Throughout this post are pictures from our family’s recent trip to Israel. You’ll see the kids ziplining across the Jordan River and on a ropes course, the family at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, having a hamburger at a kosher McDonalds and other self-explanatory scenes.
Tonight I must have turned off the TV about 5 times and then my kids turned it back on 5 or 6 times. I activated parental controls to make the TV shut off daily at 7:30pm for an hour, figuring it was enough time to frustrate the kids into going to bed. The funny thing is that we have blocked content that is pre-teenage and teenage while not blocking adult content (which the kids have no interest in anyway). We find the Disney programs aimed at pre-teens more disturbing than anything else.
My 6 year old son Jeremy decided to dress up in jacket and tie to school after seeing some other WASPY kid all snazzied up; in his school they wear uniforms. When we got down to the lobby of our building, he decided no jacket. OK. Then when we got a block before the school he took off his tie. I asked him, why did we get all dressed up and you took it all off? He said, “Jews don’t wear ties.” I think Ralph Lauren is in for an image problem if my 6 year old kid figured it out for himself the first full week of kindergarten.
In an airline magazine, I noticed a blurb from a Japanese martial arts expert who opined that you can’t really get good at certain disciplines before you are in your 40’s or 50’s, because you need to have a level of patience to be able to master certain forms correctly. I have to say at 47 years of age that there is definite truth to this, because I see how much I can learn now that I could never learn when I was younger and how many things I can do that I thought I couldn’t do when I was younger. One thing I have certainly considered over the past decade is how much education and training is wasted on kids and teenagers. I really do agree with the German philosophy that says you shouldn’t expect much from people under 30. Although I do like exposing my kids to places, ideas and experiences, I am under no illusions that they are supposed to become great learned things from it — I am teaching them adaptability outside their comfort zone in becoming exposed to new things, giving them means of comparison and the ability to discriminate and to thus develop taste, and I am giving our family the ability to enjoy and remember experiences. And of course anytime my kid comes back to me a year later and remembers something from a trip, it gives me a feeling of validation that the exercise was not for naught.
Looking at the New York mayoralty race, you can just see how the people running are a fraction of Mike Bloomberg. They are all going to give into the unions and in a few years everything will be as if Bloomberg had never been mayor. In certain senses, yes, things will look different on the skyline and lifestyle-wise such as bike lanes and calorie counts in restaurants. But the unions didn’t strike a year ago knowing that if they just waited him out, they’d get the contracts they wanted. If a billionaire can’t change even one city, why should anyone else try to change the world? It just makes me know that there is no real good reason to be involved in politics. You are just surrounded by entrenched people with interests waiting for you to be gone so that they can put all the pieces you move around back the way they wanted them.
We just returned from a 2 week holiday in Israel. Covered a good amount of ground: Caesaria, Galilee, Acre and Jerusalem. This trip included my parents – we had wanted our kids to have an opportunity to spend a Jewish holiday in Israel with the grandparents. When we returned, there were 4 flights on El Al airlines alone from Tel Aviv to New York City within a 30 minute period the Saturday night after the holiday, and you can imagine the crews at the NY airports running from plane to plane unloading what must have been about 100 baby strollers per plane.
One striking thing these days in Israel is all these European club football shirts that say Qatar Foundation on them being worn by Israeli kids who haven’t a clue that Qatar officially boycotts Israel.
VIP arrival and service at the Tel Aviv airport is a waste unless you are with carry on-luggage only because they don’t get your luggage for you. Whether or not you get through passport control 10-15 minutes faster doesn’t matter if you get held up at the luggage carousel. The departure service doesn’t expedite anything such as VAT refunds. We didn’t even wind up using the service although we thought we’d get use out of it during the holiday rush. The airport actually did a darn good job processing all the incoming and outgoing people, better than anything JFK in New York manages to do.
Caesaria – the Dan Hotel is an hour from the airport by car, and is the kind of place you would have figured you’d have stayed at if you were a communist leader in 1970’s Russia. It has its charms but it is a really dated property. The rooms are OK; the food is pretty good and it has a good pool and some play areas. The gym is really poor; there is no ATM or sundry shop on the property. A 20-30 minute walk or a 3 minute $10 taxi ride away is the coastal ruins and museum which you’d want to see, and there is a little beach club area and a seaside promenade with eateries. Imagine our kids doing a dance on the stage at the Roman Amphitheater playing their 15 second part of all the history that ever stood on that stage. At night, we couldn’t get a taxi back to the hotel from there where we strolled around a bit, so the security guard just drove us back. When we stayed there was a teenage football team staying there and you can imagine what it was like when 50 rather large and very hungry kids ran into the dinner buffet and attacked the hamburgers, chicken shnitzels and corn on the cob and loaded up their plates at breakfast. One night there was a wedding and we sat on our balcony and enjoyed the music as entertainment. Lots of elite Israelis have their villas close to this hotel. You come more for the company than for the facilities. At the jacuzzi I saw an Arab executive of a gas company who said that Israeli Arabs are hated everywhere in the Arab world because only they have nice cars, prestige and a good life in a decent country. This hotel works as a one to two night stopover while recuperating from your arrival flight but I wouldn’t want to stay here longer unless I was here with friends.
Kibbutz Kfar Blum in the northern Galilee was our next stop, a 2 hour drive away. Even my parents were impressed; they came with the lowest of expectations. The food and the rooms are nice; it is a pretty setting and it offers great value for money. We were here 18 months ago and the difference is that at this time of year there is no big Anglo group from Ranana here on a Passover program; it is a mixture of people and everyone pretty much stays to themselves. Come as you are and don’t worry what anyone else thinks of you. It was a good hideaway for the kids and the grandparents. The kids played checkers and cards on the balcony overlooking the pastoral grounds with the grandparents. The new boutique rooms are excellent and the suites in the older parts of the hotel are also very nice. The pool is rather chilly even though it was hot outside, but by 4-5pm it cools off and the evenings are pleasant even when the daily high is in the 90’s. The dining rooms serves meat for lunch and dinner but you can get dairy in the lobby bar. We couldn’t keep up with all the meat meals. The hotel staged lots of special programs over the holiday such as a marzipan making class, reptile show, folk dancing at night, singalongs and kids dance party. The Hula Reserve is 10 minutes away and it is a nice attraction. It wasn’t as crowded as we had feared. We went to a kosher McDonalds in Kiryat Shmona about 10 minutes away and that was really awful and pricey. At Metulla just past Kiryat Shmona, we looked right into Lebanon from the Israeli side that is up on a big hill and you don’t see anything there that looks threatening. The Hizbullah is out of sight on the other side, although the Good Fence no longer operates because of the fact that they are indeed in those areas. It was amazing to me that we spent a few days within 10 miles of the Lebanese and Syrian borders and nobody there is batting an eyelid over any of it.
I enjoy sitting at the kibbutz at night just enjoying the calm. A few minutes walk away there is this kids adventure area with kayaking, ropes course and a zip line across the Jordan river. My kids had a ball and Karen had the unfortunate job of going across the Jordan in the hot sun to collect them after they crossed the river on the zip line. All pretty safe (the 5 story ladder you climb to the top of the zip line is more dangerous than the actual zip line) and the staff there couldn’t be nicer. The kibbutz hotel staff were also great; we gave them a sack of laundry and they did it for free. If you go kayaking, expect your shoes to get soaked and there is a big rock you cross at the end of the hour long ride. Imagine Jeremy saying to me “I’m focusing” when we asked him to take a picture while he was navigating the ropes course. Elizabeth was expecting the Jordan River to be larger. I guess the newest development is that my kids have learned to charge popsicles at the pool to their hotel room. You can just see the foreshadowing going on there, right?
An hour and a half ride takes you to Acre just north of Haifa along the coast. It is a seaside fishing village with lots of history. Not that much to see but it is a good place to overnight and there is this new boutique hotel called the Efendi which is exceptional for Israel. It is a beautifully restored property with 12 rooms (none of them interconnecting) and it is in the old city of Acre. The rooms are lovely; there are really charming spots on the property such as the roof and a porch overlooking the seashore with lots of mats, and it feels like a beautiful house. The staff is very friendly. The hotel is on a 5-star level but it lacks certain amenities such as a gym, in-house restaurant and room service, and it can be creepy late at night walking around the neighborhood trying to find your way back to the hotel. The hotel owner also owns a famous fish restaurant a few minutes walk away and a gelateria which is comparable to Grom in Italy. None of this is kosher certified, by the way. The kids found Acre mainly boring but we were there on the best possible day of the year perhaps – they had the annual street fair festival that night. Once you get the hang of Acre you realize it is not so large and difficult to get around. There are the old tunnels you can walk through and it is a very sterilized tourist attraction now; there is a bit of a shuq; the old prison where famous underground leaders of the Jewish resistance were imprisoned, hanged and where some of them broke out. We ate dinner at a kosher restaurant in Acre outside the old city; a new road to Haifa shortens the commute from 1 hour to 20 minutes and the cheap real estate is attracting Jewish residents to the city. The city has a nice beach promenade. Fresh pomegranate juice is in season now and that is real yummy.
From Acre it was a 3 hour ride to Jerusalem. Beware of leaving without a printed set of directions like my parents did. They insisted that this GPS thing that works with a cellphone would be great. So when we heard “You have reached your destination” and we were at some intersection before having even left the city, we knew we were in trouble and it was probably the funniest moment of the trip. My mother said that she’s been driving around Israel for 35 years asking for directions and this would be perfectly fine. We stopped for directions in Haifa and almost got hit by a light rail train because we didn’t realize we parked along the track. My kids don’t exactly listen to instructions so when we yelled “GET OUT OF THE CAR” do you think they exactly moved their butts? No, Karen had to physically drag them out of the van in the face of the oncoming train. The grandparents? Totally oblivious.
Route 6 really shortens the ride around the country once you figure out where to pick it up. It also has nice rest stations along the route. The King David remains an excellent city hotel with staff who have a real culture of wanting their guests to feel at home. I recognize more faces of the staff in the dining room than of the guests. I’m not part of the social scene, but the pool there on a holiday afternoon is the Jewish equivalent of the Beverly Hills hotel. The TV system now offers BBC World. If you use American Express Platinum, you will be upgraded and get lots of goodies. This hotel has to please a rough crowd; the elite of the Jewish world who wants the best and hates paying for it. They manage to do it. In Jerusalem, security in the city center has become more lax after several years of nothing happening. The newest attraction is the renovation of a old train station with several stores and restaurants, a nice photographic exhibition, and outdoor trampoline jumping. But no ATM at that whole place yet. We rode the city’s light rail line to one of the ends and it is a nice ride. A lot of the apartments built near the city’s tourist areas are still dark even at the holiday time; reportedly they were sold unfinished and they are still being renovated. The Waldorf project is not nearly done. Prices at the GAP were rather close to what I pay in the US.
I had a lovely dinner party at Spoons which is a venue for private dinner parties in the Yemin Moshe section of Jerusalem overlooking the old city walls. I was celebrating my upcoming 10th anniversary with Karen, and it was the 30th anniversary since I had first visited Israel. That venue hosts many secret meetings between diplomats and intelligence operatives. Visiting Jerusalem during the holiday is a problem due to street closings and many stores being closed as well. The Israel Museum has gone through lots of renovation and had a very nice exhibit about Herod; the children’s wing is impressive in its interactivity and there was a nice gift shop. There is a new spa about 20 minutes drive from Jerusalem which is on many people’s “next time” list. All my kids really like is to go to the shuq and buy trinkets and candy; there is a bakery near Machane Yehuda where they come out with trays of hot rugelach and every 3 minutes people snap up the pastries and they come up with new trays. My kids sat on the street corner licking their fingers from the hot chocolate rugelach. We were bummed over being in Israel for Simchat Torah, an especially festive ending to the Sukkot holiday and basically being stuck in the hotel. A person who sponsors streetside dancing with an orchestra this year withdrew his sponsorship due to his wife being ill; nobody replaced it and the party didn’t happen. My kids favorite parts of Israel visit were: Jeremy: the hot rugelach pastry, the zip line, the ropes course and the snake show (where he put the snakes around his neck). Elizabeth liked the rugelach too, the zip line and the marzipan making class at the kibbutz. We didn’t get to too many restaurants; we tried Black Burgers and they were OK but nothing great; not as good as the burgers at the King David poolside. Of course we did things such as visit the Jewish Quarter, the Arab Market, the Western Wall, downtown and the Mamila Mall. At the Wall, Elizabeth prayed for a good husband and Jeremy said he just prayed for me. As you can see, our kids set their sights high. EL AL airlines was fine; the kids enjoyed their kids meals and Jeremy slept 10 hours on the flight home. Their equipment is spotty – a good amount of the planes are old and you can’t expect consistency of the amenities they claim to offer. Frankly, I’ve had my fill of this country for awhile but we wanted the kids to have the chance to interact with their grandparents for the holiday. It was very inconvenient to make the trip at this time, but if you want a life without regrets you have to just go and not wait for all the stars to be in alignment since they never are.
Now for some Thoughts about the country and some of the recent conversations I had regarding geopolitical issues. As is consistent with earlier visits, the country is self-absorbed and confident. I don’t see people in the gyms, but everyone looks very fit. There is simply no concern about Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. The press is focused internally. I hear various opinions: Iran will get the bomb and there will be mutual deterrence….Syria’s Assad just got a 1 year contract with this new deal with the 2014 deadline….Sisi will make moves in the Sinai to eliminate jihadists and cover his ass by appearing to abrogate the treaty with Israel in the Sinai and nobody will object…Business is good here and the roads are amazing – the country has really put in good infrastructure. TV is professional; Arabs and other foreigners are buying up real estate. I doubt any airport outside Russia has so many Russian language airplanes. Every Israeli I asked said that Russian immigration was good for the country; usually there is hostility toward immigrants. The Arabs are happy; I don’t see any interest in an uprising and in fact people are counting their blessings that they live in the only stable country for 3,000 miles in either direction. The museums are good and people are taking their holidays. The Israeli psyche today is “we don’t give a shit; we’ll take whatever they throw at us and deal with it.” I personally find Israel nice to visit once in a while but not a place where I want to live, despite the fact that more American Jews have moved there during the past decade. I just feel that there is that veneer of instability lurking beneath the surface; my friend who lives up north said that when Obama threatened military strikes against Syria he kept booking plane tickets out of the country and cancelling them every 24 hours for a week. It is nice though riding a taxi and hearing Jewish music instead of something Pakistani – but then the driver says that every time a Hassidic Jew gets in his taxi he makes him turn off the music. Basically, Israel would be great if you just took out a good portion of the Israelis…Other comments I heard were that Indyk (Obama’s special representative) has a small staff and basically makes his own phone calls; Kerry is really working hard and that in his case he sought assurances before taking the job that Obama would agree to what he wanted to do in the Middle East. There is a solid chance that for whatever reasons Russia and the US might play ball together on various issues in this region and if the two of them cooperate, a lot of good things could happen.
And finally there is my conversation with Oded, which was much more unexpected especially in light of what he has often said for the past 20 years. Here are his current thoughts: Just you wait and see what happens in Turkey when the generals get tired of Erdogan. Right now Erdogan is useful as an ally against Syria but they want revenge and when they get it, Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood will be small fry compared to the blood bath that will be in Turkey. (I believe it; I’ve been wondering what’s been taking so long.) Assad is good for the US and Israel so they keep him there. The US keeps Jordan alive with money and F-16’s on their soil. Lebanon will be split for a generation. Egypt will clean up Sinai. Egypt, Syria and Iran are all broke. You can’t underestimate the fear in Iran’s nuclear circles after all the assassinations that Israel has carried out on Iranian soil. Hizbullah is a spent force; too many of their fighters have been killed. Hamas is Israel’s best ally today because the Egyptians have turned on them. Obama and Kerry and Bibi are seen as brilliant and working very much in concert; they bluffed the Iranians and Russians and won. The Iranians are going to cut a deal because they can’t afford to go bankrupt and because they have no defense against the Tomohawk technology that the Israelis can deploy against them. The Russians are never going to help the Iranians because they have their own crazy Islamic terrorists to deal with, and they don’t have the money or the technology to compete. Changing energy markets have removed Russian leverage over Europe. The Turks are afraid of Iran whom they share a border with. The Arabs and Persians have no oil leverage because America is nearly self-sufficient with energy. He views Obama and Bibi as being the strategists and that Kerry executes; and that both leaders do not depend on their advisors for their strategies. North Korea will also bend. Al Qaida forces in Lebanon/Syria tried to assassinate Ahmed Jibril, a noteworthy Palestinian terrorist leader – it is a real cauldron over there consuming the Syrian army which is in no position to threaten Israel. Same deal with the Egyptians. He believes the Palestinians will make a deal with Israel on Israeli terms and several people I’ve met believe that Hamas is not in a position to block Abbas at this point; that people are simply sick of living under Hamas in Gaza. This is an unexpectedly optimistic scenario that Oded is putting forth; it means that the military option is now obsolete against either Syria, Egypt or Iran, and you can expect more money to be diverted by Israel into other areas. I heard of various units being disbanded because of budget cuts and the sense that technology shifts have made certain types of units obsolete. Tanks are just not the draw they used to be, and teenagers in Israel are being given enough information to choose very selective jobs in the army as the work of warfare becomes more intelligent, at least on the Israeli side of things.
What counts today? I’m just reading that the Technion, Israel’s leading technology university, just received a $130 million donation from a Chinese billionaire to set up an institution of higher learning in China. Every time I’m in an airplane flying over Israel, I see a country that is just amazing in its resilience and strength. You don’t see that flying over its neighbors and you don’t see it walking their streets or moving around the country. Everyone knows it – Israel is just on a completely different level and in certain ways they have leapfrogged even the USA. Just look at the Tel Aviv airport processing thousands of tourists going home on one Saturday night in a virtual flotilla of airplanes all going out the same hour against the 2 hour lines for those arriving at JFK in New York. Those that deny it can either continue to argue over past injustices and think they have satisfied themselves, or just move on, cut deals and live their lives. Israelis have no problems walking around with Qatar Foundation football shirts — the rest of the world should stop boycotting their academic institutions and artists which are just falling behind anyway, and just get with the program. I’m not talking about what’s right and I’m not a propagandist for Israel. I’m just saying that hey, it’s 65 years and the place is working. They are pulling ahead and those that are pissing on them are not making any progress themselves. It’s a no-brainer to me. I can tell you this – the Israelis are not walking around thinking about the Iranians and I’m certainly not going to waste my time thinking about them. The Hizbullah and Hamas sent missiles into Israel several times over the past decade or so and it causes disruption for a few days but then everything goes back to normal and the economy doesn’t get disrupted. The Israelis seem to have all the capability they need to deal with Syria and Iran and as I said, nobody over there is worrying. Anyone who thinks the Israelis are someday going to be pushed out and all they have to do is wait for them to self-destruct or be demographically ousted is in la-la land. It’s just plain and simple facts on the ground as I see them.
Finally, a thought about dogs. According to recent research, 48% of Americans sleep in bed with their dogs. 91% think of dogs as just as much a family member as a fellow human being.
We’ve all had enough travel for now. We’ll be at home pretty consistently through the next 2 months except for the major holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas-New Years). We’d like everyone to have a bit of routine for a change.
