11 Sivan 5780
3 June 2020
The News on the Israeli Street
The daily Corona update . . .
The Corona figures as of 8:00 am this morning (Wednesday):
There are now 17,285 confirmed cases of Corona in Israel of whom 14,940 have recovered. 29 people are on ventilators. 290 Israelis have died.
Palestinian terror in the last 24 hours . . .
Road 465 in Benjamin, Khawra, Al Khader, Road 55 near Azzun, the T-Junction in northern Samaria, Ya’ed, Luban A-Sharqiya and other places were where Palestinian terrorists assaulted Israelis with “rocks” and Molotovs.
More terror to come . . .
Now that Yamina is no longer in the coalition government, Israel has decided to stop offsetting the salaries of terrorists in Israeli prisons and monthly stipends given to the families of murderers of Israelis from the tax payment that it passes to the Palestinians.
We can expect more outrageous decisions like this with a government full of left-wingers and a government without Shaked, Bennett and Smotrich.
Jordanian terrorists . . .
Five Jordanians who were apparently captured back in February on information provided by Israeli intelligence were put on trial yesterday.
According to the Jordanian Legal Ministry, the five are accused of “planning to carry out suicide bombings against Israeli targets in the occupied West Bank.”
A new ballistic missile from IAI . . .
Israel Aircraft Industries announced yesterday that it has developed and successfully tested a new “LORA” ballistic missile which has maneuverability and precision currently unavailable to the IDF.
The LORA was accurate to a distance of 10 meters from a distance of 400 km and can be fired from land or sea platforms.
Turkish influence expands in eastern Jerusalem . . .
The so-called Turkish “aid agency” TIKA has been busy in recent weeks buying up properties and displaying propaganda designed to spread PM Erdogan’s brand of revolutionary Islam in Jerusalem.
This is a photo of yet another store now displaying the Turkish flag in the Muslim Quarter:
A clothing store for young girls–now a propaganda instrument of Turkey.
It is incomprehensible that the Israeli government lets Turkey get away with this.
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TODAY’S BLOG
A Short Day Trip To Ramot, Part 2
If you read yesterday’s OneIsrael blog, you know that we were on our way along Highway 1 to Jerusalem’s northwestern suburb of Ramot to visit your humble servant’s son and his family.
We had just passed Abu Ghosh down in the valley and Mevaseret Zion high on the hill to our left.
Note how Mevaseret Zion is built right on the 1949 Armistice Lines. Note Highway 1.
Looking at the above map, we were going from left to right, and exited Highway 1 at the Mt. Scopus-Ma’aleh Adumim exit which is approximately where you see the Highway 1 icon on the right side of the map. From there, it is about one mile down a steep hill, under the remarkably engineered new railroad bridge, and through a tunnel until we come to the exit for Ramot.
Also, if you look at the map above, you will notice that as we enter Ramot, we immediately cross the Armistice Line (aka the Green Line). Established in 1974, Ramot was incorporated into the municipality of Jerusalem in 1980, and actually consists of the neighborhoods of Ramot Alon, Ramot Bet, Ramot Gimmel, Ramot Daled, Ramot Vav and so on.
An estimated 60,000 Israelis live in Ramot. The international community would have you believe the fraud that all of these Israelis are “illegal settlers”, that the land on which Ramot sits belongs to the Palestinians, and that one day all of we Israelis are going to get up and leave.
Our son and his family live in Ramot Bet. I won’t tell you exactly where, but his apartment is on one of the streets that you see on the map below:
Part of the thriving community of Ramot Bet.
Over the last five years, I have gotten to know this beautifully architectured community very well. One of my grandsons had his brit in the Ateret Tsiyon Synagogue two years ago (our newest grandson Elijah had his brit in the backyard last month because the Synagogue was closed because of Corona) and my granddaughter goes to an English-speaking kindergarten in the area. I am in and out of the supermarket that you see beside the HaEts Gardens all the time.
So who lives in Ramot? Most residents, like my son, are “modern orthodox.” A good portion of men wear black coats and black hats, and most women wear long dresses and wigs or hair coverings. Even on the hottest day, you will not see anyone walking around Ramot Bet wearing short pants or a short sleeve shirt.
Families are large, though perhaps not quite as large as you will find in an ultra-orthodox neighborhood. The average family has around six children. Also, in the average family (again unlike with the ultra-orthodox), both the husband and wife work. For example, our son has a master’s degree in counter-terrorism and is a manager fighting cyber crime in a FOREX company, and our daughter-in-law is a lawyer who does social work for the city of Jerusalem.
I mention all of this because one of the biggest misconceptions in Israel and elsewhere these days is that the orthodox have been one of the primary spreaders of the Corona virus. If what we saw on Sunday is any indication, nothing could be further from the truth in regard to the modern orthodox.
On Sunday we took a 25 minute walk to Canyon Ramot (the Ramot Mall). Along the way, we passed dozens of other people. Everyone was wearing a mask, and many were wearing gloves. When we arrived at the Mall, the situation was the same with only the occasional person without a mask:
A hazy photo I took inside the Ramot Mall on Sunday.
I neglected to mention that the mall is the second largest mall in Jerusalem with three levels and more than 22,000 square feet. It has almost every kind of store and business you can imagine such as The Children’s Place, Super-Pharm, FOX, Crocs, Lord Kitsch, Teva Natural Food Market, Israel Discount Bank as well as numerous bookstores.
All of the restaurants in the mall are kosher mehadrine (a higher form of kosher than usual), but that does not reduce the variety–with burger, yogurt, waffle, pizza, and normal Israeli fare in profusion.
In fact, the reason we went to the mall on Sunday was to eat out for the first time since the Corona restrictions were loosened. My son and I decided we wanted some shwarma:
It was exciting to eat out again–but before we entered we were checked for temperature and masks. Interestingly, the only person not wearing a mask was one of the workers behind the counter. Note that the large man directly in the center of the photograph is a member of United Hatzalah–a volunteer based emergency service provider headquartered in Jerusalem.
And so we come to an end to the wonderful day we had in Ramot–topped off by our ability to finally hold our newest grandson (grandchild number 7) in person.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.