Red Tape

If you went to Israel on vacation, depending on your age and personality you'd get different things out of your trip. You don't even have to be Jewish, religious, or Arab; Israel is just a great place to visit. Of course, I'm biased, but if you go there to party or to sight see or to get in touch with God or just hang out on the beach, you will likely be very satisfied. That being said, you would probably be pretty oblivious to what it's like to live in Israel, on a day-to-day basis. Things are simply done differently there. A family friend of mine here in America put it well: she would hold up one finger on each hand, and hold her hands apart from each other. She would say that when Israelis want to get from one point to another, instead of going like this she'd say, moving one hand in a straight line to the other hand, they would go like this and then she would let her hand spasm and zig zag out of control for a few seconds until it reached the other hand. She's right, too.

Obviously, there aren't nearly as many Israelis as there are Americans, but if you put every single Israeli into, let's say, New York City, the entire city would collapse. The American bureaucracy system is probably better and more efficient than Israel's, but that's because Israel's bureaucracy has a serious handicap: it has to deal with Israelis. If you put all the Israelis in NYC, applying for citizenship and drivers licenses and jobs, NYC would crumble. I have no doubt it my mind. Israelis look at paper work and other such trifles as just that-trifles. Things that they do because they have to but they are a principled people and if they think they are getting jerked around, they won't go silently into the night. Americans are like this too, but they generally resort to yelling and being obnoxious. Israelis get like this too, but they get sneaky and scrappy, they will bend the truth as much as possible and plead their case until you meet them at least halfway. And God help if you are actually in the wrong. They will go through endless paperwork and hassle just on principal to get exactly what they want, to the point where it's not even worth it anymore.

Let me give you two examples from when my dad was living in the US. I use my dad as an example because he typifies Israelis. Go watch You Don't Mess With The Zohan. He fits into almost every joke about Israelis in that movie.

The first story was when my dad got pulled over by a cop on the highway. The cop informs him that was clocked doing 85 in a 65. "Really?" my dad says innocently, "because my speedometer only goes up to 80." The cop, confused, looked at the dashboard and saw that the speedometer, did, indeed, only go up to 80 MPH.

"Fine," the cop said. "I'll write a ticket for 80 MPH instead." Now, here it is. The crucial moment where Israelis are different --not better or worse, just different -- from Americans.

"No, that's fine, write a ticket for 85," my dad said.

Now the cop was baffled. "What? No I'll just write a ticket for 80."

"No," my did insisted, "write it for 85." The cop gave in and wrote a ticket for 85.

On the court date, my dad plead not guilty. The judge asked him if he had any evidence to prove his case. He calmly pulls out a photograph of his car's speedometer and whatever else he needs to prove that the picture is of his car. The judge looked at everything and quickly came to a ruling.

Not guilty.

Another time he was doing 120 MPH on the freeway, late to the airport. In his defense, he says this is the only time he ever did something that reckless. Anyway, a cop sees him whipping it down the highway and pulls him over. My dad explains this next part confusingly, but he says that he saw the cop and knew that there was no way the cop could have clocked him because of the angle the cop was at. Basically, the cop hadn't set up a speed trap or anything and because of the direction he was facing when my dad passed him, couldn't have pointed his gun at the car before my dad slowed down.

The cop pulled him over, understandably furious. "Do you know how fast you were going??" he asked.

"Of course I know how fast I was going," my dad said calmly. "I was going 65."

The cop gets even more angry and a back in forth goes on for a few minutes and my dad does let up one inch. Eventually the cop writes him a ticket for going 120 MPH.

My dad, once again, pleaded not guilty in court. The judge asks on what grounds. "Simple," he replies. "I was only going 65 MPH."

The judge asks the officer, "do you have any proof he was going 120 MPH?"

My dad had guessed right, the cop wasn't able to clock him. His entire case was basically that he saw my dad going so fast that he should be lucky to get a ticket for 120.

"Not guilty," the judge announces, and that was that.

Afterwards, the cop goes up to my dad in the courtroom. "Where you from?" he asks him.

"Israel," my dad replied.

The cop stuck his nose up and scoffed. "Figures," he said, and then he walked away.

That poor cop. He didn't know what he was up against.