Municipal Elections: Tel-Aviv is going through its municipal elections, some of the bigger parts are the Parties City for Everyone (run by Communists), To Give Life (an animal rights group), Meretz (they have an American branch) and the Green Party. City for Everyone has the most volunteers (according to one of their volunteers) and their volunteers seem to flooded the streets, the bulletin boards, and beyond. I've tried asking for an explanation between the parties, but all I get are "oh, this one is slightly more left wing than that one." I asked the City for Everyone party volunteer to explain to me why he was volunteering for them, his reply was: "It's the best." (thanks for the insight!) City for Everyone has the platform that they'll make the city more affordable, especially around the Jaffa area where many Arab families cannot pay their taxes. Tel-Aviv is slowly becoming a city where only the wealthy and single can live (thoughts of New York harken back), it's vibrancy so attractive that prices are rising and slowly choking off the city to families and anyone without a large amount of money for rent.
All of these parties were out rallying at Yitzhak Rabin's memorial, a formerly less-political event. Now, its almost an orgy of martyrdom for Yitzhak Rabin, with politics as its purpose and slogan and the memory of Rabin slowly fading. It's not a time for Israelis to come together, rather it's a time for them to see banners.
One of the most surprising things about the memorial, which seemed to take over Kikar Rabin and the surrounding streets, was that many youth groups were out and about. Between Habonim Dror, and plenty of others--all with similarly styled blue shirts--the youth (age 8 onwards) seemed to dominate the scene.
Shimon Peres, Tzipi Livni, and others spoke about the need to create a better Israel, with more stable internal relations and better relations with Palestinian neighbors.
At the end of the night, I felt almost hollow. Politics has taken over memory, and something as straightforward as commemorating the death of a fellow human being, who was murdered, has been made partisan. This country is so fractured,and all the time opportunities for unity--between the holidays and memorials--are becoming fraught with tension and division.
I'm constantly thinking, "Israel could learn from this or that in Diaspora communities" or "Diaspora Jews should do this like Israelis..." In truth, Diaspora Jewish communities are highly fractured as well--although (thank G-d) political differences are often a little smaller, and don't pit Jew against Jew the way they do in Israel.
In other news, people were pushing and shoving all over the place at this event--even a memorial for Rabin couldn't spark manners. Someone, an opinionated American from the midwest, recently said to me: "Israelis act like animals, walking around with cellphones."
