Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv skyline This past April, Melinda and I went to Tel Aviv. It was her first visit, and my first since I was a teenager, which means that to a large extent I was getting to know the city freshly, too.
Israel is a difficult place for me. Partly because of things I inherently dislike about it, but more because of the incredible pressure of what I'm supposed to feel when I go there, and even more because that "supposed to" is so intense that I can't talk about the place without making someone angry. I've avoided going there deliberately, in large part as a lame cop-out from confronting this stuff, and I must admit I'm having a hard time writing about it now, so please go easy on me.
The pressure on one side is because I am a Jew. A proportion of the other Jews in my life are ardent Zionists, which is fine in itself, but they have a hard time accepting that I can be a Jew and not automatically agree with them on this issue, which is very emotionally important to them. Not only is there a political disagreement here that's hard to have a constructive conversation about-enough so that there's at least one long-term project to civilise the dialogue-but there's also an intense expectation that because I am a Jew I will feel a particular way when I set foot in Israel. It's supposed to feel like "coming home" and being "among my people", and for me it simply doesn't. The places I have that kind of feeling about are London & Brighton, because they made me, and İstanbul, because while it didn't directly shape me (I was 2 when my family moved away), it's been a very clear part of my cultural context. Israel just doesn't have that significance for me, but the expectation that it will is so strong that I end up feeling guilty about it.
The other side of the pressure is from people whose politics are a lot closer to mine, but overreach in one way or another. I have serious issues with the whole Zionist project, because it has caused the displacement of a large number of people who did nothing to deserve it and suffer terribly. I wish that instead the Jews of the 1940s had focussed on making the United States, which is still by far the safest country to be a Jew in, into a better safe haven by opening immigration policy and improving race relations here. I think that would have been a safer response to the horrors of the Holocaust, and would have caused no additional suffering along the way - arguably truer to the inspiring Utopianism that is evident in a lot of the better things about Israel, too. So I agree with many of the people who protest against Israel's repression of the Palestinians. But most of them protest against Israel's very existence, and while I wish I could change history, it's wrong to ignore the few million 2nd, 3rd & 4th generation Jewish Israelis, who bear no responsibility for the founding of their country, and have done no more to deserve their plight than the Palestinians have. And all of that is neither here nor there when protests spill over into anti-Semitism, as happens lamentably often.
So I feel pressure on both sides. From people who I disagree with but love, who have a hard time understanding that going to Israel doesn't feel like a joyous homecoming for me, and from people who I agree with more but find frustrating, who feel that one simply shouldn't visit Israel unless it's on some kind of Palestinian solidarity mission. And in my heart of hearts I don't know if Israel should be boycotted, because of the terrible things the country has done and is still doing, or not boycotted, because to boycott it punishes many innocent people. For years I have dealt with this by avoidance as far as I possibly could: not only avoiding visiting, but doing my best to avoid discussing the place at all, which is of course impossible in a Jewish family, but I've tried.
Given all that, why did I suddenly go? Well, my grandma lives there, and as she ages it's becoming less and less reasonable to ask her to come and meet me in London or Bodrum, so it was time to accept this and go to her instead. There are times when family simply trumps everything, and that is the one statement in this whole post that I am not willing to accept any argument about.
Because of other time constraints, we were only able to spend a few days in Israel altogether, and because the easiest time for my grandma to be with us was the middle of the day we never left Tel Aviv. I have no regrets about the latter, because I did really enjoy walking around that city. In a lot of ways it was a pleasant surprise, because what I remember from my last visit to Israel was that the landscapes were beautiful, and old Jerusalem was amazing in a similar way to old İstanbul, but the modern urban areas hadn't interested me at all. In the years since I've become much more interested in modern cities, and learned to understand them much better.
There's actually a lot that New World cities could learn from Tel Aviv (which is much like a New World city because so much of it was built in the past century). It's dense, but built on a very human scale. The Bauhaus buildings set the tone for that, and newer development tends to be respectful of that legacy. It has its fair share of taller buildings, but I couldn't find any urban canyons where the aggregation of skyscrapers felt overpowering, blocked out the sun or created a wind tunnel, as seems to happen somewhere in every dense US city. It's bursting with flowers, public art and interesting graffiti, and has a lot of quality public space along with miles of beach and a system of boulevards that add to the greenness of the city and make it feel spacious even with its density. And along with wonderful food, there's a great outdoor cafe, bar and dining culture.
There are negatives too. One evening we wandered off the tourist trail in Yafo and found ourselves in an area more reminiscent of East Cleveland than the delightful places we spent the rest of our stay in (no photos because I felt uncomfortable bringing the camera out there) - a wrenching reminder that this Utopia is built on the suffering of a group of people. And then there's the issue of water: while modern Israel has achieved some incredible things with irrigation, the price of making the desert bloom has been to essentially mine water from aquifers that are not being recharged, and if nothing changes all those beautiful flowers and delicious fresh fruit will have to go eventually.
I can't ignore or forget those two things when I go to Israel. But it's no longer tenable for me not to go, and when I do I refuse to let the dark clouds blind me to the likeable things there and stop me from enjoying a visit. And, of course, taking plenty of photos.