Yackety Yak Israel - Buzz from big white city

At an edge of a boiling vat of sulfur - or just instability

An old friend asked me what is it like to live in Israel, in a political sense. So I tried to remember the last month's newspaper headlines. Every day there is a story about the "Palestinian situation". First it was the attacks from Gaza in the south and what to do about it. Than it was the exchange of prisoners. Than it was the talks through all kind of intermediaries between the Hamas and Hisbollah and Israel. Now it is about the cease fire and who controls it. You get the point, the "situation" is always present here. Politicians have gotten smart, when they don't know what to do they talk around the situation or try to focus the country's attention (or at least the media) at something else. But this woman asks: "why should you care if the Palestinians vote for one Islamic radical or the other"? Adding "In the US we don't care who is in charge in Afghanistan"! So I thought about this for a week. It really disturbed me that I couldn't give her a quick answer. I imagined her calmly sitting in front of a CNN report from Afghanistan showing one bearded soldier shooting at another with total amusement and detachment. After all, the organization and political view of people 1/2 way around the world does not matter that much!

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Taliban in Gaza, the lava is boiling and bubbling... all the time!
Than I realized, they are not 1/2 way around the world for us here in ISRAEL! Aha, I got it! BUT than again, who cares if they are 10 meters away or 10,000 miles away? Aha, you do care, very much. When you can see, hear, smell, and FEEL people, you care, and you notice, and you worry, and you get angry, and you get happy, and, and, and... So that's it! Israel is at an edge of this boiling, bubbling, steaming, cauldron of sulfur - a virtual lava flow of political, military, religious, economic, nationalistic -- and every other form of social category you can imagine. The long view is that the Arab world is modernizing. It has been doing so for about 100 years but still has some ways to go. The nationalist and religious conservative do not want to let go of power easily. This is true everywhere except for the countries that don't have a long history of religious or political power. That's why Qatar, Dubai, and to some extent Kuwait are on opposite side of the modernism spectrum than Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Yemen. The bigger countries, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria seem to be more mixed. And Turkey while certainly Islamic is moderated by close proximity to Europe and its geographic location as a hub between Europe and the Arab world.

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Trucks going - not-going - going - not-going == to Gaza

What does that mean to Israel? Well, we are in the very edge of the lava flow, the sulfur steaming volcano crater, the boiling pool of tar... that's the difference. When you are 1/2 a world away, news of the "situation" are not a big deal. But here we deal with not just the Palestinians, but the Iraqis, Iranian, Saudis, Egyptians, you name it. We deal with the rhetoric on TV, the threats and muscle flexing of every little group coming out of the Arab world. We are the "modern front" which is edging into the "pristine world" the "virgin territory" which the Arabs kept "clean" all these centuries. Well, a little exaggerated, but none the less true. The Arab conservatives see all of the modern world as a threat, but so do the Amish in Pennsylvania and the Indians in the Amazon. Even in Israel there are vestiges of very old cultures. The 'shamranim' are supposedly a group who has connections all the way back to Mosses and the Israelite tribes on this land over 2,500 years ago. But with numbers down to 700 and no real military strength they simply try to keep their culture and life as it is.
Does this help? Just like worrying about a volcano erupting and the lava that will start exploding any day, we keep our ears tuned to rumblings and our nose ready to smell the sulfur. Because that is what you do next to the volcano, a the edge of the crater!