Global Friction, Men/Women, Jew/Muslim: Incident - Anastasia Michaeli

http://youtu.be/qJDX-YtYeMc << link to You Tube video if you can't see the one above <<

Knesset Member Anastasia Michaeli threw a glass of water at Knesset Member Ghaleb Majadele four days ago. It made for a great news clip and gave us all a peek at the hidden world of Knesset committee discussions. There is one Knesset channel on TV, but as most houses of representative and senate video feeds go, you can imagine how interesting most speeches members give -- ENOUGH TO IMAGINE THE PAINT DRYING. All of Israel's political, social, financial and every other category of friction ends up on the Knesset floor (and committee hearings.) I would venture to expand this craziness to even international friction between the west and middle-east, free world and the Arab non-democracy and maybe even free markets and structured Arab ones. When it comes to the edge between two civilizations, Israel is IT! Here, in this little state, we are truly the seam between the west and middle-east. We have the friction between Jews and Muslims, men and women, secular and religious, probably all three drove Anastasia Michaeli to lash out that day.

Unless you are here and see society pushing and bumping at the edges, you don't have a sense how much of a border mentality we have here in Israel. Here there is a true friction between west and (middle)-east, developing countries and the developed world, democracy and dictatorship, liberal and autocratic, developed and undeveloped, religious and secular... and a few other sharp differences between typical European modern states and middle-eastern developing states. Sometimes the contrast between people here is even hard to accept. One reason is simply limited space. Israel and each city (or region) is simply small physically. Jerusalem, a confluence of so many different `

The Russian immigrants, like Michaeli and her party's leader Avigdor Lieberman, have shown their friction with Arabs, orthodox Jews and left wing idealists. Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party, is a good example of how a small (12.5% of the seats in the Knesset) section of the population not only holds power but also can influence what we see on TV and interrupt the dialog with other parties. In Israel tossing water at an opponent is not a disturbing act as much as a strange amusing one. There were clips from Russian water tossing fights between their politicians. Is it that Russians, after 70 years of repression, suddenly decide to assert their right to voice and opinion, then find themselves just a peep in the ever growing noise of political banter... turning into small extreme acts of protest. Just to be clear, a Knesset member dumping water at another member, even on TV, it's not something we take seriously. Every day there are protests much more serious and relevant to our lives. Ethiopians protested in Kiryat Malachi about housing discrimination: Ethiopians are prevented from renting and buying apartments in certain areas. This is a great example of an African community brushing with more established European and middle-eastern ones. Here the government does not deal with discrimination like in other places (i.e. US and Europe) so whatever happens inside communities usually stays there until the situation is bad enough to explode. While Ethiopians are accepted by most Israelis, there is still some discrimination. I am sure that in other places Africans also face certain discrimination, here in Israel there is a big community of Ethiopians, there are three generations of them from the time a large immigration has come in the mid 1080s. (see statement by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the state of Ethiopian Israelis) What we see here is a serious topic of friction between African communities, which should be well accepted by established European communities, but for some reason they are not. Israelis take this kind of problem much more seriously than water dumping in the Knesset. One important issue to notice is how these social and community frictions are not just serious but also taken as a reflection of how our society deals with global problems locally. Nobody wants to see discrimination, yet the situation is real and does affect many people. The government can't be testing and watching at every case of discrimination or even small attacks. Yet there is need for some sort of government or community standards. Well, we don't have a solution, at least not one that we can show off to the world. But that's not the end of it. The "Social Justice" protests of last summer as slowly making their way through Israeli society. In the government arena, all kind of new political candidates are looking for a place to make a change. Eventually it will get better. Like other things, it make take time, but it will certainly change. From my own little border, just right of Tel Aviv... THANKS for reading again :)