Blessings We Have Found in Israel

 

Israel gets some bad public relations if one depends on the news, editorials, talk radio and just about any mass media, even movies and other entertainment. Living in Israel very quickly dispels all the lies. Are there a few choice people who might make one take a less than superb view, but such are rare and even they warm with time. Needless to say, not knowing or speaking the language causes some difficulties but there is almost always somebody there to lend a translating hand. There was the time we were at a McDonalds and the woman at the counter spoke no English and two what had to be young High School age girls came in and realizing the communication problem immediately became our translators without being asked. Generally there are those who willingly offer to give directions to whatever place you need to find in ten minutes to make the appointment and it is your first time in the city and you got off the bus where you thought was the closest stop. That time we only missed by one or two stops and had to walk about a mile or so, you get used to walking in Israel because so much living is city center style European life, an initial system shock after life in the outer suburbs in the United States.

 

Our friends, acquaintances and relatives are quite surprised when we relate the ease and general atmosphere in Israel. When we tell them that we have found Israel more accommodating and generally having a softer and more easy and comforting nature they tend to express great surprise. One might expect that in Israel life would have an edge on it with the constant threats from virtually any direction and the added unpleasant surprise with the Iranian nuclear threat and President Obama and his team’s animosities and threats thrown at Israel but they would be quite wrong. Probably the best description we could give as a true barometer of Israel and Israelis would be to take everything ever attributed to Israel and her people by the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Commission or virtually any other United Nations agency etcetera and take it all and place the initials of the United Nations in front of them but in small letters and then read the entirety as one word. An easy example would be if some United Nations commission claimed Israelis harbored a genocidal hatred then all one need do is take the two words and place the letter un in front giving you ungenocidal and unhatred and you would produce an honest appraisal. Sure it would take ignoring your spellcheck and do some translations where ungenocidal would become accepting of others people who are different and unhatred would become lovers making the entire accusation translate into accepting and caring for peoples who differ from Jews and accepting, caring and considerate of people who are of any other stereotypical, racial, religious or nationality different from Israeli or Jewish. A closer inspection of Israeli actions around the world will better exemplify this example.

 

When Haiti was struck by that devastating earthquake, the Israelis were amongst the first to have responders on the ground evaluating any special needs. Israel had the first field hospital which was equipped with X-ray equipment, a gynecological unit, a neonatal unit, burn center, surgical rooms, prosthetics and physical therapy, emergency room, and virtually every department and specialists which was on the ground and set up within six days of the earthquake. This hospital remained on the ground even after the search and rescue units had stood down. Israel also opened clinics in areas where urgent care not requiring the abilities of a full hospital were present and when the Israelis left Haiti a number of these clinics remained completely equipped with diagnostic, monitoring and other equipment and Israel had trained people in the area such as orphanage, school or other personnel who would be capable of offering care after the Israelis had left.

 

When Typhoon Haiyan spread destruction throughout much of the Philippines, Israel arrived with an one-hundred-forty-eight person team, including search, rescue and medical services and a fully functioning field hospital with one-hundred tons of aid. Making rescue and aid assistance even more difficult was when the typhoon struck, the region was still reeling from the Bohol earthquake in October before. One of the more interesting reports on the Israeli presence at the time was on television news where an on the scenes reporter had been directed to a small village not on one of the main Islands by the Philippine government when she requested assistance in reaching the “most remote village” to report on how they were coping with the aftermath of the storm. Imagine her surprise to find a clinic operated by Israelis already set up and operating while training the local villagers on how to treat people for emergency aid and familiarizing them with the equipment which the Israelis would leave behind as well as the clinic itself with one Israeli aid worker to remain behind and work for the next six months or so with the villagers to assure that they have received whatever training might arise.

 

When Nepal recently had their massive earthquake, once again Israel was amongst the first to respond and the operation was much like the one in Haiti with one exception which was remarkable; Israel took care to the most remote of places, some of which had rarely if ever seen support even from the Nepalese government where Israel set up satellite care units often referred to as clinic in a backpack, though we would hate to have to carry such a backpack, they are quite heavy (pictured below). These remote aid clinics provided urgent and critical care close to the, and often on the, mountain slopes treating climbers and vacation goers as well as native Nepalese citizens. They also operated as a remote triage for when victims were stabilized and given what treatment was available at the clinic and once the patients were stabilized for transport having them taken to the main Israeli or other field hospital.

 

 

The Israeli and Nepalese medical staff who operated the IsraAID mobile clinic in the village of Tar, ten hours northeast of Kathmandu. (Photo credit: Melanie Lidman/Times of Israel)

 

 

Israel has sent aid groups to other areas struck by natural calamities with teams having gone to Japan after their earthquake and tsunami disaster, Myanmar after the tsunami, Turkey after they suffered an earthquake and offered assistance to the United States after hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans and destroyed entire fishing towns along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and reportedly one of a very remote few to offer assistance to the United States. When one considers the Save a Child’s Heart program and how it saves children of all ages who have debilitating if not life-threatening heart problems as well as setting up entire departments in hospitals around the world and training their staff and physicians on how to diagnose and treat these children including training the heart surgeons on how to perform these sensitive and vital surgeries, Israel leaves all the equipment the staff was trained on with the hospital.

 

And the Israelis you meet, see, work with and just generally run across are some of the most patient people and really do try to help in their own manner. They may sometimes have difficulty in expressing things in English but many are actually happy and anxious to use their English and respond well when one states the words in the correct syntax as that is important to them. Sentence structure in Hebrew is different than in English and thus literal word for word translations quite often makes for what at first one takes as Yoda speak from Star Wars, perhaps it was direct translation of Hebrew to English that was the basic transference used to make Yoda syntax. Our Hebrew is embarrassingly inadequate to even make a scheduled appointment and get the day of the week correct not to mention the time as some places use a twenty-four hour clock which reminds all of military times.

 

Then there is a tight knit group of what are referred to as Anglos, basically English speakers, and we have events, trips, sightseeing, Torah, Talmud and Bible classes for men and women and we have found our level of social activities is vastly more active and on a level of friendliness equal to our best of times and friends back in the United States. Another thing which leads to such is that Israel is a rather small nation, approximately the size of New Jersey, though that is misleading as the southern two-fifths, or forty-percent, of Israel is made up of the Negev Desert which is rather sparsely populated. Where New Jersey has a population of nine-million, Israel’s population is just over eight-million. Of course there are some groups who pretty much stick to their own group of like-minded and religious viewpoints such as the Haredi. In much of Israel where there is a mix of Arab and Jewish populations there is no evident difference in the treatment and the interactions are natural and as normal as humanly possible. In the area we reside there are Arab and Muslim stores and employees in larger stores or other places of employment are seamless as to their fitting into the society as a whole. At the regional hospital there are Muslim and Arab nurses, physicians, technicians and all positions and everything functions, as we said, seamlessly. The street signs are all written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English with some towns sporting French or Spanish or Russian, though we have yet to see one which had more than four languages and usually just the three required languages. What is always amusing is when a store has its name actually an English name but the letters on their sign is in Hebrew. What gets confusing is that when you read some of these signs you try to think what the prefixes and suffixes are as Hebrew has many words result only in a letter prefix or suffix. Some examples of prefixes are the ‘v’ which means ‘and’ along with an ‘h’ which means ‘the’ while the suffixes often give one the gender of the word as well as if it is singular or plural or includes the speaker or listener in the plural group and so on. Over half of learning Hebrew are the prefixes and the gender and singular versus plural of the words. Someday we will get a reliable translation program for our phones, or should we call them what the phones have become, life assistants and general applications from pictures to recordings, getting e-mail, surf the Web, record our every move and change of mood on Facebook, well, not quite, and most important movie or still camera and recorder.

 

Basically, virtually everything UNcomplimentary about Israel are UNtrue. Contrary to popular belief they are not contrarians. Israelis are like all peoples, there are the great, the good and the we wish they were nicer types. Many fall all over themselves attempting to make our lives as stress free as possible which had to be stressing on them. Of course it might be that as the ancient Hebrew scholars made a point of hammering into our stories and writings, people will only treat you as well as you treat them and life can be like a mirror to one’s soul which is revealed by ones actions when it appears nobody is watching, because, as we are taught in Judaism and is likely taught though with a slight difference, there is always somebody watching us from on High and nothing escapes that view as our innermost thoughts to our most expressed emotions. We can also count that such observations tell whether we’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Still, there is something else which permeates through the society at large. There is an air of optimism and hopefulness. You feel a vigor for living life and finding meanings where other places simply ignore and accept things as is. In Israel there is this striving to be better as a people and as individuals. There is also a level of acceptance which makes one more comfortable simply being themselves as all will be just fine in the end. There are more young children than we were used to in the United States. This too adds to the optimism as a society with declining populations is what is destroying Europe right before our eyes. They are dancing their last dance in Europe and if things continue as has been the scenario we in Israel will become all the more isolated and an Island of freedom and democracy in a sea of misfortune. There is still hope for Europe but only if they turn their ship of state around and rediscover what gave them the impetus to live life to the fullest and explore the world, that spark of life which made passing their ideas and ideals on to the next generation, something difficult to do when there are so few children born to the indigenous Europeans. Israel will only grow stronger as the Jews of Europe make their final decision and that plague may soon prove to be a prophesy for the United States though that need not be their future written in stone. The United States has a far better opportunity to reverse the slipping trend before the slope becomes too steep and wet for any traction and down becomes the only direction. We are both glad we have come to Israel and Israel has proven to be a wellspring of optimism and life, a future of light and enlightenment, more than a completion as it is an opportunity to grow with such splendor and a kaleidoscope of choices each colored so vividly and vibrant. It is really hope eternal or as close as we have seen on Earth. It is great to be at home, the home which was destined and a good, no, great home it is and will grow from there. Needless to say, but we do not expect the United Nations to understand as they are the people of ‘UN’ and that sums them up in total.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Peace, Peace Yet There is no Peace

 

The latest effort in the news is New Zealand who claims they will start an effort which will end the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Their premise that the base of the problem is the formation of a Palestinian State with established borders ignores one very simple problem, the Palestinian do not desire a two state solution, they demand a one state solution with no Israel. Their desire is an Arab Palestine without a single Jew left alive between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have gotten bolder of late and freely claimed their desire for that solution completely assured that the media will not report their spokespersons making such statements because it does not fit the world’s narrative which blames Israel for the lack of peace. Look back at every last single attempt to find a solution and show me where the Arabs have been pressed to make any sacrifice or effort towards accepting a solution. I can save you the pain and suffering of going through so many promises by outside powers claiming they only want to solve the problem. Every attempt to solve the problem has one assumption at its base, Israel just has to find the right borders for setting up the Palestinian State and everybody will live happily ever after. There is one huge obstacle to that solution, Abbas has repeatedly said the Arabs will not give up their quest to forcefully fight for all of their beloved nations and the Jews have been driven from its shores. Just in case you are still having difficulties understanding exactly what that means, let me put it the way Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser stated the Arab desire so succinctly and so precisely when he demanded the Arab forces would not stop until they “Would drive the Jews into the Sea.”

 

“Drive the Jews into the Sea.” That was the cry of the Mufti of Jerusalem in 1948 as his forces backed by the armies representing seven Arab nations, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and additional militias and troops from Yemen, Turkey, Sudan, and Libya which all came together along with military advisors volunteering their expertise and with no other war grabbing their attentions from Britain, Germany, France and Austria, yes, you read that correctly, Nazi officers and British officers working together to assist the Arab armies to destroy the nascent state of Israel. To put things right, the Israelis were fighting with whatever they could scrap together and on the kindness and extreme efforts of some helpful nations who sent military equipment with little promise they would ever receive payment as the Jews look like they were facing some severe odds, yet still Czechoslovakia sent artillery and armored vehicles along with rifles, machineguns and ammunition. An American Jew in the United States went and bought up all the leftover military hardware which was available in the United States and as he owned a company which made the huge transformers for electrical substations and that some manufacturers require, he attempted to send the outer shells of a transformer with the insides removed and filled instead with military equipment even to include a couple of tanks, armored transport vehicles, Jeeps, Rifles and ammunition until the unit weighed the same as if it had housed the real transformers and shipped them off to Israel from his home city of Baltimore. He knew the dock hands who loaded the ships and they challenged him that he had been shipping an awful lot of transformers to Israel and it is reputed that his answer was that the transformer were filled with military equipment and laughed and then told them Israel was replacing their entire electrical system and needed the transformers. This was his explanation he gave despite knowing quite well that the very same items he was shipping were against the United States government emplaced arms embargo on Israel immediately which was ordered after recognizing her as a nation thanks to the State Department. There were rumored shipments from France which probably had some validity considering that Baron Rothschild was once again back home in France. Somehow the Jewish forces of the Haganah, Irgun, Sternists and other paramilitary and forces considered to be terrorists under British rule and now were a part of the Israeli military preparing to take on an assault they were never supposed to win. In all fairness, there were a number of Arabs communities and extended families who fought alongside the Jews to preserve Israel and these were amongst the Arabs who were gladly accepted as citizens of the Jewish state immediately after the 1948-9 war which Israeli refer to as a war for independence.

 

In reality the initial war to destroy Israel was in some ways identical to every war as they are all fought for survival because every war Israel endures there is one potential outcome every Israeli must face, if Israel loses they will, in all probability, be killed as the forces sweep through the broken shell which had been protected by the IDF and lost allowing communities to be left unguarded as if Israel lost; they had fought to the last available person. Facing the guaranteed wholesale genocidal slaughter of the population should Israel ever be defeated on the battlefield is the motivation and realization as the consequence of failure for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) upon entering any battle. This is part of the reason that Israel having secure borders weighs so heavily when negotiating with the Arabs who demand their own nation cut from the nation promised for Israel and the Jews at San Remo and again unanimously voted into law by the League of Nations as a part of the Mandate Plans. The British Mandate lands had already been split with seventy-eight percent, the area between the Jordan River and the border established for Iraq while the small piece of land westward from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the very sea the Arab armies of 1948-9 desired to push the Jews into as they cleansed the lands, all of that land was set aside for the Jewish State and not for two states living side by side with one side still trying to annihilate the other side as so many push for today.

 

That brings us back to the European Union imposing a ban on all goods coming from the reputed contested areas. In cases where a manufacturer might be employing banned items in his parts list or recipes, they too will face being boycotted thus, just to be on the safe side, they assure they employ only approved parts. Of course Israel can simply avoid such inconvenience by closing the factories beyond the Green Line and only build items inside the areas the Europeans feel comfortable with, at least for now. There would soon be raging Europeans demanding to know why all the Arabs employed at the factories lost their jobs when the factory was relocated within the Green Line and then demanding that the factory reemploy their former employees from the Arab areas and have then, at each factory’s expense, these former employees provided transportation to and from the new location. Then the Europeans would refuse to buy the products as the price would have become prohibitive due to the added costs of moving and providing rides and everything else.

 

New Zealand has claimed that they will see if they can find the route to restarting the peace process. They will likely try to find what the Israelis can provide Abbas and the Arabs in order to sit at a table and be insulted and demands made for Israel’s eventual destruction and then when nobody is able to convince the Israelis to sign onto a peace treaty which stipulated that the desires and needs of the Palestinian Arab people must remain sacred with all parties fully understanding that such a phrase guaranteed the continued terror attacks upon the Israelis despite the treaty and then the world will decide that maybe if Israel surrenders all of Jerusalem and all of the Negev then the Arab Palestinians will be satisfied. We all know that such would only lead to increased terrorist attacks and an eventual new peace process and a further retreat of the Jews and so on and so on until the Israelis really are living in rafts floating in the Mediterranean which is when the Arabs will demands that the Jews floating in their internationally recognized rights to the Sea be removed. The world will rush to grant them their darkest desires and the Jews will have their rafts towed to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and then left to drift only to be eventually towed again to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and yet they will still produce more than the Arabs living on the whole of what was Israel are capable of creating. One will have to wonder what reason the European Union and member nations will find to boycott anything made on half of the rafts as they too should be granted to the Arab Palestinians. This sounds ridiculous but is the end result if the world continues to leave the Arab Palestinians blameless for the lack of peace yet they are the party never satisfied which is why the world has literally run out of sacrifices Israel can give to be permitted to sit and be insulted and the end of the talks the Arabs will walk out or force Israel’s hand to refuse some ludicrous demand with the Arabs knowing full well that this final insane demand will be the first offering in order to lure them to the next round of who can demand the most out of Israel, the world or the Arabs.

 

That is the feeling in Israel as we know and you know and we each are aware of the other’s knowledge that the peace process is nothing more than an international effort to destroy Israel removing this Jewish entity that the world finds so repulsive an idea that it must be eradicated by any means possible. Much of the world sees the existence of the reestablishing of Ancient Israel and the return of Jewish sovereignty as the home of the Jews as an anathema as it contradicts every accepted norm of the world’s greatest defilement and racism, the helpless Jews always just that one step into the perilous direction and the immediate reflex has always been to blame the Jew, even if no Jews resided where the calamity was experienced, then it is the fault of the Jews for not coming to repair the world. Never mind that Israel is often the first on the scene of every disaster no matter where such occurs, Israel may be the only nation which has entire troops trained and ready at a moment’s notice to transport them and their necessary equipment across the globe to assist the stricken. Israel had the first working hospital fully stocked and equipment which the nation of Haiti after they suffered a devastating earthquake. They had delivered their first baby in the maternity ward which was across the field from triage area directing those victimized by nature in order to provide them the assistance necessary. Israel also had search teams trained for exactly this kind of emergency who brought equipment and dogs trained to find victims trapped in the rubble. The Israelis made a number of harrowing and dangerous rescues and even took a dancer, who had lost one leg, back to Israel in order to provide him with a top of the line prosthetic device and he returned to his career dancing like he never had dreamed was possible during the aftermath of the earthquake when he realized he was to lose one leg as it was beyond saving. George was in for a surprise, and we reported on George Exantus, a great dancer and dance performer, amongst a few other discussions which we spoke of in Why Doesn’t Israel Refute the Propaganda Against Her? which has a link to see a video of George performing with his new leg and except for his putting on his prosthesis one could not tell he was not fully functioned with never having lost one leg. If only the world would get to know Israel and her actual spirit and desires to aid all we are able and not have to suffer a disaster, earthquake in Haiti and others around the globe where Israel has been, tsunami, reactor failure as in Japan, and Israel was there as well, hurricane as in New Orleans or of any other calamity where Israel, it turns out, are amongst the first to arrive and provide assistance and often the last to leave making sure all are restored as best as can be expected and medical personnel have been trained to carry on the therapies. We could continue to a disaster in the Philippines where one team of Israelis went to aid a remote village only to find out they were the first aid workers or anyone else to visit their hamlet, let alone come to assist. Here too a child was named Israel in recognition of the generosity and actual caring assistance. Is it really necessary for the entire world to have faced an emergency and actually witnessed the caring heart of Israel extended to assist before understanding our desire to be the chosen to assist others and the chosen to be a light unto the nations during even the darkest of times?

 

Beyond the Cusp