Parents’ Day
I love field trips. But I had never been on one before in a police van led by cop packing an impressive looking piece.
No, the authorities hadn’t finally caught on to me and sent me up the river. It was part of ‘Parents Day’ in the Israel Police department for families with children serving their army duty in the police.
For someone who’s always kept their distance from authority, I felt pretty comfortable as my wife and about 12 other adults joined my daughters commanders for a half day tour of the area they patrol on a day-in day-out basis.
This was a part of Israel we don’t usually get to see… the Shai district, which runs from the Shomron settlement of Eli to the Jerusalem area settlements of Adam and Anatot around to the east and the Modi’in-area settlement of Nili, Kiryat Sefer and others. The operative word, I guess, is settlements.
As parents, we tend to pack away in the backs of our minds the fact that our daughter is driving around 12 hours a day arbitrating olive picking disputes between Arabs and Jews, removing settlers from illegal outposts, arresting husbands who are abusing their wives or children, controlling traffic after an auto accident, confiscating knives, drugs and other contraband from cars stopped at roadblocks… and doing it all on roads and neighborhoods which are high risk anyway for rock throwing attacks and even worse.
We received some insight into the complexities and nuances of keeping the peace in an area where there’s constant conflict, where nobody really knows who owns those olive groves, where a caravan can be put up illegally but the police are powerless to dismantle it, unless the political echelon gives the ok.
We visited Eli – amazing view and weather, the archeological site of Tel Shilo, the oldest settlement in Shomron, Ofra, and Amona, the site of a violent scene two years ago when police tore down permanent buildings built there illegally. Those same settlers who were fighting the police then are the same ones who receive full service the next day when their car is stolen by someone in the Palestinian village next door.
We ended up in the police district headquarters at Beit El, where we were greeted by our children in uniform and treated to a luncheon feast.
When our daughter’s commander walked toward me at one point with a purposeful look, my heart started beating and the first words that came to mind were going to be ‘but it was for medicinal purposes only’. But he only wanted to talk about seeing Paul McCartney last month and compare notes.
I was a little disappointed because when we were stuck in a traffic jam just past the Hizme checkpoint heading out of Jerusalem into the territories, the driver didn’t just put the siren on and pass all the cars at a high speed. That would have been cool.
But the police seemed pleased with how their first Parents Day turned out, and they plan to do it again. The commander left us with some good advice. Make sure to give your daughter or son a hug or a pat on the back once in a while, because they’re doing an amazing job at trying to keep our country safe. I know I’ll be doing that a lot from now on.
Polls with Camel glasses
A landmark event took place last night at Tel Aviv’s Dancing Camel brewery, where citizens of the United States were invited to vote for the next US president by an organization called Vote From Israel.
The first initiative of its kind anywhere in the world, Vote From Israel’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for US citizens currently in Israel to participate in the electoral process. The organization’s leadership estimates that out of 125,000 eligible voters in Israel this fall, only 42,000 are registered, so they worked 18-hour days through the hectic fall holidays to register some 7,000 to 10,000 more.
Now that the registration phase is complete, they’ve set up three events where people can hand in the absentee ballots they sent away for, or they can use Vote From Israel-provided Federal Write in Absentee Ballots. Everything is anonymous and sent via Federal Express to the voter’s relevant district office.
The press seems to be lapping it up, too, as a reporter from Newsweek and camera crews from Austrian public TV channel ORF and Israeli commercial Channel 10 competed for the most colorful comments from participants.
At last night’s event, six delicious flavors of beer were on tap, including a sweet and rich stout and seasonal brews seasoned with lemon and pomegranate bouquets. Voters were given coupons for half off of any beer. The Jets-Chiefs game was projected on an enormous screen.
After voting, participants were asked to complete an exit poll, surely a key element to the Vote From Israel concept. Although the organization is officially unaligned, it’s no secret that most Americans whose Zionist bent is strong enough to put them in Israel are likely to favor the 2008 Republican ticket. And with the influence that exit polls can have on undecided voters, one needn’t get so creative to conjecture the motivation behind Vote From Israel’s anonymous funders. The results of the organization’s exit polls can be released to the public a full week before the East Coast votes.
Regardless of the conspiracy theories, the beer, football and nightlife vibes kept the proceedings last night remarkably light. One reveler quipped that he had come to exercise his right not to vote, while another shrugged that he’s come just to meet up with friends, despite being Canadian.
Here we go again
So, it’s all but a foregone conclusion that we’re headed for early elections. Just what this country needs.
Kadima leader Tzippi Livni, claiming that she wasn’t ready to give in to the ‘blackmail’ of potential coalition partners like Shas, took the high road and went to President Shimon Peres today and returned the mandate he entrusted her with last month to form a new government.
So barring some unforeseen blip, and owing to the convoluted manner the president and the Knesset parties must behave now, we’re looking at mid-Feburary for election day. And guess who’s prime minister til then? Ehud Olmert.
Ain’t Israeli politics grand?
I’m actually looking forward to the campaigning, because the televised election ads are among the most entertaining moments of TV since the original Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970s.
That’s about the only consolation to the whole ordeal, because whether Livni and Kadim come out on top again (highly unlikely), the Labor Party and Ehud Barak make a comeback (even unlikelier), or the Likud and Bibi Netanyahu clean up (Lord help us because it’s very likely), the resulting coalition will be very similar to The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, which goes “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
I’m sure that despite the fateful issues and decisions facing us, the next elections will have a record low turnout. Until we start producing some new blood and new ideas, more and more Israelis are going to continue turning off to politics. And it’s a time when we can ill afford to leave our fate to others to decide.
Maybe the environmental Green Party will finally galvanize voters and become this next election’s Pensioners’ party or Shinui – a dark horse coming out of nowhere.to capture the minds and hearts of the population.
Nostalgia Sunday – 1967
Perhaps the most genius service of the century is Scan Cafe, which takes those crates and crates of slides so many families have lying around the house — the slide projectors having died years ago — and puts them into digital format.
We must have had thousands of slides, carefully organized in slide trays (kids, ask your parents about these), which gathered dust for years in Newton, Massachusetts, until my Dad moved to Los Angeles in 1998 so that they could continue to gather dust in California. After my dad passed away, my sisters took charge of the monumental task of going through his crap – and there was plenty of it. That’s when they found Scan Cafe, which allowed us to finally see pictures of our childhood that we hadn’t seen since… er… well, since our childhood.
We came to visit Israel in June 1967. The trip had been planned months before, as my Israeli mother wanted to visit family and have them meet her husband and children. We arrived a few days after school — and the war — ended. And so, our family outing photos have some historical merit. I’ve selected a few from a trip my parents took to an outpost at the former Jordanian border. Then, as now, it starts by heading towards the Dead Sea:
And here’s the border crossing:
There was plenty of gear for the grown-ups to examine.
And you’ve gotta love my Dad’s eternal fascination with office equipment!
Links to previous posts
Nostalgia Sunday -Simchat Torah flags
Nostalgia Sunday – Heaters
Nostalgia Sunday – Yom Kippur
Nostalgia Sunday – Rosh HaShana
Nostalgia Sunday – Old Coins
Nostalgia Sunday – Historic Homepages
Nostalgia Sunday – Tango
Nostalgia Sunday – Tel Aviv Night Run
Nostalgia Sunday – Missing Dad
Nostalgia Sunday – Clique HaClick
Nostalgia Sunday – Tel Aviv 100
Nostalgia Sunday – Eurovision
Nostalgia Sunday – Old Israeliana
Nostalgia Sunday – Classic Movie: The Blaumilch Canal
Nostalgia Sunday – Plaid Bedroom Slippers
Nostalgia Sunday – Historic Photo Shop Shuts Its Doors
Nostalgia Sunday – New Israeliana
Nostalgia Sunday – High Windows
So what is it like to live in Israel?
I returned from a trip to the states last month and was as usual was quite annoyed with the incessant questioning about my life here. Call me impatient but it’s the same thing every time and it can get quite annoying. So one night after a difficult dinner where the amount of silly questions matched the amount of drinks I had I jotted down the most common questions. The most common of course is being asked “What is it like to live in Israel?” People fail to understand that my life here is not a Disney-esque adventure where I jump from an archeological site to the Great Synagogue and back again. Sure I live in Israel, but I have a real job, real problems and a real life.
Here are a few of the most common questions asked of me, my real answers and the answers I would really like to give.
Question: Do you like living in Israel?
Answer: Very much.
What I would like to answer: No, I’ve only stayed here for the past eleven years because of self-hatred and my love of bureaucracy.
Question: Should Jerusalem be divided? I don’t think it should be.
Answer: That is a complicated question that I would need hours to answer.
What I would like to answer: Well, that is a fairly complicated question that I can’t even approach. It isn’t so black and white and frankly, your opinion on the matter means nothing to me. Just because you stay at the King David Hotel once a year does not give you the right to determine the future of Israel’s capital city.
Question: Is it quiet over there?
Answer: Yes.
What I would like to answer: It’s quiet right now, but you never know when the next bulldozer attack is going to be and I hear Iran is developing nuclear energy.
Question: I know someone who moved to Modi’in last year? Do you know David, uh, what’s his last name (screams to wife/husband “What is David’s last name?”)
Answer: Modi’in is a fairly large city and most of my friends live in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
What I would like to answer: Even if I did know this person who you apparently do not know very well since you do not even know their last name where can we possibly take this conversation next?
Question: Your daughter, does she understands Hebrew? Do you speak to her in Hebrew or English at home?
Answer: Yes, she understands Hebrew. They speak to her in Hebrew at daycare. We speak to her exclusively in English at home.
What I would like to answer: Well, if we want her to speak like someone with a severe learning disability we would speak to her exclusively in Hebrew. Of course we speak to her in English, it would be a crime to rob her of the gift of fluency in English.
Oh, I’m really not that bitter…I did have several drinks before jotting all this down. And I was just really missing the land where high fructose corn syrup can’t be found, the hummus is more common in it’s unpackaged form and where salad is served with every meal. I just couldn’t wait to get home already.
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