Tel Aviv

Scenes from a terror attack

By Ben Hartman / January 21, 2015 December 1, 2020

The first news about the stabbing spree on the Tel Aviv bus Wednesday morning came in like it always does – in a short message on WhatsApp, trailed by a barrage of follow up questions and replies, sending my phone into seizures. Just like that, one moment you’re feeding your infant daughter breakfast and the next you’re taking pictures of blood puddles and paramedics, an avalanche of information piling up around you. Somehow nobody was killed in Wednesday’s attack, but the …

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The bombs at those other schools

By Ben Hartman / May 14, 2014 December 1, 2020

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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Not a celebrity funeral?

By Ben Hartman / April 19, 2014 December 1, 2020

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?

By Ben Hartman / February 19, 2014 December 1, 2020

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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Aharonovich’s Patriot Act?

By Ben Hartman / November 14, 2013 December 1, 2020

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 …

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This used to be my synagogue

By Ben Hartman / September 19, 2013 December 1, 2020

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 …

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

By Ben Hartman / August 9, 2013 December 1, 2020

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 …

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Our violent shadows

By Ben Hartman / July 30, 2013 December 1, 2020

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 …

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The right to remain silent

By Ben Hartman / July 25, 2013 December 1, 2020

After four years heading the police intelligence and investigations branch (“AHAM”), Maj Gen Yoav Segalovitz was the one being questioned Thursday, and it appeared he’d learned something from the countless suspects he’d interrogated over the years. Calmly evasive and quietly dismissive of questions, he was not a hostile witness, just a man showing an impressive ability to speak for 45 minutes without saying almost anything of substance. Towards the end of the press conference, one crime reporter from an Israeli paper …

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Wanted: A nuanced debate

By Ben Hartman / June 20, 2013 December 1, 2020

Despite a series of unqualified statements and inflammatory, racist language directed towards African migrants, (called simply “infiltrators” – a word typically only used in Jpost articles when quoting official statements by politicians or protestors), a June 8 article by prominent Israeli journalist and commentator Ben Caspit entitled “South Tel Aviv: Abandoned by the State” didn’t make the sort of online stir I thought it would. On January 17, the African Refugee Development Center issued a press release criticizing the article, posted …

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