Update at Three Months in Israel

So, here I am in Israel: three months into it. Where am I? I’m going to check in. I love it here. For some reason, it feels like home. I just measured and my little bungalow is 256 square feet… and I still love it. My bed is about five feet up in a loft so it gives me some room below to live. I am going to work on getting internet access today and I am resisting getting cable as I don’t want the temptation. I can rent movies and watch them on my computer.

One of my concerns is that of being complacent. I need to feel productive, not as if I am on a vacation. I have my Hebrew classes from 8:15 AM until 12:50, every day. Tel Aviv is perhaps the most alive late at night – any night. You can get into traffic jams at 3:00 AM on a Tuesday. However, my schedule does not allow me to stay out that late. I know that I really don’t want to, anyway. Over ten years ago, I would have welcomed the nightlife. Now, I would prefer being with groups of friends in a quieter environment. I prefer dinner at someone’s home or even just drinking and hanging out in someone’s home. Yet, here I am in a city with an incredible nightlife scene. It rivals Barcelona or other comparable sized cities. The music is not of my generation, anymore. What gives the younger folks energy saps mine. However, Tel Aviv is where the single people are. And what talent! I have to put this city over Spain in terms of beautiful women. I don’t know if all of Israel is like this but Tel Aviv is amazing. Also, people are approachable.

Israel is so small (again, you can fit seven Israel’s in the State of Georgia). Since all men at 18 must spend three years in the army, they often choose to backpack around the world for a few months before entering into a University or working. The handsome Israeli men meet gorgeous women in Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Sweden, Spain, wherever, fall in love, and bring them back to Israel. Therefore, half of my Hebrew class is not Jewish. Perhaps most of the school is not. But, the Israelis bring back stunningly beautiful women. Everyone speaks great English. I mean great English. TV and movies are almost always in English with Hebrew subtitles. Plus, they study it throughout their lives. “Lingua Franca” is not longer the appropriate term. We could call English the Lingua Freedom (Libertad) or make it more appropriately, the “English Link”. These folks have it down which takes away most of my marketability, work wise.

I am just now considering investigating work opportunities here as I would like to live here for quite a while longer. Everyone says it is a tough life here. The standard of living will certainly not be as high as it is in the USA with income taxes over 50%, cars costing twice as much and gas costing 4 times as much. I love Israel perhaps more than some who were raised here. There are so many languages spoken on each corner. These are mainly Hebrew, French, English, and Russian. I have not been exposed to many of the Arab population, yet. I will dive into that culture at a later time. People here don’t have big egos and are welcoming and hospitable to foreigners and new immigrants.

A valid fear that I have is that the country won’t exist in its present form for very much longer. The world hates Israel except for the United States. Once that support wanes, you have a very vulnerable strip of land; very vulnerable. Israel, at its narrowest point is only about 8 miles wide and half of it is uninhabitable desert. That is why Israel has needed to occupy parts of the West Bank (the western bank of the Jordan River). It could easily be clipped in half at that narrow point. Missiles aimed at Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, etc could wipe out the country.

So, how much should be sacrificed to appease the world powers and the angry neighbors who see these Europeans and their former Jewish neighbors as having taken over what should be part of the Muslim world? How much is it worth to have a Jewish State where the religion in woven into the power of the government and the religiously observant subsidized and exempt from the mandatory military servitude? Would a secular state cool the international hatred? Why is this tiny strip in the news so often when recent blatant tragedies like that of Darfur and Chechnya go unmentioned in the most of the press for years? There are only 7 million people of which a million are not even Jews. There are 300 million in the USA. Why is everyone so obsessed with denouncing Israel?

There are many wonderful books to be read that are more articulate and plunge deeper into the history and morals. The following is off the top of my head, stream of conscience, and without using any particular research docs.

Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own state because, otherwise, they will continue to endure persecution as they have throughout their history in the Diaspora. There are many shades of gray in the cases for and against Israel as a Zionist State. Here are my explanations of the black to dark gray and the white to beige.

The case against Zionism and Israel:

Here are the rational reasons why people that are so critical of the Jewish state.

In 1948, there were 600,000 Jews living in what was soon known as Israel. Upon declaring itself a nation, about 700,000 Arabs fled or left Israel in fear of the war that was to come. The plan was to return once the alliance of Arab countries defeated the Jewish State of Israel that was a day old. After the war, there was simply a ceasefire and no peace treaty. Israel did not let the Arabs back into Israel. These refugees stayed in encampments on Israel’s borders. There are now about 4.5 million people that say they are descendants of the Arabs that left and that want to be able to move back into what is now Israel.

As a Zionist state, Israel allows and encourages all Jews to move here and become citizens. However, the Arabs that left and who have been living on the borders are not allowed back in.

Jews were not particularly persecuted in the Arab world prior to the creation of Zionism and the Jews emigrating to what is now Israel. In what is now Spain, Jews lived in peace with the Arab rulers in the southern parts of the Iberian Peninsula. With the Inquisition of 1492, many Jews were allowed to flee to Muslim countries such as Morocco and Turkey. Jews have lived for thousands of years in Yemen, Iran, and Iraq.

Also, in a later war, Israel captured an area that had been given to the Arabs of the area for their creation of a country. This area is known as the West Bank. Israel captured it and originally put military posts around it in order to protect it from invading armies from Jordan. They later did the same to an area inside Lebanon. However, there are some religious Jews (and the Religious have power in the government) that felt that Jews had the divine right to restore all of ancient Israel to the Jews. The government started subsidizing Jews who had moved to Israel as refugees from other countries to move to the West Bank. They had full Israeli rights and citizenship. But, their Arab neighbors, some of whom were refugees and descendants of refugees, had none of these rights. This is what is spoken of when people mention “The Occupation”. Protecting these Jewish “Settlers” became burdensome to both the Israeli government and burdensome to the Arabs in the area (now called “Palestinians”) because of the extreme security needed to keep these Settlers from being attacked. Palestinians still have to go wait in long lines to get through security checkpoints so travel is difficult.

So, we have the Refugees, the Settlers, and Israel letting only Jews move to Israel. Maybe that’s not fair…

Here is the other perspective outside of the religious view that Jews should be here in as a precondition to the coming (or return of) the Messiah.

Although some 700,000 Arabs left Israel after its first day of existence, another 700,000 Jews have fled their Arab countries to come to Israel after persecution that was a response to Israel’s creation. Many had to flee with no possessions.

What was called Palestine (first by the Roman Occupiers, and later the Ottomans and the British) included all of Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Syria and Lebanon. Most of the land formerly known as Palestine went to Jordan. All of these countries are far less than 100 years old. The United Nations wanted to create a Jewish state in this area where there was a large number of surviving Jews after the greatest genocide in history. They also wanted to create another Arab state in the remaining portion of Palestine (now known as Palestine). Turkey and Greece returned each other’s citizens in a peace treaty after years of war. It was thought that this might work here, too.

The neighboring Arab states who scream about Israel’s injustice of not allowing the Arabs who left before the War of Independence in 1948, will not allow any of them to become citizens in their countries. Instead, they have made them stay in the bordering refugee camps. Jordan, under enormous pressure from its own Palestinian population, did allow a few in at one point. Most of these countries are Muslim states where the clergy has power within the government – like Israel.

After millennia of persecution, Jews, who maintain a different lifestyle than their host cultures that stems from their religion, have created a state that is a true democracy. About 20% of the country is Muslim or Christian. All vote and are represented in the Parliament. All have state protection and freedom of religion and historic buildings of all kinds are maintained. Unlike every other country in the region, the press is free and all are encouraged to openly criticize the government and its policies without fear of reprisal. And they do. Regarding the settlers, I have no defense for their being there except for the need for military outposts in a seething, vicious area that is geographically where Israel is most vulnerable.

So, what are the possible solutions? You have 7 million people in Israel that would have nowhere to go. It’s a tiny land. Muslim countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Palestine (although it’s not yet a country) have not recognized Israel as a country. Many are still formally in a state of war and have been since Israel’s creation.

Billions of dollars have poured in from around the world into the West Bank only to be rerouted to Switzerland into Palestinian leaders’ bank accounts. Israel has invested heavily in creating and infrastructure for the Palestinians. Even though Hamas, the ruling political party in Gaza, is sending rockets daily into Israeli cities in order to provoke Israel and to stay in the International press, Israel continues to provide water and electricity into Gaza.

A tiny country that is militarily strong but geographically vulnerable has good reason to fear increasing its population to a level far higher than has ever occupied these lands with a population that whose leadership has sworn to destroy the country (the Palestinian Right of Return of the 4.5m descendants of those that left in 1948). Israel cannot comply too much with the angry Arab nations until they have valid recognition and diplomacy with these states to the point where there is no more threat of annihilation. Israelis have seen so many acts of terrorism within its borders where random unarmed civilians are targeted and the deaths celebrated in the streets of its neighbors. Allowing these people now to come in and literally live next door brings great fear into the hearts of Israelis.

I have read in some of the Arab English press, the suggestion of a one-state solution. I would welcome that, if Israel’s citizens could be assured protection and the state could remain a true democracy – even with an Arab majority. The suggestion is to create a state such as Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, and such. This could be OK but it is far from a possibility in the near future.

Make your own decision about Israel. I firmly believe in Israel as a home for the Jews, a safe haven for them and as a place that treats all races and religions of its citizens with respect and gives them equal rights. If there is to be a majority of other groups, there should be more land given such as the West Bank, part of Jordan, Lebanon, etc. However, Israelis see the culture of violence, the victim mentality, and of failure to take responsibility of your one’s situation as a difficult culture to weave into a society that virtually has no internal violent crime.

This is NOT a South Africa situation. Jimmy Carter recently wrote that within Israel, there is democracy but Israel’s relation to the occupied West Bank is akin to Apartheid. Israel is completely out of Gaza (although it supplies Gaza with electricity and water and those plants themselves have been bombed). Gaza is the most violent part of Palestine and there are no Jews there. Bill Clinton helped negotiate the offer of 95% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza and a mutually occupied Jerusalem to Palestinian leader Arafat. He walked from the table and started a Holy war (Jihad) against random unarmed Israeli citizens and convinced Arab children to kill themselves in order to do it. Israelis are bitter about that. Life in Palestine is much worse since the 1990’s when these negotiations were going on in good faith. They came to work in Israel daily but since so many smuggled in bombs that killed hundreds, they struggle to get in.

I believe the world’s most pressing issue is the genocide of the (Muslim) people of Darfur. I also believe the people in Palestine deserve a good life and the pursuit of happiness. Israelis would be willing to sacrifice so much if they could get peace and security at their borders.

The world’s chastising has united and bonded Israelis and the Jewish Diaspora that has been spread out through the continents. I once saw a movie about a neo-Nazi who surmised that the best way to kill the Jews is to embrace them, accept them, and acknowledge them. Then, they will exhale, relax, assimilate into the host culture, and turn on each other with their many differences. That could happen here in Israel.