Mediterranean

Tel Aviv — The botched Israeli interception of a Gaza-bound blockade-buster flotilla ignited the usual Monday-morning quarterbacking in Israel:

Had the military prepared itself sufficiently for violent resistance? 

Did Israel lose the media war in the first hours when official spokespeople were silent for hours despite reports of fatalities on the ships?

(JTA) — Arab leaders have threatened to boycott a European Union summit if Israel’s foreign minister attends.

A defiant Avigdor Lieberman insisted, however, that he will attend the Mediterranean Summit in Barcelona on June 7 in spite of the threats, which are being led by Egypt and Syria.

“I intend to, and I will be there,” Lieberman told Israel Radio. “We’re not forcing ourselves on anyone and we’re not forcing anyone else to come.”

 When you think Passover, you think seder.

In Israel, they also think beach and picnic and tiyul. That’s Hebrew for an excursion or hike.

In the Promised Land, where tourists flock for inspiration, the natives vacation. Forests, bucolic trails and nature preserves attract those with a bent for the outdoors. Museums and galleries are packed. All sorts of institutions, religious and secular, sponsor educational and cultural programs. Music is everywhere: in concert halls, on the street and on the radio.

A Crown Heights thoroughfare known for baby carriages, yeshiva bochers and the occasional Mitzvah Tank is about to be home to a trendy pizzeria and wine bar, the first exclusively kosher wine bar in the city.

Basil Pizza & Wine Bar, located at the corner of Kingston Avenue and Lincoln Place, is scheduled to open at the end of next week and will serve a variety of kosher wines, gourmet pizzas and Mediterranean-inspired dishes under the supervision of OK Kosher Certification.

Tel Aviv — Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market is normally a cacophony of blaring Mediterranean music and bellowing produce merchants hawking a rainbow of produce. But on Monday, a Palestinian suicide bomber turned the open-air thoroughfare known in Hebrew as “the shuk” into a nightmare of screams and wailing sirens.

Zikkim Beach, Israel — Itzik Levy rambles up a grassy sand dune just three miles down the coast from Ashkelon and surveys what he hopes one day could be the site of his new home.

Some 19 years ago, Levy had moved to the settlement of Eli Sinai on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip amid dunes with a similar view of the Mediterranean’s blue horizon. Now he’s lobbying the Israeli government to set aside areas like Zikkim Beach or the dunes of Nitzanim for Eli Sinai residents who want to rebuild their communities inside the Green Line.

Tucked into the shadow of the Pyrenees in the Languedoc-Rousillon region, Toulouse is one of France’s best-kept secrets. 
Actually, it’s not such a secret: more than 100,000 students flock annually to the city’s august universities, bringing a vibrant cosmopolitanism to these medieval squares and cobblestone alleys. But while it seems every globetrotting American has been to Paris, very few have set foot in France’s fourth-largest city.

JERUSALEM — When northerners holed up in bomb shelters needed food during the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, local municipalities contacted non-profit organizations, which in turn delivered the food at their own expense. Numerous other organizations and individuals delivered everything from medications and toys to the northerners, most of whom had fled to the hot, neglected shelters with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Pity poor Zeno, tormented by his weakness for cigarettes, guilt about his mistress and unresolved tensions with his father. At his psychoanalyst’s suggestion, Zeno writes his memoirs, but the result is the imperfect recollection of an intelligent man blindsided by swirling desires and frozen by inhibitions.

Zeno, the prematurely aged protagonist of Italian Jewish writer Italo Svevo’s comic masterpiece “Confessions of Zeno,” deeply resonated with William Kentridge when he first read the book in college.

Fishermen go where the fish are. Borders and national boundaries mean little to men whose lives are regulated by tides, currents and wind.

Even in the Middle East.

“Area K: A Political Fishing Documentary” by Nadav Harel and Ramon Bloomberg is an adroit hour-long film that explores a rare area of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, the product, ironically enough, of the attempt of Israeli military authorities to impose borders on the fishermen of Gaza City.