Life, logistics, Jerusalem

I am still waiting for my Israeli press card to come through! This is a pain, as I can’t get to Gaza without it. But tomorrow I’m going down to Tel Aviv to talk to some folks there.
Shoot, I also have lots of great material for a great post about “Sunday morning in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” But I only have time for the very short version here: Big disappointment. No transcendental music. No services at all in any of the church’s heavily contested nooks, crannies, or broader open spaces– even though I was there for a good part of the morning. Only the old game of fleece-the-tourist continued apace. Though several of the church’s soaring domes and cleverly contrived stone staircases could be described as beautiful, still, to my plain Quaker sense of esthetics the odor of idolatry far outweighed the faint whiff of sanctity. As I said: big disappointment.
(Once, I went there and there were some Armenian monks chanting on a hidden high mezzanine. That was lovely. None today.)

20 thoughts on “Life, logistics, Jerusalem”

  1. helena,
    good luck getting your paperwork… i am saddened to hear that you can not go to gaza without a press pass – does that mean that tourists can not visit gaza?

  4. Helena,
    What are you hearing about the remark a few days ago of Israel’s Central Command Chief Yair Naveh to the effect that “Jordan King Abdullah is liable to be the last king of Jordan”?

  5. Riverbend’s post does an excellent job (as ususal) in documenting what is happening in her neighborhood and her life.
    I think the remark “she is a bit of a poor thing” is very insulting to her and I wish frank could walk about 10,000 miles in her shoes. I’m thinking his opinion would be more charitable if he was living in a war zone without electricity, clean water, jobs and basic security.

  6. THE ROVING EYE
    The occupiers’ trial
    By Pepe Escobar
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ20Ak03.html
    Susan – NC,
    If the power or water cut from you compensated and paid for the inconveniences ‎caused by the cut.‎
    But when Occupier for more than three 3 years talking there is progress in Iraq and ‎things better in their speeches and media this so disrobing with billions vanished for ‎Iraq constructions that the big lie they keep saying it.‎
    I think their is progress which is the Death Squad forces that designed and made by ‎CIA in Iraq.‎

  7. Susan NC
    “Bit of a poor thing” is a slightly british form of understatement, generally intended to reveal a great deal of sympathy and compassion.
    Thank you for your empathy with Riverbend.

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