The Mayor of Tzfat, Yishai Maimon, Berates Those Who Remain as "The Poor and Unfortunate Who Have Nowhere to Go"

I just read in TzfatLine, the e-mail newsletter that is sent out to subscribers in Tzfat and the environs, that some 70% of Tzfat's residents have left the city. I do not know if the figure is accurate. I do know that many have left.

I certainly do not judge those people, but neither will I, who choses to remain out of conviction sit in silence while the mayor, Yishai Maimon, represents those who stay as "the poor and unfortunate who have nowhere to go".

Just for the record: Our daughter in Tel Aviv has a reinforced room and has urged us repeatedly to come stay with her, Dan's family is in Binyamina, we have friends in Kiryat Gat and Ra'anana who have extended open invitations and we have relatives in the States and England.

We ***choose*** to stay in Tzfat. We renew that choice every day.

We don't expect to be treated like heroes by the municipality for making that decision. We consider it just doing our bit for the sake of keeping Israel's northern area populated.
But we certainly do not wish to be insulted and misrepresented by our mayor either.

I realize that he said that to schnor, but let him make himself look pathetic in order to grub money from the government, not me and mine.

To heap calumny on the bravest and most loyal of Tzfat's residents, if I may be frank and tell it like it is, was really an all-time low, even for this mayor who had already racked up quite a track record of unwise pronouncements and decisions.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

This blurb was in our e-newsletter that I just received:

FREE FOOD:

As of 1:30 PM, today, Tuesday, free food is being distributed through the
efforts of the City of Tzfat. Vegetables, fruits, bread and other items are
available in front of the Municipal Building on Jerusalem Street. Bring your
shopping cart or shopping bags. It is not known how much is be given away or for how long.

That is sooooo Tzfat.

No one even knows who's organizing this. The donors maintain anonymity.

That's why I love this crazy country.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Israel is a Mistake

Please see: http://tinyurl.com/fzam4

To contact the author of "Hunkering Down with History": cohenr@washpost.com
Thank you for this article, Mr. Cohen.

It is the best summation of the situation that I've seen written and articulates my every thought on the matter.

As I have said to my husband: Two outrages were perpetrated upon us during the 20th Century - first the Holocaust and then the establishment of the State of Israel.

We were between a rock and a hard place and we had no choice but to found a state, but it is a tragedy.

Once the State of Israel was established we were forced to engage in realpolitik and statecraft.

For the first time in 2000 years we were made into warriors. There is no estimating the moral and psychic damage that did to a people who were formerly scholars and peasants.

We should be working toward a condition in which there are no states and no need for states.
If the Jewish People are assured that we can be free to live as we choose, in all our diversity, in peace and undisturbed by any; there will be no need for a Jewish state. It is a far healthier and enriching experience that we should live among the other Peoples of the world.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
July 18, 2006

Tzfat, you may have figured out or read, is the Safed that has been in the news so much lately as we have suffered many missile attacks from Hizbullah.

The following link will lead you to an ongoing account I have been keeping as to what has been transpiring here since the first hit:

http://tinyurl.com/l8o3d