Hey Airlines, Start Treating Us Like Human Beings!

I decided to write this post after one of my Facebook friends posted a horrid story about passengers on a United Airlines flight who were left to stay at a remote military barracks with little warmth, little food and very little information after their plane made an emergency landing in Goose Bay, a town in northeastern Canada (see: EXCLUSIVE: Hundreds of fuming United Airlines passengers 'abandoned' in remote Canada barracks for 20 HOURS after 'faulty' Chicago-London flight diverts while crew spend night in 'comfy hotel').  I'm actually not surprised that something like this happened, especially with a carrier like United Airlines, who along with several other companies have a notorious record of poor customer service.  For those of you who are interested in finding out what other airlines don't make the grade, just look at this list of The 15 Worst Airlines Flying in 2015.

Anyone who has flown at least a few times during their life probably has a bad story to tell about less than stellar customer service on the part of an airline.  I've heard plenty of tall tales from friends and relatives; tales of lost luggage, rude staff, flight delays and so forth.  What really bothers me, though, is that lately, the airlines have been treating us less and less like human beings and a lot more like chattel.  The seats are getting smaller, the fares are getting higher, and the airlines keep finding more ways to nickel and dime us to death.  Does anyone remember when those headphones were free?  How about those complementary meals on short-haul flights, or being able to check just one bag without having to pay a $25 fee?  Those days are long gone, my friends.  Nowadays, unless you happen to have the big bucks to fly first class or business class, you'll be crammed into tiny seats, jammed up alongside the people next to you.  You'll barely be able to move, let alone do something revolutionary, like cross your legs.  In fact, if a dog is flying on the plane below you in the cargo hold, he'll probably have more room than you since most regulations stipulate that pets travelling on airplanes must be in kept in an enclosure that allows them to stand up, turn around and lie down.  Does this irony sound stupid to anyone else?

It's time the airlines started treating us like human beings.  So for any airline CEO reading this, let me sum it all up for you.  Stop cramming us into your airplanes like sardines.  Give us seats that will allow us to move a couple of inches or more without having to disturb the person next to us.  Better yet, give us seats that will allow us to get up to go to the bathroom without having to wake up the person in the next seat taking a nap.  Stop charging us for things that you used to give us for free.  Hire staff that will treat us with dignity.  And most importantly, do these things for ALL of your passengers, not just those with deep pockets.    

End "Status Quo" Religious Dictatorship in Israel

In the last few days, I've come across more stories out of Israel that have raised my level of anger towards the country's religious establishment.  The latest story I've read was about Haredim threatening protests if Jerusalem's new cable cars operate on Shabbat (see: Haredim threaten protests over Jerusalem cable car), even though the Jerusalem Municipality issued a statement reassuring everyone, including the anti-Zionist Haredim, that the new transportation initiative would not be operated on the Jewish day of rest.  A few days prior, another story came out about an IDF soldier who faced the wrath of Israel's dictatorial religious laws because he brought a pork sandwich onto his base.  He would have been sent to a military prison for eleven days had it not been for the efforts of his relatives, who spoke to the media, and an unnamed Knesset member who wrote to the defense minister about the incident (see: Punishment Withdrawn for Israeli-American soldier who indulged in pork).  I actually remember posting this article on my Facebook page withe the caption, "I'm beginning to wonder, is this Israel or Iran?"  Also worth mentioning is that after the IDF cancelled the prison sentence for the secular soldier, the deputy defense minister, himself a rabbi and member of the religious Zionist Beit Yehudi party, scolded the military for backing off from the punishment.  Now of course, I have much more respect for religious Zionists than I do for the anti-Zionist Haredim, because religious Zionists are great contributors to Israeli society.  Unlike most Haredim, they work and contribute to the Israeli economy, yet they still devote themselves fiercely to their religion.  That being said, however, they do not have the right to impose religious laws or values on Israel's secular public.  It is just as wrong for Israel's religious Jews to have a penalty imposed on a secular Israeli soldier for eating pork on his base as it would be for secular Israelis to have a religious Israeli soldier be punished for not eating pork.

Unfortunately, stories of secular individuals and government authorities being threatened or punished for breaking or even being suspected of breaking the country's dictatorial religious laws are commonplace in Israel and have been since the founding of the state in 1948.  The reason is the so-called "status quo" arrangement made between Israel's founding fathers and the fledgling Jewish state's religious establishment.  The arrangement dates back to a letter sent by David Ben-Gurion to leaders representing the Haredi community in which he made assurances that religious laws and ordinances on matters including Shabbat, Kashrut, family law and educational autonomy would be upheld and enforced in what would become the State of Israel.  Ben-Gurion, who as we know became Israel's first prime minister, did this because he needed to ensure a united Jewish stance in favour of the United Nations' 1947 Palestine partition plan.  Without this united stance, the partition plan granting Jews an independent state in the Land of Israel may not have passed.  The irony is that the "status quo" arrangement that allowed Israel to be established with international legitimacy is the same thing that is oppressing much of Israel's public today.

So what if Israel's government decided to drop Ben-Gurion's compromise?  What if Israel's leaders suddenly agreed to lift restrictions on activities like shopping and public transportation on Shabbat and other Jewish holidays?  Would we be on the fast track to civil war?  I don't think so, and the reason I don't think so is that even if the Haredim or the religious Zionist community strongly resented Israel's turn towards secularism, they would still not bite the hand that feeds them.  After all, Israel is the one and only Jewish state, and I don't see either the Haredim or the religious Zionist Jews creating states of their own.  How could the Haredim create a country of their own?  They won't even contribute to the society and economy in the country they have now, to say nothing of their refusal to fight for it in the IDF.  Why would they act any differently to create a country of their own?  And as for the religious Zionists are concerned, there may be some of them who may openly talk of creating a second, more religious Jewish state, but I think most of them will continue to remain loyal Israeli citizens because they know Jewish history better than most people and will remember what happened the last time the Jewish people were split into two states.  Hence, they will not want history to repeat itself.

The point I'm trying to make is that for the sake of liberty, Israel needs to end the religious dictatorship that David Ben-Gurion's "status quo" arrangement has left us with, and we can do this without tearing the country apart.  We need to allow ordinary Israeli citizens who want to take the bus on Saturdays or get married without the involvement or the Orthodox rabbinate the right to do so without being threatened or punished.  Now I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak from my fellow Jews who are of a more religious persuasion for what I'm saying here.  Indeed, I've already gotten responses back telling me that if I or anyone else don't like Israel's dictatorial religious laws, we should live somewhere else.  My response to these people is that Israel belongs to its secular citizens just as much as it does to its religious ones, so no member of either community should tell members of the other that they should leave just because they share a different view of what it means to live as a Jew in the Jewish State of Israel. 

Israel Needs a New National Anthem

I read an article today about a visit that Israeli President Reuven Rivlin made to a school in Jerusalem, where he discussed co-existence and equality.  One of the things he told the students at the school was that he respects those amongst Israel's citizens that do not sing the verse, "Jewish soul", in the national anthem, "Hatikva" (see: Rivlin to Students: Respect those that do not sing the words, "Jewish Soul" in the anthem).  Israel's national symbols, including its national anthem, its flag and its coat of arms, have been a point of contention with the country's non-Jewish citizens who feel excluded from what are essentially Jewish symbols.  President Rivlin gave an example of an Arab friend of his who told him that the national anthem should be changed.  Rivlin replied to him that the national anthem could not be changed because the hope of establishing a Jewish state was, in his words, "our goal for two thousand years."  I am not a person who likes to change symbols simply to placate minority groups.  This has been happening too much in other countries, including Canada, where I live.  In fact, it is almost always the industrialized democracies that bend over backwards to placate members of minority populations, many of whom come from countries that do almost nothing to accommodate minorities in their own backyard.  For example, in Canada, celebrating Christmas in public schools has all but come to an end because doing so supposedly offends Canadians who are not Christians.  But would you ever see public schools in the Islamic Republic of Iran refrain from  celebrating a Muslim holiday so as not to offend non-Muslims?  I don't think so.  Hence, I do not agree with changing Israel's national anthem or any other national symbol to accommodate non-Jewish citizens.  I think I can speak for most Jews both inside and outside of Israel when I say that we only have one country that is truly ours and we aim to keep it that way.  Nevertheless, I think that Israel's national anthem should be changed for other reasons.

"The Hope" Has Already Been Achieved.  Israel's National Anthem Should Reflect This

Like Israel's flag, the country's national anthem, "Hatikva", or "The Hope" as it translates into English, predates the State of Israel itself.  It was written in 1878 by a Jewish poet and adopted as the anthem of the Zionist movement in 1897 at the first Zionist Congress.  The anthem itself speaks of the hope of the Jewish people to establish a sovereign homeland in the Biblical Land of Israel, hence the name of the song.  One of the reasons that I believe in replacing Hatikva as Israel's national anthem is because the hope that it refers to has already been achieved.  Jewish independence has been reestablished for the first time in 2000 years and we Jews are, as Hatikva states, "a free people in our land."  In other words, the anthem is out of date, and I think that any national anthem of Israel should be one that talks about the State of Israel as it exists today and hopefully for years to come.

"...towards the east an eye looks to Zion."  An Exclusionary Verse

Another problem that I've always had with Hatikva presents itself in one particular verse that I find excludes Jews of non-European descent.  This verse goes, "...towards the east an eye looks to Zion."  As I understand this verse, it was meant to resonate with Jews of European descent, often referred to as Ashkenazim.  After all, it was an Ashkenazi Jew that wrote the song, and for him and other Jews in Europe, east was the general direction of the Land of Israel, not to mention the fact that the Zionist movement itself started off as an exclusively European Jewish movement under Theodore Herzl.  And even when non-European Jews, sometimes called Mizrahim or Sephardim, began joining the Zionist movement, it was still an overwhelmingly European Jewish movement.  Indeed, there has always been tension in Israel between Ashkenazim and Sephardim/Mizrachim, with the former group historically assuming the role of the ruling class, while the latter group has traditionally been the underclass.  This tension still plays out in Israeli politics today, and in my opinion, Hatikva, though never intended to be emblematic of Ashkenazi dominance, is in fact a hallmark of such dominance.  By having a verse in our anthem that refers exclusively to Jews in Europe looking east towards Zion, we are allowing our anthem to negate those of us Jews who are not of European descent.  My family on my father's side, for example, is of Georgian descent.  My grandmother herself was born in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, and for those of you who know your geography, the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia can be found northeast of the Land of Israel.  Hence, my ancestors would have looked west to Zion, not east.  Moreover, my family on my grandfather's side (my father's father) go back several generations in the Land of Israel, even before the modern Zionist waves of immigration to what would become the State of Israel began.  But does Hatikva give any reference to Jews that were born outside of Europe or who were already in Israel before Zionism began?  Nope, not a word, and this for me is a problem.  Actually, it's more like an injustice.  Our national anthem must be an anthem for all the children of Israel, not just the ones who happened to find their way to the country from Europe.

What Would a Better Anthem Be?

I believe that a better national anthem for the State of Israel is one that the greatest number of Israelis can identify with and say, "This is what my country is all about."  One thing that I would hope for is that any future national anthem be a song written by an Israeli.  Perhaps there is already a popular Israeli song that we can designate as our national anthem.  I always liked "Jerusalem of Gold" (Yerushalayim Shel Zahav) for example, though I don't believe that this would be suitable because it is a song about Jerusalem, not Israel as a whole.  But perhaps there is another Israeli song that would be more appropriate.  Heck, maybe we should hold a national contest and have Israeli citizens submit their own ideas.   

     

Help the Rohingya

In the past week, I've been seeing a lot of news stories focusing on the plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim people who mostly live in the Burmese state of Rakhine, where they are relentlessly persecuted, subjected to massacres and expulsions, and denied basic rights of any kind.  The Burmese authorities refuse to give them citizenship, claiming that they are from Bangladesh, while the government in Bangladesh disputes this claim and will not recognize the Rohingya as their responsibility either.  Hence, the Rohingya are a people without a country to call home.  They have been in the news recently because many of them, having attempted to flee persecution in Burma, now find themselves stranded at sea in appalling conditions on less than seaworthy boats because no country will give them refuge. 

When I saw the clips of the Rohingyas stranded on ships in the middle of the ocean begging for help, it reminded me of a dark chapter in Canadian history when in 1939, Canada turned away the St. Louis, a ship loaded with over nine hundred Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.  Actually, Canada was only one of several countries, including the U.S., Cuba and other Caribbean states that refused to allow the Jews to disembark on their soil.  This ship eventually sailed back to Europe, where some of the refugees ultimately met their deaths in the Nazi concentration camps.  Hence, as a Jew, I strongly empathize with the plight of the Rohingya people as their situation is not too dissimilar from the former situation of the Jewish people, who not too long ago were a people without a country, unwelcome wherever they hoped to find refuge.  Now it seems that the world is failing to stop the genocide against the Rohingya just as it failed to stop the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust.  Have we learned nothing from history?

The Rohingya need more than the small handouts and lip service that they have been getting from the international community so far.  They need the world to take action and stop the persecution and genocide that is being committed against them in Burma.  Furthermore, they need to have place that they can call home.  I argued in one of my first blog posts that every persecuted people needs a homeland of their own, and even pointed to the Rohingya as an example (see: Why the Jewish People and Every Other Persecuted Nation Need a Home to Call Their Own).  Indeed, just as the Jewish Holocaust may have been prevented had the Jews had a country of their own when the Nazi death machine emerged, so too may the existence of a Rohingya homeland prevent the continuing genocide against the Rohingya Muslims.     

Jerusalem Must Remain United...At Least Physically

Today, May 17, 2015, or the 28th Day of Iyyar according to the Hebrew calendar, is Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) in Israel; the day when Israelis mark the reunification of the city and the liberation of the city's eastern half from Jordanian-Hashemite rule.  Before the liberation and reunification, Israelis and Jews were barred from most of the city's holy places, including the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.  My relatives on one side of my family are from Jerusalem.  In fact, they have been living there for five or more generations, even before the first Zionist-inspired waves of immigration to what would become the State of Israel began.  My father recently told me a story about how his father went to meet his friend, an Arab man living in the Old City, for the first time in nearly two decades, shortly after the reunification.  My grandfather himself was actually born in the Old City when it was still under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.  I also remember my father telling me about how IDF soldiers visited the Western Wall for the first time.  "They were crying like babies," my father told me.  And who can blame them?  This was the first time in two thousand years that Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, was entirely in Jewish hands.  To divide Jerusalem again would be like tearing the heart out of the Jewish people.  Yet this is exactly what a lot of people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are talking about doing in order to meet the demands of the Palestinians to have the eastern part of the city, including the Old City, as the capital of their future state. 

Let's not forget that Jerusalem has never been the capital of any people other than the Jewish people.  In fact, even when it was under Jordanian control, the Hashemite regime never made it the capital of their kingdom, setting aside this honour for Amman instead.  Furthermore, my father can attest to the fact that under Hashemite rule, the eastern side of Jerusalem was far from prosperous.  When he entered the Old City for the first time, there was garbage strewn all over the streets.  He even told me a story about how the IDF warned its soldiers and the public not to eat the produce sold in the Old City because it was watered with sewage water.  Jerusalem wasn't treated very well under the previous Ottoman rulers either.  Have you ever wondered why the gate that leads to the Old City's Jewish Quarter is called the Dung Gate?  Well, it's because that part of the Old City, including the site of the Western Wall, was a dumping ground for animal feces.  And this is supposed to be Islam's third holiest city!?  I guess the moral of the story is that when tyrannical Muslim rulers control the city, they can do whatever they want with it, which includes making it dirty and reeking of neglect.  But if Jews control the city, they are conquerors and occupiers, regardless of the fact that Israeli control of the unified city has brought with it modern infrastructure and economic prosperity.  I am uncompromising in my belief that Jerusalem must remain united...at least physically.

In other words, there can never be a physical border separating parts of what constitutes Jerusalem today.  But I would not rule out the possibility of a political border, or more specifically a municipal border.  What I mean is that it may be prudent to give Arab neighbourhoods in the city municipal autonomy so that the predominantly Jewish neigbhourhoods remain part of the municipality known as Yerushalayim, while Arab neighbourhoods, like Beit Hanina, Shuafat, and Beit Safafa would be part of the new municipality of Al-Quds.  This way, Jerusalem would remain the united capitol of Israel, but have a municipal separation between Jewish and Arab majority areas that would not be marked by physical boundaries.  This is a model that has already existed in Israel for quite some time in certain areas of the country.  For instance, the city of Nazareth is a predominantly Arab city, while next to it is a different city called Nazeret Illit, which is inhabited mostly by Jews.  The same thing has also been happening in Judea and Samaria.  For example, outside of the city of Jericho, where almost all of the inhabitants are Arabs, there is a small village called Vered Yericho, as well as other nearby Jewish villages.  What I'm trying to say is that it is possible to plan the allocation of land so that Jewish and Arab communities can have at least some degree of autonomy that allows them to meet the specific needs of their respective communities. 

As the current situation in Jerusalem stands today, the overwhelming majority of the city's Arabs refuse to participate in Jerusalem's municipal politics because of threats from Palestinian leaders who consider any participation in Israel's institutions to be treason.  In 1987, for example, Sari Nusseibeh, now the president of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, tried to run for mayor of the city, but withdrew his candidacy after his cars were burned and his home was vandalized (see: Tradition of Not Voting Keeps Palestinians Politically Powerless in Jerusalem).  Perhaps, however, if the mostly Arab neighbourhoods of the city were put together to make up an autonomous Al-Quds municipality, the Arab residents therein would be more likely to participate in municipal politics, knowing that it would be Arabs and not Jews governing them.  Once they are given municipal autonomy, along with adequate funding that could come from both Israeli and Palestinian sources, they would be able to improve their living standards, which lag behind those of the Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.  This municipal autonomy could even be part of a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which I discussed in a past blog (see: My Own Personal Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan).

Haredim in Israel Must Learn to Live and Let Live

Early this past week, I came across an article in the English internet version of Yediot Ahronot saying that Haredi activists are asking the mayor of Jerusalem to close the city's famous Biblical Zoo on Shabbat (see: Haredim want Biblical Zoo closed on Shabbat).  This certainly isn't the first time that people in the Haredi community have tried to prevent certain institutions or places of commerce from operating on the Jewish Sabbath and it definitely won't be the last.  Indeed, I can tell you from my own personal experience that Jerusalem on a Saturday can seem like a ghost town.  But of course, restrictions on many activities during Shabbat are not limited to Jerusalem.

Most daily activities, including grocery shopping, dining out, going to the movies, or even using public transportation are significantly curtailed in all parts of Israel, either because of religiously-based laws preventing such activities from taking place or because of pressure from local Haredi communities.  In fact, this has been the reality in Israel since independence, though it's a reality that many Israelis would like to change.  It's bad enough that many Haredim refuse to contribute to modern Israeli society by say, getting a job, yet these same people have the nerve to tell ordinary, hardworking Israeli taxpayers how they should live their lives.

It's not like the rest of the Israeli public tells the Haredim how to live their lives, other than asking them to contribute to the country's economy, which many of them still refuse to do.  On the contrary, the rest of Israel's citizens make the Haredi way of life possible since it is their hard-earned taxes that the government uses to pay the masses of unemployed and unproductive Haredim to sit in their synagogues and study the Torah all day.  And how do these folks repay the Israeli majority?  By gathering on the streets every Saturday to yell at, spit at, and throw stones at Israelis driving their cars, yelling "Shabbos!  Shabbos!"  My response to the Haredim who insist on telling the rest of Israel how to live their lives and telling them what they should and shouldn't do on Shabbat or other Jewish holidays is the following: No one is stopping you from living the way you want to live.  If you want to live your lives according to how interpret the Jewish religion, that's fine.  If you want to continue walking around in your medieval Polish garb, speaking Yiddish and acting as if you are still living in the shtetls of Europe, then by all means, go ahead.  But don't insist that all Israelis must live as you do.  Learn to live and let live. 
   

Your Time is Money...Except at the Doctor's Office

A few days ago, I read a news story about a woman who waited in a Peterborough hospital for an hour and a half for a one-minute cortisone injection.  So what's so newsworthy about this?  Anyone in Canada who's ever been to a doctor's office or hospital knows what it's like to wait for what seems like an eternity for an appointment or procedure that only lasts a few minutes at most.  The difference in this case is that the woman has attempted to bill the hospital for the time she was kept waiting (see: Time is money, says woman who sent hospital $122.50 bill for wait time).

Personally, I would love to be able to bill doctors and hospitals for the seemingly endless hours I've had to wait for them.  Heck, I think if everyone got to bill their doctors for wait times, we would all be rich - and the health care system would be bankrupt.  Seriously, ask yourself how long you've had to languish in your doctor's waiting room with nothing but magazines in excess of a year old to occupy your time?  I'm betting that many of you have lost count of how many hours you've waited to see a doctor over your lifetime.  Now let's face it, sometimes doctors have legitimate excuses for making you wait.  These usually involve emergency situations.  But sometimes this is not the case, and doctors can keep you waiting just because they feel like it.  My feeling is that some of them have a sense of entitlement, believing that their time is worth more than everyone else's simply because they're doctors and the rest of us aren't.  For example, the woman who is the subject of the aforementioned article claimed that she and other patients were kept waiting while the doctor and his staff took a lunch break.  The woman also claimed that another patient asked the receptionist if he could go grab something to eat to keep his diabetes under control, only to be refused on the grounds that he might miss his appointment time.  How hypocritical can you get!?  The doctor and his staff can take off and grab lunch, but patients don't have that right!?  It's not the first time I've heard about this kind of double standard that some people in the medical professions seem to have.

I once had a doctor who I saw on an almost weekly basis.  In my opinion, he had a very large sense of entitlement and was just about the most arrogant person I have ever met.  He routinely kept me waiting for up to 30 minutes each time I saw him.  But God forbid if I was a few minutes late, he would give me a lecture.  In fact, one time when I failed to make an appointment due to a freak snowstorm, he charged me $75 for missing the appointment and then told me, "I hope you learn from this."  Meanwhile, whenever I suggested he was hypocritical because he was routinely late for my appointments with him, he would shrug and say that his frequent tardiness was due to situations beyond his control.  Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, doctor, but isn't the weather beyond my control?  My point is that there is a fetid stench of hypocrisy that surrounds people in the medical professions.  They get to bill us whenever we're late or absent, but we don't get to bill them whenever they fail to serve us in a timely manner.  The woman who billed the hospital for her wait time is obviously aware of this double standard, as I think we all are.  The difference between her and the rest of us is that she courageously took a stand against this hypocrisy by sending a bill for her wait time to the hospital.  I think that we should learn from this woman's example and stand up for our right as patients and taxpayers to receive timely service from the folks who work in our health care system, or to be compensated whenever we're kept languishing in waiting rooms for no valid reason.