There is an interesting article by David Brooks in the New York Times called A Loud And Promised Land.
An extract:
Israel is a country held together by argument. Public culture is one long cacophony of criticism. The politicians go at each other with a fury we can’t even fathom in the U.S. At news conferences, Israeli journalists ridicule and abuse their national leaders. Subordinates in companies feel free to correct their superiors. People who move here from Britain or the States talk about going through a period of adjustment as they learn to toughen up and talk back.
Ethan Bronner, The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, notes that Israelis don’t observe the distinction between the public and private realms. They treat strangers as if they were their brothers-in-law and feel perfectly comfortable giving them advice on how to live.
One Israeli acquaintance recounts the time he was depositing money into his savings account and everybody else behind him in line got into an argument about whether he should really be putting his money somewhere else. Another friend tells of the time he called directory assistance to get a phone number for a restaurant. The operator responded, “You don’t want to eat there,” and proceeded to give him the numbers of some other restaurants she thought were better.
Read it in full here.
There is also interesting news about Israel’s current position on Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions in The Times today.
Any thoughts on these articles?
Hmm he gets it about fifty percent right. More accurate than many I guess.
The Israeli appetite for argument is really astounding. But what I love even more, is that after they verbally battle one another over some petty inane issue, they finish in the most friendly way.
“Ok, good night, have a good Shabbat”, they say, after calling each other idiots.
David Brooks’s article: The begnin argumentative mindset of Israeli Jews is indicative that their personal view is important specially if they are educated (and most are) and have a sense that they know “practically” all of the issues of a given subject matter. If this is not a true democracy, I do not know what it is… Democracy works best if the majority of the populace is fairly educated and can make good and defensible claims even if we do not agree with them.
One have to be reminded that in Exodud the Jews in Sinai had given Moses a lot of grieves about pushing them out of a more routinize living albeit under duress and semi-slave status.. Even a figure like Moses who actually split the sea in half for them to have safe passage was not immune from their questionings and benign derision.
Second article: Bomb the place. the Sooner the better. The Iraqi nuclear facility is long gone and I have not seen any drawbacks for its destruction in 1982. The latest Syrian facility was also bomb right??? Nothing happened, not even Syria claims aggression…. Everyone is anticipating it…. it will not be a surprise that’s for sure and it is justified. Israel cannot afford leaving this theocratically run state have any military capabilities that can reach Israel much less nuclear weaponary..
Jews have the disputation gene – worldwide. We don’t do ‘deference’ for example.
Israelis in addition have a lot to discuss!
Much of it is because they care. If your kids have to go to the Army and you do not agree with government policy then you are going to be a lot more vocal about it.
It’s exhausting but healthy.
Definitely healthy, I think. And what you describe as the ‘disputation gene’ (and lack of deference) I think is one of the many things that makes me so admire Jewish people in general, and Israelis particularly.
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