Aliyah Diary 21: It’s a free country??

by tostien · December 11, 2024

Article Outline:

Security in America
Buildings in Israel are kind of like …
Israel took my truck
The Arab took my shoes
The west bank of the Jordan river (Judea and Samaria)
About Ariel, Israel
Motor-scooters & Motorcycles
Internet Censorship
No Bill of Rights in Israel
Jerusalem $21 fine
More on China
Please comment

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Security in America

Entering the apartment building to get to my college housing (not depicted above) with a box of heavy books in my hand – I head gestured over to the girl to the right of me who arrived at the door at nearly the same time. The gesture, in context, meant, “can you open the door with your key card because I’m carrying a heavy load and my card is in my pocket?” She responded with a vocal cord gesture instead, the gesture causing vibrations with, together with flow of air from her lungs, released sounds recognizable to me as, “It’s a free country. I don’t need no key card.”

That’s not what that means! Buildings can have locks on them! Bong her over the head with the door bell and let freedom ring.

Getting through Newark airport … not right after 9/11 … about a year later when they thought they’d try tight security – involved a key card like that. I received it after a most ridiculous interrogation of 10+ questions when an Israeli security guard could have done it in one. I couldn’t hold a straight face and had to keep it together while asked, “is something funny?” After having my pockets emptied down to the lint and my wallet still setting off some sort of alarm and a team of Newark local boys couldn’t find all my cash, they put the wallet on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed a second time. They still couldn’t find the metal and Bubba took a metal detecting wand to the wallet until he found a dime wedged in a corner. My belongings were scattered around here and there in security and I just wanted my wallet back with my IDs, cards, and money even though my coins were scattered to the winds.

After about four lines like that, at the last one I couldn’t find my key card so I did a “flabbergasted” routine and they let me go without the key card that had marked on it that I had passed the previous three security lines.

Found my card when I landed in Israel and never felt so unsafe again.

Buildings in Israel are kind of like …

Office buildings: Should I stop at the front desk – no? The quick glance was enough? Alright – will keep walking to the elevators.

Malls:
[my face gesture]: “Are you actually going to make me go through the metal detector?”
[security guard eye gestures back]: “Just make a good faith effort.”
[my hand gestures]: “Okay man, watch me as a partially empty my pockets looking for your approval.”
[security guard internal monologue]: “The metal detector probably isn’t on anyway, white guy.”

Checkpoints on the road … stop me, ever? Nada. Just friendly smiles, really. Do I really look like that much of not a threat? Am I that much of a middle-aged white guy? Clearly – though I wish my dermatologist agreed.

Israel took my truck

I could go anywhere … do anything … a car was waiting for me in my driveway any time I wanted.

That is the sense of freedom I felt the day my two teenagers went back to school.

Sharing a car with your wife isn’t as bad especially if she’s Chassidish and the Rebbe says women driving is a no-no. My plumber isn’t Chassidish or hasn’t found the right Rebbe yet because he has to share a car with his wife, impacting his ability to get to his job. Where’s his truck with all his equipment? In Lebanon somewhere. He hopes it gets totaled so the army has to buy him a new one.

How did his truck get to Lebanon? Excellent question. Israel invoked a law for the first time since the Yom Kippur war in 1973 – they requisitioned 7,000 trucks for the army’s usage during the current war and his was one of them. Apparently when you buy a truck in Israel you sign a statement that the country can do that in a time of need.

The Arab took my shoes

Speaking to neighbors who have been here for longer than I have by a factor of … decades … apparently, Arab workers were all over my area of the country. My neighborhood was built by Arab workers from over the ‘green line’, just past the barrier, or machsom, less than a mile from here – the other side takes you to “Judea and Samaria” as we call it here, or, the “west bank” of the Jordan river as they call it elsewhere. (Some of the west bank of the Jordan river was always in Israel proper, and other parts are mountains no where near a river.) In addition to giving Arabs regular good paying jobs, an Israeli woman here spoke decent Arabic and would regularly arrange for day laborers from nearby Arab villages to come work. Kind of like finding the Spanish-speaking people outside Home Depots in many U.S. cities early in the morning.

There are no Arabs to speak of in my town since the Hamas war, though looking out at the mountains across security fences it’s easy to see their villages, and sometimes to hear the tape recording from their mosques. (It’s hard to find people who will live chant at 5am every day.)

Before the war, apparently there were lines of cars going through the checkpoints between here and Judea and Samaria … not so anymore. The Arabs have lost their good paying jobs and have a government (Palestinian Authority) which provides no health insurance and no retirement benefits. An Israeli ID card is coveted for those reasons – Arabs in Jerusalem have them and are permanent residents, most refusing to accept citizenship.

I asked neighbors – when Arabs worked in our neighborhood for so many decades, was terrorism ever a problem or a concern? Nah, the problem was theft. A neighbor told me about the time an Arab worker said he couldn’t work in his sandals and asked to borrow the Jews’ sneakers while he worked … and then *walked off* with them. (That was a joke and a truth at once.) If you want to understand how a man feels, walk a mile in his shoes because then you’ll be a mile away and have his shoes. (That was also a joke and a truth at once … stolen from Jack Handy.)

The Israeli who arranged for this man to work in Israel … she apparently went into his Arab village and made enough of a stink with the people to whom she gives work to, to get my neighbor’s shoes back.

Oh … and the reason I needed to hire the plumber who got his truck taken by the army … because the Arab plumber who did the house plumbing did a lousy job. Arabs aren’t know for their workmanship.

The west bank of the Jordan river (Judea and Samaria)

This barrier, this machsom … it is what separates Israel proper from the wild west bank. It’s a scary place to where I shall not cross into untold dangers. Will there be a terrorist? Will there be a highly guarded pile of missing left socks? Will I get cheated at a game of chess or have to breathe in second hand smoke? (The latter, I still think is a concern.)

That was my psyche for the first two or so months here.

. . . and then . . .

Oh, I want to visit someone and the quickest way to get to his apartment is to go through the barrier to the wild west (it’s actually to the east). He says it’s safe. Risk it over saving 20 minutes of drive time? Yup.

Before the barrier are Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews … packed into apartment buildings 10 floors high and extending miles across … then you cross the barrier and you’re in middle Zealand wondering when Gandolf is going to come by holding his shepherd’s staff leading a flock of sheep.

Most of the license plates are Israeli (the orange ones … who chose that color? Cheapest paint in the 1970s when they chose it or something?) There are also the Palestinian plates which are green on white or white on green. There are some shops at corners … most are Jewish and some are Arab … it’s not really a big deal. It’s kind of nice, actually. It’s a nice country drive up and down and around country hills. Would I want to be stranded on the side of the road with a broken down car at 3am? Not so much. Daytime driving to a Ariel – sure.

Side note: license plates here are tied to the car. If you sell your car, the license plate stays with it unlike in the United States where the plate is linked to the owner. Also, Israeli taxis are white. Arab taxis are yellow. License plates have prefixes for police, military, and some other things, with different colors and lower numbers for more senior respective members.

About Ariel, Israel

I was driving to Ariel, a Jewish city of 20,000 people funded by some very rich people. Built beginning at the end of the 70s and doubling in size in the 90s when Russians came and found cheap apartments. Funny how economics will do that. They are building like crazy here … and all of Israel.

It is a mix of religious and secular and has a university and a medical school – with Sheldon Adelson’s name. There is also a huge center named after pastor John Hagee. I’m not going to go into the politics here other than this sentence. Just stating facts.

Motor-scooters & Motorcycles

“How dare you pass between the cars! Wait your turn in line! Don’t you know what you’re doing is dangerous and I’m going to move over to block your way?” … say drivers in the United States.

In Israel – they’re bringing my food faster than I could get to the restaurant! Make way everybody! The motorcycle is coming through and maybe next time it will be with your food!

Most of the motorcycles have these large rectangular blue packs on them that say “Wolt” … basically, UberEats except it means, “I have the right of way even if it will kill me”. It’s only a few dollars to order food delivery. Assumedly the restaurant is also paying them for the delivery.

Also, check out how Tel Aviv appended exit numbers above their exit signs. That’s not a thing much around here.

Internet Censorship

This one shocked my American senses. We argue over how many corporations get to control the internet, not over whether one company could block another company’s website … of course they can’t. The government can’t limit free speech. However, in Israel, I encountered this:

The above is the message received when trying to access Al Jazeera in Israel. It is simple enough to get around when using a VPN … I’m sure Israel isn’t trying as hard as they could to block it, and even though I agree that Al Jazeera has been atrociously inciting against Israel, should their website be blocked? Freedom of speech? Nah.

Ever have someone use your WiFi, download a movie, and get an email from your internet provider telling you someone did that and cut it out? Me either. Of course not. In Israel the internet service providers don’t do anything, from what I’ve read. No need for a VPN to hide your traffic.

No Bill of Rights in Israel

… maybe because it’s not needed. Israelis will never be silenced by the government anyway. It’s just not the culture here. Every life is important here and the government isn’t squelching us any time soon. They’d just cause Israelis to block highways and delay delivery of their dinner. There’s an unwritten social contract that thou shalt not block the Wolt driver.

Even so, there’s no fifth amendment right to silence … silence can be used against you. There’s no freedom of press, it seems … Al Jazeera isn’t a thing here anymore. There’s no guaranteed freedom of assembly, though, see the previous paragraph. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1956 said travel was fundamental right in the constitution – no matter what Andrew Coumo said or many local governments got wrong during Covid, you could freely travel through the country during the pandemic. In China you could leave your house once a week to get food, stopping for health checks at every block. In Israel, you “had” to stay in your neighborhood or city (within 1 km, though impossible to enforce) and to go between cities you “had” to speed down back roads to avoid police who would fine you.

Freedom of religion? Maybe. The Supreme Court in Israel (a leftist organization) once said Lubovitch couldn’t open a location in a certain town because freedom of religion also means “freedom from religion.” Pretty sure that’s not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind.

Want to leave a bad review for someone? In the United States you are protected when you speak truth. In Israel, like in Jewish law, truth can hurt. You can destroy someone’s business that way – perhaps the person already corrected their mistake or the way you saw it was through a lens of anger. Be careful what you say and even more careful what you write.

My friend, a reader of the blog and contributor of the above, also tells me that debtor prisons are still a thing here. While there is no hard and fast deadline to file your tax return and apparently the government and your accountant just sort of talk it out … bad things can happen if you don’t pay your health insurance taxes. Only those with income outside of a business need to file tax returns or pay separately. Also, businesses often private health plans on top of the public ones, which, by American standards are amazing and cheap anyway.

As is well known, all men and women above 18 have to be drafted into the army … except for when they don’t. After you complete your army service or after 27 years old, you can get a gun after taking one of various levels of training. This entitles you to a certain number of bullets and responsibility for a crime if someone used your gun to commit the crime and they didn’t break into your locked gun safe to do it. Gun rights here are much more severely restricted than the United States.

That covers the lack of the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments of the U.S. constitution. What about the 7th amendment? Right to a jury trial when the amount in question exceeds $20? Yeah, it says that. Jefferson was good about understanding religious freedom though terrible with money. The concept of inflation seems to have escaped him and I, for one, think it would be fun to try and take a constitutional rights case to the Supreme Court over a $21 fine.

Jerusalem $21 fine

The city just doesn’t seem as holy when you get an unfair parking ticket. Jerusalem does not have meters. They have apps for parking. Much more efficient and cost effective, I suppose. (Modiin doesn’t have pay boxes or meters at all for public parking – I’ve mentioned my love of Modiin before.)

Like a champ I installed the parking app in Hebrew.
Like a champ I went through pages and pages of setup in Hebrew.
Like a champ I added my credit card to the app.
Like a champ I connected Bluetooth so it would automatically stop paying when my phone connected to my car and I drove away.
Like a champ I started the payment timer.
Like a champ I ordered in Hebrew an excellent bagel with portobello mushroom and mozzarella cheese.
Like an American I returned to a parking ticket anyway.

Why? Apparently, despite the GPS showing my location, the app didn’t select it for the region where I was paying.

Aftermath: I went to the Jerusalem municipality website – which has very full content and good translations in English – to contest the ticket. First you enter your information and whatnot so they associate the ticket with you, despite that they have your license plate number … and once you do that, you wait for it to be approved. Then you wait another day. Then you login … then it doesn’t show up. Then you realize it’s not as easy as you think it will be.

In America I would call the city and make a stink. Here, first, the tickets aren’t that high (parking without a fine in New York City would easily be more than double), and second, it just wasn’t worth my time – event though paying required a Hebrew only website and my foreign credit card didn’t work. Having this much trouble with plenty of other online services that needed my time … such as logging into to see my electric bill or my healthcare. That’s for another article. The city won this round.

More on China

In this blog I tend to use the United States as an example of freedom and China as an example of not freedom. Israel falls somewhere in-between, though I certainly feel more free here than in the United States. There’s the law and there’s practical application, I suppose. I’m still on email lists from my old community (and actually, still own and run some of them) and there’s this gem – “Traffic Ticket Blitz!” Seems in Israel the powers that be have better things to do and the road design often prevents excess speeding even if you wanted to.

This threw me – no one here seems to know about the Uyghurs in China. There are about 11 million of them and China is systematically holding them in detention and destroying their culture, Muslim religion, and ability to reproduce. It’s bad. China has over a thousand years of conflict with the Muslim world and for some reason Muslim countries don’t seem to care – only this Jew in Israel knows and cares around here. In the Jerusalem Post there are only three references in my search. One is in passing by an American writer and another is about an event in New York. Lo ichpat, I learned … they don’t care.

I was telling a native Israeli about this and my experience filing a trademark in China for a Muslim client. Not going to give too many details here, though normally when you file a trademark using the international protocol there’s a paper trail of documents filed that never goes away. It’s stored on computers in Switzerland owned by the World Intellectual Property Organization. In this case the application vanished – it’s like it was never filed. I did receive a one page document from China that my Chinese associate refused to translate. The key words: 用作商标易产生不良社会影响 That means something like, “this trademark would have a negative social impact.”

Lest you be flabbergasted about that, the Israeli I was telling this to said to me, “so what? The government has a right to say that.”

I literally got a patent through in the United States for a Dorsal lower torso and gluteal entertainment plate – it is the only time in my entire career that I got an examiner removed from a case. She refused to grant the patent because it was “offensive”. She’s right. It is offensive – the problem is you’re the government. You can’t tell me what is and isn’t going to create a negative social impact and what is and isn’t offensive. Next thing you know, freedom of religion will be down the drain and what next? No jury trial for $21 parking tickets? Why not throw out the whole constitution!

Here’s a quote from what the examiner wrote – she’s right about everything she writes except for the law:

The disclosure, and therefore the claim in this application, is rejected as being offensive and therefore improper subject matter for design patent protection under 35 U.S.C. 171. Such subject matter does not meet the statutory requirements of 35 U.S.C. 171. Moreover, since 37 CFR 1.3 proscribes the presentation of papers which are lacking in decorum and courtesy, and this includes depictions of caricatures in the disclosure, drawings, and/or a claim which might reasonably be considered offensive, such subject matter as presented herein is deemed to be clearly contrary to 37CFR 1.3. See MPEP § 608.

It is evident that within the context of where the claimed entertainment plate is commonly used, the subject matter in the images would be deemed offensive to most members of the public having a modest sense of decency, particularly most religious groups. Even slight familiarity with such groups finds religious traditions denouncing casual, public displays of genitalia. Therefore patent images communicating imprudent and indiscreet use of such displays on a plate would be considered by most people to be indecent. In the context presented, the images are at least vulgar and the inclusion of such proscribed matter in a Federal Government publication would not be in the public interest.