Featured Posts
featured

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

Read More »
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

Read More »
October 31, 2017
featured

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

Read More »
June 12, 2016

Person of the Year for 2013 in Israeli Crime: The Felician Family

By /

(Update: Yaakov Felician was remanded on January 7th, 2014 for allegedly threatening the witness in a [closed] rape case against him. The following post originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post) Though they say it typically doesn’t happen twice in the same place, in 2013 lightning struck one small corner of Bnei Brak’s Pardes Katz neighborhood over and over, continuously bringing sorrow to a single Israeli family. Few people had a worse year in 2013 than the Felician family. In June, police announced […]

Person of the Year for 2013 in Israeli Crime: The Felician Family Read More »

Reporting While Arab (RWA)

By /

Sharon police Commander Kobi Shabtai had barely made his introduction to reporters at the sub-district headquarters in Kfar Saba on Monday morning, when he started to come under fire. “The police don’t pay any attention to us, you don’t give us access like the Hebrew press”, said a female reporter for a major Arabic radio station describing her inability to find police investigators or spokespeople to talk to at murder scenes or to get on the phone afterwards. She mentioned an

Reporting While Arab (RWA) Read More »

(Don’t) stop the wedding

By /

If you were worried, Dror Alperon will be marrying his fiancée Tuesday night, less than a week after he was arrested in connection to a double murder in Petah Tikva in June. Dror, his aunt Haya, and his cousin Reuben Partush have all been released, and by the end of the week the remaining two suspects Eli Partush and Asher Gini also stand to be set free. The police case against the suspects is a convoluted story of revenge for a

(Don’t) stop the wedding Read More »

Aharonovich’s Patriot Act?

By /

Public Security Minister didn’t hide his grin on Saturday night. Speaking to Rina Matzliah on Ch 2 just before the 8pm news hour, he said police had arrested a top organized crime leader, and that more of the same was soon to follow. He wouldn’t confirm that police had arrested Shalom Domrani, but it was already widely-known and by the time the papers closed Saturday night, the arrest of the southern mob boss was splashed across the front pages of the

Aharonovich’s Patriot Act? Read More »

Facebooking the underworld

By /

Not long before his legs would be blown off in a car bomb in Ashkelon last night, Dror Damari took to Facebook to wish his friends a good week. Over the course of the next day, around a dozen people left condolence notes on the post, most wishing the newly paraplegic young man a healthy recovery, as he lay in the trauma ward of Ashkelon’s Barzilay Hospital. Damari, reportedly an associate of mobster Shalom Domrani, did not have a locked Facebook

Facebooking the underworld Read More »

Terror in Avihayil?

By /

Yitzhak Algabry didn’t know his life was about to end when he walked into his backyard in Moshav Avihayil in the Sharon one night in October 2012 to grab some bread for a family dinner that was taking place inside the house. Instead, Algabry surprised three burglars from Tulkarm who were hiding in the apartment unit in the back yard. The men began to fight with him, with one bludgeoning him in the head before another stabbed him in the chest

Terror in Avihayil? Read More »

The spy in short shorts came to court

By /

“Did you see the picture he took at Natbag (Ben Gurion International Airport)”, one of the photographers outside the court-room on Monday morning asked, before another answered “it looks like he took that with a Nokia phone, and it’s not even in focus”. The press scrum was waiting at the Petah Tikvah Magistrate’s Court on Monday morning for the remand hearing for Iranian-Belgian businessman Ali Mansouri, whose arrest earlier this month on a series of espionage charges was reported to the

The spy in short shorts came to court Read More »

This used to be my synagogue

By /

Few pilgrimage sites have seen more Israeli politicians and journalists over the past year than a two room African migrant bar on Rosh Pina street next to the Neve Shaanan pedestrian walkway in south Tel Aviv. They come in groups on guided tours, and as they stand in the first room, the guide will point to the doors leading to the second room – aged, solid wood, with two large Stars of David set at eye level. The message is clear

This used to be my synagogue Read More »

Snuff photos and gag orders in the age of the smart phone

By /

A smartphone was burning a hole in someone’s pocket on Saturday as he (or she) stood over the headless and dismembered body of a young woman dumped in a suitcase next to the Hagana train station in south Tel Aviv. Moments later there was a picture, and within a day, the shot and a few others went viral on WhatsApp on a cellular collision course violating with impunity a police gag order – one that restricted the release of information on

Snuff photos and gag orders in the age of the smart phone Read More »

Our violent shadows

By /

It was mid-day in a quiet Petach Tikva neighborhood on June 27th, when a man hopped off a scooter next to a kindergarten, ran down the street and shot two men dead before racing back to the scooter and disappearing into the city. Underworld figure Eli Orkabi, 35, lay dead on the pavement next to local contractor Eran Fartush, 42, who it appears was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time – in this instance a quiet suburban neighborhood

Our violent shadows Read More »

Scroll to Top