I spent two weeks in May visiting family in Tel Aviv. What follows are some scattered impressions.
A week before my flight the Houthis hit Ben Gurion airport so all flights were cancelled except El Al’s. Half the gates were unused at the airport and there were no non-Jewish tourists.
Houthi missiles were better from a lifestyle perspective than Hezbollah or Hamas ones as you get five minutes’ warning instead of just 60 seconds. It surprised me how diligent most people still are in going into shelters. Waking up at 3am is no fun but at least the baby’s crib was in the shelter already.
I met up with an Israeli-American reporter who covers politics for western media. “When my mom in Maryland calls me up to complain about what she saw Trump doing on MSNBC, I pat her on the head and let her know how much worse it can get.”
The hostages occupy enormous mental headspace in every Israeli. Murals and bumper stickers drape the physical space of the city, parents and relatives are constantly on tv. The hostages and their stories seem like a shared language (like how this book review characterized the Marvel Universe today) where first names hold totemic value.
At a playground one day a helicopter flew over and everyone got concerned as they knew it was a military medical transport flying back from Gaza.
Vibes
Is there a city that does good weather better than TLV on a Thursday night? Restaurants and bars pour out into street after street, you see groups of 20+, often intergenerational, out together. Fridays are much quieter as many go home to see their families. Does Israel have the answer for the loneliness epidemic?
No international djs come anymore. Boiler Room memory holed the shows it put on in Israel, but they’re still getting protested because they got bought out by KKR who is apparently too pro-Israel for their audience.
Tel Aviv needs to get abundance-pilled. Rent and housing costs are both maybe 85% of new york city.
Cigarettes are everywhere. Ten percent of Israeli teens smoke, not France’s 15% but far higher than America’s 1.5%. Fancy restaurants have outdoor smoking and non-smoking sections.
Folks called up from reserve duty go out with their gun in flip flops because they have to report the next day and it’s more convenient to carry around.
Taxis charge a 25% surcharge on shabbat.
I ran into one Chinese guy, maybe 30, who’s in town to sell lightbulbs (“we’re midmarket, can’t compete with Philips in America but too fancy for Africa and LatAm!”). He had no idea about the missile warnings.
Food
I do not like salads in general but immensely enjoyed every one I had in TLV. Dishes were always just on the edge of being over-salted. The country has share plate-maxxed.
The burger culture is extremely strong. The most outlandish attention-getting twist on the formula I saw was one shop sprinkling sugar on the bun.
Many restaurants were short-staffed due to reservist call-ups.
Babies
Secular Israelis have more babies than any other comparably rich country. You feel it in the street with lots of families and young children everywhere with even upscale restaurants all welcome to kids. I wonder just how having such ultra-fertile religious sects pushes these numbers up.
People are far friendlier to my 9-month-old than in new york and they’re also more than happy to tell you how to parent. I got told off three times for having a Doona stroller as apparently it’s bad for babies’ backs?
Seeing my child play with other kids too young to know war when Gaza is a 90 minute drive away redefined cognitive dissonance for me. While I was there, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert published an oped saying that “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians…. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
And speaking of war crimes…
Books I Read
Arendt—Eichmann in Jerusalem
I would have read this years ago if anyone told me how funny it was! As she wrote to a friend, “You are the only reader to understand what otherwise I have never admitted—namely that I wrote Eichimann in Jerusalem in a curious state of euphoria.” It shows and is so much better for it.
World-historically funny.
And now a little darker…
This is in dialogue with what Olmert said on Ezra recently.
You have to change the nature of the dialogue and the appeal to the Israeli people and start to talk in a different way. Instead of warning us all the time that we are on the verge of destruction, which is what this government is doing now for 15 years, not just in the last couple of years.
I remember the days when I was fighting Hezbollah. After my war against them, everyone said how we failed and so on and so forth. But a few years later, I started to hear that they are so powerful, that there is a danger to the very existence of Israel if Hezbollah attacks Israel. And we keep hearing all the time that Iran is threatening the very existence of the state of Israel. And we hear also about Hamas today — these days, when Netanyahu talks, why does he need to explain the war? Because Hamas can become a danger to the very existence of the state of Israel.
This has to change. You have to open a dialogue with Israeli society on a different basis, on the basis of hope — something which will change the lifestyle and the hopes of the younger generations. Then we will not have to fight all the time.
“Look, the guy keeps winning, he must be doing something right!”
On the moral hollowness of the generals who waited until 1944 to turn on Hitler.
Career myopia, Nazi-style
Can’t stop pulling quotes from this book it is just too perfect. Of course, literally no-one who made it to Nuremberg has enough guts to defend Nazi ideology—otherwise they would have stuck it out in the bunker.
She closes chapters better than anyone I’ve come across. “Totalitarian domination tried to establish holes of oblivion into which all deeds, good and evil would disappear, but holes of oblivion do not exist. One man will always be left to tell the story.”
