Tel-Aviv

Snuff photos and gag orders in the age of the smart phone

By / December 1, 2020

A smartphone was burning a hole in someone’s pocket on Saturday as he (or she) stood over the headless and dismembered body of a young woman dumped in a suitcase next to the Hagana train station in south Tel Aviv. Moments later there was a picture, and within a day, the shot and a few others went viral on WhatsApp on a cellular collision course violating with impunity a police gag order – one that restricted the release of information on …

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Four years in the making

By / December 1, 2020

When the full details of the Bar Noar case are cleared for publication, probably sooner rather than later, it will be one of the strangest and most lurid crime cases written in Israel in years. Surprising and terribly tragic, the current police case against the three main suspects and an LGBT activist involved in the story runs counter, though maybe not entirely, to what many assumed was a hate crime against the community. In the almost four years since Nir Katz, …

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The Pyongyang District Police and the Tel Aviv press walkout

By / December 1, 2020

This could have been a scene straight out of North Korea, or at least that’s what a few of the crime reporters present said. What should have been an event to honor Tel Aviv’s cops had become a love-in for Israel Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino. Before Israel’s top cop took to the podium, three cherubic little children clad in Tel Aviv Police t-shirts beamed towards the crowd of some 300 uniformed police. “Who’s the most handsome cop? The commissioner!” one child …

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Not quite friends – riding around with Tel Aviv police detectives

By / December 1, 2020

“You see that guy, something’s wrong with that guy,” said “Ronen” a detective from the Lev Tel Aviv police station during a ride-around I went on for a couple hours last week as part of a story on the strangely legal and highly potent drugs sold at Tel Aviv kiosks. “Why? Is it the hat?” I asked, savoring the rare opportunity to be on the other end of the police gaze. “No, it’s how he’s walking. He’s walking but not going …

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The Dirty South

By / December 1, 2020

  A rat the size of a well-fed house cat sent a female reporter from Army Radio dashing across Fein Street one night earlier this week in the heart of the Central Bus Station neighborhood, Tel Aviv’s basin of junkies, homeless African migrants, and bottom-rung prostitutes. The brush with the rodent was one of the few moments of excitement during a tour organized by police for crime reporters, all of whom have been to the area time and time again. The …

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Popo beepers, and the WhatsApp insurgency

By / December 8, 2020

I first got a pager in 1995. I was 16, and there was little need for me to have one. Occasionally I’d get a page, 911 at the end if it was important, and then hustle to the nearest pay phone to make a call. If I was being honest, probably 9 out of 10 pages were from my dad. Fifteen years later, I got a pager again, but this time, owing to the efficiency of The Jerusalem Post, I have …

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