Shit Israelis (And I) Say

Topics!

-Israeli Political Debate
-Overheard in Tel Aviv
-That time I was robbed
-Hebrew improvement


Debate!

So I attended a big political debate for internationals here in Tel Aviv. Rivka told me that only Americans would go to such a thing, that political debates are not Israeli. Well, in that case, I think it's clever for candidates to engage in something for a specific voter base.  Plus, olim (immigrants) can vote in Israel AND in some other country (often the US...) so you get double influence if you speak to us.

These were the representatives:

Tzachi Hanegbi - Likud (Right wing, current ruling party), he couldn't make it, which is too bad

Hilik Bar - Avoda/Labor (Center Left)

Michael Oren - Kulanu (Center)

Tamar Zandberg - Meretz (Far Left)

Ayelet Shaked - Bayit Yehudi (Far Right)

Yaakov Peri - Yesh Atid (Center Right)

Here are some of the more notable quotes from the evening...

Bar (Labor) - He suggested that a two state solution is the only true Zionist solution, because otherwise we either annex the West Bank and give those Arabs voting rights and lose the Jewish majority and the Jewish state, or we annex the West Bank and don't give them voting rights and lose Israeli's status as a democracy.  "I suggest a two state solution, which is a respectful divorce from the Palestinians rather than the Catholic marriage that other parties want."

Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) - "No parties are talking about peace. We need to acknowledge that a peace agreement is not going to happen, so what do we do in this situation? In the Gaza disengagement, the left wing parties spoke about trade agreements with the Palestinians and vacation villages, and the right talked about tunnels and missiles and look - we have only tunnels and missiles." She suggested we annex area C of the West Bank and give the Arab minority there full citizenship.

Michael Oren (Kulanu) - "In the West Bank, Palestinians have something to lose, life is relatively good for them there, which is why they don't rebel. Gazans have nothing to lose, so they revolt. W need to try to improve their daily life without strengthening Hamas."

Bar (Labor) - "What are you so afraid of, Ayelet? The two state solution would result in a demilitarized Palestine, and even if they go back on that promise, then we will have the legitimacy in the world, as a state acting upon another hostile state, to give them the biggest punch in the face!" (quote!)

Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) - "That's not the case! There will still be a civilian population there, we can't just smash them. We should move out and then let ISIS take over and THEN fight them? NO THANKS!"

Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) - "Can we blame the rest of the world, who loves us, for trying to help us change our unfair policies?"

Shaked - "We shouldn't try to be loved. We should try to be right, and explain how we are, and not give up the right in order to be loved."

Zandberg - "We shouldn't explain our bad policies we should fix them."

Shaked - "I live in the Middle East, I don't live in a dream. With states crumbling into Jihad all around us, I'm not crazy enough to give one centimeter of land to the Arabs!"

Bar - "Someone who doesn't believe in peace is not a true Zionist. There must be hope."

Oren - "We're going to need a 'Diplomatic Iron Dome.'

Bar - "There are those Arabs who want to live next to us... Jordan, Egypt... and those like ISIS who want to live here instead of us, and with them we will speak only through our very brave soldiers."

Then they each talked about their major domestic points:

Bayit Yehudi - More competition in banks, lower cost of living

Kulanu - More LGBT rights, lower cost of living, break banking/import/land distribution monopolies

Yesh Atid - More LGBT rights (Zandberg interjected that despite claiming this, Yesh Atid voted against them...), deal with corruption, lower cost of living, better welfare/healthcare situation

Labor - Create equal opportunities across Israel regardless of race/economic class/geographic location of birth. "We Jewish are proud of our huge heads, and we've invented so much amazing stuff but we can't find a way that children born fifty km apart can have the same chance at education and a future."

Meretz - Separation of church and state, equality across gender/race/wealth/orientation lines. And she added that Meretz votes according to their policies.  "This is a relatively new idea, to vote according to your position. It is crazy that here in the Jewish homeland, the democratic state of Israel, there are Jews who can't get married according to their own beliefs."

Overall, I thought most people made good points and also some silly points.  As I was leaving, Shev bounced up to me and said "Ariane! Did anything you heard today change your mind?" And mid-yawn, all I could say was, "I'm confused.



Overheard in Tel Aviv

aka bits of conversation...

In Hebrew, many words sound very close to other words. The other day I was at Shabbat dinner with a bunch of people I just met for the first time. And someone was asking me if it was okay since everyone was speaking hebrew.  So I said "Ken! Ani Smicha!"

Which I meant to mean "Yes, I'm happy!"

But SmEcha is "happy." What I actually said was , "Yes, I am a blanket!" :D


***

Ariane: What did you do in the army?
Dude: I was in the paratroopers. I wanted to be a pilot, but I didn't make it. You know what they say, you try to fly the planes, and in the end you just jump out of them.
Ariane: That's cool though, did you enjoy it?
Dude: Sure, yeah I did. I still have a lot of friends from my unit. And I learned a lot of great skills, because I was a medic.
Ariane: Ooh, like what?
Dude: Like CPR. I'm really good at CPR!
Ariane: Did you have to use it in the field?
Dude: Sure, but mostly on Arab terrorists that we shot and then I'd have to revive them.
Ariane: Whoa. That's intense.
Dude: Not really, compared to most of what we did.
Ariane: o_O

***

OtherDude: You're so cute! I just want to bite you!
Ariane: Uh... thank you? So... uh... what's your dream job? If there were not obstacles, what would you do?
OtherDude: I guess I'd be a soccer player. How about you?
Ariane: Well... you're going to laugh, but hear me out...
OtherDude: Let me guess: a princess.
Ariane: No. A Mossad agent.*

*Doing historic artifact recovery for Israel

***

Family Portrait of "Hadira" (the apartment)

I was in the kitchen doing the dishes, and...

Ido: Ariane! Come in here, we're having a family conversation.

I walked in and Ido and Yahli were talking in Hebrew, and Ido turns to me...

Ido: Ariane, do you think we should beat up Nir?*
Ariane: Aw.
Yahli: Yes, we will break his legs.
Ariane: Aw, you guys! You don't have to do that, but that's a nice thought.
Ido: We think he should be sensitive towards our sister.
Yahli: Yeah, so invite him over and we'll kill him.
Ido: Is he a big guy?
Yahli: Does he have a lot of muscles?
Ariane: I don't know, not especially.
Yahli: Does he have any martial arts training?
Ido: Does he do karate?
Yahli: Find out this stuff first before we beat him up.  If he's medium skill level then yeah, we can take him. Better than that though... and never mind, you're on your own.

*Yet a different dude, who somewhat hurt me


***

Yahli: Ido is a really tough commander.
Ido: There is a rumor that I don't let my soldiers go to the bathroom without asking first.
Ariane: Is it true?
Ido: No! That's absurd!
Yahli: My commander told me that though, it's going around the base.
Ido: That's crazy! Of course I don't do that!!

***

Yahli: Blah blah blah shoah. Blah shoah shoah shoah. (Hebrew)
Ariane: Are you talking about the shoah?
Anna: Yahli compares everything to the shoah. Even if it's not that bad, everything is the Shoah.
Ido: Like Yahli says I'm the shoah to my soldiers.

***

Ariane: You wear a different uniform on your way to base than you do on base, right?
Yahli: It depends. If you're living on base, you'll usually change into a more comfortable one when you get there. But we just stay in our representative uniforms since we come home at night.
Ido: I had a soldier once who was stopped by military police and got 8 separate uniform complaints... his hair was too long, he wasn't shaven, he wasn't wearing his dogtags, and he was wearing flipflops, and...
Yahli: He was wearing FLIPFLOPS?!?

***

Ariane: Today a guy at the shuk (market) called me a pretty lady!
Yahli: Really? Was he with a dog and carrying a cane?
Ariane: No.
Yahli: Was he wearing sunglasses and kind of stumbling along?
Ariane: No. *walks off*
Yahli: Hey! You ARE a pretty lady!

***

Yahli: (hands me a crumpled up pricetag) Ariane... here is a gift for you. It's symbolic of our relationship, and I want you to have it.
Ariane: Aw, thanks. Explain the symbolism?
Yahli: You see how there are black and white stripes?
Ariane: Uh huh.
Yahli: There are happy times, and there are sad times, in our relationship. The white parts are the happy times. The black parts are when I offend you.

***

Ariane: I'm writing a new blog entry that's pretty much entirely conversations that have taken place in this apartment.
Ido: Oh arreee you? We like you! We love you! I am the biggest Zionist ever!

***

Here is a random video I took so you could get a sense of my roommates and the timing on it is kind of remarkable actually.

Ido taught me the phrase earlier in the day, because he said it to me when I got my new phone (see below).  But I couldn't remember it, so I just said "chadash!" which just means "New!" which would be a pretty dumb thing to just say to someone when they have a new thing, but what can I say, baby linguistic steps.

That Time I Was Robbed

The other day I was walking on my street... it's a lovely tree-lined avenue and I like to listen to music and walk up and down it sometimes. Anyway, I was walking and leaving a voicemail for Gabi, when just outside my building, some dude in a hoodie on a bike just glided up behind me, said "Whoooosh!" and plucked my phone right out of my hand and sped off with it.

I tried to chase him but obviously on foot I fell behind quickly, and let's be honest, it's probably better I didn't catch him or I might also be missing teeth as well as my phone.

All in all, I'm not that upset about it. It's going to sting to pay for a new one, especially since I've been trying to save up money to make my first few aliyah months easier, but at the end of the day, meh. I called my dad on skype and he said "Are you hurt?" and when I said no, he said "Well then it's just a fuckin' phone!"  Yeah. Truth!

My Dad also said something that made me smile. I said "I'm sorry I'm calling to bitch about this, I know you have bigger fish to fry right now." And he said "Sweetheart! I never have any fish to fry bigger than you!" Aww <3.

Anyway, there are no photos in this post because this week's photos are now in the hands of my little thief. I changed all my passwords and everything, but I hope he's thrilled by my photographs of a funny looking snail I saw in the street and our Shabbat cake.

I bought a new phone that's much shittier than my old one. Obviously I'm going to be more careful now when it comes to waving my phone around at night, but it occurs to me now that it's literally like holding $400 up to your ear and playing with it in the street and so on, and I don't really want that.

Aaaand when the sales dude asked for my number when I went to leave the store, I had the really simple excuse of, "I told you, my phone was stolen, I don't have a number!"

My Brain is starting not to run away from Hebrew

You know how when you hear a language you don't know at all, your brain doesn't even try to decode it? It just sounds like blah blah blah blah. Like Hungarian vs Czech vs Turkish, if I heard them, I wouldn't know what was what.

And then you reach a point where you understand patterns in the language, so you recognize WHAT language it is. Like I know when someone is speaking Korean because of all the "sumida"s and the "da/sa yo"s in it. But I don't know what they're saying, just that they're saying it in Korean.

And THEN you get to a point where you can start to pick out words, and THEN to the point where you actually understand something that's been said to you.  

So in Hebrew, usually when I go to order coffee, I know precisely what to say to get what I want, and I know the normal questions I'm asked and the normal responses to those questions, but if the barista deviates from this script, I just freeze up and my brain doesn't process this improvised interaction and I just go "uhhhhh" until they repeat the question in English.  But TODAY, for the first time, the barista asked me a new question - did I want to eat something along with the coffee - and at first i went for the "uhhhhh" but then my brain caught up and I understood them and I answered.

Which is actually pretty exciting even though it was so minor, because it means I'm moving past the "oh they're speaking Hebrew to me..." stage and into the "they're saying something specific to me that I can decode" stage. Obviously my tutors speak Hebrew to me all the time, but they speak very specific Hebrew to me that they know I can understand, which is definitely different from the way normal people speak. And in lessons, my brain is in learning mode and my tutors will wait all day for me to word by word decipher what they said, whereas normal people in the street will get impatient and switch to English. So yay!

Here's a picture of Kiyomi. We had coffee and a nice chat on her balcony today.