A statue of the mermaid on the promenade in Kiryat Yam

Kiryat Yam is a fairly un-notable town on Israel’s Mediterranean Coastline just north of the city of Haifa. Its not somewhere that would ordinarily appear on any tourists itinerary but following the alleged sighting of a mermaid there last year, the mayor is now offering a $1 million reward to any tourist who can prove its existence.

It is one of the uglier towns on Israel’s coast: boxes of Soviet-style housing projects jostle close to the shore and tankers plough the shipping lanes, heading for more important destinations to the south.

However, Kiryat Yam, a development town full of Russian and Ethiopian immigrants, has been galvanised by a claim that neither the busy port of Haifa to the south nor the walled crusader city of Acre to the north can match: according to the mayor, it has its own mermaid.

Tourists are stopping here to try to summon the elusive creature by blowing on a ram’s horn, a Jewish relic, and investors have expressed an interest in developing the almost deserted beachfront. Shmuel Sisso, the town’s mayor, has whipped up excitement by offering a $1 million (£615,000) reward for anyone who provides proof of the siren’s existence.

Oleg Borisov, 56, a market-stall holder, believes that he was the first to have contact with the creature a couple of years ago while he and his dog were having a night swim. “I was in up to my head when I felt something moving in the water,” said Mr Borisov, who moved here from Ukraine 20 years ago. “All of a sudden I felt as if somebody was spreading my legs and going right between them. My dog started barking and there was a loud splash on the water. I screamed and fled — I was stuttering I was so scared.”

He has never returned to the water at night. When Mr Sisso built a promenade along the shore this year, and people started reporting strange sightings in the surf, Mr Borisov made the connection. “For sure it was a mermaid,” he said, adding that he believes she must have a message to deliver. “There will come a time when she will appear,” he said. “The Messiah is coming soon, too, in 2012.”

On the jetty, alongside a small fibreglass statuette of a mermaid sprayed with gold paint, Mordechai, 57, a native of Kiryat Yam, prepared for his daily swim. He dismissed the story as nonsense. “I’ve been swimming here every day for 50 years and I didn’t see her,” he said. He conceded, however, that there was mention of sirens in the G’mara, a Jewish holy text. “If you believe in God, you believe anything can be created. And I believe in God.”

In his office, Mr Sisso grinned at all the attention that his mermaid has attracted. He said that at least two witnesses claimed to have seen the creature, and he produced two snapshots from a British amateur photographer showing a yellow discoloration in the surf at sunset. Vince Palmer, from East Sussex, said in an accompanying letter that the pictures proved the mermaid’s existence — and he enclosed, helpfully, a self-addressed envelope for the $1 million cheque. “Before this picture she performed many tricks but I’m afraid I missed these with my camera,” he wrote.

The mayor’s reward offer has sparked the threat of international legal action from an American group called the Mermaid Medical Association. They wrote to Mr Sisso, telling him that they were “shocked about your decision to pay a reward of one million dollars to those who will hunt the mermaid. “Therefore if you don’t declare in a period of ten days that you withdraw from your decision we intend to approach the International Court of Justice and to ask for its interference,” said the group’s director, Jeff Lerman.

Mr Sisso was not intimidated. Nor has he been forced so far to come up with the reward money: he is too busy dreaming up mermaid-themed costume parades and more hotels to worry about such trivialities.

So if you’re visiting Israel and fancy seeing somewhere that tourists never usually go and see something that arguably doesnt exist, then Kiryat Yam is the place for you! Frankly though, we’d not quite go this far off the beaten track!

Quotes: Times Online

Didgeridoo by Flickr user Jeff the Trojan

It is indisputably Australian, but the didgeridoo is now hugely popular overseas.

In Israel, hordes of fans have turned out for the sixth annual Israeli Didgeridoo Festival.

It is about as far from Aboriginal Australia as you will get, held at a kibbutz not far from Tel Aviv to coincide with the Jewish holiday, Sukkot.

Organiser Yoram Sivan admits for all its Aboriginal origins, traditional didgeridoo rhythms are giving way to a more modern, global sound.

“The didgeridoo is one of the most magical instruments I’ve come across and people are very excited about it,” he said.

“Maybe there are still more didgeridoos being made in Australia than other places in the world, but definitely the scene in the world is so much larger.

“In Australia the thing about didgeridoo is the tourism, you sell didgeridoos to tourists. And in any other place in the world it’s not about that. It’s about the music.”

Even the musicians have drawn limited inspiration from Aboriginal didgeridoo players. Some have never been to Australia.

The didgeridoos are not made down under, and Ortal Pelleg, a member of one band that specialises in didge, says its music is far from exclusively Australian.

“I think that the music in this band is a mix of cultures around the world, with African touches, Brazilian touches; really a lot of different influences are weaved in there,” he said.

The huge success of didgeridoos as a tourist souvenir or marketable product in Australia means this traditional Aboriginal artefact is more and more a global commodity adopted and modified by overseas musicians without necessarily any regard for its Indigenous origins.

Some fans at the festival say the didgeridoo may even be bigger in Israel than in Australia.

“As far as I see it now in this festival, it has nothing to do with Aborigines and Aboriginal music,” said Ram Brousard. “I think it is more based now on electronic music.”

“I think today there are more players in Israel than in Australia,” said Elichay Danor. “People are so much in love with this instrument.”

The didgeridoo is so popular in Israel that Mr Sivan manufactures his own instruments at a workshop near Tel Aviv.

But while it might sound like a didge, his “compact didge” as it is called, does not look like one. Instead of a single, long pipe, the wooden tube is curled around like a snake.

And Mr Sivan’s unique didgeridoo is making lucrative inroads into a growing market in Europe – no doubt clearly tagged as “made and designed in Israel”.

“We are in contact with festivals in France, in Germany, in the [United] States, in Switzerland,” he said.

“I know there is a scene in Europe and people are very hot for this instrument. And it happens all over the world simultaneously.”

Article: ABC

In the town of Kirvat Yam, near Haifa, where dozens of people have reported mermaid sightings, a $1 million reward is on the line for anyone who can prove by photo or capture that mermaids do exist, reports the Jerusalem Post.

“Many people are telling us they are sure they’ve seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other,” Kirvat Yam town council spokesman Natti Zilberman told Sky News.

Many of the sightings have taken place at sunset, attracting crowds of tourists and locals alike, hoping to snap a picture of the mythological creature.

“People say it is half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin. It does all kinds of tricks, then disappears,” Zilberman said.

Witness Shlomo Cohen was one of the first to identify the mysterious creature, according to IsraelNationalNews.com.

“I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way,” he said. “At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail. At least five of us saw it and we all couldn’t believe it.”

The town council, which is offering the reward, insists that the mermaid mania is not just a marketing ploy to attract tourists, though it does hope tourists will come out to try their luck at the $1 million prize.

“I believe,” Zilberman said, “if there really is a mermaid, then so many people and tourists will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than $1 million.”

Source: nydailytimes.com