The Day of Atonement and Bicycles

In a few days Israel will shut down.  No TV, no movies, no entretainment of any kind.  No cars on the streets, absolutely no business open for any reason.  Evening comes and in synagogues all over the country a rams horn will be sounded to herald the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, holiest day in Jewish calendar.  Jews all over the country will go and pray to their god, asking for forgiveness and for another year to live in which they'll be able to do whatever it is that they do.  For twenty-five hours they'll pray and they'll fast and the ones that do it for real will try to find their peace with their god.

In a few days Israel will shut down.  No TV, no movies, no entretainment of any kind.  No cars on the streets, absolut... wait, no cars on the streets?  REALLY?  That means that I could ride my bike in the streets, up and down the highways and not be mowed down by the notoriously aggressive Israeli drivers, doesn't it?  Yes, it does.

And there you have it folks, the religious fault lines of Israeli society out where everybody can see them.  That thing with the bikes?  I was not making that up.  It's a beautiful sight to behold.  As night falls more and more kids take to the streets on their bikes; dozens, hundreds of them moving slowly or fast in groups from three to fifty.  Last year our family took a long trip from Kiryat Ono where we live down to the Tel Aviv beach and back, roughly 18 miles all in all.  Along the way we saw all twelve tribes having a ball.  My kids love to ride a bike, needless to say they await Yom Kippur breathlessly.  And god you ask?  Well, were you to ask my boys they'd tell you in all honesty that it would be god-damned shame to waste perfectly good, empty roads on the one day when you can enjoy them.  The greatest part of this whole deal is that there is no law that prohibits using a car during Yom Kippur, it's just something that we all do, period.

A couple of years ago, just before Yom Kippur I told a friend of mine how much my children were looking forward to the holiday.  Steve (that's my friend) is a deeply observant orthodox Jew that moved from the States to Israel so that he could practice his religion to the full.  Steve looked at me all funny, thoroughly confussed.  It took us a couple of minutes to figure it out that Steve had no idea that the biking thing took place.  For him the very thought that a Jew would do anything else during Yom Kippur other than fast and pray was totally alien.  

So I was shocked by his ignorance, and he was shocked by my... well, by me.

So if you want to see Israel in all of its multiple-personality glory, drop down in a couple of days, just in time for Yom Kippur.  Lunch's on me. 

And here's something that you don't see everyday: Nuance

So Mahmmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority goes to the UN to ask them for a state and even before a vote is taken the question on everyone's lips around here is: Is it good for us?

One might have thought (ok, I thought) that opinions would be neatly segmented along political lines.  Left-wing doves would think it's a good thing and right-wing hawks would think it's a bad idea and that would be it.  Onto the next discussion.

Boy did I get that one wrong.

As it turns out there's a range of nuanced opinions around here and they don't segment along any traditional lines.  They don't segment along any lines as far as I can tell.  I've had left wingers explaining patiently why going to the UN is just a stunt that ultimately hurts the Palestinians chances for a state.  On the other hand I've heard right wingers explain that Abbas' little stunt would work out in our favor, giving Israelis a focus around which to rally and to show unity in the face of adversity and so on.

Nuance in political analysis in not something we encounter readily over here.  Not only that, the punditocracy in the papers and on TV were quick to give grades to Abbas, Bibi, and Obama (like any of them would care).  They (the pundits) were the ones with the clear-cut pronouncements, the ones with the unsubtle analysis.  By comparison with the pundits, the cabbie that drove me home from the airport a few days ago was subtlety itself, all nuance and shades of gray, looking at the situation from twelve different angles and reserving judgement until more information came in.

Really.

Someone said once (it might have been Bibi) that the root problem of Americans on the world stage is that they have no sense of history, that for them anything that happened more than ten years in the past happened "a long time ago" whether it'd be the Inquisition or the Battle of the Bulge.  By the same token, the problem of Jews and Arabs is that they have no distance from history.  Everything that ever happened is kept painfully close as though it just occurred, whether it is the Hebron riots eighty years ago or the burning of a synagogue in York (and I'll let you guess when that one took place).

Both of these images are crude stereotypes of course, but they are instructive in a way.  Having no sense of history and having no distance from historical events both lend themselves to having absolutist, naive views of policy and how to react to unfolding events.  And the best antidote to such views is nuance.

Food for thought.

What would I do differently if I were in Bibi's shoes

I got called out on the one and only comment to the last entry.  What would I do, where I in Bibi's shoes, or at least in his position?  Good question, that.

Off the bat I would say that what I would like to see from Bibi is more of a mindset change and less specific policies at this early point in time.  That said, some ideas:

1. Lower or eliminate duties and excise taxes that are there just to protect the artificially high profits of some local manufacturer.  For example, some types of breakfast cereal have 100% to 300% duties imposed on them.  Why?  What possible purpose could that serve other than to protect a local manufacturer's bad habits and to line the government's pockets with my money. 
2. I won't debate here whether having a value added tax (VAT) is a good idea or not.  Let's say that it is, just for the sake of argument.  What peeves me off is that they add VAT on top of duties and taxes.  So my breakfast cereal (or my car for that matter) has an initial cost of say, $2, then they add another $2 on duties, and then they add 16% VAT on $4!  Does that make sense?  Didn't think so.
3. Buying or renting an apartment in Tel Aviv is very expensive.  No matter what the government does that is not going to change (sorry protesters, live with it).  That said, there's quite a bit that we could be doing to alleviate the burden.  The big reason that housing is so expensive in Tel Aviv is that Tel Aviv is where life happens in Israel.  Business life, entertainment, whathaveyou.  Added to that is the fact that getting into Tel Aviv is very difficult.  There's little or no effective public transportation and taking a car is inconvenient and expensive, so why would anyone would choose not to live in Tel Aviv?

Here's a radical idea.  Invest in infrastructure, say good rail or the sort of 'rail on wheels' that they pioneered in Curitiba, Brazil.  By that I mean connect the periphery to the heart in a way that is effective, safe, quick, and inexpensive.  I live about eight miles from downtown TA and getting from my door to say, the theater, is nigh-well impossible without using the car.  Give me a good alternative and I'll use it.  And I'm confident that I speak for millions.

And here's a depressing thought.  I'm writing this paragraph almost a week after I wrote all of the above ones.  In that time, the Palestinians went to the UN to ask for a state of their own and Bibi got the chance to go there and look all grand and statesman-like during his speech to the general assembly.  It's sad comfort (but comfort nevertheless) to see that in this at least we're like every other country.  When the head of government (president, chancellor, prime minister) gets into trouble on domestic issues, it's always a good idea (for him) to go abroad and be seen to be taking care of the country's business.  Above the fray, as it were.  Can't even fault Bibi, the Palestinians served that one up all on their lonesome.

Update: 450,000 march and Bibi still has no clue

"It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."
Quote variously attributed to George Elliot, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and the Talmud among others


OK.  This threatens to get repetitive.  450,000 people show up around the country to demand a better life and Bibi et al. do nothing.  But I can understand that, Benjamin Netanyahu wants you to know that he's a smart, clever, intelligent fellow and if he were to opine on this movement we would know him for what he is.

Here's a clue for you Bibi, because you obviously don't have one.  These protests that you've seen grow from week to week didn't sprout fully formed like one of your wackadoodle foreign policies.  They are the public face of the private resentment we (I'm one of the 450,000) feel after years and years of callous mismanagement of our country.

And they're not about just one thing, be that the price of food, the high rents in the center of the country, or any of a dozen others.  The protests, the marches they all come from a deeper discontent that will not go away with a few words and the appointment of a "blue ribbon committee" to investigate matters.  If it's any relief, Bibi, they're not about you specifically either, so they won't go away when you do (as you surely will).  They're about us, about the country we want for ourselves, and our natural desire to not be taken for suckers.

Now, two possibilities present themselves.  Either Bibi already knows all this and behaves as he does out of sheer malice, or he doesn't know all this (but should) and anything I write here will make no impact on him.

"You can lead a horse's ass to knowledge, but you cannot force him to think."

Quote attributed to Dorothy Parker.