Smelling salts anyone? Meretz voters for Bibi

I guess because Barak is the only contender and is he a major screw-up. Worse, Barak tells bald-faced lies to his party and then turns around immediately and does the opposite. We need another leftist party and one that is led by someone decent. Half-way decent. Hell, I’ll take someone with a miniscule amount of decency.

Dutchgrrl –I speak with very few non-Israelis in a day with the exception of my International students (and those I mostly speak at –not that they listen but ma la’asot). I don’t generally take the time to translate and write down even the most interesting of conversations and most of the time we are talking about things like you know, lunch or complaining about (insert your complaint here, insert anything you can think of potentially complaining about here), and so forth.

Something interesting, rather depressing, that you don’t hear anymore or can generally get anyone to spend even 5 seconds on is the whole “peace process” — no one is following it, no one is considering what is happening or not happening in general. No one is debating what the next step should be or how it should be running and isn’t (or is), and most don’t know if there was a meeting or wasn’t a meeting or what was discussed –nada. You get a tired wave “let’s talk about something else” or a “it isn’t worth talking about because nothing will come of it.” Internal politics you still get a lot of discussion about but Annapolis-related, the big zero. I know people –professors, grad students –who only knew that Bush was in the country because of the traffic snarl when he came back in November.

LOl, well I doubt that will ever happen to me as knowing what the media is doing in the main is part of my job –yah teach media studies and media ethics, yah gotta know what’s going on with them as much as possible.

I’d have to say though that the average person in Israel is currently –and this was not true 3, 4, 5 years ago etc but rather starting about 2 months post-lebanon-War-round-2 and hitting full strength about 7 months ago– on a prozacless escape from “the peace discussions” –though certainly not the rockets (plenty to say about those) or internal politics (way more than plenty to say about that).

The people that I know who are the most involved and the most invested re “the discussions” are not olim but the religious sector in general –including religious olim certainly, but including far more non-olim. The religious students I have, for instance, –all israeli-born and raised–know every detail and nuance of every scrap of information that comes forth regarding Jerusalem, potentially regarding Jerusalem, and so forth. The secular students stare at them glassy-eyed when any such discussions begin.

Oh and if you are wondering where the figures come from, I heard recently a very fascinating talk on a study that is following political interest, knowledge, and news consumption trends starting in 2000 and the study will finish up in 2010. A representative sample is followed up every few months in a year and things were pretty steady and standard until the war during which there was, understandably, a serious positive spike followed about 2 months later by a serious negative “spike” (meaning dipping to levels previously not seen). Then there was a revival of interest almost as high as during the war when the preliminary Winograd report was being talked up in the media and then appeared, followed by an ever-steepening decline. It hit the lowest point from the start of the study last summer and has not shown signs of rising from there since then. This had to do with anything not happening within our borders. People continued to follow and be knowledgeable about issues that could effect their daily lives such as the (shot down) civil marriage law brought before the knesset, the internet-religious-nanny law and so forth. But if it wasn’t occurring on the inside of the country, it was like actively turned off and avoided.

dutchgrrl –I’d not call myself an “outside observer” nor a “foreign fan” of israel (my only passport and nationality is Israeli. I have no other.). Certainly I have a different perspective from Israelis who have never ventured outside the country for any length of time–just as I have a quite different view of American politics than do Americans who’ve never ventured abroad, having lived abroad from there for significant periods of time and in a variety of other countries. I have a pretty inside view of politics in general having worked with the Clinton campaign and administration back in the 90s.

Do I support my country fully –absolutely. Do I have problems with some of the things, many of the things in my country –absolutely. And yes, my opinions vis a vis “the situation” have changed since I moved here –moving a great deal more to the right of the leftist spectrum. Not as much, however, as have the political views of friends of mine (see above) born and raised here. We, the folks above and I, have all been swayed by the same events, the same changes in the situation on the ground and in the same direction (and if you can’t be flexible as far as opinions, goals, and strategies in accordance to changes on the ground, then you are pretty sunk. I have a friend who is a fellow tnua boger from the Israeli sector of the tnua, also born and raised here, who says he will vote Labour no matter who heads it or how disastrous it could be because we have to support our party’s movement –and that really bugs me) . As for realizing that things are complicated, of course they are complicated, there is no question that they are complicated and there are no easy answers. Never have been and never will be. There are no answers that will solve any single thing completely, when it comes to the large issues, and most possible solutions won’t even come close but some are better than nothing (and some are worse). Hindsight, of course makes everything much clearer.

I’ve discussed it so frequently that I find the topic rather boring. Here is a copy of my response from one of the previous discussions on this blog:

Millions of people around the world have dual citizenship. It is neither hedging your bets, nor not giving full loyalty or any of that other crap. Saying so is like saying you can only love and be loyal to one of your two parents. Whether you keep both or you give up one citizenship is wholly a personal choice and nobody else’s business. Having both is, as Muse notes, certainly convenient when it comes traveling to places without need for a visa and so forth. But there are many other reasons to retain it –regardless of what other country you are moving to.

America is a huge supporter of Israel. I am extremely grateful not just to the U.S. for their support for this country but for all the advantages I had growing up as an American citizen. I think that many Americans who hold a very anti-american sentiment could benefit from living outside of the U.S. for awhile –they would learn to appreciate what they now take for granted and some of what they currently condemn about it. My decision about my citizenship was made after a great deal of thought, many years of thought, on the subject.