THREE SCORE AND TWO

At 62 you’re entitled to limited benefits from Social Security. You can take money out of your IRA account without penalty and you qualify for lots of “senior” discounts. You’re not really old, but you’re not young either. So how is the Zionist enterprise, born in 1948, going as it approaches late middle age?

This reporter grew up watching the changes and has aged along with the country. When I first visited Israel in 1964 I was very young, a boy of 14. The country was too. The borders with the Arabs were very close by. They were pointed out to us wherever we went and they seemed just over the very hill we were standing on. The cities were more like towns. I am reminded of this adolescent Israel whenever I see an old Italian film by Fellini or Visconti. You know, one of those films shot in Rome in the late 60’s. There are very few cars on the street and all of them are so tiny, buses are full and there are occasional horse carts on the outskirts. It’s not exactly poor, but the “Italian miracle” has yet to happen.

That is how Israel was too. My extended family of some twenty people had one car and that was an old Willys Jeep used for work. I was put on a stool in the back and it sat on the metal floor. I was driven around to visit all my relatives. Everyone lived so comfortably and modestly, plenty to eat, simple apartments with terrazzo floors and lots of windows that opened on a welcoming climate. Even then I was moved by the openness and decency that was palpable even to a fourteen year old. My extended family originally from Turkey, was rebuilding their lives and their country.

In the last thirty years, like a camera with a 5-year timer, I have seen the progress of Israel in snapshot form: the expanded boarders, the ownership and relinquishment of Gaza and the economic progress that has transformed the country. Two generations have now come from these original immigrants and their grandchildren’s children are now Facebook addicts. Another round of new immigrants is moving into their old apartments and taking their entry-level jobs.

"Singapore on the Med"
The Israelis have used these six decades to modernize and participate in the first world that rings the globe from Vancouver to Seoul, from Oslo to Brisbane. Israel today seems part Hong Kong, part Italy, and part America. Like Hong Kong, it is bustling and prosperous. Small, land poor, but entrepreneurially rich, growth is directed up. The vast vertical concrete and glass universe that exists from Holon south of Tel Aviv to Haifa in the north is Asian in its fecundity. Office towers and residences rise from fields and formerly two-story edifices. It’s all new, glitzy, proud and necessary. Like Hong Kong, there is more currency than dunams (land) so it’s up, up and away. This costal corridor is nothing short of amazing and the eye cannot fail to be overwhelmed at the achievement, the affluence and the effort behind it.

Israeli business, too, is like Hong Kong. It’s all deal logic and little sentiment. Deals are quick, sheckels change hands rapidly and the whole world is backlit for investment potential. Israelis go to every corner of the globe for commerce. I heard a story of a struggling Israeli who went to the Ukraine and came back a near billionaire. Russia, Romania, China and Toronto are merely places telling the Israelis what bar association they need to use in order to get their technology and real estate deals done. The ultra high tech patent royalties flowing into the country are like the Nile of old, watering another crop of inventions and replenishing the ground with a deposit of cash for next year’s growth. At the cutting edge of software, nanotech and security, not to mention Biotech and telecommunications, Israeli brains and aptitude have created eager customers in India, Brazil, China, Russia and America. In field after field Israel leads the technology way.

But, Israel is not Switzerland. It is very Italian. Divided in every way by deep rifts that define and harden the hearts of its citizens. There are painful economic divisions. There are Israelis who dwell in seven room apartments like those in Milan and those who live six to a two-room apartment like in the heart of Napoli. There are those who easily drop another person’s weeks wages on dinner in Tel Aviv. There are divisions between the hard scrabbled denizens of Beersheba and the easy living yacht owners of Herzliya. Like Italians, Israelis too think the government and politicians are screwing them. Reading any Israeli newspaper is a mind-boggling experience in grievance airing, acrimony and lawsuit filings. Everyone, everywhere is put out and upon. Too crammed together for their own good, Israelis are hyper-vigilant that their neighbor or some government body will be looking to take a larger slice of their pie. If conflict were water the Israelis would drown. Very Italian too are endless personal and business feuds. The Israelis are close to the Sicilians not just geographically, but culturally as well.

Lastly, like America, the next generation has no connection with the past. The hora dancing kibbutz dwelling pre-1967 Zionists of popular imagination (which I witnessed) have given way to “blond” mini skirted ecstasy infused Russian temptresses, dance clubbing to tech music at 4am (which I didn’t). The religious differences too are as glaring as ice sheets. The populations who are motivated by Talmudic instruction and think everyone else should be too are growing. In this way, the Israelis are like Americans. The Israeli justice minister Yaakov Neeman recently declared, “The Bible contains a complete solution to all our problems.” Sounds like our ex-attorney general John Ashcroft at one of his daily Bible reading prayer breakfasts. Israel has settlers, we have mega churchgoers. Creationists abound in both Masada and Missouri. Life lived waiting for rapture and redemption bind the two countries.

"Disunity at home"
One constant all these years later, however, are bellicose enemies threatening Israelis with destruction. This cannot be ignored or swept under the rug of software IPO’s and Cassina sofas. Like chapters in the Old Testament, there seems to be a crazed tyrant in every age. The clearly unhinged Ahmadinejad is merely the latest in a line that includes Nasser, AsSad and Qaddafi. I can think of no country in the world that has had its neighborS threaten it the way these have threatened Israel. To live with the knowledge that past threats were translated into action does not promote sound sleep.

This uneasy, unsettling reality gives A poignancy to the country that influences it in many ways. It makes diplomatic efforts very important. Every visit by a minister of this or that to India, China, France or Argentina is big news. The economic and educational bonds between Israel and abroad are lifelines of great importance. Additionally, the amount of effort and resources that go into military preparedness cuts both ways. It is a huge drain on the budget, but also drives the arms export business; one of the ways Israel builds ties to other governments. As to Israel’s most immediate neighbor, the Palestinians, for the moment Israel has given itself a moment in time to think it through. The endless carnage of the two intifada’s has been subdued with the wall and very successful military intelligence. In one of the rare examples in all of history, the Israelis have stamped out the arrows of death aimed at their heart. They have broken the back of and walled in the suicide bomber from Jenin. Assassinations, arrests and fences have proven effective. Gaza has been punished and if they want more, round two will be even more destructive to Hamas. Goldstone, who denounces Israeli “disproportionate force”, does not live in Sderot and while there are ample reasons to improve the public relations aspect of the next Gaza invasion, no sane person can think Hamas accomplished anything but worsen their own misery. The Lebanese boarder is a nightmare and the next fight will be beyond ugly, but Israel will vanquish Hizballah. This time the international community will be ignored, just as they are ignoring the wall of missiles being built in defiance of every U.N. order.
So to me, Israel these 62 years later is like a lot of humanity as it ages: older, wiser, richer, cynical and concerned about the future.