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Monday, July 18, 2011

It's all about perspective

These last few weeks have gone by in a haze of almost normalcy here in Israel.
The New York Times even ran an article showing Israel in a downright positive light proclaiming: Where Families Are Prized, Help Is Free
 Jewish and Arab, straight and gay, secular and religious, the patients who come to Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv every day are united by a single hope: that medical science will bring them a baby...
...Demographics here are also political. Israel has historically focused on promoting Jewish birthrates to retain a Jewish majority and more recently as a counterweight to higher fertility rates of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Arab citizens of Israel, however, have the same rights to state-paid fertility treatments as their Jewish counterparts.
While Libya, Egypt and Syria are dealing with the 'Facebook revolutions' involving violence, overthrowing governments and gunning down opponents, we have had our 'Facebook uprising' involving the price of cottage cheese and this week it's the price of rentals for students in downtown Tel Aviv.
There is comfort in the middle-class-ness of it all. You could close your eyes and almost  imagine we are a regular bourgeois country.
But the conflict hasn't gone away. However if Facebook and Youtube have become the venues for change take a look at this latest entry in the war of our legitimacy in the region. Think about it and pass it on. 

3 comments:

Batya said...

Israel is so different from what people think
I'm back. Let's meet.

Laura said...

Great video. Thanks for posting it, and thank you so much for helping me translate the label on the meshaper afiyah jar!

Anonymous said...

I love it when our biggest problems are the price of cottage cheese and housing for students. I much prefer the pressures from within as opposed to the pressures from without. Then again, no pressure at all would be lovely, but that dream is still a dream. One day...

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