Jerusalem mayor to absentee residents: Rent up!
Owning a home in Jerusalem has been an eons-old dream for millions of Jews throughout history. About 9,000 of them who’ve fulfilled that dream are really irritating the mayor of Jerusalem, though.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat has sent a letter to nearly 10,000 Jews–mostly American or French–who own apartments in Jerusalem but neither live in them full-time nor rent them out, leaving them empty most of the year except for when they visit (most often at the pilgrimage festivals of Shavuot/Pentecost, Passover, and Sukkot/The Feast of Booths).
Residents of the Holy City have long complained that absentee owners drove up real estate prices (since they earn higher salaries outside of Israel, don’t pay sky-high Israeli income taxes, etc., and can therefore pay above-market prices) and have turned many once-vibrant neighborhoods into virtual ghosttowns. These include not only new luxury developments like David’s Village just outside Jaffa Gate and the Old City walls, but also established ones like Rehavia and Talbiah, whose streets are now unusally sleepy except during holidays.
Barkat’s letter laments other economic costs incurred by what he called “ghost residents”:
An empty apartment means fewer buyers at local kiosks, fewer children in schools, fewer customers in cafes and most importantly, fewer young families living in Jerusalem. Nine thousand such apartments [according to the Jerusalem Municipality's figures] cause growing damage to the city’s economy and housing market.”
Barkat asked homeowners living abroad to rent out their apartments to students or young families when they’re not in town.
These are the problems that come along with fulfilling a two-thousand-year-old dream — and running it.
Comments (0) »Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 8:43 AM | Stand For Israel
English-speaking immigrant “mob” bursts into Hannukah-themed song and dance in Jerusalem
Nefesh b’ Nefesh is a terrific non-profit that helps bring Jews from English-speaking countries to Israel on aliyah. It was established in 2001 after a relative of the founder (a Florida rabbi) was murdered in a terrorist attack; he decided the best response to people trying to kill Jews in Israel — was to bring more Jews there!
In addition to helping would-be immigrants navigate the bureaucracy of becoming an Israeli citizen (Remember – Israel may be a high-tech wonder, but it’s still a mostly socialized state and dealing with the bureaucratic aspects of living there isn’t easy!), NBN tries to help olim (immigrants) acclimate to life in Israel, helping them find jobs, access social services, and build the social networks key to successfully integrating into life the Jewish state.
Enjoy this NBN activity — a “flash mob” that burst into Hannukah-themed song and dance in the middle of Ben Yehuda Street, the pedestrian mall that’s one of the capital city’s central spots.
Comments (0) »Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 2:10 PM | Stand For Israel
Settlement? Shmettlement!: Gilo’s just a part of Jerusalem, where David’s flocks once grazed
New apartments going up in southern Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood
Stand for Israel was in the Holy Land last week and couldn’t resist snapping a picture of the “very dangerous” building taking place in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, which caused a kerfluffle last month when the U.S. administration and even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon decried the new apartments as expanding “settlements” and therefore imperiling the peace process.
(Is it just us or has the peace process been way beyond “imperilment” for years — pretty much since the Palestinian leadership decided that they’d choose terror campaigns over recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state?)
People of good will can disagree about “settlements” — whether they’re “obstacles to peace” or not, but no one in Israel thinks that these apartments are in a settlement. Gilo is a sprawling neighborhood that runs along Jerusalem’s south-western side, between the Malcha area to the west (which has housing, a big, Western-style mall, and a large “technology park” that is home to many high-tech companies), the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa to the north, and the now built-up area around Kibbutz Ramat Rachel to the east.
To the south is the Arab town of Beit Jala which, during the intifada, was taken over by Fatah’s Tanzim militia who took over homes in the largely Christian village’s homes in order to turn Gilo’s outer edges into a shooting gallery. In fact, the new apartments aren’t far from Ha’anafa Street, a road whose beautiful views of Beit Jala and the valley it rests in next to Bethlehem turned their residents into sitting ducks. Eventually, the view–and the vulnerability–were obscured by a wall the Israeli government erected to block the shootings. Some 950 apartments had their windows reinforced at government expense (though another 700 unprotected ones were damaged as well).
Barricade to protect against gunfire being erected in Gilo in 2001
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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 5:05 PM | Stand For Israel
Punching way above its weight-class: Israelis rank fourth in scientific productivity
Though the UN estimates that Israelis comprise around one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population, a recent report shows that Israelis rank fourth in scientific activity.
Data compiled for the Council on Higher Education showed that Israelis produce roughly ten times the amount of scientific research you’d expect for a country its size, publishing 6,309 essays in foreign scientific journals.
Even more telling than the number of articles published is how important or influential the research is, which is measured by the number of times articles are cited by other scientists. The report singles out Chemist Avram Hershko of the Technion, who won the Nobel Prize in 2004: Hershko published 148 articles and was cited more than 16,000 times.
Not too shabby.
Comments (0) »Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 1:18 PM | Stand For Israel
Unfortunate application for Israeli high-tech know-how
Text: "Find Shelter!"
Israelis became addicted to their “telefon niyad” (“hand telephones”) years before cellphones became so common in the U.S. Beack in the ’90s, visitors to the Holy Land couldn’t help but notice how ubiquitous the devices were–along with Israelis chatting loudly on them in public (the U.S. would soon follow suit). During the terror campaigns of the Second Intifada, cellphone networks would crash after every major attack as mothers called all of their kidsto make sure they were safe — at the same time that emergency services needed to make calls.
Now the annoying gadgets may be even more life-saving:
Within two years, the IDF Home Front Command will install a rocket alert system in Israel that will be able to calculate the precise location of an impact zone, and alert residents in an affected neighborhood via their cellphones, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Comments (0) »Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 3:56 PM | Stand For Israel
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