Tel Aviv

Tens of thousands of supporters of Israel crowded New York's Fifth Avenue as part of the annual parade celebrating the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. This year's parade also commemorated the centenary of the city of Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai was an honorary grand marshal and donned a pair of "100" glasses. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson led off the parade, followed by floats blasting Israeli pop music and teenagers from yeshivas and Jewish day schools.

Re "The new Hamas," Opinion, Jan. 31 Fawaz A. Gerges argues that Israel should negotiate directly with Hamas because, although Hamas has not discarded its core ideology that Jews have no place on what it considers Islamic lands, some Hamas leaders might be willing to accept a long-term truce. When last year's cease-fire began, Hamas had rockets that reached the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. By the end of the cease-fire, which Hamas used as cover to smuggle more lethal weapons into Gaza, it had rockets that reached Beersheba, which is much farther away.

I expected to be transformed by my first visit to Israel, and especially Jerusalem, the cradle of three faiths, a traveler's Holy Grail. But when I returned to Rome for Christmas, I was surprised to realize that what I remember most is not ancient, spiritual Jerusalem but secular, young Tel Aviv, celebrating its 100th anniversary next year by mounting concerts in Yitzhak Rabin Square and restoring its 8-mile-long oceanfront promenade.

Monday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a bass player from the Israel Philharmonic stepped forward to say a few words to the audience about Leonard Bernstein's Concerto for Orchestra. Hearing a new piece for the first time can be difficult, he said about one of Bernstein's significant last works, which had its premiere in Tel Aviv in 1989, the year before the composer died. "But this isn't just any new piece," he noted. "It's about us." The italics are mine, but you get the point. The us -- the orchestra, that is, which was on the last day of its American tour under Gustavo Dudamel -- is "undisciplined," "unpredictable" and "noisy," the player had said.

One of Israel's best-known mobsters, a crime family boss with a long list of enemies in the country's increasingly brazen underworld, was killed Monday when a bomb exploded under his rental car near a busy Tel Aviv intersection. The midday slaying of Ya- akov Alperon was described by Israeli media as the boldest hit yet in a string of turf battles that have killed dozens of gangsters and at least eight bystanders in the last three years.

TEL AVIV -- In Zohan Dvir, Israelis have a Hollywood hero -- no matter that the soldier-turned-hairstylist played by Adam Sandler represents some of their country's worst stereotypes. "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" looks to be a big hit in the Holy Land. Billboards bearing the leading man's split-legged, blow-dryer-wielding image are plastered across city walls, and numerous stories have been written and broadcast in the local media, which has called it the "most Israeli film in Hollywood."

An Israeli police officer fatally shot himself in the head at an airport farewell ceremony for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, prompting bodyguards to whisk the visiting leader and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to safety, officials said. A military band was playing, and the dignitaries apparently didn't hear anything. But the guards quickly ushered Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, up the stairs of his plane at Ben-Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv. Other guards with guns drawn rushed Olmert and Israeli President Shimon Peres toward their cars.

Greeted by joyous relatives and a crowd of reporters, about 40 Iranian Jews landed in Israel on Tuesday, leaving behind their lives in the Islamic Republic for new homes in the Jewish state. Family members screamed in delight and threw candy at the newcomers as they emerged into the airport reception hall. No details were given about their route of exit from Iran. "I feel so good," said Yosef, 16.

The title of Israeli writer-director Eytan Fox's new film, "The Bubble," is a pejorative reference to youthful myopia, namely in the trendy Sheiken Street district in modern Tel Aviv, where twentysomething progressivism may feel more like a cool romantic spirit than something politically urgent.