Salad days chopped short in Beersheba

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
They say new brooms sweep clean, and in Beersheba, Mayor Rubik Danilovitch is proving to be no exception, reports www.nrg.co.il. Danilovitch, who was elected at last year's municipal elections after a 10-year mayoral stint by Yaakov Terner, has decided that the gigantic, brightly colored sculptures of fruit and vegetables placed by his predecessor along the city's main thoroughfares are not to his taste, and plans to have them removed. According to the report, Danilovitch has little appetite for the meter-high sculptures of apples, pears, carrots, tomatoes and mushrooms, generally, and unflatteringly, known around the city as the "Salad Statues." "The sculptures are not nice," the mayor said simply. The report said Danilovitch was planning to remove the statues and bring in a professional architect to design the public areas. Former mayor Terner, who runs the Israeli Air Force Museum in Hatzerim, on the outskirts of Beersheba, responded that Danilovitch had first disposed of the brightly colored benches he had placed around the city, and now was putting the knife to the vegetable sculptures. He said a new mayor should not uproot his predecessors' work just because it was not to his taste.