Nicholas Croce's Blog

It's 4:00 P.M. Five o'clock, quickly approaching. It's the winding down of a typical work-day. Today, though, the end of the day proved to be the beginning of one of the most interesting activist experiences I've ever been around. My friend and co-worker, Ben, and I decided to take a walk down to Levinsky Park. Located right near the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, Levinsky Park has become a meeting place of sorts, and for some, a home, for many Sudanese and Eritrean refugees in Israel. Today wasn't a normal day, this was not a normal 'tiyul' through the city, no. Ben had heard that the Minister of Interior, Gideon Sa'ar, would be visiting the park and the surrounding Neve Sha'anan neighborhood. With the newly-formed Netanyahu coalition, Sa'ar became the newest minister of interior, leaving his post as the minister of education. I was glad Ben wanted to go. Not to be confused, I was not there as a representative of anyone or anything but

WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED? It started with the haircut. No, it started before that, it was not getting any sleep two nights ago. Wait, no, it wasn't then either, it started with the 'Yom Tov' (literally, good day , a religious holiday where, for the purposes of this writing, buses don't run). Wait, but not even, it was going to see someone I met at an Amnesty event in Jerusalem, yeah that was it. Like this, I could go back, and back, and back, to who the hell knows what, ad infinitum. In that case, a twenty-year story short: I figured it was a time for a haircut. So did all of the little kids at the Passover seder. Don't get me wrong, they loved that I was there and all. Justin Bieber had never been to Zikhron Yakov! From Biebs to a monk I went. Again, please don't get me wrong — the haircut was wonderful —— the experience of getting a haircut. What care, what precision, what speed! This guy was really something else. When my friend suggested the fifteen sheq