An oasis in the North (mosquitoes optional)
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel
We just spent the weekend in one of Israel’s most beautiful camping spots – Hurshat Tal.
Close to the border with Lebanon, it’s as close as you can get to the pastoral camping sites immigrants from North America are used to. Landscaped lawns and a well-kept campground occupy featuring ancient oak tress, natural pools and and a huge artificial lake of icy cold, refreshing spring water (and a couple impressively fast, long water slides off on the side), take up about 100 of the 190 acres of the national park.
During Succot, as well as the other weeklong vacation holiday of Pessah, the park is packed with campers – wall to wall with barbecues, raucous families and revelrers. However, no matter the noise level or body compression, but 10 pm or so, everyone winds down, there’s no ‘thumpa thumpa’ of trance music which is the norm in most Israeli campsites, and everyone chills out for the evening.
Our first night was like that, with seemingly half the country crammed into the site, weirdly humid weather inducing thunder storms and mosquitos galore, and tempers flaring between Jewish and Arab campers.
Our 9-year-old and his friends, who were unable to sleep, roamed the site in the middle of the night and came running back to report that the police had arrived and had broken up an altercation between two families. It was unclear if the fracas was racially motivated, but they noted that an Arab mother was pounding on the window of the squad car as it drove away with her teenage son.
We never got the full story, and by 4 am or so, after the last thunder storm, we drifted off into a fitful sleep for two hours.
The next morning, on Shabbat, about 95% of the campers fled for home, leaving our little group of four families with virtually the whole park to ourselves. The weather broke a little with cooler, less humid weather. And the camping trip turned into what I remember from my days in Maine – a joyous nature experience.
When the weather cooperates, there’s no place like Hurshat Tal in the country, and any visitor who reaches the North (and how can a visit to Israel not include a visit there?) should block off some time to hang out there, even if it’s just for a few hours.
A moral dilemma on King David Street
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice, Sports
I’m not sure if I was taken in by a 3-Card-Monty sidewalk scam or callous in not fully helping someone in need.
I left Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on Friday with my tennis partner Calev after our weekly doubles game (Why we get to play at the venerable hotel’s outside court situated in it’s beautiful poolside courtyard is another story worth telling some day).
As we were walking to Calev’s car, a neatly dressed woman holding two young girls – aged maybe six and four, dressed in their Friday finest approached us.
“Excuse me,” she said in an accented English that revealed her Arab origins. She was tall and thin, and wearing a fashionable black pant suit.
“I’m from Haifa, and I had to come to Jerusalem to take one of my girls to the hospital for an appointment. But I lost my pocket book, and now we have no way of getting back to Haifa. Do you have any money you can give so we can go home?”
What would you do?
Calev, who grew up in New York, immediately scoped out the situation as a classic tourist scam, aimed at bilking the high-scale King David clientele out of their money.
I looked at the little girls, and took NIS 20 out of my pocket and handed it to the woman.
“This will get you to the Central Bus Station,” I said. “You can ask Egged (the bus company) to help you get home.”
The woman wasn’t happy with that offering.
“But I need NIS 150 to get home,” she insisted.
Claiming that the money I gave her was all I had, we continued walking to the car. Calev said, “I’m sure she’s from east Jerusalem and does this every week.”
As we drove onto King David Street, he suggested we look for the woman and offer her a ride to Haifa. If she declined, then we’d know that I had been taken. If she accepted, then it was going to be a long afternoon driving two hours each way to Haifa.
Alas, we couldn’t find them on the street anymore, and we were left to speculate. Ultimately, I didn’t feel bad at my NIS 20 contribution to the woman. Even if she was a clever scam artist, the money would hopefully go to feeding her children. But we may never find out who she was… unless she’s there again next Friday when we finish our tennis game.
Looking at things (ir)rationally
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, War
Signing in at the induction site
Sending a kid off to the army is alot like coming to live here in the first place – a big leap of faith. It’s not really a rational decision – although for many, alot of thought has surely gone into it. But most of us assume that things will work out in this country, and there is some reason why we should be living here.
With the army as well, there’s the rational and irrational. Of course we need soldiers to protect our country – moreso here than just about anywhere else. Rationally there’s not much of a choice -unless you’re haredi, or Arab, or … well, let’s not get into that can of worms.
Heading to the bus with a lollipop.
In fact, one could argue that sending your child to the army is the ultimate objective in making aliya – we conceive little Israeli babies in order to increase the Jewish population of Israel and stock the fighting forces.
Obviously, like alot of people we knew who made aliya with us way back when, there was a naive hope we possessed that by the time we had kids and they turned 18, there would be no need for military conscription, and there would exist only a voluntary army like in the US. That dream seems as far off today as it did 25 years ago.
The point of no return for tomorrow's soldier.
Bidding farewell to Sarit yesterday, amid the other families hugging their child-turned-soldier for the last time (the next time we hug them, they’re not going to be the same people – even if it’s only two days later for Shabbat), I was touched by the irony of it.
We spend 18 years of our child’s life protecting them from harm, nurturing their soul, giving them a sense of security. Then one day, you simply hand them over to a body where there’s going to be bullets, tanks, explosions – things that you’ve been avoiding like the plague until now.
It’s hardly a rational thing to do for a parent, isn’t it? But unfortunately in the reality of Israel, for anyone who cares about the country, doing anything else would be irrational.
Going to the zoo
Filed under: coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life
I’ve been waiting for the right moment to introduce my baby boys to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, and given that their ears perk up every time they hear a dog bark, bird chirp or see a bird cross their path, I figured the time had come. Enough with reading about animals and faking a tiger’s snarl; we had to actually see some live animals.
The aggressive goat
The choices of animals to visit seems endless on that first trip to the zoo — elephants! zebras! monkeys! And what I also liked is the coexistence effect of the place; on a Thursday morning, the place was pleasantly full with ultra Orthodox boys on a school trip, Arab elementary school children in their red sweater uniforms, also on a school trip, as well as Arab high schoolers and similarly-aged Jewish high school kids. And just to prove the zoo’s coexistence effect, all signs next to the animals’ enclosures are written in Hebrew, Arabic, English and, often, Yiddish.
30seczoo01.MP3We’re [all] going to the zoo…
A very Druze Knesset
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Politics, Religion
The Israeli Druze are a mysterious and interesting people. They are known to eat raw meatballs. They find their spouses on the internet (okay, we do that too). Although it can be argued that they know no borders, they are historically extremely loyal to Israel, fighting as part of our military since the War of Independence and even teaching in our universities.
About a year ago, some alarming news reached the public when Israel’s National Resilience Survey results claimed that Israeli patriotism among the Druze was dropping rapidly. Balad party Member of Knesset Said Naffaa had harsh words to say to YNet on the matter at the time:
“Israel had always viewed the Druze as some type of domesticated beast, but now this previously docile animal is fighting back,” said Naffaa.
Moreover, Israel has taken quite a bit of heat recently when the government decided last month to ban two Arab parties from the upcoming election (Yes, Balad is one of them), given their track records for anti-Israel sentiment, rhetoric and actions.
With polls opening in a number of hours and election fever in full swing, one aspect to the situation that has unfortunately not been emphasized is the potential for this upcoming Knesset to be the most disproportionately Druze-represented than any ever before. How’s that for tolerance and diversity? Even extremist Yisrael Beitenu party has a Druze on their candidate list.
Haaretz did the math for us recently, revealing that a total of five Druze candidates were likely to garner seats:
According to the government’s statistical yearbook for 2008, Israel has about 120,000 Druze citizens, constituting 1.6 percent of the population. Five Druze lawmakers would be 4 percent of the Knesset’s 120 members, 2.5 times more than the proportion of the community within the national population.
And the best part is, the candidates hardly seem interested in only representing their small ethnicity:
Deputy Foreign Minister Majali Wahabi (Kadima), a Druze, said yesterday that his community cannot be expected to vote en bloc: “The large parties have to understand the importance of our community. I personally plan to represent my people faithfully, but also anyone who voted for my party, no matter what sector they come from. I believe in our involvement in Israeli society, not in separate parties.”
Tomorrow, Israel has much to decide and crystallize. At least there’s a good chance that our legislative body will be far more diverse and far less “special interest”-focused than we’re led to believe.
Image of a Druze man in the Golan courtesy tierecke from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
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