Democracy Overseas

With roughly four weeks until Election Day, I sit down and fill out a long-awaited ballot.

On a related note, there's a widespread rumor among Americans here in Israel that you can vote at the embassy in Tel Aviv, because that's how Israel handles its overseas voters.

To this, let me be blunt: You can show up at the embassy's door, on fire and waving your passport in the air, and they will not let you in. United States embassies, as it turns out, are not for United States citizens, but rather a way for the makers of concrete barriers to stay in business.

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Ahead of the Times

Once again, I find myself ahead of the times, The New York Times, that is. This time about how the 2002 corporate scandals led directly to where our economy is today.

Am I a prophet? Perhaps. More likely just someone with common sense, which these days seems to be even scarcer than a sound investment bank.

Also today, another fine line of logic from Roger Cohen.

Finally, I meant to add in my previous post, we need not worry about the fantastic sums of our money our government is throwing at the failing financial sector. You get to a certain level -- I think it's somewhere in the tens of billions -- that the money isn't real anymore. Just numbers on a piece of paper ... kind of like the dollar itself.

Bonding

I bit the bullet. This afternoon, after my post-work run through the hazardous and construction-strewn streets below the German Colony, I decided to clean. Not just my room, but the hallway outside my room and the kitchen. A little pre-new year tidying.

It wasn't so bad. I shook out my carpets; swept, scrubbed and dried my floor; swept, scrubbed and dried the third of the hallway closest to my room; and swept, scrubbed and squeegeed the kitchen. Then I tackled the refrigerator for the second time in less than a month.

In the midst of tossing out mushy vegetables and very dated condiments, two of my dorm-mates walked in. Initially, I was less than thrilled with their presence, hoping to finish without anybody being the wiser, so nobody would ask, "Why is the American throwing away my food?"

To my surprise, in a mix of Hebrew, English and hand signs, they joined the effort with modest tenacity. As always, multilateral action proved much more successful than unilateral hardheadedness. Among the three of us, we figured out whose food was whose, and what food belonged to those who don't even live here anymore (which was the majority of it). Thanks to them, we got rid of stuff I wouldn't have dared done away with on my own ("not my mother's borekas!"). When we finished, the guys, who I've scarcely spoken to, let alone seen, voluntarily took out the two hefty bags of garbage we collected.

Later in the evening, one of the girls walked by my room nibbling on some sort of homemade treat, and she invited me over to the girls' side, where several of the dorm's residents had gathered to eat and hold what appears to be a regular meeting with the dorm overseer (non-Arabic speakers need not attend).

I returned to my room about 20 minutes later, only to be drawn out again by blaring Arabic eminiating from the hallway. It was "Bab el-Hara," a wildly popular soap opera from Syria that, much like "Peanuts" at Christmas, broadcasts across the Middle East each Ramadan. I sat down to watch the show -- overflowing in starkly dramatic music, overactive gesticulation, harsh lighting and, my favorite, impressive facial hair -- along with a half-dozen of the Arab students. Good thing I didn't wash that part of the hallway -- they ordered pizza (complete, of course, with green olives, virtually standard to all pizza in Israel).

The show ended and the group migrated to the balcony adjacent the kitchen. On the way there, one of the girls -- the same girl who had passed by my room earlier and invited me for food -- asked if I would ever fast for Ramadan. I responded that I only fast once a year, and that is for Yom Kippur.

She understood "Yom Kippur," but it took a few beats for her to realize I was talking about the Yom Kippur, as in the Jewish Day of Attonement (perhaps you've heard of it).

"You're Jewish?" she asked with familiar surprise.

And so it began. In a matter of moments I found myself cornered by her and two others -- the guys who helped me clean out the fridge earlier -- wanting to know everything I thought about the situation in Israel, as it relates to Arabs.

"How much time do you have?" I asked.

The girl spoke to me in fairly good English; the guys spoke to me in Hebrew. I responded in a bit of both, which was worrisome because, usually, when someone says something in Hebrew that I don't understand, I can just nod along. But when talking politics, culture and identity, I was wary of nodding along with something that I completely disagreed with. The stakes are too high, the subject too sticky and the chance for confusion to great to mix signals.

And how exactly do you express a position when there is no single language to express it in that everyone fully comprehends, especially when that position is highly nuanced, and nuance is hard enough to get across without a linguistic barrier?

I can explain, for example, that I agree the occupation (for them, the central issue, even though they're not under it) is tragic, devastating for Palestinian livelihood and destructive to Israel's soul, but it's harder to explain that the occupation is also the most necessary evil of all evils, a system that, if suddenly removed, would bring chaos and anarchy to the West Bank because there is as yet no Palestinian infrastructure strong enough (for many, many reasons) to take the IDF's place (not to mention risk to Israel's security).

I can explain that I agree that the IDF at times reacts disproportionately, vengefully and even in violation of international law, but I will not condone Palestinian "resistance" by making it equal to the IDF; life in the West Bank and Gaza is oppressive, for sure, but it is not nearly the first instance in human history where a people have been subjected to such conditions. It is, however, among the few times that the response to such conditions has been to strike violently at civilians on the other side. There is no excuse for such behavior, and there can be no tolerance for it.

I can explain that I agree that Arab citizens in Israel do not enjoy the same democracy as do its Jewish citizens, but any mention of creating an Israeli nationality is instantly misconstrued as surrendering indigenous Arab culture for mainstream Jewish culture (because, after all, all Israelis are Jews and all Jews are Israelis). There is no concept of a secular, public culture in Israel (like in the U.S.) that transcends Jewish or Arab subculture.

And I can explain that I agree that Arab citizens in Israel endure both systemic and socioeconomic racism and discrimination, but it is much more difficult to specify that it is not the apartheid of South Africa or the segregation of South Carolina. Moreover, those who advocate the expulsion or extermination of Arabs, though Jewish, do not represent me nor many other mainstream Jews. I will side with a decent, hardworking West Bank Arab Palestinian any day over a dogmatic, hateful West Bank Jewish settler.

In the end, there was at least one thing we could agree on without misstatements or misunderstandings. There is no solution and it is unlikey there will ever be peace. Too much of what needs to be negotiated is non-negotiable because they are elements that cut right to the core of who we are as a people and who they are as a people. Increasingly it appears that a true and lasting peace can only come at the cost of sacrifcing our identities, and for both sides, that is a price too high to pay.

Addendum: Cleaning, Caught on Tape!

Shocking scenes from yesterday afternoon:

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Priorities

There is so much to say -- and is being said -- about the collapse of the kingmakers on Wall Street, and the sudden reintroduction of federal government into an industry we have been told for decades needs not public oversight. Far be it from democracy to keep an eye on its offspring of capitalism; perhaps parents, too, should let their kids raise themselves.

What really baffles me is why everyone is so shocked. I'm no economist (I'm happy I can balance my checkbook), but it was clear to me as far back as 2002 -- during the corporate corruption drama of Enron & Co. -- that things were far from aboveboard in the American economy, and no one was taking any substantial measures to make it so. The profits continued to come in and attention to responsibility took a backseat.

Of course greed is nothing new. Letting greed be the invisible hand to this extent, however, is. When the Dow Jones shot passed 11,000, investors were jubulant, but the good feelings hardly escaped their ivory towers; the profits didn't get passed around. For everyone else, salaries had stagnated, good jobs went out to lunch, healthcare costs soared and a growing number of young people were receiving their college diplomas weighed down with a lifetime of debt. Meanwhile, American debt (particularly to China) was skyrocketing to pay for a war because the typical source of a democracy's financing -- taxation -- was considered un-American. And so insulation from the torment in Iraq was complete.

It was obvious that subprime mortgages were unsustainable. It was obvious that the financial institutions that encouraged, and profitted from, such shoddy investments were in too deep. It was obvious that when the bills came due, the cash wouldn't be there to pay for them.

And so the very thing that got us into trouble in the first place now appears our only chance at getting out of it: more borrowing, more credit, more debt. Seven hundred billion dollars to be exact (plus more for AIG and the Macs).

What Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke have taught us over the last few weeks is that when there's a gun to your head, it's best to pull the trigger yourself; maybe you'll have some chance of directing where the bullet goes.

The experts say this is a new era in America's economic culture, that we have seen the ills of our ways and so great have been the consquences, we will at last become a nation of prudent savers.

History shows otherwise. Very little changed in the wake of the corporate corruption scandals because too many people went back to too much comfort too quickly. Enron and WorldCom were seen as just a couple bad apples in an otherwise healthy crop. The market returns were too lucrative to admit the problem was systemic. And to the thousands who lost everything, c'est la vie.

And what of this "global economy" I keep hearing so much about? Are we all in this together, or just when times are good? Because so far I've only seen my tax dollars (and those of my children and theirs) being put up to staunch what is an international hemorrhage. Certainly the U.S. should take the lead because we have the deepest pockets and this crisis is largely our fault, but where are the other central banks of the world? Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the rest aren't just American holdings yielding American profits, after all.

But perhaps the most sobering analysis of the situation came from Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia economist and director of the UN Millenium Project. In commentary for the BBC, Sachs reminds us about national and global priorities, especially those of the world's richest countries. If we really want to -- if we really had to -- we really could make this world a better place.

But, I'm sorry, a trillion dollars worth of assets needs saving; a billion farmers will have to wait.

Pick-up Athletics in Tel Aviv

Not far from the manicured beaches and trendy coffee shops live Tel Aviv's poorer residents, many Ethiopian immigrants and foreign workers from East Asia. Members of these very different communities gather on a fenced-in blacktop in a park adjacent the central bus station. On the same turf, one plays soccer, the other plays basketball.

Audio Slideshow: The Voice of a Nation

NAZARETH, Israel -- Mahmoud Darwish is the Palestinians' most famous poet. Universally beloved for his writing that represents their national listlessness, Darwish died last month at the age of 67. Since then, events have been held throughout the Palestinian community to commemorate the man and his work.

In Nazareth this week, the community gathered to change the name of its cultural center in Darwish's memory. More than 800 turned out for the event, packing the modest-sized auditorium.

Also, watch the video on the Multiple Reality Disorder blog.

A Taste of Haifa: Mossawa, the Front Side

Now that you've seen the dorms on the back side of Mossawa's building, here is a quick tour of the main entrance on the front side of the building, which leads to the office.

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A Taste of Haifa: That Falafel Place in Wadi Nisnas

When I want the taste of Arab-made, just-the-facts-ma'am falafel, I know just where to go: that place in Wadi Nisnas, you know, what's it called? Down the street from the shuk. On the left. Yeah, that one.

Warning: this video contains graphic scenes of me butchering Hebrew and making a mess of myself with tahina. Also, are my sunglasses crooked or is it just my face?

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Tribute to the Voice of a Nation

On Wednesday, my fellow American and Mossawa coworker and I joined our Arab coworkers in Nazareth, for an evening of poetry and live music at the local cultural center. The honoree was Mahmoud Darwish, the most famous Palestinian poet, universally beloved throughout his community. He died last month at the age of 67.

Of course, in any good adventure, the journey is as important as the destination, and getting to Nazareth was no exception.

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For more, view the audio slideshow on MediaBardAV.

Living Conditions

Last night, there was quite a lot of commotion coming from the girls' side of the floor. Curious, I poked my head around the corner to find about a half-dozen girls cleaning their common area, in such an orchestrated way I was sure Mary Poppins would fly through the window at any moment.

I watched their effort with some envy, thinking wishfully how nice it would be to rally the guys to do the same. Our common area is a mess, and I'm not tackling it on my own.

For starters, about a week ago a table appeared in the hallway that cuts the width of the hallway nearly in half. Thrown on top of it are used electronics -- an old TV, DVD player, stereo and space heater -- along with dozens of DVDs, a Haifa University student union backpack and other assorted crap.

The floor needs a thorough sweep n' scrub, and the bathroom resembles something you might have at camp, or a highway rest area that hasn't been updated since Eisenhower first commissioned the Interstate system.

There is no toilet paper. The lights don't work (good luck hitting your mark during the 3 a.m. bathroom break). One of the two toilets is out of commission (at least, that's what I assume the Arabic says on the note taped to the door). There is a mirror, but I think it's just a shard from what was once a larger mirror. There are random carpentry tools, including a blue bucket full of white goop. And the floor is an always-wet mess of dirt and sand.

Yesterday, I returned from a run very much in need of a shower, only to find the bathroom door locked, apparently because for the person taking a shower at the time, locking the door to just his shower stall wasn't enough; he needed the whole bathroom.

I was in far too sweaty a condition to wait, so I took the chance and used the bathroom on the girls' side, which is much cleaner and, thanks to more windows, brighter. But this was a precarious situation because I haven't yet met all the girls (nor the guys, for that matter), and I am still feeling out their cultural sensitivities to coed living. As it turns out, the girls' shower is missing a door, so I too had to lock the entire bathroom.

What I had forgotten was that girls, while perhaps more fastidious than guys, have a) long hair, and b) rarely pull their hair out of the drains. So they were clogged, thus producing a flash flood that no amount of squeegeeing could staunch.

If there's a silver lining, it's that the kitchen is in pretty good shape, but that's because I'm the only one who uses it, and I clean as I cook. Also, a few days ago appeared a four-burner gas stove, which if it gets hooked up in my lifetime would indeed be an exciting development.

For now, I can fend off the common area mess with my flip-flops. One of the girls told me that the dorm manager is thinking of hiring a twice-weekly cleaning service, the second time I've heard that claim. The first was four months ago, so I won't hold my breath. Meanwhile, I'll be satisfied if the guys in one of the rooms next to me stops throwing their trash out the window.

Addendum: Rest in Peace, Shard of Mirror

After finishing another post, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and found the mirror, already just a piece of a larger one, in several more pieces, just lying about the sink, counter and floor. Of course, no one bothered to clean up the sharp mess. As if I didn't have a reason to not walk barefoot.

Addendum: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Good news on the bathroom front: The lightbulbs have been replaced in each of the toilet and shower stalls, so I am no longer tied to the daylight hours to maintain personal hygiene. The other toilet remains to be fixed, but how much can I ask for?

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, I have discovered that at least one person on the floor has taken the liberty to sample the food I leave in the fridge. I mark most of my stuff, which is futile, because even though it's in Hebrew, the initials ב"ג don't mean much to people who don't know my name.

When a State Without a Nation Visits a Nation Without a State

Last week I accompanied Mossawa's deputy director down the street to Adalah, another organization that works to improve the conditions of Israel's Arab minority. The purpose of the visit was to deliver a joint presentation to a group of Belgian parliamentarians who were in Israel on some sort of fact-finding mission.

That's funny, I thought, I didn't realize Belgium was enough of a nation to warrant a parliament. After all, it took the entire second half of 2007 to put together the most recent government, which didn't actually come into office until March, and has been on the brink of collapse since July, when Prime Minister Yves Leterme offered his resignation to the king (the king rejected it).

I guess that explains why this group of MPs had time for holiday in Israel, and I guess that further explains why they all looked so good. I have never seen a group of politicians so relaxed, so casual, so ... European. Entering Adalah's office in Hawaiian shirts, short-sleeve polos and sundresses, this lot looked more like ministers of a country club than of a country.

Aside from the grapes put out for them on the table, which they were quite keen on, the visiting dignitaries were about as interested in the presentation as a college-accepted high school senior is in the last class of the day. They passed notes, giggled and whispered, and played with their Blackberrys. The two presenters had 60 minutes between them, which was spent translating a series of clipped sentences from English to French through a translator who said she really only understood Hebrew. All told, there were five languages in the room: those three, plus Arabic and probably Flemish.

Which brings me to my central point: the irony of government officials from Belgium visiting Israel. While the former may be the definition of pacified and pleasant Western Europe, Belgium and Israel actually have a lot in common. To the extent that my argument that the state of Israel needs to find a way to form a nation of Israel is often countered with, "but look at Belgium."

Yes, let's look a Belgium, a country that many European political analysts predict will soon cease to exist (a bit of an overreaction, if you ask me, but point taken).

It's not just that Belgium can't keep a government together; lots of countries have this problem (ahem, Israel). It's why Belgium can't keep a government together. And it can't because in Belgium, as in Israel, belonging to a subnational entity is, for many, more important than belonging to the national entity. In Israel, that's Jewish or Arab; in Belgium, it's French or Flemish.

In Israel, many Arabs don't want to be Israeli if "Israeli" is a synonym for "Jewish." And many Jews only want to be Israeli if "Israeli" is a synonym for "Jewish." There is no shared definition of Israeli nationhood.

Same in Belgium. The 4.5 million Francophones don't want a Flemish Belgium, and the six million Flemish don't want a French Belgium. To the point where the Belgian king (a neutral party since nobody cares about him) for the second year in a row used Belgian national day to plead with his people not to allow linguistic differences to tear apart the country (what language he pled in remains unclear).

No wonder why Brussels is home to both the supernational NATO and the EU -- it's the capital for everyone and no one at the same time.

It's beyond me why some try to undermine my case for Israeli nationhood by bringing Belgium into the conversation, as if Belgium is a model we should hope Israel can one day adopt. That the two non-nation-states are already so similar should be cause for great concern among those interested in a sustainable future for Israel.

Fortunately, I don't yet see any regional body like the Arab League interested in relocating to Tel Aviv, though I suspect that is for other reasons.

Looking for Israel on the Map

On what continent is Israel? The easy answer is the Middle East, if only it were a continent and not the geopolitical shorthand of the British Empire.

I often like to draw others into debating this question, because a quick look at a world map makes instantly obvious that Israel is nowhere else but Asia. But the debate lingers still because, well, Israel doesn't feel like Asia.

A big reason for this is that Israel is something of an enigma. Founded by Jews in a region of Arabs, established as a democracy against a backdrop of autocracy, structured to think like Europe and act like America. What is this place again? Where?

On the surface, the question of location is a way to argue for the sake of arguing, but a closer look reveals deeper ramifications.

When polled last month by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, 600 Israelis largely reviled their association with the Middle East, preferring to see themselves as Western-oriented. More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they had a negative connotation of the term "Middle East," with less than 20 percent holding a positive view of the region.

It makes sense. After all, which would you choose: hang out with a region eking out a combined GDP less than Spain's, or hang out with Spain? Stick around countries that risk popular uprising when the oil runs out or the leader kicks the bucket, or keep close to the well-rooted democracies of the West?

That's what I thought.

Of course Israelis aspire to move closer to Europe and the United States. Some, like author Bernard Avishai, hope Israel will one day be incorporated into the European Union (a few human rights matters not withstanding).

But no matter how Western Israelis see themselves, they can't forget that no amount of modernization will remove them from their physical address, and that is squarely in the Middle East. As such, Israel can't simply write off its Arab neighbors. In the words of Israel's own Declaration of Independence, it must "do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."

The conflict between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world is not so much about religion, culture and land as it is about perception: perception of self, of the other and of history that then manifests itself through religion, culture and land. It doesn't help Israel's claim to its property here to constantly remind its neighbors that Israeli identity has more in common with the white West than the Arab East. Saying so makes the Arab argument for them: you don't belong here, you aren't from here, go back from whence you came (the parallel argument Jews make: You have all this space, we just want a minuscule strip of it).

And it further ostracizes Israel's Arab minority, underscoring their conflicted identity: living in the West, tied to the East. While the Arabs surveyed also, for the same no-brainer reasons, preferred integration with the West (though less of a majority thought so), their cultural affiliation was -- no surprise here -- with the larger Arab world.

I return to Square One. Israel needs to develop a common culture with which both Jews and Arabs can identify. Without a set of universal values and national objectives, Israel cannot survive as a viable political entity; it will crumble under the pressure of subnational forces. If mainstream (e.g. Jewish) Israeli society is running West, it invariably leaves in the dust 1.4 million citizens who have good reason to stay East.

Is Israel better than its region? No doubt. Would Israel be taking a step backwards if it turned East rather than West? Absolutely. But there comes a point where verifiable socioeconomic, technological and military-political superiority creeps into perceived ethnic superiority, and it's frustrating if you're of the group that comes out on the short end of that stick.

So it isn't just that Israel is Jewish while the region is not. It's that for Arabs, Israel is arrogant. A bunch of outsiders set up shop in my backyard and then pass us by to do business in that wealthy neighborhood on the other side of town ... Who do these people think they are?

As far as many Arabs are concerned, including some I work with, they aren't the ones who need to change. Israel needs to bend towards them. They're the majority, and in a democracy like Israel, majority rules.

A Multicultural 9/11

You might think being in a country that has suffered a million mini-9/11s on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks would make me especially cognizant of the day. To the contrary, I never felt more distanced from its gravity, and when I woke up Thursday morning I had to remind myself that it was indeed seven years since 19 terrorists gave the Bush administration an eight-year blank check to savage America to a degree the terrorists themselves never could have on their own.

Towards the end of the workday, when the eastern United States was just heading off to its workday, I watched a bit of the live coverage at Ground Zero -- after all this time, still largely a blank construction site -- on MSNBC.com. But otherwise, Sept. 11, 2008, was a completely normal day. I didn't mention it, and my Arab coworkers didn't ask.

Nor should they have. Too much has happened since then to feel sorry, politically and culturally, at least, for my country. The United States responded to 9/11 by launching a 9/11 of its own -- only many times magnified -- against the civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to say we intentionally target them as al Qaeda does us (we just torture), but with our money and in our name has been inflicted egregious and gruesome suffering, without redress or any hope of better days to come.

The more than 3,000 lives stolen on that crisp, blue-sky day seven years ago is forever searing. But to set aside a special moment to mourn them while condeming tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands -- maybe more -- to the unmarked mass grave of a Defense Department press briefing or a backpage story that nobody will read puts a value on human life that I am not prepared to honor.

If the post-9/11 era has taught us anything it's that there are a lot more of them than us. And by them, I don't mean terrorists, or even terrorists' sympathizers. I mean the two-thirds of humanity that sees Dec. 25 as simply the day before the 26 and after the 24, and nothing else. The five-sixths who don't live in Europe or North America, and another five-sixths who still lack Internet access.

Ironically, the more we try to hold onto our national identity, the more subnational and supernational forces pry us away from it. We can go to war unilaterally, but we can't make peace with ourselves; funny how hamstrung the most powerful country on earth can be, limited, in part, by its own exercise of power. The inevitible result of wanting to lead a world community we refuse to understand.

A country raised to believe in its exceptionalism too easily forgets we aren't always the best, brightest, smartest, fastest and winningest. I was reminded of this when I spent the evening of Sept. 11 -- and into the early hours of Sept. 12 -- with an eclectic group of Israelis, Britons, Macedonians, Greeks, Georigans and Slovenians, all of whom might take issue with me identifying them outright by their countries of origin.

The event was a screening of digital short stories sponsored by the British Council at Haifa's Cinematheque. Each of the storytellers, some university students, some older with children and careers, presented what they know best: themselves. The idea behind the project is to get relatively simple technology into the hands of those without access to it, quickly train them, and give them a chance to define themselves to the world. A much needed effort when the narratives of so many are so often controlled by someone else and someone else's agenda.

The common message was individualism. We are not what our passports, presidents and prime ministers say we are. We live in the space between the group, both breathing life into it and rebelling against it.

A peculiar message given the country we're in. Israel is nothing without fervent adherence to group ideology. It must be Jewish and nothing else, lest it be nothing at all.

But what of the Arabs, 1.4 million citizens to a state created for a nation to which they can't belong? What of the foreign labor, some 200,000 Thai, Philippino and others, who, rather than work and then go home, are settling down, speaking the language but are no closer to being Israeli?

To whom or what, with whom or what, do these people associate? What is their nationality? What is their identity? And what of Israel as a strictly defined state for Jews, in an era when definitions are anything but firm? Is Israel swimming against a current of change too strong for it to fight?

And Israel is just an extreme example of new, or renewed, identities bumping up against old ones. A few short stories told by people you wouldn't otherwise ever hear from reminds me of just how much knowledge and ambition is out there that goes completely unnoticed. The untapped wells of ideas proving humanity is far from thought-out, but that maybe these wells just need a little extra effort to reach.

I think of John Lennon's "Imagine," a song that, if realized, would probably look more like the dreadful grayness of the former Soviet Union than the rewarding utopia it promises. "Imagine" asks of us to abandon our differences so the "world will be as one," but whose one world would it be? I don't want to give up who I am to live in peace with someone else.

Lennon was coming from the right place but with the wrong response to the ills of his time, some of which are still the ills of our time. We shouldn't need to surrender our uniquenesses to create a more perfect global society. In fact, doing so would undermine our effort to progress, because it is where we come from that grants us the perspective to think differently and do creatively.

If you're looking for our common humanity, it is our differences, because our differences make us human. Maybe this, and not our regression to national enshrinement, should be foremost on our minds when Sept. 11 anniversaries roll around.

Vegetarians Need Not Attend

With so many holidays for so many religions -- and sects of religions -- crammed into tiny Israel, it's a wonder how the country's economy actually functions, let alone thrives, amid such distracting celebration.

Saturday marked one such observance, the Feast of the Cross, coming about half-way through the month-long fast of Ramadan, and about two weeks before the start of the Jewish High Holidays.

The Feast of the Cross is among the lesser-known Christian holidays, and I had never heard about it until Mossawa Center's deputy director invited me and the other intern to her family's get together in Shfar'am, an Arab city about a half-hour drive from Haifa.

Rest assured, like every other Christian holy day, this too pertains to Jesus's crucifixion (incredible that his disciples were able to fashion an entire religion out of a singular event; that's like Ron Paul being elected president for the sole purpose of dismantling the government he was voted to run).

In any event, the cliffnotes version of the significance of the Feast is that some 300 or so years after Jesus died for our sins, Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine I, was on holiday in Jerusalem, and stopped for a falafel on her way from picking up a "Don't Worry America, Israel is Right Behind You," tee shirt that her son, the emporer of Rome, had asked her to get for him. It was while burrowing into the overstuffed pita that Saint Helena, distracted by the humus on her nose, stumbled across the genuine, bona fide True Cross. EBay hadn't been invented yet, so she did the next best thing, and commissioned a church to be built around the site of the cross -- the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Feast of the Cross isn't as popular as, say, Easter for a number of reasons. Partly it's because the Feast isn't celebrated on the same day by everyone. In fact, it can fall on as many as six set days during the year, and for some, the day jumps around. Some denominations just roll the Feast into other occasions (see: Good Friday, section 16F, subsection R2-39, header 8A, point 12), and when it is celebrated on its own, this time of year most Americans are already gearing up for Halloween; they can't be distracted with piety.

Most of all, of course, unlike Easter's giant pink bunny, no mascot easily comes to mind to associate with the Feast of the Cross. How do you expect to properly market a religious observance without a cuddly animal?

It's a shame, though, because the Feast of the Cross is a lot of fun. Food, family and fireworks -- you can't beat it. And I don't mean a professionally designed, officially sanctioned fireworks spectacular; no, I mean you and your friend Jimmy head down to the Defense Department's tag sale (no joke, they have them), and come home with a surplus of Stingers, left over from the days when al Qaeda was on our side. Then you climb up to your roof and fire them off without any supervision whatsoever. By the end of the night, the whole neighborhood is shrouded in an acrid gray haze, and partially burned to the ground.

But the incessant pops and bangs, and sparkles in the sky, get old after awhile. The main event is the food, of which there is a lot and you will eat all of it. Beef kebabs, lamb kebabs, kidneys, chicken, pork ribs, lamb ribs, meat-filled pastries. ... What I'm saying is there is a lot of meat, all of which is delicious and none of which is kosher, and this puts me in something of an ethical quandary.

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Growing up, the family rule was kosher in the house, not kosher out of the house, with a two-hour gap between the consumption of meat and dairy. For me that meant mostly avoiding meat when out to eat, except on those occasions when a meat dish appeared particularly interesting. I never, however, crossed the never-kosher threshold that divides kosher-possible meats (chicken or beef) with those that can't be kosher even if Moses himself blessed it (pork or shellfish). Further, I always held fast to the dairy/meat rule, firmly believing in the ethical premise behind "thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk" (Deut. 14:21, among other verses).

It wasn't until college that I decided it was silly, and a touch hypocritical, to apply different kosher policies to different locations. So I cut non-kosher meat completely out of my diet (save for whatever vestiges of pepperoni remained on the pan on which my cheese pizza was baked). As an aside, I have always been comfortable with halal-slaughtered meat, as part of my cultural statement against Jewish-Muslim division (not to mention the rules are pretty much the same).

Rules, of course, always have exceptions, and mine are based on the fact that I don't keep kosher for religious reasons, by which I mean, I really don't think God -- whatever God is -- cares what we humans eat, with what forks we eat and for how much time we wait between flesh and ice cream (and this assumes God even has the capacity to care about earthly doings, something I sincerely doubt).

Rather, I keep kosher for two reasons. The first is that it is the most obvious identifier of my most obvious identity: Jewishness. Second, life is a balance between responsibility and recklessness. Too much of either begets either regret on one end, or gluttony on the other, and kashrut laws -- like all aspects of religion, just a symbol -- represent the former.

In keeping kosher, I make the statement that even though I have the power -- as a member of the species at the very top of the food chain -- to devour any other creature I care to, I will not as a sign of humility and restraint.

But there are times when the recklessness of a new experience must balance out the responsibility of adhering to principle. Which returns me to the dinner table in Shfar'am.

Contrary to popular belief, all is not kosher in Israel, and you can get your fair share of pork, shrimp and cheeseburgers (and on Shabbat, no less). But it's Israel, an innately kosher country, and so many Jews come here and let down their guard; they're already in Holy Land, after all, what more do you want? I must admit to finding myself in thie category.

There's a practical aspect, as well, and that is I just spent six paragraphs explaining the summarized version of what kosher means to me. Imagine trying to get all that out on the fly; it would be the longest answer to, "You want a burger?" in the history of long answers.

Moreover, pulling the kosher card, especially in the heavily Arab environment I'm in, risks ostricization. The fact is, you don't just say no to meat once, lest you appear hypocritical or be forced to try to explain the aforementioned philosophy. And with food serving as such an important means of communication in Arab culture (like so many cultures), you have to ask yourself whether it's more important to stick with something just for the sake of sticking with it, or to not stand on ceremony in an effort to reach out and relate to others unlike yourself. You can't do that if you're not eating with them.

And how kosher is kosher, really? Kosher meat is supposed to be better meat, but when its largest supplier in the United States is busted for horrific animal and worker conditions (does Yom Kippur cover 9,000 counts of child labor violations?), my symbol of responsibility in fact comes off as quite reckless. It may be that today's organic, naturally fed, free-range, environmentally benign meat is as or more kosher than what is prescribed in the Torah.

At the Feast, I drew the line at the pork ribs, which don't require a novel to explain to non-Jews why I can't eat them. Jews, like Muslims, don't eat pork, period.

I questioned that too, of course, because in a night during which I did away with everything else (meat and dairy separation becomes impossible when nearly everything is mixed with yogurt or feta cheese), is there any point to saying no to a particular non-kosher meat? Kosher is kosher, after all, and not kosher, whether a steak or a ham, is not kosher; there is no gray in religion.

Audio Slideshow: The Feast of the Cross

SHFAR'AM, Israel -- For many Christian Arabs living in Israel, Sept. 13 marks a celebration commemorating the discovery of the Crucifix some 1,700 years ago.

Also, watch the video on the Multiple Reality Disorder blog.

Reality Bites

The Republicans have returned to their roots. Not of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, as their convention rhetoric liked to indicate (and who'd probably both be democrats in today's political environment), but of the Reality Rearrangers. Those who, for almost 30 years, have marginalized facts in favor of their own intentionally divorced misunderstanding of the universe. The producer, pusher, enabler and addict all in one.

We had come so close. After the non-response to Katrina, a fantastically flawed freedom-fighting foray in Iraq, torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, partisan hiring and firing at the Justice Department, and the small government, deregulation obsessed, free-to-the-point-of-anarchy market regime that brought poisoned toys from China and economic peril from subprime lending, a country that so stupidly, eagerly and for so long sat contently idle inside the cave at last began stepping out into the harsh light of reality.

The days of semantical whitewashing were over ... over, that is, until the Republican National Convention. Last week, the people who brought us new meaning to such grandious ideas as democracy, freedom and victory gave us further meaning to change, prosperity and national purpose. They reminded us that they are still firmly in control of both party and national narrative (which are, of course, one in the same).

I'm not talking about mere spin here. Spin is something all politicians everywhere engage in to try to convince enough people that their version of the facts is the correct version. But the facts on which the various spins are based is fundamentally the same; everyone is still playing the same game. These guys, by contrast, left the stadium long ago and have been playing ball down the street ever since.

Judith Warner had an excellent column in The New York Times this week spelling out just how frightening the world according to the reengineered John McCain and right-wing Sarah Palin is. It is a world were real is fake and fake is real, intelligence is arrogance and ignorance is humility, and everyone is a complete idiot but nonetheless perfectly capable of (and entitled to, goddamn it!) independent decisionmaking.

It's not just the blatant hypocrisy of having an unwed, knocked-up teenage daughter while you have blasted safe-sex education and the degradation of "family values" as the causes of teenage pregnancy. It's the how-do-you-sleep-at-night hypocrisy of using your Down Syndrome newborn as a prop to claim you will be a "friend" to all families with special-needs children, then vilify big government programs, paid for with -- what else? -- taxes, that care for those very people -- programs that you, like the Bush administration before you, would cut to have enough money for the biggest government program of all, Iraq.

It's the chutzpah of bragging about keeping taxes low and demonizing "wasteful" federal spending, when the reason you can claim the former is because of the latter. Alaska received the most amount of federal funding after Wyoming in 2006, gobbling up more than $3,500 per capita, according to the Census Bureau; the next highest, Mississippi, was allocated less than $2,500 (the national average was about $1,300). Not as ruggedly independent as you might like to claim.

It's the insanity, a la Mitt Romney, of having us believe that everything is fine with America, and if it isn't it's because of those god-awful, do-nothing liberals who have been running the show all these years. Who put them in charge, anyway?

It's the mocking of Barack Obama's service as a community organizer, then dedicating your convention's theme to community service. It's accusing him of being out of touch with "real" Americans when the only thing that's out of touch is your wife, who, with her entirely-too-vogue outfits, looks like she just stepped out of Blade Runner.

Are John McCain and Sarah Palin kidding?

Unfortunately, they are quite serious, and if McCain's acceptance speech was any indication, his change in tune is actually just a George W. Bush remix. For more on that, definitely check out Friday's brilliant Daily Show.

The disquietude that has settled in around me since the GOP Convention is not with the hijacking of narrative -- entrenched partisans can tell themselves whatever fairytale they want -- but whether enough Americans will go along with it while the rest of us scream common sense into a black hole.

The William Elites -- Safire and Kristol -- have (really, New York Times, William Kristol? Are you that desperate to prove you aren't a bunch of communist conspirators?), and the rest of us normal folks have proven no better during the last two presidential elections. Will we make it a hat trick for a corrupt, status quo, self-serving, power-hungry, fear-mongering, Ugly American republican party?

My challenge to my country is not just to elect Barack Obama the next president, but to elect Barack Obama the next president in a landslide. Enough of the 50-50, I want Reagan-'84 in reverse. I want America, in a single voice we haven't heard from much lately, to express a clear repudiation of the last eight years. A collective mea culpa. An acknowledgment of our wrongs, our failures and our shortcomings, combined with a desire to try to do things differently and to make things better.

In a sense, Obama is right. His campaign and this election isn't about him, it's about us. It's about our chance to redeem ourselves from the depths of ignorance and hubris, and give the next president a clear mandate for real change.

A Taste of Haifa: My New Surroundings

The long awaited (all six days) tour of my room and what's around it.

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Misadventures on the Autobus

Today I spent nearly 90 minutes on the 37א -- the "Druze" bus, so called because it goes from Haifa to Isofiya and Dalyat al-Carmel, both well-known Druze villages. Why? To spend 10 minutes buying olive oil.

Not just any olive oil, of course, but Druze olive oil, so fresh the health department couldn't regulate it if they tried. Not only is it delicious (you know so because of the re-used Coke and juice bottles they put it into) but you can get it in huge quantities for much less than the brand-name EVO at brand-name places (you know, like a grocery store). I got three liters of the thick, green stuff for 70 shekels, and now I don't have to get more until the next harvest of olives.

On my way there, the packed bus of Arab high school students and old Druze women again learned the lesson of the unexpected.

Around the fifth hour of the 15-hour ride, a pretty young Sabra of a woman, about my age, got on, and took her place in the seat-free area opposite the rear doors. She stayed there, leaning against the window, minding her business, looking like everyone else just waiting to reach their destination.

I was sitting in the first set of seats adjacent the rear doors, which put me just about directly across from her, nearly close enough to talk to.

I blinked, and she was on the floor. Suddenly, without warning or commotion, this perfectly normal-seeming young woman collapsed right there in front of me; not just fell down in one place, but fell across the bus, from her side to my side, like a tree cut down by loggers.

At first I thought epilepsy. But when I peered through the glass divider, I saw her on the floor, in a fetal position, completely still. A crowd formed around her and, about 10 seconds later, she sat up with a jolt, looking dazed in my direction. That's when I figured it was dehydration.

She fell so quickly nobody could catch her, not even herself. Her face took the blow, giving her several contusions and a bloody gash that looked like a second eyebrow.

Everyone within arms-length lended a hand. There were shouts in Hebrew and Arabic, to one another and to the bus driver. An elderly Druze woman, wrapped in a traditional white shawl, took charge. The Jewish woman sitting next to me plunged frantically into her cavernous hand bag for tissues and water. The adolsecent Arab boys crowded around, especially eager to play hero to the fair maiden in distress.

Around the point the injured woman began crying and shaking from embarrassment, I decided the best thing I could do was just stay out of the way and not stare. There were enough cooks in the kitchen.

About five minutes later, tissues to head, she got off the bus for the nearest hospital. And that was that. I suppose given the country I'm in, there are worse things that could happen on a bus.

Welcome to Israel! Be Prepared to Be Searched and Questioned

Yes, I am here, and quite easily, too. I got through passport control Friday morning faster than did the Israelis on the flight. Of course, I had to lie (er, withhold the full truth) for my reason for coming to Israel. I couldn't say: "I'm here to work for an Arab organization that may or may not want to disassemble Israel as a Jewish state." Instead, I told the tired border agent (it was nearing 1 a.m.) I was here to see friends. What friends, you ask? JEWISH friends! Bernstein, Epstein, Goldberg, Iceberg. ... The line between truth and accuracy grows duller still.

Coming back to Haifa has been so, well, normal ... and incredible, and incredible because it's been so normal -- and Israel is anything but normal. Either Haifa stopped the day I left in June, or the eight weeks I spent at home was merely a dream I had one night in between.

This is the first time I've ever returned to place for a long-term stay so soon (or ever) after a previous long-term stay in the same place. The result has been the complete absence of an adjustment period. I've fallen right into Haifa's groove: I know where to shop, I know where to eat, I know how to go; I know how to find quiet, I know how to find noise.

I recognize people. The bus drivers -- there's the Arab guy, the fat guy, the Orthodox guy, the funny guy, the young guy; today I saw on the bus the elderly Druze woman who sells pita on Saturdays near the university, a woman from whom we bought eagerly on many occasions.

It's the small things. Galgalatz Radio (and its caught-in-my-head jingle: "Gal-Gal-Gal-Galgalatz"); my wallet weighed down with about 15 tons of useless 10-agarot pieces; the view of Haifa and then some (too hazy nowadays to see to Lebanon) when riding up or down the mountain, a panorama I'm so used but never take for granted; and standing at a Supersol check-out line while an old Russian woman in front of you questions the cost of every item the cashier scans.

Also, my Hebrew -- relative to where it was the last time I showed up in Haifa -- is excellent. I can get around fairly well, to the point where I can communicate smoothly so long as everything goes as planned. When the dialogue I have practiced goes off track, say because the cashier won't take my credit card, or I have to navigate a store's return policy, I'm in for trouble.

I love Haifa because it goes about its business every day without asking for anything, least of all to be recognized as a beautiful and dynamic city. It is so diverse, and I don't mean just between Arab and Jew, but between young and old, religious and secular, families and singles, students and retirees, rich and poor. Ever since my first encounter with Haifa in January I have been trying to gauge who makes up the majority in this city, and looking around the streets and the buses, I've concluded that there isn't a majority of anything.

Haifa itself is two cities in one. North of Hadar and, more precisely, north of Carmel Center, Haifa is slower, wealthier, trendier, more comfortable, more adherent to the Israeli narrative. Points south are the opposite: busy, bustling, noisy, congested, cramped, the direct recipient of the chemical plant's pollution from across the port.

In a way, my time here in Haifa is the inverse of my last time. At the universty, I lived in upper Haifa and only visited lower Haifa. Now adjacent to Wadi Nisnas, the Arab neighborhood best known for its artwork and shuk, I am living in lower Haifa and will be lucky to flee to upper.

Not that the living is all that bad down here. The building I'll be living and working in for the next half-year is old, by which I mean beautiful architecture and certainly not up to fire code. The office looks like any office -- desks, computers and fluorescent lights -- while upstairs is a fairly well-maintained set of dorms (except for the guys' bathroom, which has some plumbing issues).

Thanks to my need to settle in and my borderline-ADD penchant for figuring stuff out, I have become quite the handyman. Last night, for example, in the middle of organizing some random part of my room (which was probably a distraction from something else I had just been doing), I decided to take a whack at the non-functioning wall-mounted lamp that's above my bed (which is now a double bed, having taken the liberty of pulling in one that wasn't being used to put next to the one that was here to begin with).

I have two wall-mounted lamps, in addition to an overhead flourescent light, but the other is behind a wardrobe -- quite useless -- thus making the only one I have access to the one that did not work when I screwed in a lightbulb. Without cause, I decided that it could indeed work and, with only the most basic knowledge of electricity, I went about getting behind the lamp to take a look at the wires.

After some fiddling, I zeroed in on the problem: the wiring was fine, but the switch was not. I fiddled some more and, voila!, let there be light.

With the wind at my back, I decided to take on a more daunting challenge: the kitchen. I'm told the other guys on the floor (the girls have their own area) don't cook, using the kitchen to, at most, heat up their mothers' leftovers. As a result, the last time the fridge was cleaned out was ... what do you mean clean the fridge?

It didn't take too long because there wasn't all that much stuff in there, but what was there was still quite an adventure. Mostly unrecognizable, except for the milk, which was from April.

Only after making that fridge shine (and the cupborad, too) did I realize it doesn't work all that well. Even with the temperature settings up all the way, nothing really gets cold.

Lo and behold, the following day I found another refridgerator standing unplugged next to the current one. Apparently, someone else had come to the same conclusion as I. Problem: the replacement has no shelves and a broken door. The current one has shelves and a perfect door.

Problem, meet solution (and thank you Eli Whiteney for interchangeable parts): refridgerator door transplant.

I asked around for some tools ("What do you need a wrench for?") and went to work. Who knew taking off a refridgerator door would be so easy? In about 15 minutes the doors were swapped, and I was feeling quite proud of myself. Until, that is, I plugged in the new fridge and broke it. Apparently, plugging in the appliance with the temperature dials dialed up is bad news for the circuitry.

So the doors went back (an inefficient fridge is better than one that doesn't work at all). And just as I was about to finish putting in the last nut into the old door on the old fridge, the new fridge with the newly re-replaced new doors came to life.

Now I didn't know what to do, and decided that before I went through the hassle of switching the doors yet again, I would leave everything as is and make sure the new fridge got cold enough to warrant giving it the old, but better, doors.

You'd think I didn't come here for a reason. Well, of course I did, and that reason starts tomorrow. But as you can see, I'm very good at biding my time.

When Nature Calls

If there's anything more the media likes than a horse race, it's a storm chase, and they are wetting themselves at the chance to tie the two together. To review the agenda-setting hierarchy: Obama nomination acceptance speech trumps, well, everything; McCain VP pick trumps Obama nomination acceptance speech; Hurricane Gustav trumps McCain VP pick.

And, for all parties involved, the first storm of the season to strike the mainland U.S. could not have come at a better time. For anniversary-obsessed news organizations, Hurricane Gustav bears down on New Orleans just about three years to the day since Hurricane Katrina laid waste to both the Big Easy and the American government's facade of post-9/11 readyness. There is ample opportunity to question FEMA, and to wonder: Where is Michael Brown when you need him (maybe he will ride to the rescue on his Arabian stallion)?

For the Bush administration, this is their chance to shine. Hobbled by eight years of failing at everything, if they spin the nation's last crisis on their watch in their favor, Bush can leave office in January with all else forgiven -- Americans' collective memory is indeed that short. And looks like odds are in their favor. Not only has Gustav, a category 2 storm, spared New Orleans a direct hit, but Katrina, quite nearly a category 4, was a once-in-a-century monstrosity, the destructive effects of which are difficult to replicate. But the American people won't be thinking so deeply when pummeled by hours and hours of images on the 24-hour news channels of FEMA doing what they're supposed to.

Finally, for the candidates, at first it looked like Gustav would be a washout. But when life gives you lemons ... (make hurricane-ade?). The GOP decided, and McCain announced, that they would show their solidarity and lend their support to the millions fleeing Gustav's wrath by ... not showing up for work?

Yes, in classic republican style, when disaster strikes, go on vacation! McCain's order, made well ahead of Gustav's landfall, to shift from a week of well-rehearsed theater to "essential business" only, combines his party's knack for preemptive action with its bold call for Americans to do their patriotic duty and shop.

At first glance, it seems appropriate and oddly proactive. The message made sense: We're not going to have a party in Minneapolis when there is flooding in New Orleans. But how exactly does a less ostentatious gathering actually help? Do fewer partisan pontificators make the levees stronger?

Perhaps the move was to let the RNC Chairman off the hook in having to tell his boss -- the guy running the country and the party -- that he is a political pariah. ("No, no, Mr. President, we would love to have you come to Minneapolis to bolster the future success of the party that you have so diligently fostered in your eights years in office. We just think, for your own sake, it would look bad. You know, the storm and all. We're looking out for you. Are we still on for Christmas in Crawford?")

Obama's response, phony in its own right, at least could result in some substantive relief. The democratic nominee said his campaign would, through mass email, encourage their network of millions to contribute time, money and effort to deal with whatever Gustav leaves in its wake. Watch out South: The Union is coming again!

Either way, like Russia's invasion of Georgia a few weeks ago, Hurricane Gustav gives both Oval Office hopefuls the exciting chance to play president: Visit with those affected (don't forget to pack the teardrops), coordinate policy, criticize the actual president from the backseat and, most presidential of all, organize press conferences to deliver powerful messages of hope and better times to come ... all without actually having to do anything.

It's too soon to tell which contender will come out on top. But whomever does, I think a certain hurricane is going to want Homeland Security chief as a small gesture of appreciation.

Addendum: Abstinence Education Works!

Will vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's pregnant 17-year-old daughter get an, uh-oh, abortion? If not, will she have access to the pre- and post-natal care, child care, maternity leave, health insurance and other family-value-oriented assistance a young mother needs to raise her child right and possibly alone, the kind of assistance that only Big Government can provide?

More to the point, what will she name the newborn, and how ever will it stand up to a name like Trig Paxson Van Palin? This teenage mother-to-be has her work cut out for her: What to do with a baby and who to vote for in November.