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The 9th Annual Chelm Awards for 2017
The 9th Annual Chelm Awards for 2017
SPECIAL EXPANDED EDITION
Celebrating Only-in-Israel Moments
on Israel’s 70th Independence Day
by Daniella Ashkenazy
For almost a decade Chelm-on-the-Med Online (www.chelm-on-the-med.com) has been collecting and sharing in English the wildest and wackiest news stories about Israel ‘hiding’ in the country’s mainstream Hebrew press in order to balance overly conflict-driven news that warps perceptions of life in Israel.
Every year, the Chelm Project announced in late-December early-January the best of the lot in a given year by giving out annual Chelm Awards for the best of the bunch in a host of categories ranging from nutty antics by politicians and incredulous actions by public bodies, to zany behavior by run-of-the-mill Israelis, including special recognition of the most audacious case of chutzpa and an ‘Honorable Menschen[1]Award’ for extraordinary gestures…every year but this one, when due to an extended medical emergency in the family, the Chelm Project grounded to a halt in late December 2017.
In honor of Israel’s 70th Independence Year[2] Chelm-on-the-Med Online has chosen to celebrate this landmark by sharing a medley of landmark moments over the past year that are not only the epitome of unforgettable Chelm-like-but-true moments in Israel during 2017, Almost all of the events below could equally qualify as Only-in-Israel moments that speak volumes about the true flavor of life in Israel over the past seven decades[3] and in the subtext – reflect how Israeli society ticks.
***
The Israeli Diplomacy in Action Award goes to Prime Minister Bibi Natanyahu who in a stroke of genius and fitting response toUNESCO’s declaration of the Temple Mount as a Muslim world heritage site with no ties to the Jews, ordered a replica of the relief that adorns the Arch of Titus in Rome depicting Roman soldiers carrying away the seven-branch menorah (candelabra)[4] and other spoils from the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Natanyahu is giving the 45,000 NIS ($11,842) replica to the director-general of UNESCO Irina Bokova as a gift, to be placed on permanent displayed at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
This year’s Most Telling Decision by an Israeli Ministry went to the Ministry of Health for a surely Only-in-Israel step. Israeli cities are so alley cat friendly that many municipalities provide ground level water troughs[5] for cats and dogs as an integral part of water fountains for people, but in 2017 the Ministry of Health was forced to distributed a directive to Israeli hospitals specifying employees should not encourage feral felines to ‘set up house’ on hospital grounds where the stray cats could be found not only wandering about the lobby and gathering outside kitchens, and occasionally strolling down the corridor of a ward. Rumor has it the last straw for senior health officials was a report that at one unnamed Israeli hospital a cat ‘fell’ through an acoustic ceiling into the lap of a dialysis patent.
No Chelm Award event would be complete without a Chelm Award for Chutzpa whose primary recipient this year reflects the over-the-top nature of political discourse in Israel:The winner isa senior Haaretz journalist Rogel Alpher, who called on Israelis to boycott the nation’s much-loved HaShachar HaOleh chocolate spread, branding the Haifa-based brand “a supporter of ‘the Occupation” claiming the iconic snack item was – I quote – “a racist-fascist chocolate spread” (because the factory owner Moshe Veidberg believes Jews have the right to settle in Judea and Samaria). Sales of HaShachar HaOleh chocolate spread skyrocket at some supermarkets with one angry customer purchasing six cartons…giving containers away to other shoppers and the rest to a food bank for low-income families… Co-recipients for unadulterated chutzpa are regular patrons of the upscale Tel Aviv Asian restaurant “Zepra” who lodged a class action suit after they ordered horridly expensive beef filet and veal dishes, while a food lab subsequently showed the orders were made of less expensive…pork. The plaintiffs not only want their money back for everything they’d ever ordered over the past seven (!) years…they cried crocodile tears claiming such underhanded behavior damaged their “freedom of choice and autonomy…desecrated their personal dignity, and forced them to break the halachic prohibition on eating pork”…rather overblown considering the eatery in question is not kosher and has pork, and shrimp and soft-shelled crabs prominently featured on the menu.
Alas, this year nobody topped Hadera installing singing traffic lights in 2013, nor Natanya’s leaders ordering the main drag painted purple in 2009 (only to have it fade in the Israeli sun). Nevertheless, there is a winner of the Quirkiest Municipality Award: Tel Aviv-Yafo, where city hall believes they can provide relief from sky-high rents and real estate prices due to a shortage of apartments with a mere stroke of the pen. How? Double built-up areas by changing building codes to permit “a 100 percent increase in building presently above ground – underground.” Sublevel ‘digs’ in each and every building could be used to enhance residents’ security with a bomb shelter, ease occupants parking nightmare (some report circling for 40 minutes to an hour-and-a-half in search for a vacant spot at the end of a long workday), or create joint sunken assets for condo owners with sublevel flats ‘under’ their existing building or by renting out space for other uses (commercial or public).
The Strangest Court Case in 2017 is but another Only-in-Israel nugget. After traffic attorney-at-law Asaf Oren (of all people) got socked with ticket for failing to pay for parking in a municipal lot where the sign stating paid parking was in force between 09:00-19:00 hours on weekdays and 09:00-14:00 hours on Fridays and holidays[6], the scrappy young lawyer successfully argued in an appeal to the Rechovot Municipality that since Hebrew is written from right-to-left, he had every right to assume the sign meant motorists had to pay for parking between 7 PM and 9 AM…not 9 AM to 7 PM. Rechovot is changing its Hebrew sign language accordingly…probably thoroughly confusing everyone except Asaf Oren.
In a Jewish state, no annual Chelm Awards would be complete without a Religious Oddities Award. The winner in the corporatecategoryis an NGO that assists soldiers in the exclusively ultra-Orthodox Netzach Yehuda NACHAL battalion.[7] When they learned some young ultra-Orthodox (haredi) men who join the IDF rather than taking an automatic exemption had a hard time finding marriage partners, the NGO hired a matchmaker who has already paired up dozens of such men with women who are also considered ‘tainted merchandise’ within their insular community: haredi girls who have gone to study at secular universities and baalei tshuva (women raised secular, who have adopted a haredi lifestyle). In the indie category of odd religious conduct, Ramle residentHaim Israel (38) hobbled off with the same honor after claiming he suddenly “felt as if his two legs had been re-amputated” almost two decades after he lost both his legs in a road accident at age 19. Phantom limb pains were sparked by the discovery that “his legs had disappeared from the Ramle cemetery” – where his father had insisted on burying them next to Haim’s grandfather’s grave ‘in advance’ believing that in order for Haim’s soul to ascend to heaven, a Jew must be buried with all his body parts intact’ (or at least everything present and accounted for...).
Encapsulating the fighting spirit of the IDF, the Only-in-the-IDF Citation this yearwas won by a group of reservists from the elite Egoz commando unit who fired off an angry letter to top brass and the Minister of Defense protesting a “grave incident of discrimination that was totally in contradiction to IDF values” after their commanding officer prevented one of their buddies from partaking in a joint military exercise in Cyprus with a Greek Cypriot commando unit charging “he wasn’t presentable enough” in his long dreadlocks although the reservist in question had been deemed fit to do battle - dreadlocks and all – in the 2014 Protective Edge campaign in Gaza. Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel was a close runner-up for this coveted prize after he took to new heights the IDF’s “dual-role military” format (i.e. performing nation-building functions in the civil domain – from immigrant absorption to remedial education for marginalized youth, parallel to its professional soldiering duties). Faced with an unexpected surplus of carrots,[8] the Minister of Agriculture appealed to Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman and IDF Deputy Chief-of-Staff Yair Golan to increase consumption of carrots on IDF military bases to combat the glut.
The Chelm Project’s Crime of the Year for 2017 is bizarre by any yardstick: The prize goes hands-down to two incredible assault and battery charges written up by over-zealous cops in Tzfat in the space of 12 months both in the line-of-duty when investigating domestic quarrel complaints from neighbors: In the first, the ‘blunt instrument’ allegedly employed by the assailant was a pita filled with fragrant fresh-fried felafel balls, which an angry 55-year-old grandmother of three threw at her already smashed husband; in the second incident, a 59-year-old man armed with a pita filled will shawarma shavings and diced salad was hauled into the station for a similar attack on his wife.
The Chelm Project’s annual Honorable Menschen Award was well earned by unnamed public spirited individuals who came to the rescue ofdisabled persons issued 500 NIS ($143) fines for “obstructing traffic” on Route 1, the main artery between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during demonstrations geared to force the government to raise disability pensions. The ad hoc group launched a crowd funding campaign to pay the fines – collecting 82,558 NIS ($23,588)…almost three times their original goal, allowing the protesters to carry on their struggle. The runners-up as honorable menschen are Dr. Khalil and Dr. Reem Bakly – a Muslim Arab dentist couple from Upper Nazareth who built a 100% kosher sukkah on their balcony with a stunning view of the Galilee, ordered a ton of kosher food, and invited their neighbors – Jews and Arab – to drop in during the week-long holiday, and Ehab, a Muslim Arab Egged bus driver from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al Amud, who turned his public bus which plies the route to and from the Kotel (Western Wall) into a sukkah on wheels, decked out in decorative fruits and tinsel hanging from the roof.
Only-in-Israel Holiday Traditions have been marked in the past by a host of ‘buy such-and-such - receive such-and-such for free’ campaigns, from foodstuffs to furniture and appliances such as the classic ‘gem’ in the 1990s when a ready-made salad maker and an appliance chain joined forces offering ‘buy four 500 gram containers of our brand of Kosher-for-Passover humous/tchina/eggplant salad and be eligible to buy a major home appliance at half price. In the same spirit, this year’s strangest combina (deal) appeared in a full page ad in the major dailies just before Passover: Buy a kolnonit – a battery-powered senior mobility cart from kibbutz Afikim…and receive for free a 3,985 NIS (+$1,000) value battery-powered Apollo moped for the grandkid who finds the afikomen.
And speaking of holidays, the Ultimate Israeli ‘Anything Goes’ Award – celebrating Israelis’ unbridled individuality and originality that knows no bounds – went to a couple in their early 40s, Galit and Ofer Mordechai, who stunned their friends with a one-of-a-kind Purim costume…Ofer arriving at their Purim party lying on a canvas hand stretcher covered with a tallis[9] accompanied by Galit decked out in mourning dress and carrying a black umbrella and obit notice.[10] Also short-listed for ‘following his own inclinations” was a man who needs no introduction: Ehud Barak… Spotted in Tel-Aviv carrying a woman’s clutch in his hand. the former Chief-of-Staff/Defense/Foreign/Prime Minister explained the odd fashion choice was not a sign he’d taken to cross-dressing at age 75; the No Nonsense ex-commando revealed he no longer had a bodyguard with a Klatch, so he was carrying his own ‘piece’ in that innocuous looking clutch.
What was the Wackiest Archeological Discovery of 2017? The prize goes toexcavators atthe Banot Yaakov Bridge dig at the foot of the Golan Heights where archeologists surmise that our prehistoric ancestors may also have been smitten by the Munchies, after apparently discovering by chance 780,000 years ago that some of the 55 plants and seeds found at the site could be roasted and some popped like popcorn.
As for the Israel Ingenuity Award the past year, itgoes to an Israeli design and technology company called Knut Studios that’s turning ‘the best laugh on earth (chosen from among recordings submitted by the public) into a ‘laugh star’[11] (i.e. a human laugh, visualized as 3-D one-of-a-kind sculpture)…actualizing an idea dreamed up by Israeli digital conceptual artist Eyal Gever who when queried – “What would you do if you could create art in zero gravity?” – said laughter, something intrinsically human…universal and free-floating – is absent in soundless space. The winning laugh is to be created on a zero-gravity 3D printer on the International Space Station, then released in space…like some interstellar message in a bottle. This honor dovetailed the Craziest ‘What Was He Thinking’ Award (sometimes dubbed the Schlemiel Prize) which was awarded to a 48-year old Ramat Gan resident who told National Insurance authorities that he planned to kill himself because he wasn’t happy with the way they were handling his case, leading to police being sent to the suicidal fellow’s apartment where the cops found the flat owner safe and sound in the living room…and a pot-processing operation full of cannabis plants and processing gear in an adjoining room, giving the flat owner ample reason to want to shoot himself.
Undeniably, the Wildest Only-in-Israel Life Story Award belongs to an East Jerusalemite namedMuhammad who in his late teens had throw rocks at Israeli Border Police, but now wants to join the Border Police stressing he “speaks fluent Arabic and knows all the alleyways of East Jerusalem.” Mohammad recently changed his name to ‘Israel’ – a role reversal sparked by the 21 year-old floor tile layer discovering by chance that he was registered in Israel’s Population Registry as a Jew because his late mother, who died when he was a preschooler, had been Jewish.
Last but not least, my favorite Chelm story of all times - In the Dark (circa 2000) - about the IDF draftee who was afraid of the dark and called his mom to sneak in and out of boot camp to accompany him whenever he drew night patrol duty – isn’t merely a weird blip on the radar! Again underscoring the unbreakable bond between Israeli parents and their kids in uniform, the 2017 definitive Only-in-Israel Award goes to the dad of a 19 year-old IDF female soldier assigned a month’s guard duty whose father Nissim stood guard every night between 6 and 10 PM (out of uniform, he stressed) just outside the base[12] on the outskirts of Afula while his daughter stood guard at the entrance because she was afraid of the dark and it was very important to him that his daughter have ‘a successful national service experience.’
[2] Photo credit: Israel Poste Commemorative Stamp
[3] Even the 1948 War of Independence – the bloodiest war in Israel’s history – was peppered by piquant Chelm-like-but-true episodes and bizarre situations that capsulated the flavor of life in the Jewish state. In February 1948, in the twilight hours of the British Mandate, the EZEL attempted to rob a major branch of Barclay's Bank in Tel Aviv parading as British soldiers. The members of the radical Jewish militia closed off a section of Allenby Street with a large number of jeeps and barbed wire. Cursing like true troopers, in ‘Hinglish’ – fooling nobody, 15 of the gang walked into the bank demanding the keys to the vault…but due to bad timing, no combination of keys opened the safe. It was 8 AM - well before banker's hours. See Daniella Ashkenazy, “There’s No News Like Old News,” Jerusalem Post, May 30, 2000. Archived HERE.
[4]Photo credit: The Arch of Titus menorah, and a 7-branch menorah motif in the mosaic floor of the ancient Ma’on synagogue in the western Negev, Antiquities Authority
[6]Photo credit: the problematic sign in Yediot
[7]Photo credit: Haredi Nachal vetsFacebook account.
[8]Photo credit: The Carrot and the Sword, Daniella Ashkenazy
[9] Prayer shawl. According to Jewish custom, the body of the deceased is wrapped in a shroud covered with a tallis – in most places in Israel, without a coffin – transported to the burial site on a wheeled stretcher.
[10] Photo credit: Tal Mordechai’s Facebook account
[11] http://www.laugh.ai/
[12]On cold nights the office on duty allowed Nissim to join his daughter in the checkpoint booth. Did other soldiers on the base deride her? No, the other girls were envious! Photo credit: photo published by the family.
8th ANNUAL CHELM AWARDS FOR 2016
YES, it’s that time of year again!
Time to announce the
The 8th Annual Chelm Awards for 2016
What was the most telling moment for Israel in 2016?
It’s neither knife-welding Jihadists in the streets in the opening months of 2016 nor the stab in the back from Obama at the UN marking the end of the year. In fact, the best reflections of ‘the real Israel’ beyond conflict-driven headlines can be found among the nutty news stories, ‘hiding’ in the back pages of the Hebrew press featured year-long by Chelm-on-the-Med Online. The best gems are candidates for the annual Chelm Awards – now in its 8th year.
The winner this year for Ground-breaking Decisions by Government Ministries is the Ministry for Social Equality for championing an amendment to the Veteran Citizens Law - 1989 that will allow anyone age 80 and above to ‘jump the queue’ at pharmacies, post offices, theatre and movie box offices, and even supermarkets by flashing their Senior Citizen card.
And speaking of movie theatres, parliamentarian MK Shuli Moalem-Rafaeli (Jewish Home party) – a mother of seven kids and still counting – is the recipient of Chelm’s ‘Landmark’ Legislation Award for the bill she sponsored that seeks to prohibit movie theatres from charging for ‘lap tots’ taken to the movies – arguing such small children are no different from babies flying free-of-cost. Moreover, kids are not viewers since they don’t understand the plot, reasons the MK.
Ofakim is the proud recipient of the Quirkiest Move by an Israeli Municipality in 2016, thanks to the Negev town’s Chever Kadisha (Burial Society) which decided to solve the problem of finding a grave in the town’s 12.4 acre municipal cemetery by posting street signs between sections…named after 15 deceased members of the Burial Society.
Veteran Chelm-on-the-Med Online followers, no doubt recall how last year’s award for thinking out-of-the-box went to the folks behind solar-powered air conditioners for Israeli lifeguard stations; well, this year’s Israeli Ingenuity Award was a shoo-in: artist Gilat Orkin who sculpts prominent Israelis – from politicians to pop stars, all out of … pita.
And the Jewish state’s Green Spirit Award? It belongs to 11 students who studied how much chewing gum gets stuck under desks, harvested 20 kilograms from a thousand desks in their high school, dissolved the yucky globs, and turn the ‘product’ over to a factory that recycled the chewing gum as an ingredient in sticker glue.
And speaking of sticky…Israelis’ inclination to instantly bond in sticky situations is legendary, particularly how perfect strangers feel responsible for one another’s fate, epitomized by Yonatan Aziahav who took this sense of solidarity to the hilt, winning both the Gutsiest Israeli for 2016 and Chelm’s Honorable Menschen Award hands-down: Stabbed in a liquor store in the Petach Tikva shuk by a terrorist, Aziahav pulled the knife out of his own neck after fleeing the scene, then went back into the store … and fatally stabbed his Palestinian assailant in the neck and chest as the attacker grappled with the store owner…
The incident won Yariv Oppenheimer a close second for incredible chutzpa after the executive-director of Peace Now charged that the 40-year old Breslov hassid’s actions in the grocery constituted “an extrajudicial execution”! But, after much consideration, the Chelm Award for Chutzpa for 2016 went to a Bedouin metal scavenger who entered an off-limits IDF training ground on an ATV and was injured by a tank shell in the course of weaving in and out among maneuvering tank formations and artillery units in a military drill using live fire… then had the gall to try and sue the State of Israel for bodily injuries.
The 8th Chelm Awardforthe Strangest Court Case in 2016? It goes to David Shushan who dragged the Almighty into court ‘for stalking him.’ After logging ten complaints with his local police precinct that “God had begun to treat him badly,” an exasperated cop told Shushan “to request a restraining order from the courts”…which is exactly what he did! While the presiding judge wrote dryly that “the petitioner is not in need of the assistance of the courts, but rather the assistance of other agencies”, the bench duly noting for the record that the ‘defendant’ in the case had “failed to appear”… A close runner-up in the strange law cases category was a class action suit that found Insurance Direct (Bituach Yashir) guilty of breaching the Basic Law Human Dignity and Liberty - 1992 after the company began charging men 80 NIS ($21) if they called a tow truck to change a flat tire, while providing women drivers with the road service free of charge.
The Only-in-the-IDF Citation could easily double as a ‘what-were-they-thinking award’: Senior brass at an IDF air force base who let their enthusiasm get the better of them, thinking it would be a good idea to line up hundreds of personnel on the runway on a broiling hot August day to spell out ‘GOOGLE’ flanked by two fighter jets…to create a ‘souvenir aerial video clip’ for visiting Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.
No annual Chelm Awards would be complete without a Religious Oddities Award.The winner in the Corporate Category goes to the Ministry of Religious Affairs that established a forth three-digit emergency dialing code (in addition to the police/ambulance/fire department shortcuts everywhere): Dial 120 for a death in the family. Why 120? Because in Genesis it says the Almighty “numbered our days” to 120 years. The winners in the Indie Category are young religious women who are sitting or prostrating themselves on an abstract sculpture recently added to the Menashe Kadishman Sculpture Garden in Ramat Gan National Park entitled ‘Birth’ (Ledah), in the belief that the metal sculpture possessed mystical powers that ensure fertility and an easy delivery.
Last but not least, the 8th Chelm Awards most coveted award – the Only-in-Israel Prize. It was a hard choice, there being so many such moments… Heading the short list was a bizarre reflection of a recent study that found Israeli men live longer, because they remain in good shape due to military service: When a balcony collapsed like a trap door in a 130 year-old building in Jerusalem, the 74 year-old flat owner came out unscathed from the five-meter free fall (unlike his daughter who broke a number of bones). “Once a paratrooper, always a paratrooper,” declared Yehuda Avshaom. He’d “instinctively bent his knees for impact and went into a roll as soon as he hit the pavement”…
After careful consideration, the 2016 Chelm Prize for the Best Only-in-Israel Story was awarded to the CEO who at the height of the Jihadi Wave of 2015-16 sought to demonstrated the ‘effectiveness’ of his company’s new knife-proof vest by stabbing a news reporter in the back on camera, assuring the trusting journalist - “I’m the guarantor. If something happens, I’ll take care of you”…only to have the paper-thin protective slab in the prototype slip out of place just before the fourth stab, sending the reporter to the hospital (with a superficial stab wound) and the designers back to the drawing board.
Co-recipient to the Best Only-in-Israel Story is Israel’s Anti-Trust Authority that had to write special dispensations into the laws to clear rival companies that ‘cooperate’ during wartime of any suspicion of creating a monopoly or price rigging, after during the 2012 Cast Lead and 2014 Protective Edge campaign companies in the center of the country offered competitors in the south the use of their own production lines at night and other off-hours so beleaguered rivals wouldn’t loose clientele due to disruption wrought by rocket fire from Gaza.
Photo credits:
Ground-breaking Decisions by Government Ministries Ministry of Senior Citizens
Israeli Ingenuity Award Golda Meir – on Gilat Orkin Instagram account
Green Spirit Award Kiryat Haim High School
Only-in-the-IDF Citation screen shot - IAF video clip
Religious Oddities Award Wikicommons, Avishai Teicher
Only-in-Israel Prize Arik Abuluf, Fire Fighters & Rescue Unit – Jerusalem / Mabat Newsreel
Chelm Awards for 2015
Chelm Awards for 2014
Chelm Awards for 2013
Chelm Awards for 2012
Chelm Awards for 2011
Chelm Awards for 2010
Chelm Awards for 2009
A CHELM-ON-THE-MED SPECIAL REPORT - Protective Edge Column VIIl
A CHELM-ON-THE-MED SPECIAL REPORT:
Operation “Protective Edge” (Tzuk Eitan) – Column VIII
a mixed bag of piquant
“BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT”
GLEANED FROM THE HEBREW MEDIA
August 22, 2014 – August 28, 2014
Keep your Spirits Up and Your Head Down!
NOTE TO READERS: Hopefully this will be the last weekly column of Backpage News from the Front, and we can go back to our regular twice-a-month Chelm-on-the-Med Online columns that report the wildest and wackiest news stories hidden in the Hebrew media that have nothing to do with the Gaza War. Sign up on the left to receive notification when new columns are posted!
WHAT’S ‘CROWDED’
Is the war over…for the meantime?
Let’s assume so.
Forget about how many people can squeeze into a VW or a public phone booth. (The answer is 14.) During one alert of incoming rockets during the 50-day Gaza War, 23 dock workers in Ashdod Port piled into a 9-square-meter (2x3 meter) reinforced concrete migunit module (‘safe zone’) that had been trucked in and set down on the pier for their safety.
Do you think Israel can submit this record as a new category of the Guinness Book of World Records? (Yediot – Mamon)
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
The first week of the war, a small group of Left-wingers protesting Israel’s ground offensive who had gathered near Habima Square in the heart of Tel-Aivv waving signs declaring “Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies” ran into a snag when the wail of the sirens heralding another barrage of Palestinian rockets from Gaza coming their way sent the demonstrators scurrying to take cover.
A second demonstration with the same message a week later was cut short by police after Hamas broke a humanitarian cease-fire to again begin lobbing rockets at Israel.
By the end of the fourth week of the war the far-Left was left with one hundred protesters in front of the small plaza at the entrance to the Tel Aviv Cinematique - charging they were being muzzled by…their fellow Israelis. (Israel HaYom)
DOES CRIME PAY?
In wartime even Israel’s criminals stick close to home (or figured this was not the ideal time to break into a darkened house since few people were going out): The overall crime rate dropped by 10 percent and crimes against property - primarily burglaries and car thefts - dropped by 20 percent. But even petty criminals who continued to go to work just like the Home Front Command urged everyone to do have a patriotic side…more or less.
A crook who specialized in motorcycle theft who was in the habit of calling the owners and offering to return their bikes for a flat fee offered an IDF reservist a special deal when he heard the bike owner had received an emergency call-up (tzav 8) and was already on active duty. “I’ll give you a discount,” said the thief: Two thousand NIS - instead of the regular 4,000 NIS ‘retrieval fee.’
Detectives set up a meeting, and collared the nervy no-goodnik red handed and gave him the heave-ho, right to the clinker.
And the bike? Police are still looking for the bike.
SPACED OUT
The Guardian of London ‘declined’* to print a full-page ad by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz that among other things refutes one of the most cherished fallacies about Gaza – the claim it is the most densely populated place on earth…which the Guardian had hinted, is why Hamas was ‘forced’ to fire rockets from residential neighborhoods…
* In a guarded explanation, the paper said it “reserves the right to reject any advertisement
OLD HAT
‘Now you see them - now you don’t’ pulling-rabbits-out-of-a-hat is not just for magicians.
A new GAMACH* advertised in a Bnei Brak newspaper offers Jews in need a unique free service: Borrowing a rabbit to delight the kids at a birthday party…or as a family pet (there is no time limit on the arrangement). The mitzvah comes with a cage and food, not just the rabbit. Call 08-9283589 if you’re interested. (Ynet TV)
* Short for g’milat chasidim (acts of charity), free services for their mitzvah (good deed) value, which range from no-cost bridal gowns on loan, to modest private initiatives such as a box of brand-new pacifiers set next to the front door for desperate parents who find their kid’s pacifier has disappeared or been chewed up by the dog at 2 AM.
‘SMOKING GUN’ ANALOGY
A new campaign to unmask Hamas has been launched in the social media – working at the visceral level.
Following the grisly video clip of the beheading of American journalist James Foley by ISIS, individual posters of western cultural icons - America (the Statue of Liberty), France (the Mona Lisa), Italy (Michelangelo’s statue of David) and Great Britain (A Guard at Buckingham Palace) - with their heads cut off, declares: “MIDDLE EAST NOW New York (or Paris or London or Rome) NEXT! Islamic State and Hamas* are a threat to all of us.”
* Where’s the parallel, you say? How about a street execution of 18 Palestinians on trumped up charges of ‘collaborating with Israel’ – now twenty-five and still counting. Of course there is a difference: Black-clad masked Hamas executioners only shot their victims in the head multiple times from point-blank range, gagged, with sacks over their heads.
WAR BOOTY?
Answering a complaint from a new mom whose iPad ‘disappeared’ from the maternity ward of Rambam Hospital in the middle of the war, security officer Igor Fredkin set about locating the wayward device, but he didn’t need Apple’s GPS app at all.
When he asked for the victim’s iPhone, Fredkin noticed the owner’s Instagram app was open. ‘Gorgeous baby,’ he complimented out of courtesy, waving the phone before her nose for emphasis.
“That’s not my baby,” she retorted, somewhat dismayed.
Turns out the shot of the unfamiliar newborn taken with her missing iPad had automatically been logged in the true owner’s Instagram account.
Almost as easy as taking candy from a baby, Fredkin had no trouble zooming in on the high-resolution photo and jotting down the name on the newborn’s identification bracelet to collar the culprit - another recent delivery with an insatiable appetite although she was no longer pregnant – found just down the hall. (Yediot)
UNNATURAL TREMORS
A rattled woman from moshav Zar’it on the northern border doesn’t think her house is haunted when she hears strange noises at night and her whole house shakes.
Shula Asiyag said about the same time things began repeatedly fall off the shelves in the middle of the night two years ago, hot houses popped up a mere 150 meters from her window…on the other side of the border in Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon.
The Technion investigated.
The army investigated.
The tremors have continued.
Will lessons from Gaza set off genuine alarm bells?
They ought to. (103 FM radio, Ben Caspit “5 PM”)
IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU
Is the Z* word dead? Seems not.
Europe is awash in antisemitism from broken Jewish storefronts in Paris to swastikas painted on Jewish stops in Rome.
How do Israelis view the situation?
Compared to 59 percent of Israeli Jews who shrugged at the prospect of threats to take Israel to the International Criminal Court for defending its citizens during the Gaza War, a public opinion poll taken by Israel HaYom found 82 percent of the Jewish public expressed ‘concern’ in the face of anti-Semitism in Europe.
Sixty percent of the respondents thought European Jews should go see their nearest shaliach.** (Yisrael HaYom)
* Zionism
** an official Israeli emissary abroad who handle requests to make aliyah or immigrate to Israel. The question, as worded, was “In the wake of anti-Semitic incidents in the world, should the Jews of Europe (a) make aliyah (60%) (b) not make aliyah (16%) (c) don’t know (24%)…this when 89 percent thought Israel could easily look forward to another ‘round.’
The 6TH Annual Chelm Awards for 2014
The 6TH Annual Chelm Awards for 2014
YES! IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN,
AND THE WINNERS ARE…
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The wildest and wackiest news stories of 2014 about Israel never made the headlines, but they speak volumes about the true flavor of Israeli society
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OK, so 2014 was not a good years for the Jews… Foot-dragging on attempts to curtail Iran’s abilities to ‘nuke Israel.’ Reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the rise of ISIS, and a two-month war with the Palestinians that unleashed an outpouring of antisemitic venom. Why already in September 2014 even a Haaretz (!) columnist crowned the Jewish New Year 5774 “the year of blaming the Jews.”
Are Israelis worried? Well, yes, but most of us continue to live life to the fullest through thick and thin.
And who are the winners of the 2014 Chelm Awards – the best odd news and only-in-Israel stories gleaned from the Hebrew press, featured by Chelm-on the-Med Online over the past year?
The overwhelming percentage of Israelis – Jews, Druze, and Arabs – continue to go about their lives despite ethnic and national tensions in the headlines, including this year’s recipient of the Israel Diversity Award – 43 year-old attorney-at-law Hamam Hleihel.
The recipient is an Israeli Muslim born in an Arab village, originally married to a Greek woman who converted to Islam, now remarried to a divorced Christian immigrant from the former Soviet Union. The family (including a stepson who serve in the IDF) lives in an Arab house in the Jewish capital of Mysticism – Safed, where Hleihel heads a law firm specializing in family law for Druze, Muslims, Christians, and Jews…and if that’s not breathtaking enough, Hleihel himself is a renowned expert in Jewish family law who often serves as a fiercely pro-feminist voice representing Jewish women in rabbinical courts.
The Quirkiest Municipality Award for 2014 was a toss-up. Ramat HaSharon that inaugurated special bicycle paths on the sidewalk that oft end abruptly in the bushes or go smack-dab into a bus shelter had a fighting chance, but the award goes to Bnei Brak whose city elders approved a municipal budget with multiple pages printed in total gibberish due to a computer glitch…and nobody at city hall took notice.
Who deserves the Award for Chutzpa? The winner in the corporate category for the most audacious conduct in 2014 is the Ramat Gan Municipality. During the July-August 2014 Protective Edge Campaign, when motorists pulled over to the side of the road after sirens sounded warning of incoming Grad rockets, while occupants were laying flat on the ground next to their vehicles with their hands over their heads for protection, Ramat Gan slammed drivers with tickets for illegal parking. The prize in the indie category goes to a homeless squatter who set up house in a Tel-Aviv park to protest housing costs, then refused the Tel-Aviv Municipality’s offer of a weatherproof tent that could keep him and his wife a bit warmer in January temperatures, charging city hall’s upgrade was totally inadequate because the accommodations were “too small to accommodate their double bed.”
The Chelm Award for Business Acumen belongs to Israeli District Court Judge Eitan Ornstein who approved issuance of an Appeal to the Public to help underwrite a civil law suit abroad by a court-appointed trustee who needs $1.5 M in ‘venture capital’ to try to recover $50 M in the hands of a London partner of a bankrupt Israeli businessperson…in exchange for a cut in any money awarded by the British courts.
Who walked off with the Israeli Ingenuity Award? The runners-up were Peek-a-boo Fashions that offers a sleek and sexy black maxi-length dress for new mothers that incorporates a hidden flap that can be opened to accommodate a hungry baby without looking like a frumpy nursing top, and ‘granny4rent’ a free matchmaking platform that allows unemployed/retired persons over 50 to find part-time work that’s not a minimum wage position guarding the entrance to a supermarket - providing overextended working parents with someone responsible to fill-in for half a day as a warm and loving, proactive and supportive parental figure. So, who took the prize? Sarit Asharov, a Raanana manicurist who invested three years nailing down the reasons people bite their nails and published a book about how to stop for good. The secret? Like alcoholics and smokers – total abstinence: Never never succumb to any contact between your teeth and your nails – not even one itty-bitty pinky finger or you’ll be re-hooked.
Chelm’s Honorable Menschen Award goes to residents of a small assisted living residence in Jerusalem called Tovei Ha’ir who banded together to collect money for typhoon victims in the Philippines; not nameless and faceless victims, the recipients were homeless relatives of twenty-five Philippine caregivers who live with the elderly Israeli residents. The seniors share the prize with Jewish brethren from Beverly Hills who pressed into the hand of the conductor of the Haifa Symphony signed ‘open checks’ as donations, leaving it to the Symphony to fill in the sum… (Although deeply touched, the Haifa Foundation returned the checks untouched asking the generous LA angels to fill in a sum themselves.)
In a piece of breakthrough medical research this year, it was found that the almost total absence of peanut allergies in Israel is linked 
to de-synthesizing sabras from an early age to peanuts by eating Israel’s most popular snack food: melt-in-your-mouth peanut-flavored Bamba, which brings up the 6th Chelm Award’s Only-in-the-IDF Award. The prize belongs to an IDF conscript who is suing the Ministry of Defence demanding disabled veteran status for life. The food available in boot camp, he claimed, failed to meet his special needs as a zealous vegetarian, complicating an existing medical condition due to avoidable stress, leading the soldier to fall into a depression and be discharged on psychiatric grounds. The disabling chain of events was the result of “being forced to subsist solely on Bamba during his entire period at boot camp."
An English teacher at a Tel-Aviv performing arts school that prides itself as an institution that believes “students must be given the opportunity to put into practice things which they have learned in class,” ran off with the Chelm Prize for Out-of-the-Box Pedagogy for sharing the poem “Richard Cory” with her class, then assigning her 11th graders to write a suicide note as homework.
El-Al’s chief rabbi (there is such a post) wanted to bolster El-Al’s practice of distributing the Tfilat HaDerech (the Traveler’s Prayer for a safe journey, with the help of the Almighty) along with the toothpicks at mealtime, making him a shoe-in for this year’s Chelm Award in theReligious Oddities Category. As an extra safety measure, Rabbi Yochanan Chaiyut ordered the Traveler’s Prayer be broadcasted over the cabin PA system before every take-off and landing. El-Al clarified the move was an “unauthorized personal initiative.”
Last but not least, the Only-in-Israel Award is shared this year by two stories: If one believes a warning issued by the Dead Sea Works, the Jewish state now faces a unique environmental hazard – that treated sewage water from the hotels that line the shoreline are “diluting the Dead Sea” undermining the conglomerate’s operations although the Dead Sea has one of the highest salt concentrations of bodies of water worldwide – 31 percent salt compared to three percent in the world’s oceans.
The second Only-in-Israel laureate for 2014 is parliamentarian Zahava Galon from the Meretz party who called for extending Israel’s generous absorption assistance package for new immigrants to another group for whom Israeli society is often just as foreign and confusing to navigate: Young people from haridi homes who abandon an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle (some 500 a year by her estimates) and find themselves cast into an unfamiliar world without marketable skills or a roof over their heads.
Oops, did we say last but not least???
In retrospect, the Chelm Awards for 2014 would not be complete without adding a special Blame the Jews Award for the most ‘original’ canard leveled at the Jewish state during 2014. Clearly, the most deserving demonizer is the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pallay who charged Israel is guilty of war crimes against civilians of Gaza because it refuses to share Israel’s Iron Dome ballistic missile defense shield with the “governing authority of Gaza” – Hamas, that was shooting rockets at Israel!
Chelm Awards for 2013
Chelm Awards for 2012
Chelm Awards for 2011
Chelm Awards for 2010
Chelm Awards for 2009
A CHELM-ON-THE-MED SPECIAL REPORT - Protective Edge Column VII
Operation “Protective Edge” (Tzuk Eitan) – Column VII
a mixed bag of piquant
“BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT”
GLEANED FROM THE HEBREW MEDIA
August 15, 2014 – August 21, 2014
Keep your Spirits Up and Your Head Down!
YIKES, WHO’S MINDING THE SHOP?!
It’s not exactly a Yom Kippur War scenario, so one could shrug off the fact that the media and the government both assessed that there was “a low probability” that Hamas would resume rocket fire after nine days of quiet. What’s worrisome is apparently the Home Front Command (!) also dozed off.
When a lady from Beersheva called at 3:43 PM on the Tuesday 19 August to say she’d just heard rockets exploding not far from her house, an irritated operator at the other end of the line barked: “Madam, you must be nuts! Go to the doctor to improve your hearing!” (Debka Files, Ynet)
* At 3:46 PM the IDF announced laconically, “apparently three rockets exploded in the vicinity of Beersheva.” All hell only broke loose several hours later when Hamas opened up with a massive barrage of rockets towards most everyone else.
WHAT WAR ZONE?
Need some signs that countless run-of-the-mill Israelis also thought the war was over? ● The day before the cease-fire collapsed, several hundred anti-Zionist ultra-religious Jews from Mea Shaarim in Jerusalem had the chutzpa to demonstrate against the draft. ● Ultra-secular activists, with equal chutzpa, utilized the cease-fire to open fire on the commander of the Givati Brigade Ofer Winter (who had just emerged from Gaza in one piece) due to a written ‘pep talk’ Colonel Winter had penned to the officers under his command on the eve of the ground offensive that the critics found offensive because it contained religious motifs; a second salvo unjustly targeted the religiously-observant commander claiming he banned a female singer, when in fact his men had opted for a free concert from Moshe Peretz instead of a free concert from Sarit Hadad. ● The UN prematurely put out a 108-page Atlas of the Gaza Crisis August 2014 with full-color glossy before-and-after satellite photos of war damage to Gaza. ● Beersheva’s residents optimistically scheduled a ‘white night’ – an all-nighter summer festival from dusk to dawn like Tel-Aviv’s Lilah Lavan to jump-start the local economy with street theatre, musicians and food concessions…tonight (21 August). Apparently Beershevans will have to be satisfied with loosing some sleep in the ‘regular way’ – with Hamas-sponsored ‘summer fireworks.” (Channel 10, Yisrael HaYom, Yediot)
DEVIL OF A DILEMMA
Demonstrating in a truly unique fashion that ‘politics make strange bed fellows,’ the Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah declared that “defeating ISIS was a life or death struggle for Hezbollah that was no less important than the struggle with the Israeli enemy, because ISIS actions serve Israel.” (Yisrael HaYom)
GROUND TRANSPORT, ANYONE?
Royal Jordanian Airlines resumed service to Israel after a few weeks, but with a unique fly-by-night operation: They continued as usual to sell tickets in Tel-Aviv to Israelis seeking cheaper flights to the Far East – tickets that said they originated at Ben-Gurion Airport, and fly to their final destination with a stop-over or transfer in Amman. But in fact, up until 18 August, Jordan’s national airline continued to shun Ben-Gurion airport, giving Israelis a royal kick in the ‘but,’ telling stunned travelers who arrived at the terminal that their flight to the Far East was right on schedule, but…they were being bussed to Amman* (!) – more than two hours away, to board their flights. (Calcalist, newhorizon.co.il)
* Maybe Royal Jordanian can apply to Guinness Book of Records for a slot as the longest airport shuttle bus in the world.
WAKE-UP CALL
Yisrael HaYom columnist Yair Nitzani described in a column devoted to his family’s quickie vacation optimistically embarked on to coincide with one of the short cease-fires between Hamas and Israel – you know, a short breather in nearby Greece, not too far to dash back home if all hell broke loose, he said. Nitzani bought a little gadget in the duty free that gave the family Internet access while abroad, just to keep abreast of things…only his wife forgot to disable the Israeli application for a Red Alert on the laptop, thus when Hamas broke the cease-fire by firing on Kfar Maimon, the family jumped out of their skins, and almost out of their beds until they remembered where they were, at the wail of the siren in the wee hours of the night… (Yisrael Hayom)
WATCH, IT’S GOT YOUR NUMBER!
Who needs to play the lotteries these days, when one can (again) play the one-and-only Grad Lotto ‘Run for Your Life’ courtesy of the Home Front Command?!
To minimize disruptions caused by alerts to take cover, the Home Front Command numerically coded Israel into small geographical sectors. Iron Dome tracks outgoing salvos and instantaneously sends an ‘incoming’ message (literally and figuratively!) via smartphone or computer monitor, to those in the sector where a rocket will land or be intercepted – telling them ‘their number comes up.’
This led Yediot’s satire columnist Yadidya Meir to carry following personal ad spoof in his column Epes: “Single man from the Gaza border 227 seeks a spouse, preferably from Beersheva 109 or 528.” (Yediot, Haaretz)
* according to Haaretz, the Home Command hopes to further upgrade the system to cut Israel into 3,000 and eventually 3,600 one-square kilometer areas.
AND THE WINNER IS…
In a Middle East pissing contest, in the midst of the 9-day cease-fire, Hamas announced ‘they’d won’ but columnist Avi Nousbaum explained to the terrorists they’d have to come out of their bunkers to make such an announcement; when the IDF Spokesperson immediately went on the air to explain ‘only Israel won’ Nousbaum explained to the IDF that the minimum for declaring victory is not to have little orange boxes declaring RED ALERT popping up on the television screen in the midst of such an announcement. (Yisrael HaYom)
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