A normal day

IDF soldier helps aran woman
with olive harvest
(photo from StandWithUs fb)

The weekend passed with some more violence in the terrorists. Today the newspapers counted 75 deaths in all: 22 in Jerusalem, 43 in the Palestinian Territories and 10 in the Green Line  (Palestine - Israel boundary set in 1948). Yet despite the violence there has been good instances of goodwill which never get printed in the press. For example a restaurant in Tel Aviv that offers 50% for any table seated by a jew and an arab. Or the instance when an Israeli IDF soldier helped an arab woman carry her bag of olives during the harvest.

Instead we get drawn by the dreary daily news of killings, illegal expropriation of lands, church burnings, killings, revenge attacks ...
Like this morning we got news again that extreme rigtwingers are being helped by the government take over property of the ancient village of Silwan (Siloam and its famous pool) now populated by arabs. http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.683416?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook

The other headlines is the rainstorm we experienced a few days back. The coastal and central plains were hardest hit, with floods and electric outages for 3 days. A dispute with the Union of Electric Workers meant that nothing was repaired and 5000 families had to go without electricity during that time. Thank goodness today the sun is back.

Market day at the Musrara
open market where 3
stabbing attacks took place

My asthma is still killing me even tough the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul got me a nebuliser. I hardly sleep 2 hours a night due to the suffocation. During the day I'm totally exhausted but still I have to work. That's as normal a day for me as it can get. As for other people, they try to push the violence as far as possible from the mind. Markets try to open as usual ... but with the closure of the Territories, fruit and vegetables are not coming in, so whatever's available is very expensive. I couldn't find a shop that sold eggs. There's an egg shortage! And that's a constant reminder to the locals that things are not as normal as they would like.