Last update - 00:00 22/08/2007
The mayor's visit
By Uri Misgav
Haaretz published a panegyric to Mayor Ron Huldai's Tel Aviv last week. It began as the lead story on the front page, and continued generously on the inside pages, including even visual "before and after" demonstrations, in a technique faithfully copied from the municipality's pamphlets.
This journalistic project presented in my view a partial and superficial picture, ignored controversial aspects of Huldai's work, and stuck to a very particular narrative: Tel Aviv was for decades a crumbling city that was about to collapse until Huldai arrived and saved it. This project was not to my liking, and that's all right - conflicting opinions in a newspaper are part of its uniqueness. What is less proper in my view is the lack of transparency for the readers.
Haaretz's readers were not given very important inside information: Ron Huldai and his entourage visited the newspaper's offices several weeks before the story ran and met with dozens of Haaretz editors and reporters. The meeting had been defined as a free-ranging background conversation, and it was agreed that everything said would be off the record. Nevertheless, Huldai showed up armed not only with the municipality's director general, but with a public relations woman, a spokesman and two assistant spokeswomen.
Despite being asked in advance to refrain from doing so, the mayor opened with a lengthy audiovisual presentation, which reeled off his glorious endeavors. A place of honor was naturally devoted to "before and after" pictures. When at last he made himself available for a discussion with those in attendance, he turned out to be on exceedingly welcoming turf. A short while afterward, as stated earlier, the puff piece appeared. The proximity in time arouses discomfort, but the main problem is with the content.
No one disputes the fact that Huldai has advanced Tel Aviv in certain areas. But his tenure, particularly his second term, is far from a matter of consensus. Alongside construction enterprises, his "bulldozer" also sows destruction and anguish. He got his share of satisfaction from Haaretz during the very same week he tried to annihilate another urban cultural institution of the first order.
It wasn't the Mann Auditorium this time, or the Ussishkin basketball arena or the Gordon swimming pool, but merely "Haminzar" (emphasis on the first syllable) - a modest but popular bar that has been a home away from home for hundreds of regulars over the past 14 years. The closure order for this beloved locale, which never did anything bad to anyone, was issued on the pretext of "disturbing the neighbors," even though it is located on the busiest stretch of bus-filled Allenby Street, near dozens of other bars and eateries. Only the requisite ruling by Judge Yiska Rotenberg brought about its reopening the next day. Huldai likes to pride himself on "moral standards" and "democracy," but it was once again proved that the only civil way to stop him and his people is in court.
These moves, like many before them, affirm that Huldai does not understand in depth the secret of the metropolis' power and beauty. The mayor, who confessed during his first term that he "did not fall in love" with Tel Aviv, insists on observing it through real estate and utilitarian lenses. His declared inclination to root out the pubs and restaurants from the city's streets in favor of distant ghettos of "entertainment zones" attests to estrangement and a lack of understanding. The city's residents steer clear of those places, and their love for Tel Aviv is based on just the opposite - the neighborhood coffee shop, pub and grocery store, like in Manhattan or Paris.
Huldai will continue being an excellent mayor for the upper middle class living comfortably in North Tel Aviv and Ramat Aviv, or in the luxury towers that blot out the urban horizon. He has never shown any interest in the abuse endured by the city's foreign residents, has remained fairly indifferent to the worsening housing plight facing young people, and has waged a campaign against the entertainment and cultural institutions dear to the city's veterans.
His pride over Tel Aviv's "revival" dismisses a substantial share of its good qualities and residents, and is destined to be remembered as hubris. The only question is who will be stripped of their assets first as a result - the city or the mayor.