Friday Thoughts (3)
Strangely enough, on a Sunday…
1. While waiting for the bus the other day, I spoke with the Binge Trader about his CIF latest. While taking his daily stroll to Bat Yam, he came across a couple of magavniks cuffing a young Israeli-Palestinian. After reading the piece, I thought Seth had made much ado about nothing. “He was only slapped around a little bit. I thought it was going to be like Rodney King or something,” I said. “That makes it alright, does it?” was the instant response. “We haven’t broken your bones but we’ve just left you a bit worse for wear.” “No, it’s just that it isn’t much of a story”. Seth went on to challenge this paradigm. He told me about a Hebron orphanage frequently targeted by the IDF. Haaretz would only report on it if there was guaranteed violence. Stuff like this is happening day in day out, he noted, but nobody’s interested. The problem is with the media. Perhaps I’m desensitised, I said, chastened. Or disinterested, was the brute comeback. On reflection, Seth’s right. The kind of incident he witnessed is unacceptable, no matter how low-key, and we should draw attention to it whenever possible.
2. I hear there’s a lot being written about this outside the land, but I thought I’d chip in nonetheless. I caught up with an old friend the other day, now a lawyer in London, and he told me a bit about how things were in London, particularly with the recession etc. Plenty of his friends were being laid off; others were finding it harder to find work. If there was a positive to all this, though, it was the end to the sense of entitlement that’s characterised my generation of North-West London Jews. We were too young to remember the hardships of the 1980s, and then we entered our best years during the boom of the 1990s. At university, we assumed we’d walk into whatever it is we wanted to do straight away, and then take the world by storm accordingly. I have to admit that I even felt this when coming to Israel, that my meagre qualifications in the UK meant I should be running the country by the time I’m 30. Now this sense of entitlement is gone. This is liberating. Thank God I have a job and thank God I can pay the bills and live reasonably comfortably. There’s something more humbling about taking each day as it comes, without the overbearing pressure of massive expectations, each step forward felt like another hurdle climbed. I suppose it’s back to basics, and I hope others are able to feel the way I do.
