Considerations

Sev­enth in an ongo­ing series

TEL AVIV – So I was on my way to a down­town club a few months ago when my friends and I pulled over to buy some bot­tled water at a cor­ner kiosk. The clerk got my water from the cooler, and I gave him some money.

I had five shekels in change com­ing to me. The clerk grabbed the money from the cash reg­is­ter, grinned at me, put four shekels in my hand, and dropped the remain­ing one in his tip jar.

Since I was still fairly new to Israel, I was absolutely shocked at the gump­tion. I just shook my head and walked away in frus­tra­tion because I could not believe that he had just stolen a shekel right in front of me. (Now that I’ve grown accus­tomed to the cul­ture here, I would have prob­a­bly grabbed the tip jar, pulled my shekel out, and thrown the rest of the coins on the floor while yelling at him in Hebrew.) In Israel, the worst thing a per­son can be is a “friar,” which is the Hebrew word for “sucker.” One learns not to be a “friar” very quickly here.

In my last let­ter, I described the civil soci­ety that has devel­oped in Israel over the sixty years the coun­try has existed. How­ever, that close­ness and famil­iar­ity has been declin­ing in recent years. In con­ver­sa­tions I’ve had with Israelis of all ages, back­grounds, and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, they have noticed the same thing occur as well. Israelis can indeed be the nicest peo­ple on earth – but they can also be the rud­est.

—
A Change in Personality

Israelis are becom­ing increas­ingly cold, cyn­i­cal, self­ish, and pes­simistic as a result of the never-ending con­flict between Israelis and Pales­tini­ans; the extreme polit­i­cal, social, and reli­gious divi­sions within soci­ety; the recent fail­ures of the Israeli mil­i­tary; and per­va­sive cor­rup­tion in the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment. (I’ve described most of these sub­jects in detail in my prior letters.)

Israelis are increas­ingly feel­ing that there is no pos­si­ble solu­tion to the intense prob­lems that are fac­ing their coun­try. To them, there is no way out of end­less con­flict. As a result of these sub­con­scious thoughts, Israelis them­selves are chang­ing – and not in a good way. The gravest threat to Israel is nei­ther Pales­tin­ian sui­cide bombers nor Iran­ian nuclear weapons; it is a lack of hope among Israelis themselves.

I was not alive in the mid-1970s dur­ing that era’s prob­lems rang­ing from post-Vietnam dis­il­lu­sion to the Water­gate scan­dal to increas­ing drug use to eco­nomic reces­sion. But I imag­ine that the pes­simism and
alien­ation that Israelis cur­rently feel likely resem­bles that which Amer­i­cans expe­ri­enced at the time – only that it is far worse here and now. A short review of recent Israeli his­tory brings this to light.

—
Bad News After Bad News

Israel invaded south­ern Lebanon in 1982 in an effort to destroy the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (PLO), a ter­ror­ist group that had moved there and had been attack­ing Israel. Soon, a new Lebanese group named Hizbol­lah was formed to fight against Israel’s pres­ence in the coun­try. After years of fight­ing a war of attri­tion, Israel with­drew in 2000 – and Hizbol­lah has still been attack­ing Israeli civil­ians to this day.

Lebanon was Israel’s Viet­nam. But, for Israelis, it got even worse. In 2006, Hizbol­lah ter­ror­ists entered Israel, killed three IDF sol­diers, and kid­napped two of them. This hap­pened after the group had been fir­ing rock­ets into north­ern Israeli towns for years. Israel and Hizbol­lah started a war that lasted sev­eral weeks.

A United Nations cease-fire ended the con­flict in an offi­cial draw, but most Israelis believe that they lost the war. Ever since Israel’s found­ing in 1948, the IDF has been the most respected (and feared) mil­i­tary in the Mid­dle East. How­ever, in the sec­ond Lebanon war, the Israelis could not even destroy a group that they viewed as a bunch of rag-tag, untrained guer­ril­las. To Israelis, any­thing that is not an out­right vic­tory is a loss because, to them, one major loss could result in the destruc­tion of the county and another Holo­caust. (It did not help that their defense min­is­ter at the time was appointed to the job because of pol­i­tics even though he had lit­tle mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence — and he failed mis­er­ably. The min­is­ter later resigned.)

But the bad news has not only involved Lebanon. After years of fail­ing to reach a peace agree­ment with the Pales­tini­ans, more and more Israelis believe that it is now impos­si­ble. Every time peace has seemed close, the Israelis, the Pales­tini­ans, or Fate (or God, if you will) have messed it up.

After for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Yitzak Rabin agreed to with­draw from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a right-wing extrem­ist shot him in the head while he was walk­ing through Tel Aviv in 1995. When for­mer
Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak offered Yas­sir Arafat the Gaza Strip and ninety-five per­cent of the West Bank, the Pales­tin­ian leader rejected the pro­posal and unleashed sui­cide bombers in a sec­ond intifada. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Sharon uni­lat­er­ally with­drew all Israeli forces and set­tlers from the occu­pied Gaza Strip, and he was about to do the same in most the West Bank. But Sharon suf­fered a major stroke before he could with­draw from the remain­ing ter­ri­tory and he has been lying in a coma ever since. Now, the ter­ror­ist group Hamas con­trols Gaza and fires rock­ets into south­west­ern Israel almost daily.

Israelis believe that they have tried every pos­si­ble solu­tion to the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict – but noth­ing has worked. Israel tried to occupy the West Bank and Gaza while giv­ing lim­ited rights to Pales­tini­ans, but that resulted in two intifadas and ter­ror­ist attacks on civil­ians. Israel with­drew from south­ern Lebanon and Gaza, but that resulted in ter­ror­ist groups gain­ing con­trol there and hav­ing the abil­ity to fire rock­ets fur­ther into Israel. So, to Israelis, there is no way out. They can nei­ther con­trol the Occu­pied Ter­ri­to­ries nor leave them. Israelis have come to accept that there will always be end­less war. But recent mil­i­tary fail­ures, the fail­ures of the peace process, and the threat of an Iran­ian nuclear bomb are not the only rea­sons for Israeli cyn­i­cism. The country’s lead­ers have also failed the people.

For­mer Israeli Pres­i­dent Moshe Kat­sav resigned last year and is fac­ing trial for the alleged rape and sex­ual harass­ment of his sec­re­tary (she was just out of high school and serv­ing in the mil­i­tary). A for­mer finance min­is­ter also resigned last year after he was sus­pected of embez­zling mil­lions of shekels from a union he had run. A Cab­i­net min­is­ter was con­victed for forcibly kiss­ing a female sol­dier. Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Olmert recently announced that he will resign soon because of eight – yes, eight! – ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions against him for charges includ­ing alleged bribery and cor­rup­tion. These are just a few examples.

—
How Israelis React

In light of the increas­ing cyn­i­cism and pes­simism, Israelis are respond­ing in dif­fer­ent ways. Some turn to God: the num­ber of Ortho­dox and charedi fol­low­ers (the lat­ter cat­e­gory is the ultra-Orthodox Jews I described in my first let­ter) is increas­ing. Some lose their faith: the num­ber of Israelis who are com­pletely sec­u­lar is ris­ing. The mid­dle ground is disappearing.

Some Israelis turn to drugs. Judaism has tra­di­tion­ally dis­cour­aged alco­hol con­sump­tion except dur­ing reli­gious cel­e­bra­tions, but that stigma is dis­ap­pear­ing here. Bars and clubs have always existed, but they seem to be becom­ing more pop­u­lar. The Jerusalem Post recently ran a story on Alco­holics Anony­mous chap­ters in Israel and how they are becom­ing increas­ingly accepted. In addi­tion, I’ve seen more mar­i­juana use in the seven months I have lived in Israel than I did in the nine years that I lived in Boston dur­ing and after col­lege. Peo­ple openly smoke pot in bars or in pub­lic, and no one seems to mind. I once saw some­one snort cocaine in a restau­rant bath­room stall with the door open, and no one around flinched except me. While an acquain­tance of mine was light­ing a joint as he sat on a couch, he joked, “We do a lot of drugs to get away from the con­flict.” (His laugh revealed that he was only half-joking.) I can count on one hand the num­ber of twenty-something and thirty-something Israelis I know who do not smoke cig­a­rettes. Many Israelis are on some form of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety med­ica­tion as well.

Some want to get out. When­ever I tell peo­ple that I moved to Israel to work and fin­ish my M.B.A., I usu­ally get this same, exact response: “What, are you crazy? You come here, and all of us what to leave!” A bar­tender I know asked how much money I would want to get mar­ried to she could get a Green Card. (Her tone of voice also said she was only half-joking.) A friend of mine here whose mother is orig­i­nally from
Amer­ica said that he and his sib­lings want to move to the United States since they are all U.S. cit­i­zens. Most Israelis travel abroad to Latin Amer­ica, Europe, Amer­ica, India, or south­east­ern Asia for a year or two after com­plet­ing their manda­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice, and now every­one imme­di­ately wants to leave again as soon as they return home.

But the most sig­nif­i­cant reac­tion involves the mil­i­tary. Right after high school, men serve in the army for three years while women serve for two. The IDF had always been the uni­fy­ing fac­tor in Israeli soci­ety: all peo­ple, no mat­ter who they are, have had to make this sac­ri­fice, and any­one who did not serve lived with a neg­a­tive stigma for his entire life. But even this is chang­ing. More and more Israelis are get­ting out of mil­i­tary ser­vice. Some fake men­tal ill­ness. Some fake drug addi­tion. Some injure them­selves (like shoot­ing them­selves in the foot). Some lie that they “found God” so they can attend an ultra-Orthodox reli­gious school because charedi Jews are exempt from mil­i­tary ser­vice. Some out­right refuse and go to jail. Some do
“national ser­vice” rather than serve in the mil­i­tary: they do other jobs like work in hos­pi­tals, get a gov­ern­ment job, or teach Eng­lish. The neg­a­tive stigma that sur­rounds those who do not serve is rapidly
dis­ap­pear­ing because more and more peo­ple are doing so. Many young peo­ple have lost faith in the mil­i­tary, as well as the gov­ern­ment as a whole.

—
A Noble Sucker in a Dog-Eat-Dog World

I was sit­ting in a local bar with some friends the other night, talk­ing to some peo­ple who were sit­ting next to me. As it turned out, I learned that the girl sit­ting next to me had a boyfriend and was eigh­teen years old. She was in her first year of national ser­vice — the alter­na­tive to the manda­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice that Israelis must do after high school. (In most places out­side of the United States, the drink­ing age is six­teen or eigh­teen; here it is eighteen.)

After a half-hour of con­ver­sa­tion, the girl turned to look at me. “Do you want to fuck tonight?” she said in Eng­lish matter-of-factly. I was shocked. Girls in the United States are never this blunt and direct. I’m still learn­ing the com­plex Israeli cul­tural norms, so I did not know whether she was deter­min­ing my inten­tions, being sar­cas­tic, or being seri­ous. I decided to take it as a joke. I laughed and said, “I love it when girls say that to me.” We kept on talk­ing, and later she left with her friends.

Still, the most inter­est­ing aspect of this sit­u­a­tion was the reac­tion of my friends here. I told them that I did not know what the girl had meant, and that I would not have had sex with her any­way because she had a boyfriend and was too young. I said that I did not want to jeop­ar­dize a relationship.

In typ­i­cal Israeli blunt­ness, a (female) bar­tender at that pub told me: “You are an idiot.” (Later, the bar­tender added that the girl was obvi­ously a “whore” and that I should not care about her or her boyfriend because of that.)

Last Sat­ur­day after­noon, as I was relax­ing on the beach with two (male) friends, I told them the same story. They both laughed and also said that I was an idiot. When I said she was eigh­teen, they responded, “So? She’s legal.” When I said that she had a boyfriend and that I did not want to hurt their rela­tion­ship, they responded in Eng­lish, “You are noble… a noble sucker. Fuck the other guy.”

Every time that I told this story, I received the same reac­tion from Israelis. It was then that I real­ized that some­thing had gone very wrong in Israeli soci­ety. Over sixty years, the coun­try has been chang­ing from a famil­ial, ide­al­is­tic soci­ety in which peo­ple took care of each other into a self­ish, dis­il­lu­sioned one in which every­one only looks out for him­self. In another exam­ple, a friend of mine works as a wait­ress in a bar, and she told me that guys always hit on her aggres­sively, even after they know that she is in a rela­tion­ship. I
once went to a pub on a first date, and another guy at the bar tried to hit on my date the whole time right in front of me. (At the time, I did not real­ize what was occur­ring because my Hebrew was very poor. I thought they were just friends hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion.) There is lit­tle cour­tesy in the dat­ing world. After all, every­one is now com­pet­ing for everything.

There are sev­eral rea­sons for this gen­eral change in behav­ior, but here is the most sig­nif­i­cant one: When peo­ple lose faith in the gov­ern­ment, the mil­i­tary, God, future peace prospects, and soci­ety in gen­eral, all that remains is one­self, one’s fam­ily, and one’s close friends. No one cares about any­thing – or any­one – else.

—
Tzipi Livni and Barack Obama

The United States, like Israel, is fac­ing myr­iad prob­lems with the econ­omy, for­eign wars, and cor­rup­tion within the gov­ern­ment. Poll after poll reveals that the vast major­ity of Amer­i­cans believe that their coun­try is on the “wrong track.” In response, many peo­ple are sup­port­ing Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama because he is an inspir­ing fig­ure who advo­cates for “change” (despite that fact that he has lit­tle expe­ri­ence in government).

A sim­i­lar occur­rence is hap­pen­ing in Israel. Since Prime Min­is­ter Olmert announced his forth­com­ing res­ig­na­tion, the rul­ing mod­er­ate Kadima polit­i­cal party has been hold­ing its own pri­mary elec­tion for party leader. The front-runner in this elec­tion is Tzipi Livni, the cur­rent for­eign min­is­ter. She is the one can­di­date who is promis­ing sig­nif­i­cant “change” and who is untainted by scan­dal. (How­ever, unlike Obama, she has years of expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent areas of gov­ern­ment.) If Livni wins, she will likely become the next prime min­is­ter. Israelis are hun­gry for change because they know that there are so many prob­lems fac­ing their country.

In the United States, the pes­simism of the 1970s ended partly because of the elec­tion of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan. Some of his poli­cies ben­e­fited the coun­try and some hurt the coun­try, but his most sig­nif­i­cant accom­plish­ment was that he con­vinced Amer­i­cans to believe in them­selves – and the nation – once again with his opti­mistic rhetoric. This is why his­tory might be repeat­ing itself in Israel and the United States.* I pre­dict that Obama and Livni will win their respec­tive offices, but what the Amer­i­can and Israeli peo­ple do
after­wards is up to them.

—
Look­ing to the Future

Now, do not mis­in­ter­pret this let­ter. Of course, the streets are not filled with depressed peo­ple who chain-smoking, fight­ing with each other, and pop­ping Prozac all the time. Far from it. My point in each of these let­ters is to put a spot­light on one polit­i­cal or cul­tural trend of a com­plex (and para­dox­i­cal) soci­ety at a time. A pes­simistic lack of faith is a per­va­sive under­tone in much of the coun­try, but I am still opti­mistic about Israel’s future. And that’s the topic for my next letter.

* Dis­clo­sure: I will most likely vote for Barack Obama and Tzipi Livni.

Prior let­ter: Liv­ing in a Chaotic Tribe. Related: Sex and the Sin­gle Israeli

Related posts:

1. Let­ter From Israel: The Opti­mistic Future
2. Let­ter from Israel: Sto­ries from the Desert I
3. Let­ter from Israel: Sto­ries from the Desert II
4. Let­ter from Israel: Me and the Israeli Arab
5. Let­ter from Israel: What is Israel, Anyway?