Israel

Of course, my whole experience of Israel is colored by Ziv. Julie and I met Ziv in Nepal back in 1992 when we were hiking the Annapurna Circuit, and we had hung out with him for awhile in India during that same trip.

Julie and I came to Israel in 1996. We came to see Ziv, and to meet up with my parents and Kevin and Lynn. We had been traveling for about four months in Africa, and we were stopping in Israel on our way to Tel Aviv.

I will not get into all of our difficulties with El Al, and how we missed the plane out of Tel Aviv because of the intensive interrogation, way back when. We saw lots of sights in 1996: Jerusalem, Masada, Dead Sea, Haifa, Druze villages in the north, spent the night on a kibbutz in the north.

But going to Israel this time… I felt like Declan was burned out on so many historic sites and that he might not be able to handle much history. We have just done Angkor Wat, Taj Mahal, ancient Egypt, Petra…

“We just want to relax and hang out; I have not made any plans,” I told Ziv.

So when he picked us up from the Tel Aviv bus station, he told Declan, “This is your place to relax, to hang out, to eat regular food…before you head off to Nepal. If you just want to camp out here for the next few days and do nothing, just let me know.”

Declan took him up on it. Ziv’s daughter Alma was so sweet; she was very interested in communicating with Declan, so she had downloaded an app and tried to talk to him. She ended up talking more to me than to Declan on the app, as Declan was obsessed with WiFi and Fortnite.

So many conversations about security. “I don’t know too much about American politics, but Donald Trump has been very good to Israel,” Ziv told me. I had the impression that security was the main thing, for all of these Israelis who live on this tiny bit of land, bordered by Syria and Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt. “The United States and Israel…they are like blood brothers, they need each other,” Ziv told me. The night we arrived, the TV news was talking about a missile that had been fired from Gaza and landed in Tel Aviv. Somehow, the missile had bypassed the Iron Dome, the anti-missile security system that has blocked hundreds of missiles aimed at Israeli cities. “Will Tel Aviv be OK?” I asked Yael. “Gaza is going to suffer!” said Yael, and indeed, one hundred missiles hit Gaza before the night was over.

Explosions and sirens are everywhere. Ziv has a great photo on his phone of an explosion in the sky that he saw from the roof of his apartment, a missile colliding with an anti-missile. An Iron Dome success! Ziv told me about how new immigrants are issued gas masks, and they have to sign to verify that they have received them. “The bomb shelters are a great way to get to know your neighbors,” Yael told me. Under the stairwell is apparently a pretty safe place, so that’s where they go when the air-raid sirens go off.

With the failed Arab Spring, the Second Intifada, the rise of Hamas in Gaza, the Syrian civil war…security seems to be very high on the priority list of many Israelis. I am posting this after the Israeli elections; Netanyahu and the right have won another term. “Bibi is like Donald Trump,” Ziv told me. “You may not like Bibi, and Bibi might not be a good man, but Bibi is good for Israel, just as Donald Trump is good for the United States.” I would argue about Trump, of course, but I cannot argue with someone who must live with the constant threat of air raids.

“What do you want to do?” Ziv asked me. “Show me what you think I might be interested in; I don’t really know what the options are,” I told him. So we walked through the Levinsky neighborhood in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoons, the eve of Shabbat. Pubs and cafes spilling out into the street, shops displaying great bowls of different kinds of olives, a line out the door for a special pastry whose name I have forgotten. It seemed a bit like hipsterville, but there were religious Jews and secular Jews and all kinds of ethnicities seemingly mixed together, walking around, enjoying the sunshine. It was a fascinating place, and I could have stayed for hours, but Declan was hungry and grouchy and so we went to Jaffa in search of a bagel. I had told Declan that Israel was “the land of bagels”, but I didn’t realize that putting cream cheese on a toasted bagel was probably more of an American thing; it became a bit of a project to satisfy Declan’s bagel jones.

We left Levinsky and spent about an hour walking around the picturesque city of Jaffa, a port city that has been inhabited since 7500 BCE. Street musicians, old stone blocks, the Mediterranean sea. Jaffa is famous for the story of Jonah and the whale, as well as the mythological story of Andromeda and Perseus. It was a beautiful sunny day, but Declan was not in the mood for history.

On Shabbat, we went bowling at a bowling alley owned by the son of Ziv’s friend. We were met with a hug, and did not have to pay. Israel is a small place, Ziv tells me. You are always running into people you know, for good and for bad. Declan has a lucky pull on a game of chance and won 1000 tickets. It took a long time for the tickets to come out, and longer to feed them on to the ticket-counting machine. Alma was jealous of his success, and I wished that he was more generous in sharing his winning tickets and the plastic junk they bought.

Ziv took a couple of days off work, and we went off-roading with one of his friends, near the Dead Sea. Declan had been interested to see the Dead Sea, and it was really nice to enjoy the spring flowers and the desert scene in his 18 year old Land Rover. Off-roading has become a passion for Ziv; he used to sail a lot, but it is too expensive to maintain a boat and a slip in Tel Aviv. He has gone off-roading with his friends in Jordan, just missing military target practice.

The new minister of culture who is trying to bring back racial divisions: the first Ethiopian pilot!

The paramedics circulating on motorcycles, panniers filled with resuscitative equipment. They can reach scenes of trauma much faster than ambulances, with all the traffic in Tel Aviv.