So I fly to Israel next week and I am very excited to be returning for my third visit to my favourite country.
I’ve got lots planned including a visit to Jerusalem with my good friend Tal where we will say hi to a few readers of this blog. I will spend a couple of days in Tel Aviv where I will be hanging out with the extended Beyond Beseder crew, some of who I met in London last summer. I am also meeting up again with a few of the friends I made out there while researching my Six Day Phwoar feature in 2006.
I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it. I will tell you all about how it went right here.
Please take lots of photos!
I was just finalising camera plans with one of the Beyond Beseder folks!
You are a valued advocate and we look forward to welcoming you.
The six day ‘phwoar’ is inspired wordplay Mr N-B
From Six-Day Phwoar: “For a start, the men are so much hotter,” he beams. “Here the men are tall, slim and tanned. Not like in the UK where they are more like cottage cheese – all pasty and chunky.”
Is he, perhaps, talking about Johann Hari at “The Independent”? Or maybe Matthew Parris at “The Times” or Andrew Pierce at “The Daily Mail.” Perhaps they will be enjoying a trip to Tehran this year to report on some public crane gay executions.
Anyway, have a great time Chas. This is a brilliant blog and your superb journalism is not to be spoken of in the same breath as that lot.
Hope you have a super time – I’m sure you will.
Thanks very much everyone. I shall self-indulgently post photographs and reports right hither upon my triumphant, philosemitic return.
I arrived in Israel today from cold & miserable London. Temperatures here are currently what the Jerusalem Post calls “unseasonably warm”, but I don’t know how long this spell of what I would call hot weather will last. I think that Ben Gurion Airport is my favourite airport in the entire world. I mentioned this to someone whose distant cousin was involved with the planning – and he said that it was designed to “welcome you in ” – so unlike sterile Terminal 5. I love the curves around the fountain area. I love the fact that once you leave the plane, you are in natural light very quickly. I love the “coming & going” escalators where the incoming passengers pass the outgoing ones. OK – so immigration/passport control may take a while, but then you’re in the baggage hall and even there it somehow manages to be less cold & utilitarian looking than Terminal 5 – maybe it’s the small amount of natural light in conjunction with the clever lighting.
Anyway, hope you have a great trip Chas – and if you are here for Purim, you’ll have an amazing time. Don’t forget to pack your fancy dress!
Have a wonderful time.
Fingers crossed, I’ll also be there in June.
Sivan8, I Agree totally! I have always said how much I like the new airport. It’s such a beautiful building: everything HEathrow T5 is not. I normally dislike pointless water features, but the fountain is just wonderful, and adds calm to the place. The natural light, the quintessentially Israeli building materials (Jerusalem stone) etc. And the ease of use of the place is excellent too. No wonder it feels like arriving home every time I land there.
Enjoy Chas! Even the airport is awesome
enjoy. i’m in TA at the moment, in the middle of a heatwave, but will be home before you leave.
Thanks again everyone. Benjy and Sivan have a great time and tell the weather to stay just as it is please!
And yes Sivan I totally agree and I loved your description of BG airport – very evocative!
Chas:
while you are there, you may want to look into this story and perhaps even offer some support to this Palestinian investigator into PA corruption:
http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/02/fatahgate-fallout-where-are-the-media-editors-are-not-interested-unless-it-has-an-anti-israeli-angle.php
Just to clarify about what Lynne T wrote about,
The reporter who reported the account is Khaled Abu Toameh, who is Arab-Israeli, and who writes for the Jerusalem Post.
Khaled Abu Toameh is excellent.
http://www.hudsonny.org/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=22
http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/02/palestinian-authority-still-stealing-hundreds-of-millions-hamas-taking-over.php
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/11/what-does-pro-palestinian-really-mean.php
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/12/wanted-palestinian-peace-now-movement.php
The Palestinian Authority (Fatah-PLO) senior official who eventually, in desperation, contacted the Jerusalem Post is Fahmi Shabaneh.
Fahmi Shabaneh eventually, in desperation, contacted the Jerusalem Post to disclose the nature of the systemic corruption of the Palestinian Authority after no Palestinian-Arab journalists and editors, and no Western (culturally Christian-European / culturally PostChristian-European) journalists and editors, would publish his accounts because his accounts presented facts about the nature of the Arab-”Palestinian” governing leadership in the West Bank and did not vilify Jewish Israeli people.