Too much time on a bus...

Today, as I was stuck in traffic on my bus ride home from downtown due to Bush's visit closing some of the major streets in Jerusalem, I was thinking about politics. I know it's odd for me to think about politics, but I had nothing else to do so forgive me. I was just reading an article in the Atlantic called "The Unforgiven" about the rifts within Israeli society. It stuck me that it's no good to say I told you so when History is proving that the political views I've held for the past 20 years turn out to be the correct ones. It's no good especially when those views may not much help the situation now because the time to act was 20 years ago.

It seems that the majority of Israelis have now come to the conclusion that a Palestinian state is good for Israel. Unfortunately, a small, violent, and politically active group of settlers has decided that it's better to be an apartheid state than to live in peace and in accordance with Jewish values. The article asked the question of when the majority is going to stand up to the minority and say enough is enough. And the article states that it probably won't be soon enough, which leaves the question if it is too late to create a two state solution?

Iran seems to be doing it's best to disrupt any peace process by funding, training, and arming hezbollah and Hamas, who's sole purpose is to kill Jews and destroy Israel. I often wonder where we would be if Iran wasn't working so hard on destroying any hope for peace. I don't know if it's covered in the American press, but about once a week or so there is an article about either Iran threatening to wipe Israel from the map, Hezbollah extending it's capabilities to be able to shoot missiles at Tel-Aviv or staging a coup in Lebanon, or Hamas' latest television production denying the holocaust, re-writing history, or teaching Palestinian kids that there is no people more vile or dis-honest than the Jews. (I just was trying to find the article on the anti-Semitic television for children in gaza and I saw an article that says Hamas will be able to hit Be'er Sheva in two years. That would mean that there is ot place in the south of Israel that would be safe, nor in the north as Hezbollah extends their missile's range. How does one respond to that?)

In the article in the Atlantic, he ends by saying that we are running out of time to negotiate peace. I think he might be right. If Hamas and Hezbollah keep up the missile attacks with no real interest in state building or negotiations, our only option will be to bomb them into oblivion and I don't think that will go over so well with the rest of the world. Nor will it sit well with the Jews in this country.

What really hurts is that if Bush had spent the past seven years spending $600,000,000,000 on alternative energy sources instead of the Iraqi war, Iran would have no more power. We wouldn't be spending money on oil anymore, and we wouldn't be paying huge sums of money to people who are trying to kill us. If he had even raised the federal fuel efficiency standards, we would be in a much better place today. And Israel would be in a much better place today. Cut Hezbollah and Hamas' funding and I think you'd find that most of the Palestinians would rather live in peace than in a state of permanent war. But the Iraqi war and occupation fuels all the tensions here.

This is a very hard country to live in. Today I went to the "television tax" office to tell them I have no television and so I didn't want to pay tax on it. The man told me, as he ripped up my bill, that there may be someone coming by to check the apartment to make sure I don't have a television. My mouth hung open as I realized this was an entire office that charges a ridiculous tax for which the revenues probably do little more than fund the office! (I have no idea how to check if this is true, but it seems to make sense.) Coming from the land of the plenty, the bureaucracy and lack of customer service (and often common courtesy) are incomprehensible. But it's a Jewish state (whatever that means), and so I feel connected to it.

I just got a letter from an old friend who asked if I feel safe here. My response, as it always is, is that I feel safer here than in the states. Back in Boston, I used to look over my shoulder when I walked the four blocks home from a bar late at night. Here, I don't think twice about walking around after midnight. The atmosphere here is so much more relaxed when the kids play. We routinely see six and seven year old kids out in the playground without a parent. On a day to day level, we just don't worry as much as we did in the states. I worry when I read the paper about the political situation, but in my daily life I am much more relaxed.

Another thing I've been thinking about is the relationship between Israel and American Jewry. It seems to me, and others whom I've talked to, that there is a great and widening divide between the two communities. Each having no sense of how the other lives or practices Judaism, and having no sense of the outside pressures of daily life. Each is a reaction to their environment, and so both are headed in very different directions. The politics here only reinforce that. If there is not progress towards a long term peace, I think more and more American Jews will grow impatient with Israel, and move further away from her. In the Atlantic article he talks about there coming a point when the American Jews, who provide a lot of much needed financial and political support (and, oh yeah, are a part of the Jewish people and so connected to a Jewish state), will look up and say "oh, that's not what I meant" and en masse separate themselves from Israel.

We see a lot of Americans coming here on what we call the Shiny Magic Bus tours. Which is a great way to see Israel from afar and to visit all the sites, but the tours seem very caught up in perpetuating the old mythology of what Israel is and not really connecting with where the country is now. I don't really have an answer as to how to bridge the gap other than to say that I have been spending time in Israel pretty consistently since I was 15 years old, but I never saw or felt the gap when I was living in the states. So maybe that's my message for the shiny bus tours, that there is a gap. The Jews of Israel and the Jews of America are headed in two very different directions and I, personally, don't think that's a very good thing. I just don't know how to change it.