Yackety Yak Israel - Buzz from big white city

Feeling change in Tel Aviv - not so easy

In a recent talk with Elinor, a TV producer, the topic of how people in Tel Aviv see themselves came up. Her friend wrote a book on how Tel Avivians turned complacent, comfortable, bordering on hedonistic. There is definitely a view that life in Tel Aviv is getting "too soft, too comfortable, too isolated from reality". What does this mean? People still struggle here, from finding a decent apartment to balancing work with life... from finding a little peace and quiet in a noisy city, to just avoiding dog poop on the sidewalk at night. Big issues to small ones, they have not gone away, just changed.
It is true that Tel Aviv has become a comfortable metropolis. It is true that Israel's central region is modern and runs well - maybe TOO WELL? (some say!) But Tel Aviv does have the same problems any large metropolis has. The city has a chronic housing shortage, but buildings are still small and personal and not crowded like European cities: Paris, Amsterdam, or Rome. Tel Aviv has a chronic parking shortage, but the city grew out of small street architecture just at the dawn of the automotive age. For over 80 years city planners were thinking about public transportation while residents prefer cars, bikes, and mopeds. Tel Aviv as a city simply changed "too quickly".

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Rabbis are worried about too many Jews
But Elinor's point reminded me of another rather extreme position we hear on the street. There is a renewed fierce verbal battle over the view of "who is a Jew". The more orthodox rabbis want to limit the official religious Jewish conversions (official state approved). This goes for both men and women's conversions. But the issue is also pushed in the other direction by more secular rabbis which want to welcome anyone who wants to live and settle in Israel.
These two issues seem to manifest the difficulty in changing view points and mind sets from the past. Thinking that life is too good for "US" is what our parents and grandparents have been hearing in Europe and in Arab countries - long before the state of Israel gained independence and was a Jewish state. The rabbis of today are still thinking and ACTING as if they were in small isolated villages (shtettles). Where bringing someone from the outside was not just strange, unacceptable, hard, but EVEN DANGEROUS! Stories of reprisals in the form of fines and even communal punishment for enticing Christians to become Jews were not strange to us two generations ago. These stories - or the isolated thinking that we hold seem to be still echoing in our minds. But we are not in rural Poland or Yemen any more. Actually we have not been there for two or three generations already.
These deja-vu thinkers are not just as nostalgic curiosities. They are actually disturbing and border on the dangerous. If we keep to our old ways of thinking we may actually hurt ourselves. If we keep to our old ways of thinking we will act accordingly and hurt ourselves. Our thinking will stop us from moving Tel Aviv and Israel as a Jewish state from forward progress. Our geographic, cultural, and historic advantages will be held back. This is what conservative, dictatorial, and religious countries are doing all around us. You don't have to look hard to find crippled countries. They come in every shape and color, they behave in every imaginable way - but basically they hurt people and the overall society.
The Tel Aviv view of change seem to come from just seeing it on the street, on people's faces, in how we live. Change just comes to us, we do not seem to plan or seek it. Some of our old politicians seem to have tried both: planning -or- stopping / ignoring. But neither one seem to work very well. It seems that people change as they see fit, when they don't, we clash.

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.

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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".

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ps. these is my take on the situation but it's a result with conversations with a few Israelis and their comments.

Sex in the City - Teenage pregnancy pack in MA

A few days ago Time magazine reported a strange story. In a Gloucester Massachusetts high school 18 young girls age 14 to 17 made it their goal to get pregnant. The question is why? The answer lies in a culture that makes sex a dirty word. This school stopped their sex education program and do not provide free birth control clinics or medication. Add to that a religious community where leaders of all faiths preach high morals based on conservative values and the Bible.
Now we are seeing the tip of the iceberg of a problem religious fanatics and right wing conservatives have created. Girls are developing at younger ages and no politician pandering for votes or preacher's sermon can stop this. As girls develop their sex hormones rage out of control. This biological process is seldom controlled by religious or political views. Ignoring this combination of biology and politics makes for a deadly combination.

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Rugged and individual the famous Gloucester sailor: a "perfect storm" is brewing in Gloucester

Parents sometimes want to shield their children from the harsh reality of life. The church wants to scare the heck out of them with regard to premarital sex. Politicians want votes, specially in a conservative place in economically difficult times. Remember how president Clinton fired Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for saying that masturbation should not be taboo in sex-ed? If these girls had been taught they can satisfy their sexual drive by masturbation they might not have resorted to vaginal sex. Or if oral sex was not made such a terrible act who knows what might have happened.
Until the time comes when sex is accepted as a part of life, without the religious taboos or right wing political social values, we are going to see more bizarre behavior. Young people do not know any better, they need guidance, direction, and most of all kind support. We must demand for the walls to come down on sex. Teach children about safe sex and alternatives to vaginal sex. Also, we must teach children how to avoid letting "some boy" get them pregnant.
These children have no clue on what's involved in raising and taking care of a baby. They can't imagine the total impact this child will have on their life. These children want sex and someone to love them. If parents really want their children to have a healthy and happy lives, you don't have to shield them from   A L L   the realities of life. The best remedy is just to love them and make sure you instill your best values in them. Be open to conversations about sex. Teach them that sex is good and healthy, but also teach them responsibility.
The high school these girls attend had no sex education or a clinic that provides birth control advice and medication. Now we see the terrible results. Israeli sexual attitudes are more open, we can only hope they are open enough so there will not be copycats all over the world. Sam-D-man from T"A

Political Yakety Yaking at it's best

Nasralla in action: yackty yaking about politics and truth
Yacking away the day is not just for Tel Aviv cafe loiterers and park bench retirees. Israel political world is buzzing with yacking like never before, seems like this is the season for all sort of political yak. Negotiation to bring back kidnapped soldiers, peace agreement with Syria, new election and accusation of Olmert's corrupt American election bribery... we can go on and on. But notice that the political world is filled with news, interviews, opinion, commentary -- covering everything. On the Palestinian side the yacking heads, lead by the number 1 yacker Nasralla is probably better known AND trusted as an authority than any world personality. Sometimes Nasralla's rhetoric is taken as basic fact: we won the second Lebanon war. No mention of countless destroyed villages, hundreds of casualties - dead and maimed, and completely upturned Lebanese political system that will take decades to heal. Well, hopefully some of us can filter out political yacking from real life and real truth. No rhetoric from any government or pretentious terrorist organization changes the fact that bullets and bombs kill.