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Giving insurance companies an (even worse) name

This is about as mundane a subject as is out there, but it certainly reflects that the reality of living in Israel has very little to do with the headlines most people read, and more to do with the trials and tribulations we all face no matter where we live.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the hassles of making an insurance claim after being sideswiped in a traffic accident. Well, it all seemingly worked out well, and yesterday – less than two weeks of laying out over $1,000 to fix the car and sending in the claim to the insurance company (Migdal, in case anybody is interested, one of the country’s biggest insurance companies) – I received a check in the mail.

Hurray for a victory over Israeli bureaucracy, right? Not quite. The check was made out for the amount of the claim, minus 10%. An accompanying letter stated that the deduction was due to ‘contributing negligence’ on my part.

WTF? Now, a quick recap. I was driving down a road in Jerusalem in the Romema industrial area. My nemesis wanted to turn right onto my road from a small side street with a stop sign. After stopping and supposedly looking both ways, she turned right and clomped into my right back door as I was driving, minding my own business.

Was this 10% contributing negligence? I think not. Luckily Migdal’s claim manager’s name and number were on the letter, so I called her- and got through to her! I explained to her that I was not even one percent responsible for the accident, and when I asked her to explain her reasoning, she said, “do you even know the traffic rules? Do you know that at any intersection with a stop sign, that the driver with the right of way has a responsibility to slow down?”

I said I was not aware of that rule, and that even the driver of the other car, whom she insures, admitted to being 100% responsible for the accident.

“Well, that’s what I decided. There are some claims I take off 50% for negligence, I only took 10% off of yours,” she said.

“But you weren’t even there. You don’t know what happened,” I answered.

“So what? That’s the way it is.”

I realized that this was a futile conversation and ended it, and also realized it was a pathetic attempt by Migdal to save a few measly hundred shekels by bullying and shortchanging innocent victims of accidents.

So, if you ever get hit by another driver, and think that you’re going to receive complete reimbursement for the damages rendered, you might be better off settling with the driver without involving the cheating, conniving insurance companies.

Room 124

Israeli bureaucratic institutions have been slowly but surely modernizing over recent years. You can get in and out of the infamous Interior Ministry in less than a day…and you don’t have to line up at 8:00 AM just to shove your way in through the heavily guarded front door.

The health funds now have computerized kiosks that print out the name of the doctor, his or her room number and the time of your appointment; a flat screen monitor tells you when it’s your turn.

Ditto with the banks and the post office where you can now kick your feet up and relax while you wait for your number to flash.

The tide of advancement, however, has apparently not yet washed over the shores of the Education Ministry which, naturally, is exactly where I had to be yesterday. I have been considering taking a tour guiding course; to be admitted I needed to have my non-Israeli diploma officially “approved.”

The Education Ministry’s building is a formidable mass; a wide arching wall of concrete with identical small window slats all facing towards a forlorn courtyard. Once inside, a spiral staircase winds its way to “Room 124″ – a tiny cubicle of an office where a lone clerk sits to satisfy the academic supplicants’ demands.

There is no brightly-lit waiting room, just a scattering of chairs along the walls and up against the staircase railing. To the Ministry’s credit, there is an old-fashioned paper number dispenser; when I first made aliyah 15 years ago, you just plopped yourself down and asked “who’s last?” A fight would inevitably ensue when someone arrived late and claimed that he or she was “here earlier” and was “after” some naive looking stranger who quickly disavowed any knowledge of the presumptuous intruder.

There were 17 people ahead of me – a true melting pot of Israeli immigrant society. I heard smatterings of foreign tongues – Russian, Arabic, French, Spanish, and of course English.

When my turn finally came – after an hour and a half wait – I braced myself for an abrupt confrontation with Israeli officialdom. To my surprise, my clerk was a bundle of buoyancy. When she started speaking to me in English rather than Hebrew, I asked where she was from. “Albania.”

What a pleasant turn of events: the woman in charge of the immigrants was an immigrant herself. As my forms were duly stamped, we traded travel stories. She told me that you can fly to Turkey and rent a car to drive to Albania by way of Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Maybe I should think about leading such Mediterranean road trips. After all, I now have the stamp of approval from the Ministry of Education.

Not just any third birthday

One of the most quickly forgotten aspects following any terror attack is the survivors. We all mourn the victims, obsess about the perpetrators, and move on, as those left behind attempt to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Three-year-old Moishe Holzberg has proven to be the exception. A year ago, Moishe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, 29, and his wife Rivka, 28, were killed along with 170 other victims when Pakistani Islamic terrorists raided the Chabad house in Mumbai, India. The Holzbergs had lived in Mumbai for six years as official emissaries of the Chabad movement.

The two-year-old life of Moishe was saved when he was spirited away from the attack by his Indian nanny Sandra Samuel. He’s been raised at Kfar Chabad near Tel Aviv by his grandparents for the last year. And on Wednesday, the community hosted a memorial ceremony for the couple, which was attended by 2,000 people. During the event, Moishe celebrated his first haircut, a coming-of-age event for three-year-old boys, known as an “upshirin” in Yiddish or “chalaka” in Hebrew.

“Moshe may be without biological parents, but the entire Chabad family has adopted him,” the head of the Chabad Youth Organization in Israel, Rabbi Yosef Aharonov, told The Jerusalem Post which attended the event.

Across a blue-grey curtain on the wall of the womens’ section of the tent, dozens of blue and white balloons spelled out “Moishe, three years old.” Moishe himself was carried in by Sandra shortly before the beginning of the event, and stood before a gaggle of reporters and cameras, calmly, even lazily, taking in the spectacle.

Rabbi Holzberg’s father, Rabbi Nachman Holzberg, said that the outpouring of support for his family has been tremendous over the past year, and that Moishe was doing very well. Holzberg also expressed his hope that the tragedy “will only bring the entire world closer to redemption.”

Samuel, surrounded by a sea of reporters and swarmed by well-wishers from the moment she entered with Moishe, said that she was feeling a mix of emotions at the event, both great happiness that Moishe was doing well and sadness at the fact that his parents could not be with him.

Samuel said that “the baby is fine, he’s a normal kid, he plays, he jumps.”

With a mixture of sadness and joy, which, after all, is a regular recipe in Israel, the shortened lives of the Holzbergs and the hopefully long life of their son Moishe was celebrated in the only way Israeli know how – with all their hearts.

Protesting Israel-style

The email we received last week was dire. Our neighborhood was in grave danger of being ruined by unscrupulous real estate developers, it read. A massive 210-unit apartment project had been green-lighted to be built right in the middle of an already congested neighborhood.

The resulting traffic, pollution and just plain lack of aesthetics (the planned project includes two eight-story towers reminiscent of the Holyland monstrosity) demanded a response. The residents’ considerations had already been rejected by two lower committees. We were urged to attend a last chance meeting of the Va’ad Artzi, the national planning commission, to take place at 9:00 AM on Sunday.

Normally, I shy away from such events. Highly technical Hebrew with lots of architectural lingo spoken at very high volume (read: yelling) isn’t how I like to start my workday. But this seemed important, so my wife Jody and I high tailed it across town to the Chen Hotel in the Bayit VeGan quarter of Jerusalem where the committee was meeting.

Truth be told, this was our first government gathering in Israel. Back in the States, I was a regular since I held the planning and city council beat at my first newspaper job. So I was expecting something similar. A small auditorium with council members sitting on a raised stage around a long table. Members of the public would step up to a podium and speak into a microphone. The men all wore ties; the mayor held a gavel.

But this was casual Israel. We residents (about 20 of us showed up to show our support) sat around the perimeter of the room behind the opposing parties who were seated at three tables arranged in a U. On the city’s side sat various officials, the project developer and several architects. We were represented by local residents and a member of the Society for the Protection of Nature (SPNI): a burly man with a gray beard, a polo shirt and a baseball cap. At the front table was the Va’ad itself.

Despite a hustle bustle of participants getting up for drinks and noshes, chairs scraping across the floor, animated whispering and cell phones ringing, the proceedings were surprisingly efficient.

The contractor spoke first, followed by the residents. Both sides were articulate, used PowerPoint slides, and seemed genuinely interested in finding a workable compromise. The SPNI man was careful to say he wasn’t opposed to the project, just the lack of public green space and the destruction of a grove of trees that had been thriving since the British Mandate era.

The developers, in turn, showed numerous plans that they’d rejected until arriving at one that they said had the least impact on the neighborhood. Most of the trees would have to go in order to build underground parking which was of course better for the neighborhood than forcing 300 new cars onto city streets. The plan also called for setting aside 25% of the luxury project for less affluent families – a rarity among shekel-crazed developers and their cronies.

One reason the battle was so relatively amiable is that everyone agreed that Jerusalem has no choice but to become denser. When the Safdie Plan – which called for massive construction in the green belt around the city – was nixed last year after protests by the very same SPNI, the alternative was to find and build on empty urban space.

The area for this particular new development was formerly mostly empty agricultural land and fields next to the venerable Ulpan Etzion which was shut down earlier this year for budgetary reasons. It was only a matter of time.

As the meeting stretched into its third hour, Jody and I had to leave – protesting is fun and all, but we do need to work. In any case, the committee wasn’t taking a vote on the spot.

We of course hope that the project will be scaled down, although Rachel Deitcher, the resident who’d invited us in the first place warned that compromise is not generally the Israeli way. Nevertheless we appreciated the fact that there was a forum in Israel where opposing sides could meet and, to our unjaded eyes, seemed genuinely interested in solving the conflict. Most of all, our first foray into city planning politics wasn’t as painful as we’d feared.

When the verdict is handed down, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Religious ruptures

With Jerusalem debating the efficacies and realities of the city’s haredim rioting against the opening of the Intel factory on Shabbat, talk at the water cooler on this first day of the work week revolved around this latest turn in the Shabbat riots.

The riots were reportedly peaceful, but as one coworker of mine commented, “How peaceful is it to head to a riot after shul on Shabbat?”

Can’t argue with that. I personally like to head home for some whisky and olives on Shabbat afternoon.

According to a survey taken by Hiddush, an NGO promoting religious freedom and equality in Israel (and headed by Rabbi/lawyer Uri Regev, who used to head the Reform movement in Israel), 76 percent of Jewish Israelis – and 93% of secular Israelis – believe haredi rabbis are spearheading religion-inspired conflicts in an effort to advance partisan haredi interests, and only 24% of the 500 polled believe that recent riots are inspired by love of Israel and the wellbeing of society.

This isn’t the first time that an Intel factory in Israel is working on Shabbat, but it is a newly revamped Jerusalem Intel plant that is manufacturing a certain kind of chip, which requires non-stop production. Given that Jerusalem is a city lacking jobs and industry, the presence of Intel is a boon, and one that clearly, no one wants to lose. At the same time, it’s not too pleasant dealing with religious hatred on a regular basis.

And so, against this background, I happened to end up at the Haredim photography exhibit in Beit Avi Chai, originally shown at the Eretz Israel Museum, with photos by Menahem Kahana of Haredim in all walks and situations of life, from synagogue rituals and family gatherings to celebrations, funerals and yes, demonstrations, from over the last ten years.

The curator is Alex Levac, winner of the Israel Prize for photography. Worth seeing and thinking about.

Shalom Haver

Driving down Jerusalem’s King David Street last night on my way to band practice, I passed an array of police vehicles and official-looking swanky cars ensconced in front of the David Citadel Hotel. Now, which foreign leaders are here now, I thought?

Then I remembered that the Sixth annual Saban Forum was taking place from Saturday to Monday in Jerusalem and Ramallah, and among the guests were former US president Bill Clinton and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

During the two-day forum, dialogue between senior officials from both countries on US-Israel relations and Middle East strategic issues such as the Iranian threat, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, are being held. On Sunday, the delegates to the conference were travelling to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.

Founded in 2004, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy has been working to promote independent policy dialogue between Israel and the US. Founder Haim Saban called the timing of the event “a critical moment in US-Israel relations.”

And even though neither Bubba nor Ahhnold were out strolling on the Mamilla Avenue mall, their presence during their visit is being felt.

Clinton, speaking to the conference on Saturday, urged Israel and the Palestinians to end our conflict, saying we cannot escape our common future.

“We are either going to hurt each other or we are going to help each other. Divorce is not an option,” AP reported Clinton saying.

“In the last 14 years, not a single week has gone by that I did not think of Yitzhak Rabin and miss him terribly,” he said. “Nor has a single week gone by in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East.”

Clinton has remained hugely popular in Israel, where his “Shalom haver,” eulogy at Rabin’s funeral forever struck a chord in Israelis’ hearts. Despite some who believe Clinton’s hastiness and recklessness at achieving an Israeli-Palestinian accord led to the Second Intifada, Clinton’s still a star here. Welcome friends, and block the traffic as much as you want.

Music downloads? Israel goes CD retro

As more and more people are downloading music on the Web and choosing Ipods over CD players, where can you find the good, old fashioned mega-CD stores? In Israel!

True, Tower Records has taken a hit here, with its Jerusalem flagship store closing down last year, but instead of throwing in the flag, other outlets have taken up the slack.

Whenever I’m in Tel Aviv – like yesterday – I try and make it over to the Ozen Hashlishi (Third Ear) on King George St. It’s the closest you can get in Israel to imagining you’re at one of those sprawling vintage CD/vinyl shops in the Village in New York, where the clerks wear Black Flag t-shirts and look like they’d just as soon stab you as take your money.

Tons of used and new CDs, vinyl, DVDs, books, featuring ample sections of niche music like ‘Israeli indie’ and ’60s Psychedelic,’ the Ozen is one of the few places you can pick up a copy Television’s landmark Marquee Moon CD – and at a bargain price. They’ve also got a club which at night hosts eclectic Israeli rockers for intimate unplugged chats with fans.

But Tel Aviv doesn’t corner the whole market for the discerning music lover. In the nation’s capital, Hatav Hashmini, a music store that began more than a decade ago by importing CDs at cheap prices and has since grown into a massive chain with its own music label, recently opened a massive, 340-square-meter store. They claim it’s the largest music CD and DVD store in Israel.

According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, the store features ten listening stations that allow visitors to sample virtually any CD in the store, one of them in a room dedicated entirely to classical music and opera.

During the grand opening last Thursday, Hatav Hashmini’s stated commitment to “music you can hold in your hands,” as opposed to downloadable MP3 files, was in strong evidence, as several big names on the label’s roster assembled for brief impromptu concerts.

Hatav Hashmini’s label boasts such artists as pop performers Micha Sheetrit, David Broza and Shlomo Gronich, as well as jazz saxophonist Danny Zamir. The store promises to host its artists for small-scale performances in the future. The venue is certainly spacious enough.

While it’s unlikely to replace the Ozen in my heart as THE place to shop for music in Israel, I’ll be certainly giving Hatav Hashmini every chance to prove itself in the coming months.

Picture of the week: The long goodbye to Rabin

There can’t be many people on the left or the right in Israel who don’t still wonder what would have happened if former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t died the night he was shot by religious fanatic Yigal Amir.

Would we have peace now? Would the second intifada have been avoided? Or would everything have unfolded in much the same way? We’ll obviously never know.

What amazes me most is that it was 14 years ago, but the memories are still painful for so much of Israeli society. It’s an open-wound that as David so rightfully pointed out in his post, Have any lessons been learned , hasn’t yet been resolved.

I was at the rally the night Rabin was assassinated. We didn’t know about the shooting until after we left, when we visited friends on our way home and found them glued to the television. Even then it was clear, history had just taken a completely different route.

Israel’s president Shimon Peres addressing the crowd on Saturday at the 14th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv. Photo by Liron Almog/Flash90.

Israel gets its newest celebrity visitor

We get a lot of celebrity visitors to Israel. Bill Clinton, George Bush, the Dalai Lama, Madonna
, Leonardo DiCaprio, Grover from Sesame Street – you name it, the great and glorious come here. It’s a field day for the press, who follow their every move in Israel, trying to get that one great shot of Madonna at the Western Wall, or the Dalai Lama at Temple Mount.

The newest celebrity visitor to our shores, however, crept in without the slightest bit of press hoo ha, making surprise visits to a number of top Israeli hot spots without causing any kind of media stir or even extra security. It’s Alpha Rex, the Lego Mindstorms robot. Yes, you heard it here first.

As part of Lego’s 10th anniversary for its Mindstorms robot line, the company sent out two of its Alpha Rex humanoid robots to cross the globe.

The sturdy little robots left the FIRST World Championship in Atlanta in the US in April 2008 and have been travelling every since. One headed off to tour the US, and the other – clearly more adventurous – headed west to Japan, taking in Europe, Australia, Canada, Egypt, India, China, the South Pole, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Iceland etc. etc. etc. along the way.

They aren’t alone of course. Lego employees, fans and business associates have guided them on their long, difficult and sometimes lonely journeys, taking snaps of them at their destinations.

Now it’s the turn of Israel, where Alpha Rex along with his human guide, David Schilling, got to visit Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Sea of Galilee, enjoying some occasionally autumnal weather on the way

It’s not the end of Alpha Rex’s global endeavor. He’s still got quite a few countries to go – including Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (hope the Israeli authorities didn’t stamp his passport), and Argentina to name a few.

At the end of it, the Lego team plan to make a screensaver showing all the places he visited. They should also consider setting it to music and putting it on Youtube. It worked for Matt Harding after all.

So what did Alpha Rex think of Israel? Wasn’t it the best place he visited? Does he plan to come here again? He declined to answer.

High school musical – the hike

A uniquely Israeli creation, the tiyul shnati (Annual trip) has been part of our family’s lives since our oldest child was big enough for one of the outdoor overnight, multi-day trips.

Whether they attend secular or religious schools, the annual trips are generally chock full of walking the land, camping in the rough, rope and ladder climbing water hikes, barbecues, cameraderie, pranks, and living and breathing Zionism.

With 10 months spent cooped up in the classroom, middle and high schoolers earn their three days out in nature, and our 15-year-old son was up bright-eyed and ready at 5:30 am this morning waiting for one of us to drive him to school.

Of course, it’s not primarily about Zionism, it’s primarily about pranks. When I asked him what kind of pranks the kids play on each other these days, he recounted one successful mission last year of entering another tent in the middle of the night, and scrawling in red marker the name of a body part on the forehead of a ‘friend.’

The preparations begin days earlier, with the required trip to the candy story for obligatory ‘junk’ bag of everything we don’t let him have the rest of the year. The school list of required equipment includes enough bottles of water to stock a small pool, but he also insisted on buying a six-pack of Coke. Both the portable music player and the cell phone stayed at home, which was an accomplishment in itself, and almost worth the cost of the trip.

Which is a sore point – a number of students weren’t attending the trip due to the expense involved. On top of the annual school fees and miscellanous charges, the school charged NIS 790 (almost $200) for the trip. I know that there’s the costs of the buses, the guides, etc… but they’re not even staying in youth hostels or hotels, they’re camping out!

If it’s a class trip, meant to build a spirit of student togetherness, there should be a way for all the students to go, even if it means cutting out some of the schedule and shortening the outing by a day.

It’s a macro problem, but this morning, we were dealing with the micro, hastily digging the forgotten sleeping bag out of the closet at the last minute. With that squared away, our young man took his last shower for three days, packed an extra pair of shoes for the water, reluctantly stuffed in something to wear if it got cold at night, made sure he had his red marker, and put his candy in a water-proof section of his backpack. With attention to detail like that, he’ll go far in life.

 

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