog was somewhat abandoned. To me this was and is a shame, because I find I can’t put aside the lessons the war taught me. I can’t go back to the apathy I still see among those surrounding me. Communication among the civilians, listening and understanding, is essential – I see it as the only path out of the mess we are in, and it is a big mess which is only on hold temporarily, it is not over yet.

But now back to tonight’s events. In 1995 Yigal Amir, a right wing extremist, murdered PM Yitzhak Rabin. 11 years later our country is a mess – we are lost and confused, our government and military looks accordingly, and Amir is being allowed to have children. I went to the rally mostly because of the freedom and rights Amir is being granted slowly and the way public attitude towards him is shifting. We are on a path towards a political assasination regaining legitimacy. So I went to the rally to make a stand. Unfortunately it was more of a Rabin-fest, the majority of the program consisting of songs by Israel’s hottest pop singers, and all my friends agreed it was pretty ridiculous. The turn out was also less than in previous years. Pessimism is heavy in the air… the only sense came from David Grossman, a talented and respected left-winged author who lost his son Uri in Lebanon this summer, and called out directly for Olmert to choose a path of dialog and peace. Can we vote Grossman into office maybe?

Tonight, it has struck me that 11 years ago, when Rabin was assasinated, it wasn’t just a gifted and rational leader that was taken away. It was a promise of the country we would be, could be, should be, but now perhaps only would have been.

I really miss him.