Grapevine April 17, 2024: The next prime minister?

• Published date: 17 April 2024
• Author: GREER FAY CASHMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

After all, pollsters already gave him many more seats than Naftali Bennett had scored when he became prime minister

Ben-Gvir's negative attitude toward Arabs and his public backing of police even when they appear to have committed transgressions will earn him many votes from within the police force and their families. He is a true disciple of the late Meir Kahane, who advocated the transfer of all Arabs out of Israel. No one should ignore the writing on the wall.

Israeli designers who worked for Roberto Cavalli

■ SEVERAL LEADING Israeli fashion designers worked for Roberto Cavalli, the iconic Italian designer who died last week.

Among the first was Tamara Yovel Jones, who maintained a close friendship and professional relationship with him until his dying day.

Not only that, but in her capacity as head of the fashion design units at Shenkar and Bezalel, she sent some of her more talented students to Milan

to be inspired by Cavalli, who had a very positive attitude toward Israel and Israelis – particularly Israeli women whom he admired both for their beauty and their strength.

In November 2011, when Motty Reif, who inter alia is a well-known producer of fashion shows, decided to revive Israel Fashion Week but called it Tel Aviv Fashion Week, Cavalli came to inject additional glamour by opening the event with a new collection of his own.

The revived Fashion Week, after a very long hiatus, did not have the extravaganza that had been the highlight of openings of Israel Fashion Weeks in the 1970s and 1980s, when the late Lea Gottlieb, the founder of Gottex, and her star model, the late statuesque and sensual Tami Ben Ami, provided opening night viewers with a glittering mix of Las Vegas, Paris, and Milan. Gottlieb had an innate sense of drama, which was reflected both in her designs and in her fashion shows, though she herself wore modest classics.

Although there definitely is a sense of glamour in the shows produced by Reif, it is more low-key and geared to commerce more than entertainment. Aside from that, there is very little new in fashion today. Innovation resides more in technology than in style. In fact, perusal of fashion publications of the second half of the 1960s proves that what goes around comes around. The designs are exceedingly similar to those paraded on fashion runways today.

When Cavalli came to Tel Aviv in 2011, Tel Aviv Fashion Week, of which he was the key attraction, was naturally launched at the residence of the Italian ambassador, who at that time was Luigi Mattiolo. Among the guests were Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, international fashion model and actress Noa Tishby, and fashion designer Gideon Oberson, whose beachwear range was the closest rival to Gottex.

In their heyday, Israel Fashion Weeks were the country's best means of image promotion, attracting hundreds of overseas buyers along with writers of leading fashion magazines and newspapers. The designs were eye-catching, and the Israeli models were tall, beautiful, and graceful.

One of the reasons that Reif wanted to revive Fashion Week was that, just under a decade earlier, he had completed his term as cultural attaché to the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, where he was extremely conscious of how Israel was perceived. He wanted to promote the beautiful lifestyle image of Israel rather than the military one. The more tension there was in the Middle East, the more Israel's military image came to the fore.

There is no doubt that Cavalli helped Reif to get Tel Aviv Fashion Week off the ground, and for that Israel's fashion industry is deeply in debt to him

Batman writers sign letter calling for the return of Bibas family

■ A FONDNESS for the enduring Batman character, who first appeared in comics in 1939, had the entire Bibas family of Kibbutz Nir Oz dressed in some semblance of Batman for Purim 2024. On October 7, 2023, they were among the hostages taken by Hamas to Gaza.

In late November, Hamas said that 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, his four-year-old brother, Ariel, and their mother, Shiri, had been killed, but provided no proof to the claim.

There is video evidence that they were alive when taken to Gaza, and the hope in Israel is that despite the inhuman conditions to which the hostages are subjected, the family is still alive.

A petition organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, DC, and sent to Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, the ambassador of Qatar, and Motaz Zahran, the ambassador of Egypt, has been signed by more than 50 writers...