Yes, but, patriotically speaking

A casual observer might reach the conclusion that Israelis hate their country.  Everybody from left to right seems to constantly criticize it. Any decision or avoidance of decision is basis for derision of the government at all levels. No one is immune, from the Prime Minister to the street cleaner.  Every citizen seems to have at least one opinion.  There is an old joke about Ben Gurion’s visit to the USSR in the 1950’s when Israel’s population was less than half of today’s 8 million.  After being shown the magnificent achievements of Russia, Ben Gurion asks Stalin if anybody objects to these massive changes.  Upon hearing Stalin’s answer that there were around three million critics, Ben Gurion retorts by saying that he has the same problem.

That being said, Israelis are very patriotic.  Just this weekend, the Israeli flags at the Eurovision contest were larger than any others. Any international athletic achievement attains top news status even if the person involves does not become a hero. Average Israelis spontaneously defend their country throughout the Internet. During Independence Day last week, I saw countless people take time from the barbeques and watch the flyover of Israeli air force planes.  Even those who have emigrated from the country are vehemently pro-Israel.

 The basic and unique reason for this underlying consensus is quite simple. These are our airplanes, whether I agree or not with their use. These are our athletic achievements whether I believe athletes should be subsidized or not. This is our government, whatever my opinion of prime minister, not one does a favor to protect the Jews. This is even our humus, one eaten even by anti-Semitic leftists in the UK and France. 

This feeling of “our” exists for most countries but not in the same sense as for Jews. For more than 2000 years, Jewish physical existence was dependent on the “kindness of strangers.” The results were often disastrous. 68 years of nationhood have changed little in terms of security.  Yes, we may disapprove of many of its policies, but it is our country. We appreciate its existence.

The Power of No

Americans live in a certain and stable world.  The United States has elections every four years, no more, no less.  The French have even more time to think, six years.  Israel is a dynamic country.  There is an election whenever the situation requires, generally around every two years.  That does not mean that the actual government changes.  In most cases, the Prime Minister remains the same but the actual coalition is adjusted a bit left or bit right, whatever that means.  The most curious aspect of the Israeli politics is that the best way of staying in power is to say “no”.

To demonstrate, the prime ministers with the most years in power in the history of Israel are Ben Gurion, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Shamir.  David Ben Gurion, who ran the country for 14 years total, is the exception to the rule because he had two advantages. First, he did not have the luxury of doing nothing because the country had just been born.  Second, his Mapai party had a majority by itself and didn’t have to put together a coalition.

The current Prime Minister, Bibi as he is known, has held the position for nine years.  In terms of Israeli’s territorial security or chances for peace, basically nothing has changed in that period, for better or for worse.  There admittedly have a few short conflicts, but more in reaction than as a long term strategy.  The trading off of concessions to the Palestinians and those who want a greater present on the other side of the green line (hard to say that neutrally) has equally frustrated the Israeli left and right.  Combined with a sane but not proactive economic policy, Bibi has managed to survive nine years in the hot seat by avoiding extreme action in any direction.

Yitzhak Shamir, a prime minister for seven years, was less diplomatic than Bibi, but much more forceful in saying “No”.  He was also consistent, refusing any all suggestion for action.  Ask any Israeli what Shamir actually did.  The answer probably will be silence.  Curiously enough, he was rather well liked, a bit like Eisenhower, who was elected to do nothing and did not disappoint. 

The power of this “nothingness” is not a product of the ideal situation in Israel.  Israelis, who love to complain anyway, can produce a long list of problems, including the price of housing and taxes, to name just a few.  Instead, in my opinion, it is the result of living in an area of the world filled with peril.  Any action, however well-intended, may in fact lead to the destruction of the country.  So the country is split between the pessimists, who believe that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, and the half-pessimists, who look for signs that something can be changed and hope not to be disappointed.  If this split seems to lack any sense of ideology, I would tend to believe that level of optimism is a more relevant differential between the Israeli left and right.  In such a world, the famous dilemma from Waiting for Godot seems so relevant for many Israeli prime ministers: Should we go anywhere?

Right and Wrong

There is an American story, whose name I have forgotten, about a man who gets a parking ticket and refuses to pay it.  He asks for a trial, which orders him to pay the fine or go to jail.  Always claiming to be right and refusing to pay, he ends up in prison.  It is clear to all of the readers, or 99% of them at least, that how matter how “right” the man s, he is wrong, i.e. stupid.

On a larger and more tragic scale, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a similar theme.  It began on a small scale in the 1920’s, when Jews began to arrive in Palestine, first in trickles and then in tens of thousands in the 1930’s.  It is clear this entry of people from a different culture and religion would cause hostility.  The Jews were a clear psychological threat, whatever economic benefits their arrival brought.

This clash of cultures implied and still implies the impossibility of unity in terms of government.  According to a book that I am reading, The Palestinian Arab National Movement 1929-1936 by Y. Porth, the British in 1936 in one of their endless and futile attempts to make peace here, proposed a division of Palestine based on the population concentration at the time.  Specifically, the Jews would get the coastal plain, Tel Aviv, and Galilee.  Jerusalem and Tiberias would be administered by the British.  The rest would be run by Abdallah, King of Jordan.  While some of the Arab leadership was ready to accept the deal, the more active Palestinian leaders rejected it out of hand, rightly or wrongly.

 Jumping ahead, in 1948, the UN, the next organization to try to fix this mess, partitioned the country.  This time, the Jew would get the coastal plain, Galilee, Eilat, and half of Jerusalem.  This time, the Palestinians would have a country with the rest of the area.  After painful soul-searching, Ben Gurion and the Jewish leadership accepted this compromise.  The Palestinians, encouraged by Arab leaders, rejected this idea.  The result of the War of Independence was more land for Israel and no country for the Palestinians.

From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs and Palestinian leadership tried to use economic means to destroy Israel, refusing to negotiate.  The result was the 1967 war, which added the West Bank and Golan Heights, not to mention the other half of Jerusalem, to Israel. Of course, the Palestinians still had no state.

The Americans tried their hand as peacemakers.  The Oslo Agreement seemed to open the way to a Palestinian state, setting up a recognized Palestinian negotiating partner on sovereign territory.  Alas, the “all or nothing” mentality led to two intifadas and an extremist government in Gaza.  In the meantime, the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria has expanded, effectively expanding the size of Israel.

This is clearly a tragic story for millions of people on both sides of the conflict.  The responsibility for the Palestinian failure to accept, however grudgingly, a land compromise lies on the regional Arab leaders, local Palestinian leaders and, ultimately, the Palestinians themselves.  Just as the Irish people stopped supporting radical IRA and Protestant leaders and ended, however imperfectly, that “hopeless” conflict, so the Palestinians theoretically could one day have a viable state of their own. 

I am not so naïve as to believe in friendship in the next few generations, but it is time to end the validity of the famous comment “The Palestinians never miss any opportunity to miss an opportunity.”  Israelis and Palestinians are stuck together in a Catholic marriage.  Once that is accepted, a way to live together in harmony, if not love, can be found.  If not, it doesn’t make a difference what the policy of the Israeli government is.

National Streets

Street names are culturally specific.  Some countries treat their streets as long strips of asphalt while others give them much more historical significance.

The United States as a rule shows little imagination but some practicality in naming its streets.  The most common names are trees (oak, elm, pin, etc), numbers, and letters.  The city of Portland, Oregon in its downtown area has all of its streets going north/south (to the best of my memory) named in alphabetical order according to the first letter, i.e. words beginning of a, b, c, etc.  It makes finding addresses much simpler.  The only real bit of history in most U.S. cities is the use of presidents, but it doesn’t go much farther than the founding fathers and a few exceptional ones, specifically Washington, Madison, Adams, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt. 

A French city map is a history lesson, especially Paris.  Anybody who is anybody in French history has a street, however small it may be, named after him or her.  There is almost always a small plaque stating a few biographical bits and pieces about the person.  The older city has medieval names whose origins are often completely lost, such as Rue de Mauvais Fils (The street of bad boys).  The distinction between ancient and modern Paris is sometimesmarked by the word “Faubourg” added  to a street name somewhere along its length, as in Rue St. Denis and Rue Faubourg St. Denis. All in all, for the interested explorer, its turns every stroll in Paris into a wonderful look into the past.

Modern Israel tends to name streets after history and nature.  No Israeli municipality is complete without a Rehov Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Herzl, and Trumpeldor.  I live in a neighborhood whose streets are all military campaigns (most of which the younger generation has never hear of).  Ironically, it is bordered by a street called Derech Hashalom, meaning “The Way of Peace.” Fortunately, most residential streets are given the sweet sounding names of trees, birds, and flowers, such as Alon (Oak), Dukifat (hoopoe), and Harzit (chrysanthemum).  In many cities, such as Jerusalem and Zefat, the names of various rabbis and righteous people are noted.  By contrast, in many Arab villages, there are many “anonymous” streets, which I suppose adds challenge to the postal carrier’s job.

Of course, there is a joke about the high regard that Americans have for the late Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin.  Almost every freeway in the United States is named Begin freeway.

Separate But Not Equal?

What a difference an ocean can make!  Ask the British and the Americans, who formally speak the same language.   Alas, the same is for Judaism.  Israelis, even not religious ones, and Americans view practicing their religion in a different light.

For Israelis, Ben Gurion’s “temporary” status quo agreement with the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, which gave them exemption from army service, had other consequences.  The only form of Judaism that is regarded as proper is orthodox, somewhere according to the practices of the national-Religious vein.  This means keeping kosher, separate men and women in synagogues, and set standards of “modesty”, i.e. women keeping their knees and elbows covered, to mention just a few items.  Most Israelis, including the most anti-religious ones, accept this as the only way to practice Judaism if you are going to do so at all.  Only in 2012 has the government been forced to recognize non-orthodox rabbis.  So, in Israel, all is clear, even if often ignored.

By contrast, the United States is the land of skepticism and variety.   In a recent poll, the second largest religious “sect” is the group of people who have doubts about religion (but not about god, to be precise).  The Pope and the protestant preachers continue to scream at their wayward flocks for failing to toe the line.  Jews are not exempt.  The vast majority of American Jews is not orthodox, but instead conservative or reform, whatever that means.  Therefore, families sit together with koshrut being often partial, if kept at all.  (Granted, many American Jews keep kosher homes.)  As for modesty, well, during my recent trip to L.A., the second largest Jewish concentration in the United States, I happened to walk by the nearby synagogue on Yom Kippur.  The men wore suits and ties.  As for the ladies of all ages, they were tastefully dressed for the most part, but many were showing knees and elbows, if not more.  My Israeli-born partner was a bit shocked and upset by this.  She remarked:  “How can they wear that to the synagogue?”  My comment that not everybody shared her values was not comprehended.  The issue of a different but still acceptable standard of modesty was beyond her grasp.  (To her credit, she could understand why people in L.A. drive to the synagogue on Yom Kippur.)

As an American Jew who has lived in Israel for so long, I explain the difference in perspective to the general attitude of skepticism in the United States.  In my opinion, most of the people at the LA Yom Kippur services do not actually “buy” the rules of Judaism, meaning they fundamentally think they are bubbameisis (old wives’ tales), but agree to pretend on Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Pesach in order to maintain some form of being Jewish.  By contrast, most Israelis believe that the Halacha, the Jewish guide to proper practices, is serious business, even if many openly ignore it.   Whether the two practices are equal, I choose to take the Fifth Amendment.

P.S. My apologies for the long break in writing.  I was on a family visit and then had to recover from it.