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Culture Shock of the Political Kind

Of the many culture shocks an American may experience in Israel, one of the biggest is the working of its democracy.The aliyah salespeople will carry on about Israelis and their opinions but that does not translate into a democracy. Russians are opinionated too and they suffered dictatorship under the Soviets for 70 years. As I mentioned in prior posts, Israelis do not elect their leader. They vote for parties, who gather in back rooms and form coalitions to pick a leader. There's so much power play and muscling others that one is reminded of the mafia. You wind up with a PM that likely wouldn't have received 25% of the vote. Remind you of anything?

The court system operates without a constitution and without much precedent, so the Supreme Court makes it up as they go. Lower court judges are picked by panels that consist mostly of other judges. And the military and Israeli cabinet don't listen to them as they should. The court supposedly banned torture around 1997, so how now is the ISA torturing Jewish teenagers with the cabinet's consent?

The press is not the press you know. They don't strive for the same objectivity that you are used to. You hear the words rightest or leftest on every page. They convict without a trial. There's so much bombast it's frightening when it's not boring.

Civil rights are minimal here. You are thinking, a country of Jews must be so humane. Well, it isn't. The military does what it wants. The police do what they want, when they do anything. Everything somehow becomes justified in a state of war which this government tries endlessly to be.

One can get paranoid in Israel worrying about all the spying and torture and assassinations. You hand out your ID # everywhere you go, including to your internet provider.

Live in Israel a while and you'll be full with gratitude that you ever had 10 minutes in America.




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