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Ruminations of an American Jew in Israel
by Mike Tabor
It was basically a good trip. We traveled over 2,600 km in 3 weeks throughout Israel. Our travels took us to several kibbutzim, south to Eilat and the Dead Sea and north to the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, Sfat, and then west to Akko and Tel Aviv, and of course Jerusalem.  | | Prince Gabriel and Zah,erah, Black Israelites in Dimona |
The main purpose of our trip was to visit our 19-year-old daughter, who is spending nine months in Israel on a program that takes her around the country and spending three months on a kibbutz and four months in Carmiel working in elementary schools with Arab and Jewish children. We spoke with a wide range of people, Israeli liberals, right wingers, Heridi, the young and old, Druze, Black Israelites, Arabs, soldiers, police, UN soldiers, Christian Evangelists, business people, hassids, kibbutzniks. Rarely did we let an opportunity pass without engaging in conversation.
But we were depressed by a lot of what we saw and heard.
The peace process and Iran’s imminent development of nuclear weapons aside, there are internal problems that threaten the future existence of Israel. More on that soon.
THE GOOD
Israel is a young country, less than 60 years old. If the state of siege it’s been under since its creation holds and it can reach some semblance of normalcy, there are still wonderful opportunities for growth and change. We spoke with a number of people committed to those possibilities.
It’s a country with an open press and media. Scandals, rumors and curiosities happening both inside and outside Israel are reported in depth. Nothing escapes their scrutiny and criticism. I read the two English publications, Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post as often as possible.
The country, its roads, public facilities, services are geared for tourism. The highways take you through breathtakingly beautiful landscapes. Signs, although often confusing when entering a large city, are mostly in Hebrew as well as English, Arabic and Russian. There’s limited toleration for slow or overly patient drivers – most Israelis want to get to wherever they are going in a hurry, so you have to be prepared to let them pass. But the country and people want tourism to work. It’s a primary income source and necessary to Israeli survival and growth. Most Israelis were very friendly – especially in comparison to my two other trips there.
 | | Cows at Kibbutz Hardu. The kibbutz uses the biodynamics principles of Rudolf Steiner. |
Many Israelis are passionate, patriotic and committed to working toward a peaceful co-existence with their neighbors. We met a lot of hopeful and optimistic mostly secular young people very willing to cede territory, make concessions and do whatever necessary to achieve a secure future.
There’s a fairly strong environmental ethic based on limited resources. Gas and diesel fuel are heavily taxed. It cost at least $50 (approximately $5/gallon) to fill our compact Mitsubishi car. We saw few SUVs or other wasteful vehicles. Large recycling containers, particularly for plastic bottles, were located in prominent places in most cities and towns. There wasn’t much styrofoam, carry out was often wrapped in paper. A lot of solar panels and water heaters in use throughout the country. The public transportation was impressive – mostly new diesel buses and trains. Soldiers were seen at almost every bus stop, of which there were many, in what seemed like out of the way locations and folks hitchhiked a lot. An electrical light rail system was being built in Jerusalem.
Israel’s drip irrigation system is well known and exported worldwide as an excellent method of maximizing the use of limited water – the desert blooms here and there and where ever possible. Citrus and agriculture production seems maximized wherever there’s useable soil. Organic and biodynamic agriculture, use of medicinal herbs, teas and other alternative medicines seemed widespread. The typical drugstore displayed natural and preventive medicine along with pharmaceuticals. Compared to the US, folks seemed thinner and fitter, despite the corporate branding of Coca Cola and widespread smoking.
 | | Hand in hand: These students are playing together at an Arab/Jewish school. The child's jacket reads "peace" in four languages. |
There’s a lot of diversity when it comes to the Arab/Israeli peace issue. We visited one of three schools that are part of the Hand in Hand program with our friend, Ira, a former Silver Spring resident. The school in Jerusalem is publicly funded but needs additional funds to support the K-9 half-Arab, half-Jewish students. Each classroom has both a Jewish and Arab teacher and the school has co-principals, Arab and Jewish. We talked with teachers, students, administration, observed the children at play and in the classroom and found the atmosphere wonderful, cooperative, creative and full of meaningful learning. (For more information see handinhandk12.org)
Ira also introduced us to the director of a program called Yedid, that assisted families in need of legal aid. Again, we were impressed with their programs. (Click to visit Yedid's website.) We also had an opportunity to meet with DC area native, Aaron Shneyer, who is working with Seeds of Peace. These groups plus Peace Now, the New Israel Fund and B’ritselim are chugging away trying to encourage the peace process. Both the Reform and Conservative (Masorti) religious movements have an impact on attempting to expand traditional religious and political consciousness beyond Orthodoxy. There’s also a radio station in Arabic, Hebrew and English promoting peace. Check out allforpeace.org.
The kibbutz movement, although much of is has privatized, still has 50 mostly intact kibbutzim. Some of them, like Harduf are highly creative. Harduf runs a publicly funded Waldorf School with about 500 students from around the area. It has the largest organic (bio-dynamic) farm in Israel and a residential rehab center for developmentally challenged children and adults. We spoke with a of few of the residential adults in the gardens and they seemed quite friendly and content. Even their large herd of milk cows seemed happy!
THE BAD
Israel has the highest (20%) poverty rate among developed countries. The “underclass” now includes plenty of Jews, including to a large extent the elderly along with Filipino and Thai men and women who have mostly taken the jobs Arab laborers held prior to the Intifada. The one million Russian Jews who flowed in after the break up of the Soviet Union have been slowly assimilating but most also hold lower paying jobs. I heard complaints that Ethiopian Jews were not housed or treated as well as the Russians. Those I spoke with echoed that belief but were grateful for the opportunities Israel offered. A friend commented, “in Israel everyone complains about how their ethnic or religious group is screwed.”
 | | Cob and strawbale housing at Kibbutz Lotan. |
The biggest disparity I witnessed was the lack of an economically sound middle class. There is a prosperous community of retired Americans. However, business people, contractors, people in banking, finance, professions who you would think should be in the middle class can barely make ends meet. That’s also true of most government workers, nurses, even doctors who don’t work more than one job. There is a large and relatively well-off group of young professionals who are mostly centered in Tel Aviv. But the masses of people seemed to be struggling to just survive. Some hold 2-3 jobs and extend their credit to the bursting point. Others, like teachers, have to live with their parents or have better-paid partners. There is a steady brain drain of highly skilled Israeli scientists, physicians, engineers, etc. to the US and an increase of low paid foreign workers.
Education, the second highest budgetary expenditure after security and defense, pays its teachers a miserly salary. Teachers I spoke with were paid 3,000 – 5,000 shekels a month (less than $10,000/year) From what we experienced, the cost of living is about the same as the US - although their taxes approach 50%! We couldn’t comprehend how most teachers managed. We heard horrible stories of unteachable and unruly children as well as drugs and alcohol even in some of the more prestigious schools.
Many young people I spoke with hoped for the opportunity to work in the US. Working in malls in Texas, Florida and California was their dream! It seemed like the country would lose a huge part of its population if everyone who wanted to emmigrate could get visas. It is rumored that the population of expats was at least 600,000. People jokingly referred to LA as the third largest Israeli city!
Finally, there’s a deep division in Israel among the secular population and the Heredi, the ultra Orthodox. Many of them receive a form of welfare from the state and get exempted from military service. Add that to an overtaxed, underpaid and cynical population and you have the makings of a thoroughly demoralized society.
THE UGLY
Not a day went by without the media highlighting another scandal, corrupt official or indictment (the bright side was that police and courts felt confident enough to arrest and prosecute).
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| Public Housing in Mitzpeh Ramon | Right now (late January, ’07), the President, Moseh Katsav and Minister of Justice Haim Ramon are up on morals charges. Ehud Barak and Binjamin Netanyahu have been under investigation. Ariel Sharon and his sons were accused of “financial misdeeds.” Tax Authority director Jackie Matza and his predecessor, Eitan Rab were arrested on charges of widespread bribery and fraud. During Prime Minister Ehud Omert’s former job as Finance Minister, his office manager, Shula Zaken was embroiled in a huge “play to pay” scandal that involves 11 interrogations and 5 prime suspects. And, Prime Minister Olmert himself is the target of criminal investigations on the state’s sale of a controlling interest in Bank Leumi as well as various appointments and conflicts in interest.
Virtually everyone we spoke with had no faith in the government’s ability to govern. Many said the issue was a more important concern than security and defense issues. If you’d like to see a really critical opinion, check out the Jerusalem Post’s 1/14/07 editorial by Emanuel Feldman, former editor of Tradition Magazine. He cites a survey by UPI on honest government dropping Israel from 10 to 34 (ranked with Cuba and Laos) and another in which 85% of Israelis believe the government is corrupt. “Have we become just another Levantine state…one whose officials are always on the take and where bribery and cronyism are an accepted way of life?” A column by Isi Leibler, also on corrosive corruption comments that “unless reversed, like a cancer it will ultimately destroy the Zionist dream”.
In fact, in a state where everyone feels financially pinched, personal ethics become secondary to survival and cheating becomes the norm. Being a “freir” – a sucker - is an accusation aimed at those who play by the rules. (There’s a funny song by Nadag Nachash called “We’re not Freirim” about this phenomenon.”)
My insight is that Zionism, in its attempt to distance itself from the last 2,000 years of Jewish history, has omitted “Yiddishkeit” from its vocabulary. The history of oppression and victimization were discarded in favor of a Zionist vision which largely separated itself from a basic love and appreciation of our past including our own history as underdogs and “the oppressed.” Tikkun Olam, the concept of creating a more just society or the concept of becoming a light unto the nations became secondary to producing a normalized Jew. And as the utopian visions were discarded, they were replaced by a Western emphasis on material goods, property, wealth, etc. Since religiousity and spirituality were discarded by the founders of the State, is cynicism and corruption all that remains of the failed vision?
THE FUTURE
It’s interesting, the quandary I’m in. As a basically non-religious supporter of the Israeli state and Palestinian state, a critic of US foreign and domestic policy, and a secular, diasporic Jew, I see one possible hope for Israel’s future to be the growing number of “dati”, who are religiously observant Jews that include ethics, national memory and an acknowledgement that we are not the center of the universe, as their primary consciousness. I only wish they’d include an acknowledgement of the validity of different forms of Jewish religious observances. But perhaps their identity in the face of moral decay is too fragile at this time to make room for diaspora beliefs and realities.
Also, the Labor Party remains relatively free from the many indictments and corruption charges leveled at Kadima and Likud. So perhaps some future credible leadership might emerge from Labor.
Another hope is in Israel’s resiliency and its ability to recover and adjust. Plus, despite the current disgraced leadership, there are some who possibly offer hope according to some of the Israelis I spoke with. Tzipi Livni currently the Foreign Minister is one. Ami Ayalon is a front runner for Labor Party leadership and has a decent reputation. Ehud Barak, a former prime minister, has another opportunity for leadership. And Labor rep Ophir Pines-Paz is also well thought by many.
THE ARABS AND THE JEWS
Although it’s an outdated notion, I’ve long felt that diasporic Jewry – on the right or left – should avoid openly advocating beliefs that would put Israel in physical jeopardy. My own observation is that increasingly elements of the left as well as the Palestinians and critics of Israel, have been backing away from a two-state solution and advocating for one state, and an end to Zionism. And that, if it comes to fruition, would indeed be unfortunate. The dominant belief in the peace camp is that there’s no one in Hamas to actively negotiate with.
An article well worth reading on peace can be found in the January 11, 2007 issue of “The New York Review of Books” by David Grossman, “Looking at Ourselves.” Grossman, a well respected Israeli writer whose son died in the recent Lebanon offensive, offers a stark plea for peace directly to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who was on the dias with him at a recent Rabin memorial ceremony.
The writer assumes no high level of expertise on Israel – this piece is a reflection as a parent and observer. It was written for the purpose of discussion and debate.
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