Tel Aviv appeals to me.
A little more than a hundred years ago, "Tel Aviv" was not a city. It was a title of a novel written by an author. The "Return to Zion" was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no country. There was no state. There was no nation. There was no physical Jewish reality in this country.
Tel Aviv is the most party time place in the world.
In the Middle East you get that sense that leadership decisions and the local powers that are working around us all the time have a direct effect on the quality of life. . . and that quality of life is obviously very different between a kid who is growing up in a refugee camp and somebody who is living in Tel Aviv.
This will be my first visit [to Israel]. I've heard it's a special place, that Tel Aviv is exciting and that the atmosphere is excellent. . . . I hope I'll have time to visit the holy places.
At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.
I love this city [Tel Aviv]!
I know my dear brother, President [Barack] Obama, has a bust of Martin King right there in the Oval Office, but the question is are is he going to be true to who that Martin Luther King, Jr. , actually is? King was concerned about what? The poor. He was concerned about working people. He was concerned about quality jobs. He was concerned about quality housing. He was concerned about precious babies in Vietnam, the way we ought to be concerned about precious babies in Afghanistan and precious babies in Tel Aviv and precious babies in Gaza.
The protesters, in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, revealed an open and raw wound at the heart of Israeli society, the pain of a community crying out over a sense of discrimination, racism, and of being unanswered.
