Private Ghetto – Gindi City

"Close your eyes and make a wish: you live in a perfect private neighborhood with a private park. A bunch of kindergartens as part of the neighborhood, private playgrounds, fancy country club, with private access to the residence of the project and an advanced and innovative mall. You have a one time opportunity to invest in one of the most unique and a worthwhile project that symbolizes the most promising real estate project in Gush Dan. ‘Gindi City’, the new residence project in the renewing Gush-Dan in Ramleh"

This is how Gindi Investments are marketing their new residential project in my home town of Ramleh. Similar to ‘Andromeda’ neighborhood in Jaffa, ‘Gindi City’ will symbolize the new era of private housing estate in Israel. The new project will include four buildings of eighteen floors in a “secure” private property with security guards, gates and walls.

Private housing, a city inside a city and “living abroad” are just part of the wording people are using to describe this project. On the other hand, some might think that such a project does not suit a city like Ramleh, a city with plenty of stereotypes that include drugs and violence.

The Arab residences of Ramleh are looking at this project with a very suspicious point of view. The fact that about 200 houses are already reserved to career soldiers from Israeli Defense Forces leave bad taste and concern amongst the Arab residences. Young couples in Ramleh without much residential projects are sniffing around with one big question in their mind: “Do they sell houses to Arabs?”

Ramleh seems to be one of the few mixed cities in Israel (Just like the city of Acre, Jaffa and more) but as a matter of fact, our neighborhoods are homogeneous and you could clearly identify, when visiting, in which part of the city you are in. The main housing of Arabs is in the “Ghetto\Old City” and opportunities to purchase housing and mobilize to other parts of the city require intensive actions of self marketing and research. Not to mention the fact that nowadays the real estate prices in Israel keep going up creating an impossible reality mainly for young couples.

It was a matter of time for such life style to intrude and impose itself upon us. I am personally a bit pessimistic about this project – creating another segregated neighborhood will not promote co-existence in a city that is located right in the heart of Israel. Ramleh is a city with huge potential to become a leading city in Gush Dan (central province in Israel) with its train access, closeness to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and the unique mixture of cultures and ethnics.

Sexualt Harrasment, Where Does It Really Start?

More than thirteen kids under the age of fifteen are suspects of gang-rapping a young girl their age. You lay back at night in your bed and wonder, what would bring those young teenagers to do something so despicable?!

I’ll take you to my daily ride from the train station to work and back. Ridding those service taxis (similar adventure as riding the metro in the States) is usually a quick and comfortable ride and you typically run into every aspect of Israeli society. In today’s ride I came across an incident which shows how common sexual harassment is in our modern life and how easily it could lead to such despicable actions, as extreme as a rape!

I paid the taxi driver and all the seats were taken. A young lady was sitting with bandages all over her face and a crashed helmet in her hands, probably had a scooter accident not a while ago. A young man that was sitting in front of her was staring at her, literally staring. At first I thought they were together but her body language slowly showed otherwise. She answered his questions politely and latter she was trying to ignore him. He started with “What happened to your beautiful face?” and went on with “What a shame, such beautiful eyes hiding behind those bandages”. His remarks kept pouring and getting more and more harassing and inconsiderate with an intruding forceful body language. I gave the man a discomfort look without saying anything; he looked back and said aggressively “what do you want?” I would have probably replied in a hostile way if that young lady was my friend but cowardly I just remained silent and gave him another look of discomfort.

The young man got off in the central bus station after a ten minute ride and the young lady burst into tears. I felt so ashamed of myself, letting such a despicable act happen. Gladly he did not harm the young lady, he didn’t right? I was trying to convince myself I did the right thing by analyzing other passengers’ actions (none). “I should have swapped places with her”, I thought to myself latter on!

They announced at the seven o’clock news edition that a charge sheet against those thirteen kids who are suspects of rapping their classmate was submitted. Is there really much difference between the two incidents? Doesn’t one lead to the other?