{"id":1563,"date":"2011-10-08T23:30:50","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T05:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=1563"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:36:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:36:17","slug":"quiet-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=1563","title":{"rendered":"Quiet streets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Quiet streets of Tel Aviv<\/p><\/div>\n

From sundown on Friday until sundown yesterday, it was Yom Kippur, a day of atonement. Cars and public transportation were forbidden on the streets and everything was closed – boats were forbidden on the water and all flights suspended. It was great – the streets were instead sprinkled with families out walking, kids playing and folks riding their bikes (John and I included). We could actually hear the ocean waves and birds outside – so peaceful!<\/p>\n

Monday night, we had dinner at Whitehall with our friend and co-worker Alon. We had a good meal and it was fun to get to know him better.<\/p>\n

Thursday night was book club at our house. It was a big book, which translated into a small crowd, but a good discussion all the same.<\/p>\n

One thing that embassies around the world do is to attend trials for Americans who are on trial, or trials for American victims. Tuesday, I attended a session in Jerusalem for Kristine Luken<\/a>, an American woman who was brutally murdered in Israel while she and her friend\/tour guide were out hiking. It was a very moving experience to meet her brother and her friend who survived the attack. It was a small courtroom, and one of the accused was in the courtroom about 10 feet from me (his two co-defendants have already pleaded guilty). Shiver<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After the trial, we attended a memorial service for Kristine and three other people who had died last year, either by a terrorist attack or serving Israel in the army. It was a beautiful venue, high on a hill in the countryside. Our Ambassador, among others, spoke.<\/p>\n

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Hear the waves<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From sundown on Friday until sundown yesterday, it was Yom Kippur, a day of atonement. Cars and public transportation were forbidden on the streets and everything was closed – boats were forbidden on the water and all flights suspended. It was great – the streets were instead sprinkled with families out walking, kids playing and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3565,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/3565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}