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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (41761)	5/1/2004 11:00:07 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793597

A nice relaxing essay this time: Apr. 29, 2004 13:48 Essay: A marvelously ordinary day By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI Our greatest national achievement may well be the one we take most for granted: our basic sanity. Consider the emotional intensity crammed into the last week. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we mourned the consequences of powerlessness. Then a week later, on Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel's Wars, we mourned the consequences of power. Finally, the next day, on Yom Ha'atzma'ut, Independence Day, we celebrated the simple pleasure of existence. The people of Israel partied modestly, with family barbecues and rock concerts and still-popular singalongs of old Hebrew hits. Despite the usual security warnings of possible imminent attacks, the parks were so crowded that by 11 a.m., police were urging people to stay away. The weather was lousy - one of those hazy hamsins that warn of approaching summer - but everyone seemed to be having a good time anyway. And that was precisely what was so extraordinary about the day. We were celebrating our independence from fear but without any sense of davka, of grim duty to prevent the terrorists from destroying our public space. We were simply enjoying a day off from routine. I don't understand how we do it, but we really are capable of relaxing in the Middle East. My family picnicked on the beach between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Our biggest anxiety was traffic, but even that worry turned out to be unnecessary. The highway from Jerusalem was mostly clear, with the only backups around exits to national parks. We found ample space in a lot directly across from the beach - five shekels for the day - and sat on a grassy hill overlooking the sea. There was security - just enough to make you feel safe but not so much as to feel intrusive. Sephardi clans set up pavilion-style tents, Russian couples sat on benches, and Arab families from nearby Jaffa played with their children. No one seemed threatened by the diversity; in fact, people seemed too preoccupied with their own small pleasures to notice anyone else. I heard a snatch of conversation between two old timers: "When I came here, all of this was " Only afterward did I realize we were picnicking near the Dolphinarium, where a suicide bomber murdered 22 people two years ago. But even that didn't feel like a "victory." It was just a good spot for a picnic. We met up with our 18-year-old daughter, Moriah, who was spending the day in Jaffa with members of her communa - 10 teenagers who have deferred their army duty to contribute an extra year of service to the country, working with Ethiopian children in Hadera. They're part of a group called Amutat Alon, which every year dispatches hundreds of post-high school and pre-army teenagers from mostly middle-class families to work in disadvantaged neighborhoods. They live communally and pool their meager subsidies. They're the nucleus of our social conscience - and, perhaps, of our future leadership. In another society, Moriah and her friends would be considered extraordinary. And that's something else we take for granted here - the selflessness and courage of our children. I ended this marvelously ordinary day watching TV - a contest of young Israeli comedians, most of them just out of the army. There was a young man who declared that his goal, as the son of Polish immigrants, was to prove that Ashkenazim can be funny. (Most of Israel's top comedians are Sephardi.) Two Sephardim played greasers. A Sephardi-Ashkenazi team depicted an ethnically mixed and disastrously mismatched couple. A young man in a kippa talked about how nervous he was because his parents were sitting in the front row. In fact, every performer had a vocal cheering section of family and friends. Watching those comedians reminded me of what outsiders usually miss about the Israeli experience: what a funny place this is and how much time we spend laughing. No one here is denying reality. We know exactly where we live and what can happen at any moment. But we believe in the capacity of this country to muddle through crises that would panic most other societies. Consider my Jerusalem neighborhood, French Hill. We were recently in the news because of several terrorist drive-by shootings. The first victim was a jogger, who turned out to be a young Arab Israeli man who, though he lived in a nearby Arab neighborhood, routinely jogged here. He was shot dead on a Friday evening, mistaken by the terrorists for a Jew. A second shooting occurred about two weeks later just outside the neighborhood. At first police said it was a quarrel between lovers; but then police conceded that the attack was terror-related and that there was a gang driving around the area, intent on killing Jewish pedestrians. Astonishingly, neighborhood life continued normally. People may have paid more attention to passing cars, especially at night, but no one I know curtailed their movements. After a few days, neighbors even stopped discussing the threat. Security was enhanced, and we all hoped for the best. When the terror cell responsible for the shootings was caught in the act last Friday night, it was noted briefly in the neighborhood and then forgotten. Partly it's fatalism: Reprieve from one threat offers no reprieve from ongoing threat. But there's something else at work too - an innate Israeli ability to persevere. Once Jews used to marvel at the miracle of Zionist normalization - which meant, then, the existence of Jewish policemen and Jewish criminals. And who but Jews could turn normalization into a mythic experience? Today, in different form, that miracle persists. We've decided to take Zionism at its word and live normal lives. Which is why we're going to win. In fact, we already have. jpost.com