Before my move to spend a year in Tel Aviv, I was pretty much ignorant of the complicated political situation that has over-shadowed Israeli life since its birth in 1948.
I had never attended a Jewish school or read up on Jewish history and my family were never ones to openly discuss the problems threatening their relatives across the seas. From my safe, suburban North London bubble, Israel had for the most part remained the beautiful palm-treed beach-land where we had holidayed many a time and I was determined to leave behind my life of relative luxury to experience it.
This ignorance stayed with me throughout my first six months here. As I lounged in the summer sun, strolled through the bustling markets, worked in various cafes and restaurants, partied in open-topped sea-front bars and generally exhausted myself, I felt more alive than ever. The ‘danger’ that many of my friends back home had flapped about felt as unapparent as clouds in the clear blue sky. But the more I fell in love with Israel, the more I wanted to know about it and the history of my roots. I bought books, read-up on the Internet and asked questions for the first time, and began to realise just how incredible the Israeli nation and its people are, sixty years on from its birth.
I was largely unaware of the extent of terror that the Israelis have had to live alongside. While I had been happily hopping onto buses, frequenting malls, sitting in cafes and attending large public concerts and shows, the people around me had witnessed either first hand or on the news, suicide bombers blow these same places and the people inside them to bits. Tel Aviv however, has not become a ghost city and remains as full of activity and chatter as any part of London, if not more. Israelis also live within the target region of what some call the ‘New Missile Middle East’ (Rosenthal, The Israelis, p.22), with Hezbollah’s development of short-range missiles able to reach a northern third of Israel and Iraq and Iran screaming out for its annihilation. Yet they refuse to altar their daily routine through fear, going about their daily lives with even more ‘chutzpah’ than before. It’s no wonder that cars routinely park where they shouldn’t and smokers ignore restrictions in bars and restaurants. Life is too short to be taken too seriously out here.
A country is its people and with everything that plagues them, the Israelis put on a brave face and live life to the full. They are infectiously vibrant and Tel Aviv continues to flourish with a growing number of tourists, not forgetting the thousands of Jews that make aliya each year. It is certainly relevant that the logo chosen for Israel’s 60th anniversary expresses the struggles experienced in the past 60 years, but also ‘movement of upward flight and growth’ (stated by the PR firm that created it). Israel and its people have marched forward past its traumas back into the normality that everyone here dreams will stay for good.
