Israelis: just not as obsessed by the Arab-Israeli conflict as the rest of the world

First, today is my one-year blogaversary! I started this blog one year ago on February 22nd with a post about voting in the most fraught mayoral elections ever, and I'm happy to report that a year out Kiryat Bialik is still busily attempting to transform itself into Kiryat Motzkin. (Apparently, we're trying to do that by painting the large rocks that lie around our town in bright primary colors. Seriously. It's pretty hideous.)

If you want to make me really happy, go read some of my first few posts, including classics such as "This is a mop" and "Election Ads: Apply Directly to the Forehead." My second post ever-- how to make Israeli Salad-- is still one of the most visited posts on this site, thanks to all of the random people googling to impress their Israeli boyfriends (at least, that's my theory). When I google "Israeli Salad," I get my own blog as the second hit, which means that I now officially consider myself the world's second-most leading expert on the preparation of Israeli salad and, hence, by logical extension, on all things Israeli. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Hehe. Or maybe all this "I actually kept a blog going (more or less) for one year" euphoria is going to my head. (Plus, my husband says I come in fourth when he searches for "Israeli salad," which is just outside the medals. Darn it.)

Anyway, today I want to post about a phenomenon I've noticed since moving to Israel: Israelis are a lot less obsessed by every little shift in Israeli-Arab relations than the rest of the world. I mean, obviously Israelis care about "foreign policy" on a different level: if we go to war with Iran, nukes fall in our backyards. Hamas shoots missiles at Sderot and they land in our cousin's daughter's kindergarten. We launch a massive invasion into Gaza and that's our brothers, sisters, and children there on the front lines. Israelis have passionate (and polarized) opinions about politics and about the way Israel should navigate its relations with Arab nations and the Palestinians.

But so often, I see blaring headlines in American media about Israel and run to Israeli newspapers to find out the rest of the story.... only to discover that the lead news story in Israel is the finale of cochav nolad. For example, foreign media is currently obsessed by the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai. Israeli media has certainly covered this story, but ultimately it doesn't surprise most Israelis very much. The reaction of any Israeli I've asked can be summed up as "If the Mosad did it, it should have been done much more quietly." Or, for example, while Iran is a big news story here, Israelis are certain that Iran is developing nukes, so all of this breathless are-they-or-aren't-they speculation loved by NPR is passed over here. Israelis also tend to be quite cynical about the future of Israeli-Arab relations; they've seen every headline before, so they don't get all excited over each new possible development. And, frankly, daily life goes on.

To show you what I mean, consider the English and Hebrew websites of Yediot Ahronot, one of Israel's leading newspapers. Yesterday, this was the front page of the English edition, www.ynetnews.com (click any image to see a larger version):

 

Basically all of the stories are about Israeli-Arab relations, which I guess makes sense: that's all that people outside of Israel tend to see (or care about) in terms of our little country. 

But here was the front page of the Israeli version, www.ynet.co.il:

 

Here's a translation (thanks to the creative word choices of Google translate):

I kind of feel badly that Tamar (whoever she is) is getting drilled, but what strikes me most about the Hebrew headlines is just how ordinary life within Israel feels when you're here. The top story was about a major traffic jam on "kvish hachof," one of our main highways. The article on the bottom of the screen that gets translated as "Occupation"? It's not referring to occupation of Palestinian lands, but to occupation for your hands as you make homemade Purim goodies. (It's actually a pun-- "mishloach yad" means this kind of occupation, while "mishloach manot" are the gifts we send on Purim.) The second story, which Google elegantly translates as "What do Csbdihh can not" is not an essay on what to do when UN inspections fail. Its title is actually "Ma osim ceshehabedicha lo matzliach," or "What to do when a joke falls flat," and it features an interview with two young people with special needs.

And, in a sense, this is what I've tried to convey through this blog. How ridiculous, beautiful, and ordinary life in Israel can be. How Israelis are stubborn, loud, quirky, and kind. How the question of "what do you use to mop a floor" can be more important to the daily life of a new olah than "what do you think about granting the right of return to Palestinian refugees." Certainly, the second question could impact my daily life even more than dirt on my floors, but life in Israel is so much more funny and full than NPR headlines would have you believe.

Here's to another year of being Israeli! Thanks so much for reading. Comments and links make me warm and fuzzy inside every time.

P.S. If you want to read good coverage of the Hamas assassination controversy, I highly recommend the daily updates being posted by www.israellycool.com. Also, Ruti Mizrachi posted a really beautiful edition of the Jewish blog carnival, Haveil Havelim, over at Ki Yachol Nuchal. Check it out!

Be Boycotted!

Hehe... I was trying to figure out how to translate a video entitled "How to Boycott Israel" into a lesson on how to be Israeli. This clever viral video basically says it all, though:



Being boycotted is actually an Israeli way of life. In the world of sports, for example, swimmers in the Olympics refused to enter the same pool as Israeli athletes and Arab judoka refused to fight our black belts. Recently, Israeli tennis players were banned from attending an international competition in Dubai. Contrast this with the Judo competition my husband and I attended in Haifa, in which teenage athletes from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, Jordan, and other arab nations all competed in a celebration of peace. THAT is how it should be.

Election Ads-- Apply Directly to the Forehead

Before the elections, my husband and I spent evenings curled up on our couch watching election ads. Government funding gives every party a few minutes to share their agenda on national TV. This means that parties with no chance of making it into the knesset-- featuring ads made on their nephew's imac-- are featured alongside the heavy-hitters like Likud and Kadima. Hilarity ensues.

The merger of the Holocaust Survivors' Party with the Mature Green Leaf Supporters is the most special Israeli party of all time (except for maybe the Men's Party, which for a while had zayin as its letter for voting and now uses fey-kuf. I'll leave people with good Hebrew skills to figure out those). My guess is that the merger of these two groups resulted from schisms within both the Retired People's Party and the other (presumably immature) Legalize Marijuana Party. This is their actual election ad, and there's something endearing about it. I repeat: this is not a spoof.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFoimWJTroQ

Sadly, these idealistic individuals didn't make it into the knesset.

This election ad parody is actually LESS ridiculous, but it captures the essence of the more serious ads on TV.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pbf2T9OmOA

The jingle hits on every platitude possible: Israel wants Change, Leadership, and a Future for our Children! Avi Etinger loves peace, but he hates the Holocaust. He follows in the footsteps of Begin and Rabin and Sharon and plenty of other people who died in recent years. (Never mind that Sharon is, technically, still alive. I'm pretty sure.) So vote for Avi Etinger, because ma ze meshaneh: what difference does it make?

Right, that other Israeli characteristic-- cynicism about our leaders. I'm slowly starting to get that.

Update: I was trying to find a clip from one of the nephew-in-uncle's-basement style campaign ads, and I wasn't successful. However, I just found a good summary of all the election ads (and the way Israeli elections work) here: http://lisagoldman.net/2009/01/31/israeli-election-campaign-clips-seriously-hilarious/

Update #2: Ok, so for my Hebrew challenge of the day I decided to try to translate all of the parody election ad that I posted above. This is my best attempt. Er... yes... did I mention I've lived here less than a year? Also, the ad was a lot dirtier than I realized at first... ah the innocence of poor Hebrew skills. Read on at your own discretion. Please correct any glaring errors and PLEASE tell me what the fourth line means! :)

Song:
Israel is in need of change
Israel is in need of leadership
For the sake of a future for our children
We need a spicy step? We need on your march lions? We need mountains next to us? Er, I didn't understand this line. Help from better Hebrew speakers is appreciated.

Avi Ettinger speaking:
This is the knesset (parliament).
On a survey of international fun/pleasure,
that was advertised recently,
the knesset was ranked in the second-to-last spot.
This situation MUST be stopped.

Song:
It's time so say "cusomo" (I'm pretty sure that cusomo is a swear word relating to a certain body part of one's mother, or possibly of a male of homosexual persuasion? Either way, it's not in the dictionary:)
To the election of a different candidate
So vote for Avi Etinger
Because what difference does it make?

Avi Ettinger speaking:
Citizens of Israel
People, children, and tots,
(aside) children and tots are the same thing, no?
Habitu bi... habitu bi b'kipat havdela --hmm. The most I get from this is "look at me in a hat from havdela." Except that he seems to be gesturing at the dome of the rock, so I'm confused.
Who is more cute/precious?
You will have that responsiblity (or you will decide?) in the polls.

Song:
He is on the side of peace
But against the Holocaust
He loves the nation
That hates fecal examinations (maybe this means prostate exams?)
He supports Judaism and sodomy (!)
He will wage war with "avtala" and Chaim Etgar. Hmm. I'm not sure what "avtala" means. Maybe "purity" or "virginity" (betulah?) Chaim Etgar is a humorous writer.
He continues the voice of Rabin
And of Begin and Sharon
And many others who passed away in recent times

Avi Ettinger speaking:
The females (?) of sexual relations (Maybe another sodomy reference?)
We can put in order the goings on
In legislation, with pleasure (with "kef," the party's name)

Song:
So when you are at the polls
go to a different canditate
and vote for Avi Ettinger
Because what difference does it make?

Conserve Water

During the last week, we've been drenched by SOME of the rain that we should have had all winter. Israel has a dry season and a wet season, but even at its wettest we get less rain than my hometown in Pennsylvania. I saw one short, spattering rainstorm after I arrived in April, then nothing but blue skies until October. This winter has been sunny and pleasant, mostly, which is a bad thing.

From the Ministry of Environmental Protection:

A report on precipitation and surface water in Israel, released in February 2009, confirms the dire status of Israel's water sources in the winter of 2009.

Main Findings:

• Precipitation in the Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) watershed - between 20 - 40 mm in the month of January 2009 - was the lowest recorded since the 1920s!
• The last recording of such low rainfall in the Jerusalem region - some 15 mm in January 2009 - was in 1895!
• Despite the cessation of pumping, water level in the Kinneret increased by only 2 cm in January 2009, compared to a 17 cm increase in January 2008, standing at only 52 cm above the black line, below which irreversible damage may occur!
• Water supply in the Dan springs was at its lowest point since measurements began in 1949. The data published by the Water Authority's Hydrological Service confirm the dire status of Israel's water economy and reinforce the necessity for water conservation by the public as a whole.

If you want to be Israeli, then, you MUST understand that water is a precious and limited resource. These are some things I do-- do you have other suggestions?

• I turn off the water in the middle of a shower when I'm soaping up. Brrrrr.
• I scrub my dishes with a wet, soapy sponge and the water OFF. Then I rinse all of the dishes at once. (We don't have a dishwasher.)
• I don't run water while brushing my teeth or washing my face.
• When the solar-powered water heater on our roof burst and started gushing water off the roof all day long, we fixed it. Go us!
  
• We have only washed our car once, because we're lazy... I mean water-conscious.
• I water my houseplants only rarely, because I'm forgetful... I mean water-conscious.
  
• If it's yellow, let it mellow... :)

Someday when we're rich and have our own house, we want to set up a system to capture rainwater and also use our own wasted water for things like watering a garden. But for now, that's about my list. Our water bill spikes whenever we go over a certain limit, but so far we've only gone over that limit once-- during a month when our boiler burst AND we had family visiting.

The thing that's kind of crazy is that in some ways, worrying about water ISN'T an Israeli characteristic. Our government doesn't seem to react to the idea that we are in a crisis; our news is dominated by the (arguably more pressing) issues of forming a government and protecting civilians. All summer, a water sprinkler down on the corner-- funded by the government-- aimlessly sprayed tree trunks and passing cars. There were literally puddles in the road, in AUGUST, when it hadn't rained in months. This was a jarring contrast to alarmist TV ads saying we don't have a drop of water to waste. Watering grass makes no sense to me. I mean, I know that we won't HAVE grass in our yards if we don't water, because that long summer is punishing. But, um, maybe that means we shouldn't have grass in our yards?

Let's hope for more rain before spring starts in earnest here!

Vote

I technically became an Israeli about a half hour after landing in Ben Gurion Airport. So even though I've lived here less than a year, I've already voted twice!

First, I voted in the most hard-fought mayoral election I've ever seen. In Kiryat Bialik, posters hung from balconies and papered fences in April, even though voting wasn't until mid-November. I was harrassed by candidates on my way into to the supermarket. My mikvah lady-- after she'd watched me dunk naked into water each month as part of a religious ritual-- took advantage of this vulnerable state by asking me to vote her son onto the city council. "He's a good boy. Will you vote for him?" she asked every month from May on. "Yes!" I would yelp. "Please hand me my towel!" Instead, she'd give me a glossy campaign flyer. (For the record, she is a lovely woman and she said "hi" to me one time at the fish monger's, which impressed me because I wasn't sure she'd recognize me with clothes on.)

Those elections reflected Kiryat Bialik's horror that it is being replaced by our neighboring town-- Kiryat Motzkin-- as the nicest one of the clump of towns called "Kiryat Something" just north of Haifa. A representative campaign flyer featured pictures Kiryat Bialik Now (trash at the side of storm drains) next to pictures of Kiryat Bialik Future (flowering traffic islands... in Kiryat Motzkin). Another ad trumpeted the fact that Candidate X was running second in the polls!! Even our mayoral candidates suffered from an inferiority complex.

When we walked to our polling station for the national elections early this month, the streets were wet and deserted. National elections are holidays here, and so the entire country emptied into the malls for election day sales. A few banners dripped outside polling stations.


Israelis literally cast ballots-- or rather seal our votes into envelopes and cast them into a locked box. No hanging chads here, but plenty of room fun kinds of voter fraud! (At one polling station, someone replaced the stack of paper for one party with paper that had another party's symbol printed on the back side!)

After presenting ID to the people manning our polling station (what a novel concept! I never had to do that in America!), I stepped behind a cardboard screen and chose a piece of paper with my party's "letter" on it. (I stole one; it's in the picture above.) Then I sealed the piece of paper into an envelope and brought my envelope out of the booth to deposit in the lockbox up front. I felt so sure of myself because I'd already voted once, as opposed to the municipal election when I got yelled at for possible attempted terrorism (I brought my bag into the polling room) until the polling people heard my accent, at which point they decided I was a dimwitted olah chadasha who deserved a bit of coddling, and a nice woman showed me what to do.

My husband's Israeli-Polish grandfather just said "Jews always lie about who they vote for" when we tried to ask him which way he leaned. (He lived through the Holocaust AND spent time in the Gulag, so his attitude is understandable.) I won't tell you who I voted for either-- but it wasn't Tsipi Livni or Bibi Netanyahu. Now I'm just trying to figure out who won the election...

65% of Israelis voted in the last elections, so if you want to be Israeli, definitely vote. Who would you have voted for? Do Jews always lie about who they vote for? Discuss. :)