Israel - Haifa and Tel Aviv

Israel has turned out to be so different from what I expected. It’s not the crazed warzone they make out on tv. Yes, it is definitely different from Europe, and there are a lot of things that unnerve me, but it’s still far better than what our media would have it make out to be. Arabs and Israelis live in this country, side by side at peace. Muslims, Christians, Jews, all of varying degrees of faith are pretty much at peace. But the only time you hear about them on tv is when they don’t. I suppose it would be boring to report “all is well” constantly, so they only report the clashes. Despite this, I feel the need to get the three small things off my chest: the driving, security, and guns. If you don’t want to hear a rant and are here for the photographs of a factory fire, a street party, and Tel Aviv, just scroll down to the bottom.

While I complain about the huge amount of inept and rude drivers here, it is no different than in some of the larger countries or cities like Paris. The chaos here is nothing compared to the sheer terror of going around the Arc de Triomphe (video) which has multiple lanes without any lane markings swirling around like some improvised dance with bumper cars. The Israeli have never heard of the equivalent of the ‘zipper system’, in which cars from 2 different lanes merging take turns from each lane to become one. Instead, they forcefully bash their way in, usually without the slightest little blink from their indicators or glimpse in the mirror. It’s amazing. This is probably why Israel ranks #7 in the “Car occupant injured in other and unspecified transport accidents (per capita)” chart and Finland is safely down at #42. France is for some reason omitted from the chart, so I can’t even pretend to guess how bad it is in comparison. The main difference is that in Israel, this frenzied driving is all around the country but in France it prevails mostly around Paris.

Another huge difference is the security. Every mall or larger shopping area has security guards outside the door. Unlike in Hungary, they don’t put a little sticker on your bags to prevent shoplifting. Unlike Finland, they don’t keep an eye on people leaving the store. In fact, these guys are only interested in people entering the damn place. Sometimes they make you march through a metal detector. Other times, they wave a small handheld one around your pockets. And if you carry a bag or handbag or backpack or so, they take a peek inside the bag or grab the bottom of it. In large parking houses, they might open your backdoor or trunk. It feels like a half-hearted measure, but perhaps it’s just because I don’t look remotely Arabian, because apparently they’re the ones who tend to explode in Israel.

In a huge contrast against the mall and parking house security, there are loads of people running around with guns. Now, I don’t mean random crazy people like in the US. I mean off-duty policemen and soldiers. When soldiers go home for the weekend, they take their guns with them and then they walk around carrying them. Some of them do this even when not wearing uniforms. They stand there in their bright red designer t-shirt, jeans, and crocs with something strapped to their back that my ignorant mind wants to generically label as an AK-47. The truth is, I don’t know what the hell the weapon is. It doesn’t even look real. It looks plastic. Only semi-shiny. And they carry them around like schoolkids would carry backpacks. I keep drilling poor Eyal on what the point of this is. He tells me they’re not loaded. He tells me they can’t leave it at home because they don’t have a safe. They need to be prepared in case something happens. Etc etc. What?? Inside the McDonald’s??? I don’t think so!

But this is the way I have been raised. I’ve lived in peaceful countries all my life. The closest I’ve come to war is when I lived in New York and got to watch a country far far away getting bombed live at night on CNN. That was just surreal. The truth is, Israel IS still at war, and the peaceful exterior confuses me. The civilians going about their normal lives: pushing prams around, going to the movies, teenagers driving their cars to lookout points and having some schmexy-time together… It all creates an illusion of a country at peace for me. A country like my own. Nothing has happened here for a year or so now. I’m staying in a city 10 minutes by car from the Lebanese border and it feels perfectly safe. It’s just the small things that show me that something is slightly different here, like the guns and security. Like we Finns have a sauna in each building, they instead have a bomb shelter.

I like it here. I hope that someday, Israel can find enough peace with its neighbours that it will someday be able to get rid of these strange oddities and just enjoy itself.

Speaking of Israel enjoying itself, here are the latest photos from my trip.

First, the street party at Haifa, a nearby city. The party started last year after the war quieted down. It was a celebration of peace.

A fire at a nearby paint factory called Tambour on the road to Tel Aviv.
(Eyal would like me to point out that at no time was I in any danger. We even set the airconditioning in the car to recycle itself so I didn’t get the slightest whiff of smoke.)

And finally, Tel Aviv. While Jerusalem is the official capital of Israel, Tel Aviv feels more like the real capital. This is where people work and play. It has skyscrapers and apartment buildings. If New York is the city that never sleeps, Tel Aviv is the city that never stops. It was far too big for me. So I concentrated on the cool little things. If you want to see pictures of the big buildings and stuff there, you’ll have to look somewhere else, because here come my favorite parts of Tel Aviv.

There is a page of sketches from the Museum of Art in Tel Aviv (which I highly recommend that everyone who is even remotely interested in art visit). Unfortunately, no scanner here. It will have to wait till I’m home. My favorite part of Tel Aviv other than the museum was the harbor at night. Soft, warm moist air. People quietly enjoying themselves, splashing about in the water. The seaside cafes and pubs. It was lovely. If you go to Tel Aviv, you have to see the harbor at night. I also ascended an elevator to the 50th or so floor of a scary little skyscraper and got to enjoy the view. Worth going to if you go to the city. Good airconditioning too.

Next Tuesday, the ancient city of Jerusalem. No Dead Sea this trip because of the ongoing heatwave. Today: struggling to stay beneath 400 blog alerts.