Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: A Loud and Promised Land

A Loud and Promised Land
By DAVID BROOKS
TEL AVIV
On my 12th visit to Israel, I finally had my baptism by traffic
accident. I was sitting at a red light, when a bus turning the corner
honked at me to back up. When I did, I scraped the fender of the car
behind me.
The driver — a young, hip-looking, alt-rocker dude — came running out
of the car in a fury. He ran up to the bus driver and got into a
ferocious screaming match. Then he came up to me graciously and
kindly. We were brothers in the war against bus drivers. Then, as we
were filling out our paperwork, another bus happened by and honked.
The rocker ran out into the street and got into another ferocious
screaming match with this driver. Then he came back to me all smiles
and warmth.
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.
We can all think of reasons that Israeli culture should have evolved
into a reticence-free zone, and that the average behavior should be
different here. This is a tough, scrappy country, perpetually fighting
for survival. The most emotionally intense experiences are national
ones, so the public-private distinction was bound to erode. Moreover,
the status system doesn’t really revolve around money. It consists of
trying to prove you are savvier than everybody else, that above all
you are nobody’s patsy.
As an American Jew, I was taught to go all gooey-eyed at the thought
of Israel, but I have to confess, I find the place by turns
exhausting, admirable, annoying, impressive and foreign. Israel’s
enemies claim the country is an outpost of Western colonialism. That’s
not true. Israel is, in large measure, a Middle Eastern country, and
the Israeli-Arab dispute is in part an intra-Mideast conflict.
This culture of disputatiousness does yield some essential fruits.
First, it gives the country a special vividness. There is no bar on
earth quite so vibrant as a bar filled with Israelis.
Second, it explains the genuine national unity. Israel is the most
diverse small country imaginable. Nonetheless, I may be interviewing a
left-wing artist in Tel Aviv or a right-wing settler in Hebron, and I
can be highly confident that they will have a few things in common: an
intense sense of national mission, a hunger for emotionally
significant moments, an inability to read social signals when I try to
suggest that I really don’t want them to harangue me about moving here
and adopting their lifestyle.
Most important, this argumentative culture nurtures a sense of
responsibility. The other countries in this region are more gracious,
but often there is a communal unwillingness to accept responsibility
for national problems. The Israelis, on the other hand, blame
themselves for everything and work hard to get the most out of each
person. From that wail of criticism things really do change. I come
here nearly annually, and while the peace process is always the same,
there is always something unrecognizable about the national scene —
whether it is the structure of the political parties, the absorption
of immigrants or the new engines of economic growth.
Today, Israel is stuck in a period of frustrating stasis. Iran poses
an existential threat that is too big for Israel to deal with alone.
Hamas and Hezbollah will frustrate peace plans, even if the Israelis
magically do everything right.
This conflict will go on for a generation or more. Israelis will keep
up their insufferable and necessary barrage of self-assertion. And yet
we still dream of peace and the day when I am standing in line at an
Israeli cash register and an Israeli shopper sees a chance to butt in
front of me, and — miracle of miracles — she will not try to take it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/opinion/17brooks.html

 an existential threat
L'Aiea dice che non hanno l'atomica, il governo iraniano dice che non
la vuole, ma la minaccia rimane. Dicesi "paranoia".

 L'Aiea
 Stai cominciando a darti troppe arie, magari tra un po' pensi pure di
avere ragione. Seguo l'esempio della maggioanza dei lettori, e non ti
leggo più.


sarebbe ora, che fra un po' i compagni mi evitano come la peste, sto
diventando dipendente da scommesse sull'intelligenza dei wannabe rabbi