Israeli wine demarginalizes settlers

December 31, 2008 - 9:00 PM by Harry · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Politics, coexistence 

The Shilo vineyardsThe Israeli settler movement is often cited as a thorn in the side of peace, a rag-tag band of Wild West-inspired radicals who are keeping Israel of reaching her goals of progress. This over-generalized perception might or might not be accurate, although the headlines last month out of Hebron don’t necessarily make them look so good.

The settler movement holds a tricky place in the culture, no matter how you slice it. And even if many sectors of Israeli society make sure that the government’s attitude towards settlers remain as ambiguous as possible, the fact is that the state depends on these people to garner us international diplomatic leverage by creating “facts on the ground” rather than theoretical claims to territory, and their lifestyles – no matter how ideological or pragmatic – are therefore highly subsidized by the national budget.

For the fall holidays, the settler movement, embodied by the Yesha Council (a consciously anachronistic acronym for “Judea Samaria and Gaza”), launched a major tourism promotion campaign which packaged the territories as a kitschy roots discovery destination for mainstream Israelis (a harsh but poignant analysis of the marketing message appears here).

Now Yesha is further trying to endear itself to the center of the country by piggybacking on the oeno-tourism trend, a trend that has people around the world and around the nation visiting remote locations of Israel to check out various vineyards and barrel caves. Many of Israel’s up-and-coming wineries are kosher, but the trend is not only for the God-fearing – especially when it comes to the increasingly developed pallets of local connoisseurs.

In addition, institutions of higher learning, bed and breakfasts and olive oil presses have been employed as “facts on the ground” that have the potential to rally support from the settler-skeptical. Haaretz recently got some interesting comments on the matter from a Yesha leader:

Bentzi Lieberman, a former chairman of the Yesha Council, acknowledged shortly before leaving his post that “the settlers are living on borrowed time: if we don’t create something else for the public, something dynamic, relevant and up-to-date, if we don’t use a different, Israeli, language, that will connect the public to us, the danger of us becoming irrelevant will increase.”

Lieberman at the time cited Ariel College and the Barkan Industrial Zone as examples of successful marketing, “that blur boundaries, roadblocks and the Green Line, projects that cross borders and span across opinions, that are beyond all the little fears and connect the broad Israeli public to here.”

“If we are not able to create these kinds of projects, in terms of language, content and essence and also in the economic sense,” Lieberman warned then, “if we don’t speak a language that Israelis understand, we won’t be here.” Today, Lieberman’s vision is taking shape and increasing numbers of Israelis are visiting Judea and Samaria for reasons that are not political. Instead they are going for the experience and the fun.

Photo from flickr user ePublicist under a creative commons license.

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Lessons from The Rabin Murder

November 4, 2008 - 12:35 PM by DavidS · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Israel can surprise you – in the most surprising ways. One thing I’ve learned in some 15 years of living here – nothing, but nothing, is what it seems on the surface. There is little, if any, black and white in Israeli life – it’s a rainbow, with lots of shades of different colors in the mix. Take my Rabin experience, for example.

I was at home with my wife and some friends, watching a movie, when I heard the news – “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Not focusing too closely on the video (men will understand why), I overheard a couple of neighbors talking outside in the courtyard. Rather rare for a Saturday night, I thought, and especially those two, who didn’t generally fraternize, going on at length. Sauntering out of the room (I think it was around the time of the second wedding), I went out to the porch to find out what was going on.

Needless to say, we turned the movie off and watched the proceedings.

At the time, I worked for a publication owned by a major Israeli newspaper in Tel Aviv. You could count on one hand the number of observant people in this organization (to their credit, the very avant garde, very politically left people at this publication were extremely respectful to my religious principles – for example, they always made sure kosher food was served at staff meetings, etc.).

But not only was I religious – I was a “settler,” too, living in a community east of the green line. This, too, had never been an issue with these people, and my views on politics and Jewish life in Judea and Samaria were well-known. But now, with Rabin killed by a Jew wearing a kippah, and his alleged connections to residents of Judea and Samaria – this was different. With all the talk of how “the right and religious” were behind Rabin’s killing, I walked into the office that Sunday morning with great trepidation, ready for anything – dirty looks, insults, verbal confrontations, or worse.

But either the folks working at this publication were exceptions to the rule, or the very yellow character of the Israeli media had reared its ugly head again, with the tiny minority of loudmouths dedicated to ruining the fabric of Israeli society trumpeting ideas about putting right-wingers in internment camps in the Negev being given a solitary platform. Even the “star” of this publication, who today is famous for his American talk-show shock-jock style radio call-in program where he argues with everybody, and who has extremely left-wing views, didn’t speak to me any differently than usual (gruffly, like he talked to everybody). Astounded, I asked one of the editors of the publication what was going. Where was all the blame, the anger, the “we will not forgive and we will not forget” I was expecting? After all, I was a pretty convenient target!

He just looked at me like I was crazy – and asked: “Why would we want to do that to you? You may be a settler, but you’re ‘our’ settler!”

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