Karmiel - Where the Protest's Intense

'Tent City' the phenomenon of makeshift tent encampments springing up all over Israel reached the orderly and tidy garden city of Karmiel in the beautiful Galil last week. One day there was a strip of neat grass dividing the municipality's main highway, Sderot Nesiei Israel (Boulevard of the Presidents of Israel) outside the  'Qanyon Chadash' (New Shopping Centre) and the next it had disappeared under half a dozen tents complete with protesters.

It's almost three weeks since these demonstrations began in Tel Aviv and it has now spread to around 40 towns and cities throughout the country. What do they want? Primarily it's about the soaring cost of living especially housing which the demonstrators want reducing. However Doctors' earnings, health, education and social welfare are now being dragged in. How much the government can do about prices in a free economy is a moot point but when the long hot summer is over and the chill winds of autumn are felt, the participants will surely disperse back to from whence they came. Still, they certainly have the attention of the government and who knows but it may have some benefit for Joe Public.

Meanwhile the words of Balaam, the pagan prophet employed to curse the Israelites but instead blessed them spring to mind. "Mah tovu ohalecha Ya'akov, mishkanotecha Yisrael". "How goodly are your tents O Jacob, your shrines O Israel."

Two Day Weekend for Israel?



Olim (immigrants) to Israel from Western countries often experience a culture-shock when faced with a foreshortened weekend lasting only from Friday lunchtime until Sunday morning. Sunday is a normal working day here, however this may change sometime soon. Although an increasing number of Israelis do have the whole of Friday off, it remains officially a working half-day with schools, banks and places of business open in the mornings. Then there is the frenetic rush to shop and prepare for the Sabbath, especially in the winter months when it can come in as early as 4pm.

For the observant, Shabbat (Sabbath) is taken up with synagogue services and long family meals leaving little time for (those permitted) leisure activities. For example, gardening, DIY and trips out are a no-no.  For the non-car owning secular population, there is no public transport (Haifa excepted) so they are reliant on taxis or sherutim (an amalgam of bus and taxi services). Additionally many places of entertainment are closed.

Silvan Shalom of the Likud party has proposed that Israel follow the Western World and have Sunday as a non-working day. He cites, among other reasons, the fact that Tel Aviv Stock Exchange only trades with other world markets Monday to Thursday as it is shut on Friday while the others are closed on Sunday. He proposes an extra half-hour on the working day to partly compensate. Two Likud MKs have now introduced such a bill into the Knesset which they feel would benefit the economy and discourage Shabbat desecration by providing a secular day for leisure activities. The Histadrut, Chambers of Commerce, the Manufacturers’ Association and the Hoteliers’ Association are all in favour but there is also opposition.

However as the old saw has it, when in doubt form a committee so a panel, chaired by the head of the National Economic Council, has been formed to look into the matter and developments are awaited. Similar bills have failed in times past but today Israel is a strong and prosperous country. Its healthy economy created by energetic and innovative entrepreneurs and the hard-working population who have driven this nation from the Third to the First World in the span of a human lifetime. I think they deserve their two-day weekend.

The 'Known Benefactor'

Contrary to popular belief, not all members of the legendary House of Rothschild were or are Zionists. Like other members of the wealthy and influential Jewish elite, those opposing were fearful of its jeopardising the full citizenship and often exalted positions of Jews in the supposedly enlightened Western World. Astonishingly, as late as the Second World War, Lord Victor Rothschild opposed the granting of asylum in Britain to Jewish refugees from Nazism.

On the other hand the famous Balfour Declaration of November 1917, in which the British government promised to establish a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine, was addressed to Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild. Alphonse Rothschild, eldest son of the founder of the Paris branch Jakob, was the most active in support of Jewish colonisation in Palestine for the oppressed Jewish masses of Eastern Europe who were fleeing pogrom and persecution. Records show that he was contributing the immense sum of a half million francs a year via the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Jewish self-help organisation founded in 1860 by Adolphe Cremieux.

Alphonse's brother, Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, was a patron of the First Aliyah settlement of Rishon-le-Zion (First in Zion) buying the land from absent Ottoman landlords. In 1884 he agreed to sponsor the ailing Rosh Pinah settlement and in 1924 laid out near Zichron Ya'akov (Remembrance of Jacob ie the Baron's father) the first vineyards in Palestine since ancient days, utilising rootstock from his French estates. In 1924 founded the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association buying up large tracts of the future state of Israel.

Twenty years after their deaths in 1934 and in accordance with his will, the Baron and Baroness's remains were removed from France and re-interred in a mausoleum located at Ramat HaNadiv (Hill of the Benefactor) close to charming 'olde-worlde' Zichron Ya'akov in the infant State of Israel. As he had also stated that their final resting place not be one of sadness, landscape artists laid out the most exquisitely beautiful memorial gardens to surround the crypt and the whole set amid a large nature park.

Wandering among the lawns, palms, fountains and flower beds with distant views toward the turquoise Med. it's easy to believe that Eden alone could equal this bijou garden. As they lie ensconced in their tranquil tombs in their beloved Land of Israel, I'm sure the Baron and his wife would approve of the overwhelming beauty and dignity yet not solemnity of their repose. The Baron was one of a very select few people without whom the State may never have come into being. Z"L may their memories be for a blessing.

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum; If you desire peace prepare for war.

These words of the Roman writer Vegetius remain as true today as when written in the 4th century and in the turmoil of today's Middle East, perhaps more relevant than ever. All over this troubled region the cataclysmic forces of revolution against autocratic governments have been unleashed and, as Muslim slaughters Muslim, Israel despite its faults, remains the one constant and stable democracy. Perhaps that's why it's despised as much by Western 'liberals' as much as fervent Islamists, an island of democracy simply shouldn't exist in this sea of anarchy, it's an anomaly.

The reality of living here is the knowledge that war can come at any time and in this very small country civilians no less than the military are in the front line. Incoming missiles take but a few minutes to reach our cities and therefore every dwelling built since the first Gulf War, when Saddam's crude but effective Scuds targeted Tel Aviv, has a fortified 'safe room'. Earlier dwellings and all public buildings have a basement 'miklat' (shelter). Israeli citizens have been issued with gas masks and on 22nd June a national emergency drill was carried out. Twice in the day as sirens wailed,  residents had to go to a shelter,  the emergency services simulated rescues and the cabinet met in an underground bunker.

We attended a lecture by the Home Front Command here in peaceful Karmiel on what to do if, perhaps more accurately when, war comes again. The existential threat to Israel is very real, not simply theoretical, as Iran has sworn to destroy us even as it strives to obtain thermonuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The fact that 20% of Israel's citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs and would also be incinerated by bombs which do not discriminate, would not deter the fanatics who control the Iranian theocracy. There are also those around the world who would applaud this 'solving' of the Israel/Palestine conflict by removing that which they abominate the most, the State of Israel.

On the subject of war, I watched a fascininating programme on the History Channel about Sun Tzu, whose seminal tome on military strategy, 'The Art of War' is still studied in military colleges today.  It is also required reading for all CIA and US  Military Intelligence officers 2,400 years after it was written because its principles are timeless. Napoleon, Admiral Heihachiro who masterminded Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, Mao Zedong, General Vo Nguyen Giap who led North Vietnamese forces to victory against France and the US and Generals Schwartzkopf and Powell in the first Gulf War are among those who studied it. 



Karmiel Centre

There are many quotable quotes from 'The Art of War' but the one I like the most as applied to our current situation is 'For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.' To survive and indeed thrive in the very tough neighbourhood in which Israel dwells, will indeed require the acme of skill from its elected leaders.

Innocents Abroad

Sea of Galilee from Meron Mountains

Fifteen months ago my wife and I left behind a comfortable life in the north of England and moved lock, stock and barrel to Karmiel in Galilee, northern Israel. Why did we do it? I had just retired from being a publisher's agent, basically on the road selling books day in and day out for almost 20 years.

Inside however, was a nagging voice which wouldn't be silenced, telling me that my destiny lay not in viewing the Pennines but the mountains of the Upper and Lower Galilee that so inspired the Psalmist of old to utter the prayer 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.' Who knows but he may have been an ancestor of mine and his spirit was urging me to return to this land after two thousand years of exile and wandering.

My wife, less than keen, but resigned to my 'meshugas' (irrational obsession) dutifully accompanied me, always believing that it wouldn't really happen and I'd see sense eventually.

We left Manchester in a minibus early one morning and arrived at Heathrow to be initially processed at the El Al special check-in desk for olim (immigrants to Israel). The preliminaries over, we were flown to Ben-Gurion Airport and the many new immigrants taken to the old terminal for further processing. Eventually we were bussed to the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem where we flopped into bed at 3am.

After only four hours sleep we breakfasted,  heard a lecture, signed up with a bank, health fund and mobile phone and  issued with our ID cards. Finally we were bussed to our destinations to begin our new lives in our adopted country where the inhabitants may be our co-religionists but culturally often miles apart and speak in a language we did not understand.

Israel, no less than the USA, is a melting pot of many cultures and peoples but all believing that this little patch of land is now home. This includes the 1.5m Palestinian Arab people who share full Israeli citizenship and make their contribution to this country which has moved from the Third World to the First in only 60 years.

Further posts will follow which may be of interest to those considering following in our footsteps, those who disagree with our actions and the merely curious.