The Lesser-Known Hazards of Living in Israel

So, the news item of the week was the resignation of the national chief of police in the wake of...yes, another corruption scandal. The stories of fallen heroes here are growing tedious, so I thought I would write about something else this week.

Judging from what you see in the media, we in Israel are preoccupied mostly by questions reagarding our personal safety and the future of the Jewish people - which is true. (Other acute local issuess that are, admittedly, less newsworthy concern the decision to eat a cheeseburger on a kosher-for-passover bun at the McDonalds in downtown Jerusalem, whether to upgrade to a cell phone with an MP3 instead of buying an iPod or who to root for in the finals of the reality program 'Born To Dance.')

What the rest of the world doesn't know is that many of us who live here suffer from grave conditions that run right below the surface of our daily existence but are often undiscernable to the average tourist. I myself am deeply afflicted with two syndromes I know many of my compatriots share.

The first is an obsession with the news. Just as substance abusers enjoy a wide array of alternatives from which to infuse, the news junkie can get it from the radio playing constantly in the background, from news services that provide continuous updates via text messages to cell phones or from the endless news and current events programs broadcast 24 hours a day on television. My personal medium of choice is the newspaper, which arrives faithfully on my doorstep before I awake and provides the powerful fix I need to start the day. No one talks to me at the breakfast table because I don't respond, at least until I've read the lead stories and checked the caricature on the op-ed page. At lunch I complete the editorials and beat articles. If I'm working and I don't have time for more than a glance at the headlines, I often feel like I'm about to slide over the brink of a great abyss because I'm not on top of things.

I can't help but wonder what fuels this obsession: is it a deep need to feel educated and informed? Is it the fear that someone will ask me a question about modern Israel that I can't answer (which is my worst professional fear, after oversleeping in the morning and boring people)? In truth, I believe my news jones is fed by an anxiety I developed in camp the summer before twelfth grade. As the oldest kids in camp, we had no curfew and went to sleep whenever we felt like it. Not being much of a night person, I invariably turned in before many of the others, only to awaken the next morning and hear about all the brilliant jokes, stories, songs and soul-to-soul conversations I missed. There is nothing worse than having history pass you by, especially when you live in the midst of the greatest work-in-progress of the Jewish people in the modern age. The thought that something of importance might happen in Israel without me knowing about it is, frankly, terrifying. I can't predict what that great moment is going to be, but I damn well want to be there when it happens.

My other obsession is the neighbors, probably because our conflict with the Palestinians is such a huge obstacle in the path to Israel's future that it's hard to see anywhere beyond the next few weeks. Everywhere I look, I see them - and not just in the newspaper (btw, did anyone catch that shot of Abu Mazen, Haled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh at Mecca in their pjs? Priceless!)

I project them onto whatever I'm reading, whether it's a passage about King Herod's begrudging acceptance of and cooperation with Rome or Toni Morrison's freed slaves' struggle to put their tragic past behind them.

I can't watch a movie without transposing the story into our key. A few weeks ago I saw 'Blood Diamond,' about the terrible violence in many African countries with a wealth of natural resources and weak governments. I was very moved by the story but as I walked out of the theatre I found myself projecting our reality onto the scenario. My first thought was that the West Bank and Gaza look like paradise compared to what was portrayed in Sierra Leone. My second thought was that the neighbors are not that far away from the utter chaos that brings with it the horrifying violence we saw in the movie.

Last week I spent several days at Hadassah hospital with fund raising professionals here to learn about all of the hospital's projects first-hand. We toured the center for emergency medicine, viewed the plans for the new building, heard from doctors about their medical research and spoke with patients whose lives had been saved by the hospital staff. Beyond the immense admiration for the organization behind the hospital, my head was buzzing with ideas for a Palestinian Hadassah. Why can't the Palestinian diaspora raise money to build a similar facility? God knows, they need it - when Arafat was deathly ill he had to go to France for medical care because there isn't a single high-quality hospital in Palestine. All they need is one Henrietta Szold to get the project up and running - just think of how it could help, where it could lead! We can assist with advice, and who knows what else - it could be a bridge to peace!

But then I deflate and return to reality. I, and many other Israelis, would love to fix the Palestinians' problems for them by transforming them into wise, peace-loving neighbors anxious to create a democracy based on western values just like ours. But the truth is that they are who they are and they'll have to solve their own problems without any meddling from me and my ilk. The solutions appear nowhere in sight, but who knows? The Middle East is full of surprises. I might wake up tomorrow and find headlines about a back-channel, secret peace agreement.

So I'll keep reading that newspaper...