Warning: this is a very long post. It includes a little entry followed by a magazine article. Anyone who doesn’t have the patient can read the shorter version here.

A couple of months ago I read a news report about an attack of an Israeli teenager in the city of Laucha. The story grabbed my attention when I read about the family history of the victim: one of his grandfather was the only survivor of his family from the Holocaust, the other died in the attack of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.

So I drove there and filed this unbelievable story for Haaretz. Then I called some local papers and offered the story for free, I just felt that it was my duty as a journalist and citizen to get the story to as many people as possible. Every paper refused my offer giving a… weiter lesen

About four years ago, while I was visiting Israel, my sister asked me to come to her house, saying that she really needs to talk to me. I used to like going there: her family used to live in an agricultural place where cows and chickens were running in the backyard. I used to play with her kids: mini basketball with her son, 4 in a row with her oldest daughter.

In the years before that meeting, my sister converted her lifestyle and turned to practice orthodox Judaism. It didn’t surprise me a bit that she took to such an extreme. She was always extreme: she wouldn’t eat an onion even when she was promised to become a queen for a week, and when she didn’t get enough attention from my parents when she was in boarding school she basically rotted her teeth by eating tons of chocolate. She… weiter lesen

It’s been almost four months now that my mother, as well as a few ex-girlfriends, started bugging me. For years, they suffered silently my twin passions, journalism and sports. For years, they had to read all about match-up zones, safety blitzes, strikeouts. About how football is being played 90 minutes and at the end the Germans always win. They knew nothing about any of these things. But Omri? Omri they know. So they leave messages on my machine, or send me emails and text messages, all with one simple request: write something about Omri.

Omri, of course, is Omri Caspi, the Sacramento Kings rookie and the first Israeli ever to make it to the NBA. The media in Israel cover the world’s best basketball league, of course, but for most journalists back home, Omri is his own beat. Every one of his shots is covered. Every penalty discussed. Every squabble with… weiter lesen