Beach dangers

July 28, 2008 - 6:34 AM by Jessica

No Swimming Another sunny, summer weekend in Israel, but marked by five drownings in the Mediterranean Sea, between the coasts of Tel Aviv and Atlit. Swimmers had been warned about the turbulent waters this weekend, caused by strong winds, but chose to ignore the warnings and swam in areas where there weren’t lifeguards or public services. Three of the five drownings took place in unguarded beaches.

You read these stories every summer, and often, but not always, the victims are foreign workers who drank too much beer and don’t know how to swim, or haven’t spent a lot of time in sea waters. Not so for yesterday’s victims, all of whom were locals who should have known better. One beach lifeguard complained that part of the problem is that restaurants and snack bars have spread to the unguarded areas of the beaches, leading people to believe that there must be a lifeguard in the vicinity. Or, they just don’t pay attention to what the water is doing and figure they’ll be fine.

It bears a scary similarity to Israelis’ tendency to drive recklessly, including passing other cars on narrow two-lane highways, sometimes killing others or themselves in the process. Is this part of the Israeli tendency to sieze the day, given the worries and dangers of this world and society, or just plain idiocy? This does happen elsewhere, including the U.S., which also had a bad weekend. Yet a lot of it seems to be the yehiye b’seder culture, in which the belief is that everything will be fine, no matter what happens.

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