Over Yom Haatzmaut, Independence Day, I spent time talking to people in a number of social events. Here are some of the things I heard:
A friend who runs a company that produces high-class tools for the creation of other tools ("our equipment is the Rolls-Royce of the field: expensive but the best") told me they've been selling to unfriendly countries such as Indonesia, and in recent weeks they've been approached by a potential client in Pakistan. A second friend who was standing with us told of other Israeli companies who sell to the Arab world, mostly via Jordan and often in Jordanian packaging to hide the Israeli provenance. Someone ought to tell the boycott folks.
A North-American journalist who has been reporting on the MidEast for a generation tells me the lack of a peace process enables all sides to live in practical peace; once negotiations start again they'll have to re-start the violence.
A Canadian who lives in Israel these past 30 years remarks, apropos Obama's plans to regulate American banks: Canada has strict bank regulations and sailed through the recent turmoil mostly unharmed. Israel has strict bank regulations, and sailed through likewise unscathed. America has light bank regulations, and look where they are.
The cutting edge in military technology is robots: drones, jeeps, and science fiction spy tools all operated from afar by highly trained soldiers who can't be harmed by the battlefield conditions. Israel is in the forefront of this technology, alongside the US.
Three if not four people separately remarked on the 20th of April as Hitler's birthday. Two of them are children of Holocaust survivors, so that's where that complex comes from; one came from Russia, and one was a thirty-something from North Africa. Jews are a screwed up bunch.
Volcanoes make humans look very small. Everyone agreed on that one.
Dear Yaacov,
ReplyDeleteHappy independence day! Though I'm quite apart from Jewish religion and traditions, still I do feel jewish somehow, a legacy from my grandparents, whose mind-boggling (and typically jewish) resources and courage to try a new life here in Brazil, coming from places such as Moguilev and Czernowitz, amaze me to no end...
With great admiration of Israel and Mazel Tov!
Sergio
Fabulous post Yaacov! Chag Sameach ve kol tuv lamishpacha!
ReplyDeleteI get very homesick during Yom Hazikaron and Independence day, more so than the rest of the year -and in my humble opinion, the two most important days on the Jewish calendar, but that is a debate for another day.
Asaf
Sergio, your family is from Chernovtsy, Ukraine? So is half of mine.
ReplyDeleteExcept that the 20th of April is not Israel Independence Day.
ReplyDeleteIt just happens to be this year (and even this year, it should have been the day previous (the 19th) were it not for Shabbat.
So "Jews may [indeed] be a screwed up bunch" but this is not one of the reasons for it..... unless of course, some of the amcha were celebrating that particular birthday---and given, alas, the penchant of Israelis to join all kinds of groups, associations, fads, religions, cults, etc.---and yes, we even have our own neo-nazi skinheads (go figure)---some of us may have in fact done so.....
Victor,
ReplyDeleteFrom my father's side, they came from
Secureni, a city close to Chernowitz, where they went to work.
Regards,
Sergio