Voting in Tel Aviv, Doggy Style

Today is local election day across the country.

When Zionists eagerly inform people that the Jewish state is the only true democracy in the region, what they no doubt omit to mention is that it is also one in which others tell you who to vote for, and one in which you can lose a potential partner by voting for the ‘wrong’ party.

“Who are you voting for?” you often get asked by near complete strangers. Suppressing the urge to reply “Mind your own f***ing business” – only close friends or family would ask such a question in the UK – you then get told who you should vote for. If you then have the temerity to challenge the advice, they often (especially if they are on the left) go on to imply how that choice makes you a bad human being (as an exercise for anyone who doubts this, try telling a left-leaning date that you intend to vote for Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] in the national elections, early next year).

Following a recent, extremely encouraging, first date, I was given my marching orders by Natalie, ostensibly (though perhaps not only) on the basis that I wasn’t a left-wing stooge (although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, this outcome has proved ideal, as we have become friends, and I can now mock her unrelentingly, in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to if we were an ‘item’).

I haven’t yet decided how I will cast my vote for mayor of Tel Aviv, this evening, though (being the capitalist reactionary that I am) it will probably be for the incumbent of ten years, Ron Huldai, a decorated former fighter pilot. Tel Aviv is a vibrant, flourishing city . . . and, if it ain’t broken, why fix it?

The ‘hip’ vote seems to be going to communist Knesset (parliament) member, Dov Khenin, supporters of whom point to the fact that Tel Aviv is becoming too expensive to live in, thus driving out students and young people. Khenin is advocating the introduction of rental subsidies and caps for such lower income groups, together with the setting aside of cheaper rental accommodation in every new building project. Apart from the fact that I oppose artificial tampering with the market, I don’t see the absence of students living around me as a necessary evil. In fact, since graduating from university, I have done my best to get as far away as possible from the buggers.

As for the election for councillors, I will be voting ‘doggy style’, for the party promising to improve facilities in Tel Aviv for Stuey and Dexxy, and which will hopefully do away with the rapacious, overzealous, ‘doggy police’ jobsworths – just a notch above paedophiles in my book – sending them back down the fetid holes from whence they came.

Perversions

Sheinkin Street, in the heart of Tel Aviv, is arguably the most common symbol of secular, modern Israel, with trendy youngsters from all over the country converging on its chic boutiques every Friday morning. Even Sheinkin, however, could not have been prepared for what it witnessed yesterday evening.

Whilst out with my dogs, I noticed a man of about forty slowly walking down the street in a pair of tightish, silky running shorts, while two teenage girls, sitting on a wall, laughed hysterically. I then noticed (one couldn’t help but) that – how should I put it – the man was in a heightened state of arousal. Having passed the girls, he turned around and walked past them once again. There was something so sickening about the display that it shook even me – with my background in criminal defence law (and the various perverts to whom I was unavoidably, excuse the pun, exposed) – to the very core. I looked for a police officer, but to no avail.

Following such a distasteful experience, I wouldn’t have imagined that anything else could have disturbed my equilibrium further yesterday evening . . . until I opened my copy of Ha’aretz, that is.

Ha’aretz is Israel’s equivalent of The Guardian – left-wing, (supposedly) highbrow, and often unjustifiably self-righteous. I read the English version rather than its right-wing competitor, The Jerusalem Post, not because I share its political and social leanings (I am somewhere in-between the two), but because it feels more genuinely ‘Israeli’. Reading The Jerusalem Post is often like reading Britain’s parochial Jewish Chronicle . . . and I didn’t come here for that.

The next perversion to disturb my post-work tranquility was the reason (as reported by Ha’aretz) of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader in Gaza, for the movement’s boycott of talks with rival West Bank faction, Fatah, scheduled to begin in Cairo yesterday. He is apparently protesting the 400 Hamas activists held in West Bank jails. Is this the same Ismail Haniyeh who has been holding Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, now 22, for 869 days?!

And did even one of the eleven European parliamentarians – including, I am ashamed to say, nine from the British Isles, among them former cabinet minister, Clare Short – who had sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, as a show of solidarity to Gazans, pick Haniyeh up on this? You can bet not. They probably just lapped it all up, the muppets that they are.

The final perversion, and somehow the most sickening, lay in wait, somewhat surprisingly, on Ha’aretz’s sports page. In a self-indulgent article on his participation (who cares?!) in last weekend’s Tel Aviv half marathon, Palestinian Affairs correspondent, Avi Issacharoff, juxtaposed Tel Aviv’s “beautiful and young” with those in “Jerusalem where everyone looks nervous, ugly and old”. In its mindless intolerance and offensiveness (not to mention stupidity) – in relation to the population of an entire city, no less (a third of whom are Muslims . . . I am sure he wouldn’t have wanted to offend them) – this resembled something out of Der Stürmer.

Where I do agree with you, however, Mr. Issacharoff, is in your conclusion – you are, indeed, “an idiot” . . . but not because you ran 21 kilometers.

The Tel Aviv Whites

Friday evening, 9:25. I arrive at Pub M.A.S.H. (ingenious acronym for More Alcohol Served Here), north Dizengoff, Tel Aviv. “Mad” Eddie (hands aloft in photograph below, I am in stripes) is sitting at the bar with (what I believe to be) a woman, who I don’t recognize, but who closely resembles the imagined product of a late-night tryst between Diana Dors and Les Dawson.

Eddie has brought “Les”, an Irish airline pilot, along from his previous drinking stop, but – when the selfish bitch makes it clear that she is unwilling to sit through Leeds United versus Northampton Town, in the first round of the F.A. Cup – Eddie makes the only sensible choice. “Sorry, Mike”, he mutters sheepishly, on his way out.

Michael, the “Mad Doctor”, joins me. The other handful of regulars have got more sense (or a life), and haven’t turned up. It’s just me and the “Mad Doctor”, who wastes no time in starting to whinge about how poor Leeds are (which he does for the best part of two hours). If Leeds were beating the Great Satan, Manchester United, 5-0 in the first half of a Champions League final, the “Mad Doctor” would still find something to grumble about. I often wonder whether he is watching the same game as the rest of us (or, in this case, as me).

Northampton go one-nil up. Why did I choose to put myself through this on a Friday evening? Ryan, nicknameless (for the time being), joins us. Leeds equalise, to earn a replay in Northampton. But nothing else happens to justify the nonsensical “magic of the Cup” cliché, or why I have just wasted two hours of my life (and on a Friday night) in a pub which has seen better . . . no, in fact, it hasn’t seen better times – M.A.S.H. is a sh*thole, and always has been. The evening is best summed up by Northampton’s nickname: Cobblers.

I am President (self-elected) – which might explain why I always feel obliged to attend games – of the Tel Aviv Whites, in essence an e-mail list (currently numbering 40) of Leeds fans in Israel. Amongst our motley number are one of Israel’s leading gynaecologists, one of its maddest psychiatrists, a clinical psychologist, a dentist, two national journalists, lawyers and accountants. We also have an Argentinian (who started supporting Leeds on his arrival from Buenos Aires during Leeds’ golden decade starting in 1965), an Australian, and a Dane. And they travel to M.A.S.H. from as far and wide as Jerusalem and Zichron Ya’akov to see Leeds lose.

I must also make mention of our President Emeritus, “Mad Jonny”, the best Mickey Thomas – he of the famous “Wayne Rooney’s on a hundred grand a week . . . mind you, so was I until the police found my printing machine” – lookalike this side of Wrexham. Until, that is, he found the ‘produce’ of Thailand somewhat more alluring than that of south Tel Aviv (funny that).

In the halcyon early days of the millennium, when Leeds were reaching UEFA Cup and Champions League semi-finals – and before the club’s dramatic demise (the result of farcical financial mismanagement) – meetings of the Tel Aviv Whites in M.A.S.H. were frequent and well-attended. The three “Mad Brothers” – Eddie, Jonny, and the Doctor – and I would vie for seats at the bar, and to see whose renditions of Leeds songs were loudest and most colourful. Five Tel Aviv Whites made the trip to Valencia, for the Champions League semi-final.

Having dropped into the third tier of English football (for the first time in their 89-year history) two seasons ago, however, Leeds are now only on the telly out here when they reach the promotion play-offs (they have lost the last two finals) or, as on Friday, when they feature in one of the more ‘glamourous’ domestic cup fixtures. For May’s play-off final defeat (at the hands of the mighty Doncaster Rovers) at the new Wembley Stadium, however, over a hundred Leeds fans crammed into M.A.S.H. (though the numbers were boosted by a contingent from Yorkshire, in Israel for a wedding).

I once heard a psychologist say that “Choosing a football team is one of the first decisions you make in life, and one of the longest-lasting.” It is hard to disagree with that. And that early, irrevocable ‘choice’ – together with the desire to preserve something from Blighty – is what, I believe, keeps the Tel Aviv Whites alive (although we have been on life support for some years now).

And that is also what makes the Tel Aviv Whites different from the vast majority of glory-hunting Israeli ‘supporters’ of Manchester United and Chelsea, whose ‘choice’ only came with the flood of silverware. They are there for the good times, and their ‘loyalty’ will not extend to their adopted clubs going through the hard times currently experienced by Leeds United.

The Israeli

A friend in London, who is in a perpetual state of considering Aliyah (emigration to Israel), e-mailed me again this week with questions about life out here: “I know it’s tough and Israelis are supposed to be rude and untrustworthy. Is that true?”

Keith’s blunt question goes to the heart of the paradox inherent in many new immigrants’ daily existences – they love living in Israel, but . . .

What one can say, with some certainty, about Israelis is that they, on the whole (and we are dealing in generalisations here), make a mark. With the exception of a few non-Jewish friends in England (most of whom I met at university, law school, or through following Leeds United), I simply don’t remember any other English people. You meet most Israelis, however, and you never forget them (however hard you try).

There’s Avi, for instance, a permanent fixture at ‘my’ café on Rothschild Boulevard. He has an opinion on everything. We threw cricket and rugby into the conversation, a few weeks ago, just to test him. He didn’t disappoint (even though he has never seen the game played, and wouldn’t know his backward square leg from his silly short one). The English (again, on the whole) don’t have much to say. They are renowned for talking about the weather (which, like them, tends to be grey).

And you are always getting advice in Israel (however unsought). I have heard from many a mother who, on walking around with their babies, would be accosted by other females telling them what they were doing wrong. And, when one of my dogs, Stuey, was limping quite badly a month or so ago, I would get 2 to 3 strangers – during the course of every walk – informing me of the fact and telling me that I should take him to the vet. “Really?” I would reply. “The vet? You really think so?”

My other dog, Dexxy, came with a vestigial tail (either that, or some sicko had cut it off). But no end of strangers still confront me about it, seeming to almost wish that I will finally come clean under interrogation, and admit my dark crime against canine. Last week, my patience finally snapped with one such busybody, deadpanning that “I cut it off and put it in the soup. You should try it. It is so tasty.” On another occasion, I got attacked by a rabid local as I was trying to forcibly remove a potentially lethal chicken bone from her mouth (Dexxy’s, I mean!)

The famous Jewish advice, “Don’t get involved”, was seemingly left behind in the Diaspora. And the English, in similar situations, would just look the other way (however strongly they felt inside).

There’s also the unfunny, Israeli wisecrack merchant. I went into a CD store in the Dizengoff Centre, last month, and asked a perfectly harmless question, only to be met by a pitifully poor, sarcastic response from the manager (who then, even more irritatingly, looked to the rest of his troop of monkeys for approval). Israeli men, especially, can be like that (but my theories on Israeli men will have to wait for a post of their own).

So, in answer to your question, Keith, yes, Israelis can be rude, arrogant and nosey. And they invade your space (that’s also a post of its own, as is the causes of such behaviour, along with many more on these fascinating creatures!) But, for good and for bad, Israelis make a mark. And, more importantly, they care.

Perhaps the words of Woody Allen best sum up the Israeli subgroup too: “Jews are just life everybody else . . . only more so.”

Amir Benayoun: A Society Divided, Even in Music

One doesn’t have to do very much to uncover the deep chasms in Israeli society, as I recently found out when I purchased a new compact disc. It wasn’t a standard purchase, but the purchase by an Ashkenazi Jew (i.e., one of European origins) of a CD by a Sephardi/Mizrachi Jew (i.e., of North African or Middle Eastern descent).

About a month ago, I had fallen asleep during the Champions League highlights (probably another win for Manchester United in the 19th minute of injury time), only to be awoken by a divine voice passionately exclaiming the most powerful of lyrics, in a live studio performance.

Now, good music is good music. Or so you’d think. But when I asked for the new Amir Benayoun CD in the Carmel Market, the following Friday morning, I was met with quizzical looks by the Mizrachi stall owner: “What would you be wanting with that?!”

And the bemusement has come from my ‘side’ too. One friend said that she would rather get out of my car, during a recent trip to Jerusalem, than be subjected to Mizrachi music, which she associates with “everything bad in Israeli society”, and whose proponents, she claims, are a bunch of petty criminals and drug addicts.

Amir Benayoun, I understand, also has his past. But he has found God. And the guy is not just good, in my opinion, but a phenomenon – a cross, if you like, between Shlomo Carlebach and (a thinking man’s) Eyal Golan. Check him out on YouTube. His new album, Omed Ba’sha’ar (“Standing at the Gate”), is simply stunning and the best I have heard in recent years, Israeli or otherwise. It has much of the passion and spirituality of Dylan’s ‘born again’ albums, Slow Train Coming and Saved (and there is no higher praise than that).

And Benayoun is not scared of tackling the issues. The track, Loh Kechol, Loh Lavan (“Not Blue, Nor White” [referring to the colours of the Israeli flag]) criticises, inter alia, the government’s treatment of Holocaust survivors, its indifference to the bombardment from Gaza of Sderot, and dares even do the unthinkable here – criticise assassinated Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who it brands “an arrogant drunk”.

Neither is Benayoun scared of tackling the music industry. Fed up with being robbed, he has set up a private label to manufacture and distribute his music.

Another friend, whose opinion on all matters cultural I value, admits, with discernible reluctance, that Benayoun is talented. But he has a “problem” with him being, since his ‘conversion’, “too right-wing”.

“If you were not brought up here, you just can’t understand,” my car friend, perhaps somewhat ashamed by her own prejudices, attempts to explain. If it means that I am free of them, then perhaps growing up in Hendon, rather than in Israel, was not altogether a bad thing.

Ran Ben Shimon: A Deeper Malaise

The disgusting, shabby manner in which Ran Ben Shimon has been treated by Maccabi Tel Aviv (see Jerusalem Post article) is a symptom of a malaise not just in Israeli football (though it is hard to have a “malaise” in something so poor to start with), but in Israeli society too.

To be sacked as coach, yesterday, after a mere 8 games in charge – a record of 2 wins, 3 draws and 3 defeats is no disgrace in one’s first season at a new club – is an example of the complete ignorance of the type of people who run the top clubs here and, more worryingly for Israeli society, the aggressive, moronic nature of many of the ‘supporters’.

If they were at all capable of reflection, the monkeys who booed Ben Shimon out – following Saturday’s home defeat to Kiryat Shmona, ironically his former charge that got him his position – will come to regret their mindlessness. A 38-year old coach who, last season, took the relative nobodies from the northern border to 3rd place, in their very first season in the top flight, will obviously go on to greater things. His successor, Avi Nimni – however great a player for Maccabi – probably won’t. And Maccabi’s management and fans will have only themselves to blame.

Much as I hate to refer to the man, it took Alex Ferguson over 3 years to turn around the fortunes of Manchester United . . . a lesson that Maccabi would have been well advised to consider.

Ben Shimon’s treatment is reminiscent of that meted out to numerous coaches before him in Israel, most embarrassingly – such treatment does nothing for this country’s already battered image – to Argentine World Cup winner, Osvaldo Ardiles. ‘Ossie’ was brought here to coach Betar Jerusalem 2 years ago, but was sacked after only a handful of games. Although he had failed as coach at Tottenham – they have had no less than 8 since Ardiles was sacked 14 years ago – he had enough experience and success as a coach in England for relative footballing paupers like Betar.

For a decent man like Ardiles, however, his sacking was a blessing in disguise. I had the misfortune, in the mid-90s, of witnessing Betar ‘supporters’ burn the national flag carried by a handful of quivering fans from Macedonia, following a Champions’ League preliminary round in Jerusalem.

Judging by the cretinous behaviour of many of the Maccabi ‘faithful’ on Saturday, you too, Ran, should be grateful.