Grapevine: The politics of water

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
■ DOCUMENTARY filmmaker Rhett Turner, the son of mega philanthropist and CNN founder Ted Turner, came to Israel for a week within the framework of the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University. This included a conference toward the end of last week, held in honor of the school’s founder, Dame Shirley Porter, to mark her 80th birthday.
Turner, an award-winning film director and producer of documentaries about the environment, discussed several of his films, including his latest documentary Chattahoochee: From Water War to Water Vision, which brings into focus the 20-year struggle between Florida, Georgia and Alabama over the management of a shared river, the Chattahoochee. Their dispute was brought to a head in recent years by a severe drought in the region and a federal court ruling with huge implications for Atlanta’s water supply.
The topic of the film is particularly relevant for Israel, affording an American perspective on dealing with shared water resources in an increasingly dry region. Turner is a committed environmentalist with a broad portfolio of environmental and wildlife films from around the world.
■ BEST-SELLING Christian Evangelical author and hard-line Christian Zionist Michael Evans, whose book The Final Move Beyond Iraq is going like hot cakes on Amazon and whose previous publications have provided revealing and sometimes shocking insights into American foreign policy, was the guest this week of Netanya Academic College’s Center for Strategic Dialogue. Claud Breitman, a member of the NAC Board of Governors, hosted a reception in his honor at her home in Caesarea, where guests included Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan, Netanya Mayor Miriam Feierberg and her husband Roni Ikar; and Shenkar College President and former Education Minister Yuli Tamir, as well as people associated with NAC’s faculty, Board of Governors and donors such as Dr. David Altman, Dr. Reuven Pedhatzur, Baruch Spiegel and Yehuda and Tammy Raveh.
■ WINTER WEATHER usually persuades people from other parts of the country and from abroad to follow the sun to Eilat. But this week, it brought Eilat’s Olympic medalist Shahar Zubari to Tel Aviv. Zubari, who won a Bronze Medal at the Beijing Olympics, said that he’d been waiting for the opportunity to surf in stormy water.
He was simply thrilled that his long wait was over.
However, many of the café and banquet hall proprietors at the port of Tel Aviv did not share Zubari’s enthusiasm as wind and weather wreaked havoc – to the extent that a couple who had booked Trask, which is literally on the seashore, had to postpone their wedding for a day while damage to the premises was being repaired. The postponement entailed contacting all 400 guests who had been invited.
This is not the first stormy winter Trask has endured, but it is the first time, according to its owner Yuval Hod, that it suffered damage to the extent that a function had to be delayed.
■ ROCK MUSICIAN Yuval Kainer, whose home in Ein Hod was completely gutted by the Carmel fire, tried to put out the flames by himself. Although many people suffered losses in the fire, Kainer was hit very hard because only two weeks earlier, he and his father had painted the house and repaired every fault in every nook and cranny.
No sooner had they completed the task, than Kainer’s father was killed in a traffic accident. Then, just after the family got up from sitting shiva, the house, with all its contents, was destroyed by the fire, which ravaged not only family mementoes and photographs, but also valuable musical instruments. Miraculously, one musical instrument, a piano, remained more or less intact, although its sound was weak. Nonetheless, when Kainer played a few notes, and heard them, he took the sound as a sign of optimism.
■ VETERAN HOTELIER Eli Papoushado, who is a former president of the Israel Hotel Association and who built the Sonesta Hotel in Taba well before prime minister Menachem Begin gave Taba back to Egypt, has now proved himself to be not just an investor and property developer, but also a hands-on designer.
Papoushado, working together with Eyal Shoan, designed the bedrooms and bathrooms of his Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London, which has just received a prize in the European Hotel Design Awards. The hotel has 1,021 bedrooms and suites.