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Our Strange Victory Over the Coronavirus: Quarantine Reflections

(This post was originally published in the Tel Aviv Review of Books in late May, after Israel all but declared victory over the coronavirus outbreak. By mid-July, Israel was up to around 1,500 new infections per day, amid talk of a new closure to stop the second wave.)    I knew that victory was near when my elderly neighbor sent a

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July 14, 2020
death row

My grandfather was a death row doctor – he tested LSD on Texas inmates

The following article was the result of several months of research and investigation in Huntsville, Houston, the Texas State Archives in Austin, and in a series of boxes of family keepsakes held by my aunts. The full article can be read here Eusebio Martinez was polite — even happy — as he entered the death chamber that August night in

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October 31, 2017
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My Gaza War

I rear-ended some settlers in a mini-van in the West Bank that afternoon, just before pulling into the settlement of Talmon for the funeral. There was no damage and we parted ways with a smile, joining the convoy snaking up to the ceremony. Hundreds of people were waiting in Talmon to bury 16-year-old Gil-Ad Shaer, murdered 18 days earlier on

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June 12, 2016

Police vs politicians on the Temple Mount

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(This post was originally published in the Jerusalem Post weekend magazine on December 4th, 2014) One gets the impression as of late that if left up to the top command of the Israel Police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the entire Temple Mount would be sealed off to all visitors, left to gather dust atop the Old City. That’s not possible, of course, as it would entail a radical change in the status quo, and banning access to one […]

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A gunshot in Kafr Kana and a new, dangerous scandal for the Israel Police

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“This looks bad, this looks really bad.” Those were the words that ran through my mind when I first watched the surveillance video of cops shooting 22-year-old Kheir al-Din Hamdan dead in Kafr Kana Friday. Needless to say, I wasn’t alone. It all began with a routine arrest on a weapons charge, linked to an ongoing family feud in the city. Special Patrol Unit officers who police the area, partly in order to fight firearms crimes, had arrested a friend of

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What do you call it?

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It’s startling sometimes the difference an hour or two can make. Wednesday went from a quiet morning with my infant daughter and not much happening in Israel, to a gunfight on the Egypt border between smugglers and IDF troops, and then, later in the day, a deadly attack in Jerusalem in which a Palestinian man rammed his car into passengers at a light rail stop, killing a 3-month-old girl and wounding 8 others. From that point on a familiar scene played

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For journalists in Israel, a sense of Déjà vu

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(Note: This post originally appeared on Tabletmag.com) It’s easy to picture the screenplay: Bill Murray is a foreign correspondent who finds himself once again covering the rocket strikes on the southern Israel town of Sderot and the residents in the line of fire, only to awake the next morning, time after time, to live the same story again. That’s the scenario Al Jazeera English’s Gregg Carlstrom faced in real life last Thursday, prompting him to tweet: “writing a story about Sderot

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Before the shitstorm

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Already neck-deep in tragedies, it feels like Israel is sailing into uncharted waters these days, ever since the abduction of teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah almost two weeks ago. At the moment no one can say for certain what will be the fallout, what will be the reckoning after they pull back the curtain and show us what’s not being said. Or months down the road, after the committee of inquiry submits its findings. For now the only

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The Popo conference call has problems

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Somebody’s dog won’t shut the fuck up, and some fool – let’s call him Amichai – keeps dropping in and out of the conference call, bringing things to a halt each time. Once a week or so the Israel Police hold a conference call with crime reporters from all the national outlets. It’s usually when a big story breaks, or before a gag order is lifted, and they want to make sure everybody has the police narrative and the chance to

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The bombs at those other schools

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  No one knows how long the bombs were stashed at the school, but it could have been weeks, maybe longer, that hundreds of kids passed through the school none the wiser. The weapons were stashed in a closet inside a classroom that hadn’t been used for some time. It was a serious haul: 13 mortar shells, three rifles, incendiary flares, and sacks filled with hundreds of rounds of .9mm ammunition. The arsenal was found in Abu Snan only a few

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On Price Tag attacks, tough talk and weak suggestions

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  Carmi Gillon is not impressed. Following a series of “Price Tag” attacks (acts of vandalism or violence directed at Arabs, often in response to Israeli government policy in the Palestinian Territories) within the Green Line, the former Shin Bet Chief said Israel could stop the attacks if the authorities really wanted to and that like the agency dealt with the Jewish underground when he was in charge, they could do the same if they just had the willpower. “We don’t

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Not a celebrity funeral?

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The morning after organized crime figure Charlie Abutbul was found dead from a (self-inflicted?) gunshot wound to the head in his Netanya home, a conspiracy began forming on a WhatsApp group for Israeli crime reporters. The first salvo was sent out by a reporter from an Israeli TV channel, who said the family doesn’t want the press to cover the funeral, and maybe we could all agree not to go. He was answered by a well-known radio reporter who agreed, as

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Doth Danino protest too much?

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It was a hot mic moment, even if police did invite the reporter to the event to begin with. On Tuesday, during a visit to the Ayalon subdistict headquarters in Holon, Israel Police Chief Inspector General Yochanan Danino started firing in all directions, mainly at the press and how they’ve handled the recent wave of underworld killings in Israel. “You turn on the radio in the morning and you hear there’s an emergency situation and you have to head for the

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