It's A Catastrophe!

I asked the cab driver to take me to the shuk from work for my optometrist appointment nearby. This was at 5:30 pm today.

"It's a CatasTROpha!! The traffic is so bad at this hour."

I never thought traffic was a caTAStrophe (that's the way I pronounce it), although I had a near catastrophe at work this morning, when one of the girls at work, looked through an email my cousin sent me of a Penisaurus - walking towards a woman's perfect butt (the thing had a lizard's body with a penis for a head). quite funny in the photo and she printed it out, forgetting to take it from the printer. This morning, the Human Resources person finds it and puts it on my desk.

"This is yours" she said, and walked off. Good thing she is my friend, otherwise that would have been a catastrophe.

Hubby thought getting a notice from the city about the garden sheds on our patio having to be removed within 30 days was a catastrophe.

But the real catastrophe, unfortunately, is nothing like the above stuff. Apparently, 1500 people living in Silwan also known as the City of David, are about to lose their homes. Why? Because the city decided to create an archeological park where they live. It was part of ancient Jerusalem and King David had made his home there. There are a handful of Jewish families that live there, but they weren't asked to move. And most of the Arabs living there have been there since perhaps the 1920s when most of the neighborhood was built. That's 80 years. Some homes were built during the late 1800s. And the families have grown. We're talking 88 buildings here with many children. Usually the Israeli government demolishes a home if it was built without a permit or when a terrorist lives there, but these people hadn't been guilty of either. And from what I've heard, they're angry, resentful and feel helpless. I would be too. They even pay taxes to the municipality and this is what they get. I am not happy about this. There are open spaces nearby, why do they have to have homes demolished? Why can't they excavate beneath the homes so people can still live there and there'll be an underground archeological garden. Would King David be happy with making these people so miserable? I can feel the people's pain. And I feel helpless as they do, even though there are Jewish organizations coming on solidarity visits. The "machine" is too big. This is a real catastrophe.