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Madonna Will Kick Off Her 2012-2013 World Tour in Israel with Some 30,000 Tickets

The last time Madonna performed in Israel was in 2009, when she held two concerts as part of her record-shattering Sticky & Sweet tour. This time the newly-rechristianed Queen of Pop is not just holding any old concert in Israel, but using the event to kick off her entire 2012 world tour.

The Israelis are, needless to say, pretty excited. They're not as excited as Perez Hilton—who brought out lots and lots of exclamation points for the announcement—but they are still pretty excited.

The world tour will kick off on May 29th in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan and stretch all the way into 2013. After Israel Madonna will travel to a couple other Middle East venues before departing for Europe, where she'll do 26 additional spots over the course of two months. From there it's off to North America to do yet another set of 26 venues, then to Latin America, then to Australia. Before everything is said and done she will have played 90 concerts.

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Tel Aviv Voted World's Top Gay Travel Destination

Israel tourism has been in an upward spiral over the last few years. Every year brings a new crop of travelers to the Jewish State—reflected in now-routine "this was the best tourism year ever" headlines—and they go home and tell their friends. That's how you end up with niche surveys about the popularity of Israel travel, like Israel being the number two destination for Russians.

Obviously part of Israel's tourism revolves around the country being a destination for religion travel. Jerusalem is and will remain by far Israel's most-visited destination (see our insidery tips for making the most of a Jerusalem visit here and here). But other parts of Israel are becoming famous for appealing to other demographics.

Forest-filled Haifa recently got the nod of being Israel's cleanest tourism city, part of a campaign to bolster green travel to and around Israel (El Al passengers flying from LHR to TLV can even purchase carbon off-sets).

And then there's Tel Aviv, which has just been voted the world's single best gay travel destination.

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Travel Snapshot: The View from Atop Jerusalem's Austrian Hospice

The city of Jerusalem (Hebrew: Yerushalayim) has seen as much history as any other place on Earth. The Old City, the 1sq km walled area tucked inside Israel's larger capital, has been continuously inhabited for 5,000 years. It fell on particularly hard times when it was divided between Jordan and Israel from 1948 to 1967—all but one of the city's 35 ancient synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians, for instance—but since its reunification under Israel much of the destruction has been repaired.

The result is that the Old City is now often the highlight for tourists indulging in some Israel travel. It takes more than one day to see all the sights, with just the Ramparts Walk that we recommended to you last summer taking half a day. The question naturally arises, how can you see as much as possible in the least amount of time?

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Hunting for Hummus in the Old City of Acre, Israel

The city of Acre (Akko in Hebrew) is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in Israel. Probable references to it stretch back to the 16th century BC, and over the centuries it's been ruled by everybody who was anybody in the Middle East. The Canaanites, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, British and now the Israelis have all had it at one time or another. The upshot is that there's been lots of time to build and tear down and rebuild the walls around the Old City, photographed here.

The entire Old City has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The problem is that it used to be something of a trap for the many travelers who came to see the ancient sites, many of whom promptly got lost in the winding roads. But over the last few years the Israeli travel and tourism people have made a major effort to make the city more tourist-friendly, posting maps at entrances and in squares. Recently signs have even appeared all over the city to direct people around.

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Martha Stewart Travels To Holy Land, Declares That It Is Good

Around this time last year, domestic goddess and noted Louboutin aficionado Martha Stewart waded into Philadelphia's intractable Geno's-vs-Pat's cheesesteak war, declaring that Pat's was "kinda bland" and giving her approval to Geno's. Having experienced a conflict of that magnitude, the celebrity was no doubt ready for this year's Labor Day trip to a part of the world where the battles are almost as heated: Israel.

Stewart spent her weekend in the Holy Land attending her nephew's wedding, scouting locations for an upcoming TV segment, and macrame-ing things (we're just guessing about that last part, though she still does that though, right?)

Her professional judgment on Israel? It's pretty interesting. Pretty interesting indeed.

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TSA Launches Israel-Style Behavior Profiling Program Called 'SPOT'

TSA has very slowly been moving toward Israeli-style behavior profiling since at least March, which was when we first covered this story. The news this morning is that the agency has finally launched a one billion dollar pilot program at BOS under the too-cute name "Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques"—SPOT—with the intention perhaps of eventually deploying it elsewhere. It seems to be modeled very closely on how the Israelis do things, which immediately raises the question of how exactly the agency intends to pull all this off.

"Behavior profiling" can actually mean at least two things. In the most basic sense behavior profiling it's just about passively watching people. This is the Las Vegas "eye in the sky" kind of profiling, where body language experts monitor the casino floor and can detect cheaters just by the way they walk around nervously. Setting up this kind of passive program is just a matter of having enough resources to train and employ people, and TSA already has so-called "behavior detection officers" in 161 airports (you can check out our background on that program here). But that's not really what people mean when they say "Israeli-style behavior profiling."

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Israel's Caesarea: A Theater Balancing Both Antiquity and Modernity

The ancient port city of Caesarea should be a strong contender on anyone's Israel travel itinerary. During the days there are the Roman ruins to be explored, among the best preserved in the Middle East. They include carefully excavated living quarters, baths, and—most famously—a huge theater/colosseum finished around 10BC, because the Romans valued their entertainment. Those are for the tourists, something that we point out in a 100% non-denigrating way.

Of all the destinations on the interwebs, we take our tourism seriously. You should just know that that's what you're getting into.

But once the sun sets, and especially during the summer, there are all kinds of events and concerts that bring out younger and more local crowds. The modern town is one of Israel's most upscale areas, and the region is actually maintained by a private organization dedicated to economic and cultural development rather than by a city council.

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Jerusalem's 'Ramparts Walk': The Insidery Diversion You'll Want to Take

We're indulging in some Israel travel this week, as Jaunted writers are wont to do from time to time. The picture you're looking at is of the ramparts that line the Old City of Jerusalem, a two and a half mile walk that dates back to ancient times and has been immortalized in art. The so-called "rampart walk" is one of those insidery tourist attractions that, once you know about them, are actually worth signing up for.

Visitors can enter and tour the ramparts, which ring the Old City, for about $5. You have to climb up some fairly steep stairs to get to them, but once you're at the top - as you can imagine - the views are spectacular. If you turn and look inside the city, you get to see iconic structures that have been written about for thousands of years. If you turn the other way you're presented with modern Jerusalem.

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TSA Rumor of the Day: Agency Ready to Adopt Israeli 'Common-Sense Security' Model?

So. The talk is that the TSA is "ready" to adopt Israeli-style in-depth security. But! This isn't going to happen. It's not the way that TSA operates. It's not the way an organization that recruits with pizza box ads is capable of operating. And—even if none of that was true—DHS Secretary Napolitano and TSA head Pistole have both repeatedly said that they're not going to do it.

Thus, this whole rumor is more an overeager Washington Times reporter getting an overeager Israeli security official to go on the record about something that's not technically true, but it's still kind of an interesting thought experiment: what if the TSA went Israeli in response to all the criticism it rightly gets, like this report says they're considering?

It wouldn't, as some people suggest, mean that TSA officials would start racially profiling passengers. As Shin Bet internal security official Arik Arad explains, it would actually mean the opposite of that. Because "the profile changes," what you actually need are people trained to pick out abnormal behavior. That requires probing every passenger group with a set of questions proven to "uncover anomalies that can lead to identifying terrorists through further screening," something that sounds scary but actually means asking things like "what hotel are you staying at?"

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Israel is About to Get Google Mapped So Hard

Israel is finally set to allow Google to map out the country's roads using Google Maps Street View, which is something of a bold move since terrorists routinely brag about using Google Earth to target their missiles and rockets at Israelis. Since we're talking about the Middle East, the decision has naturally engendered a robust debate about costs and benefits. On the costs side: the terrorism and people dying thing. Supposedly on the benefits side: tourism.

We're not really going to belabor the security issue, partly because it's convoluted but mostly because it's way, way too depressing for a Monday morning. You can go here for a will-it or won't-it backgrounder. The tourism debate, on the other hand, seems a little bit more straightforward and a little closer to our wheelhouse.

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Will Airport Security Soon Include Scanners Filled with Bomb-Sniffing Mice?

Putting aside all the debates about detection thresholds and risk management and anti-terrorism integration, it's pretty easy to know that TSA measures are just a bunch of security theater: that's not how they do it in countries where there's lots of terrorism. Airports like Israel and Britain and Spain don't have the absurd spectacles we do, except when we make them adopt our policies.

And when companies in those countries design airport security technology, they don't innovate in the direction of laughably stupid shoe scanners or humiliatingly invasive full-body scanners. Instead they brainstorm cheap, scalable ways of detecting explosives. Like bomb-sniffing mice.

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December Has Been Quite the Month for the TSA; They Did Frisk Santa, After All

Miss TSA Pin-Up Calendars...giving Santa a pat-down... What weird TSA news will we hear next?

The US government will spend over $160 million on full-body scanning over the next two years. On one hand, you have Israeli security experts who say that's a waste of money. On the other hand, you have DC-based scanning machine lobbies who've seen their funding double over the last 5 years, and who think that's a fantastic development. As always we acknowledge that this is a tangled debate with arguments on both sides, though we will note that in sharp contrast to TSA, Israeli airport security doesn't routinely let weapons and explosives slip through checkpoints. We'll also note that TLV doesn't get needlessly evacuated because of holiday gifts and... umm... frozen chicken.

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