Yom Ha’atzmaut in the Park

OWN CORRESPONDENT

As the gates opened at 17:00, the crowds arrived in their numbers for the “Party in the Park”, celebrating Israel’s 69 years of independence.

As they entered, the adults gathered their flags and made for the food stalls and shopped around the “shuk”, which provided delicious sweet treats, novelty toys and children’s items to beaded pieces, an array of jewellery and other crafted goods.

The children headed straight for the kiddies carnival area, where they had all sorts of fabulous adventure rides, jumping castles and the like, which kept the young’uns very busy.

The best thing about this was that although there certainly were parents seen searching for their kids, there wasn’t reason to worry. Despite the thousands of people, the area was totally closed in and there was a huge security presence. So, our children were safe, which meant the adults could relax and party to Israeli soloist, Hananel Edri and the Johnny Sklar Band.

They got the crowd on their feet to dance with an awesome line-up of contemporary and traditional Israeli songs. The highlight of his performance was the exclusive debut of his first-ever self-written song “I live to love”.

King David Linksfield’s flag dancers wowed the audience with their performance before the organisers announced that Karen Camberg was the lucky raffle winner, winning two return tickets to Israel to spend a weekend in Jerusalem, courtesy of El Al.

Once the younger families went home with their schoolgoing children, the party continued with DJ Ronen pumping out the hits.