Saturday, July 5, 2008
Yacking with good people - Watch out when you say...
Two meetings recently made me realize how little foreigners understand Tel Aviv. Two people who came to Israel for business but also wanted to come across as friendly and interested in Israel. One, a business man, gave a technical talk. Working for an American company he resides in Dubai. The trend of basing Middle East operations of American companies in the gulf states is something of a fad now. The other one was a president of a large university. Both came primarily for business, they would not have come to Israel just to visit or to extend their contacts. Israel is now an acceptable place to do business and the fear of terrorism seem not to stop most people. But there is something that most people do not understand until they get here. Actually, not just get here, but really speak and interact one-on-one. Israelis are still not totally "friendly" to Arabs. Israel for the most part is still at war with most Arab countries. There is somewhat of a quiet fear and a bit of hatred. In the mainstream media the more moderate Arab countries like Dubai, Qatar, Tunisia, and Jordan are lumped in with Israel. After all, we are mostly against terrorism and solving the "Palestinian Problem" with violence. Well, it's not that simple. Israel has been essentially hated and attacked by Arabs for longer than the state has had it's own independence. While a minority of Israelis try to stand for Palestinian rights and fight for the wrong that is perpetrated on most Palestinians in the name of a few terrorists, most do not see things this way. For the most part, both Palestinians and Arab countries are still fighting a war with Israel. While the war is sometimes quiet and non-violent, never the less it is there. Maybe the media in Israel and the world is stirring the emotions more than necessary. But still, this is the only country in the world who is being attacked on a regular basis. No Israeli is oblivious to this fact. So for the most part, we may "tolerate" some Arabs, but we mostly don't like them. When Israeli leaders in negotiations and in political speeches say that "first the Palestinians must stop shelling, shooting, and killing" - they pretty much reflect what most of the population really feels - but does not shout out in public - in protests that you would see aired on CNN, ABC, or BBC.
American style shopping in Natanya - BIG! and somewhat lost in translation. Back to the point! When foreigners with good intentions say that they come from Dubai and still "like" Israelis, that does not make most Israelis smile! So when this kind of statement is made in front of 300 Israeli computer scientists they tend to twitch and than TUNE OUT! My advice, don't do it! It may seem like you are a nice guy to come from Dubai and do business in Israel. Maybe to the corporate managers in the US and England it may even seem like this is your little part in the "Peace process". But most Israelis are not ready for it.
Now for the college president comments. She said that meeting with Palestinian women she was amazed how difficult and how little the higher education system in Israel enables them to obtain college degrees. Again, while some Israelis feel that some Palestinian women are totally NOT TO BLAME, we still wonder why there is so much support for terrorism among Palestinians. No terrorist organization could attack so much without popular support. While some Palestinian women are somewhat "innocent", they still allow terrorist organization to organize, arm, and attack Israel. This seems to be the view in Tel Aviv. The truth is, most Israelis do not know what it's like to live in a Palestinian refugee camp, so there is no way of telling what these women say or don't say. But than again, in Ireland, the women are the ones who stopped the IRA (with all due respect to the British, Irish, and international peace effort). So you see, Tel Avivians are not that ignorant or that hateful! We do see the big picture, and it is not as simple as coming here and saying: "we are your friends". Hopefully this is helpful to you business people who come to Israel and try to be politically correct and "friendly".
ps. these is my take on the situation but it's a result with conversations with a few Israelis and their comments.
Monday, June 30, 2008
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!
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.
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!
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