Reflections on a visit to the USA during the first days of the Obama era, and in the wake of the Israeli elections.

“No entrance to leftists!” A satirical take on Avigdor Lieberman by left wing party Meretz.

Being back in the States after a prolonged absence is always instructive. Living abroad gives you the space to take a detached look at American culture and politics, which can reveal some remarkable insights.

I have been living outside the country where I grew up for most of the last ten years. I wasn’t here for September 11^th, but I experienced the extreme sense of fear and loathing that followed it on a visit back in 2002. I witnessed the wars and scandals of the Bush era from afar, but on each visit back found that latent streams of intolerance and prejudice (I grew up in the South) were steadily emerging out of the shadows and into the daylight.

Perhaps the climax of the absurdity of the Bush years was the Hurricane Katrina debacle, which occurred while I was in New York visiting my grandmother. I saw this disaster through the same media lens that the rest of the country saw it, and on subsequent visits I managed to catch some of the shockwaves (for example, Spike Lee’s ferocious documentary about what happened during and after the storm.)

Like it or not, the way that Americans perceive reality (or perhaps the way that the American media presents “reality” to Americans) is different from the way the rest of the world perceives those same events. Indeed, you can be sure that the BBC painted a far different picture of the Katrina aftermath than did the American news networks. I particularly remember a shot in a BBC report of armed private security guards (Blackwater?) protecting some storefront in the French Quarter, while an obviously wet, traumatized and hungry black family huddled across the street helplessly.

However, history is a series of pendulum swings, as my father likes to say, and lately it seems like the USA really has turned a corner. Barack Obama’s brand of hope is not just a slogan. I’ve met several people who didn’t vote for him here who couldn’t help but admit that the guy just seems real and sincere. (An anecdote: Watching Obama speak on TV, I remarked offhandedly to someone that the guy has great charisma. “So did Hitler,” she answered me. But even she admitted that she couldn’t help but be impressed by him.)

Not just that, but suddenly the whole Washington process, so shrouded in secrecy and tucked out of site during the Bush era, is exposed in all its vulgarity right there on everybody’s televisions. Press conferences, town halls, “bipartisan negotiations” are all being held in plain sight these days, and our leaders are bluntly stating that they just aren’t sure. They don’t have all the answers, and they are not certain that what they are fighting for is even going to work. A refreshing whiff of honesty, in my opinion.

Still, America is in bad shape. Even in the best of times, this has always been a country where people are always preoccupied by their economic situation. Strange that, in the world’s richest country, life always seems to revolve around money: working hard, climbing the ladder, buying stuff, paying off debts, loans, mortgages. Believe it or not, I’ve been to plenty of “poor” countries where money worries are keeping a lot less people up at night.

But these are not the best of times, in fact they are downright lousy. Everyone has heard the bombastic rhetoric about the severity of the crisis – that’s nothing new. What is new, at least for me, if how close everyone feels to it. I can’t remember the last time I felt so much fear and uncertainty in the air in America. I mean, paying back loans on a fancy car that maybe a friend of mine couldn’t afford, yes. But all these stories about overqualified people applying for crappy jobs because there are just no decent jobs to be had right now – that’s something new. And what’s worse is that everyone seems convinced – and I am inclined to agree with them – that it will probably get much worse before it begins to get better.

Yup, things here are in really bad shape, a real disaster, but perhaps not as bad as in my adopted homeland, where I’ve been carrying on a pretty pleasant existence, with notable exceptions of course, for most of the past decade.

Believe it or not, I’m talking about Israel. I know that for most Americans, Israel seems like a place where things are constantly blowing up left and right – and there is some truth to that. There have been some really bad times. It’s not easy living in a country where there’s a war or national trauma pretty much every other year – and the time in between is spent agonizing about the last trauma and trying to anticipate the next one.

Granted, Israel is no Shangri-La, but it does have its advantages. Until recently, the cost of living was fairly low. I was able to live smack dab in the center of Tel Aviv for perhaps a fifth of the rent that I would be paying in New York City. The weather is good for most of the year, there’s a great beach five minutes away, and I can get pretty much anywhere I want in the city by bike. Sounds almost idyllic, right? And by the way, terrorism in Israel’s cities (excluding those located near Gaza) has been almost nonexistent for a few years now. Politically, a promising new grassroots movement won several seats on the Tel Aviv city council, and for the first time a slew of green parties took shape in order to compete for seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Then, however, something snapped.

It started with the Gaza war. I was absolutely shocked to hear one Saturday morning that the air force had killed 150 some people in the opening act of what was to become a month long assault. From that first day, and until the fighting ended in late January (with both sides declaring unilateral ceasefires), I was seized with a sense of hopelessness that I don’t recall having even in the darkest days of the Second Intifada, when multiple buses were blowing up every day.

Perhaps I was too young to really grasp what was going on back then, or perhaps I was more insulated (living in university dorms without a TV), but I remember thinking back then that, somehow, things would eventually work out. The fighting would exhaust itself, the “leaders” would drag themselves back to the negotiating table, and somehow the situation would improve.

I can’t say that I feel that way today. Not only was this war savage and one-sided, that’s really not all that new (although in my opinion this one broke new ground). And it’s not only that (on both sides) civilians bore the brunt of the fighting. Unfortunately, that’s pretty standard as well.

What truly disturbed me about this war was the almost wall to wall support that it engendered inside Israel. Very few dared to question the war’s goals, methods or necessity. In the first few days of fighting, only the extreme left in Israel had the courage to protest against it. Noted leftist intellectuals publicly expressed their support for the attack, and even “leftist” political parties rallied around the flag and the country’s leadership. For most Israelis, this was a war of no choice. They shot missiles at us for 8 years, so what did they expect, that we wouldn’t eventually react?

Society’s reaction to the war was one of weary enthusiasm and acceptance, and its reaction to those who dared to oppose it was vitriolic rage. “How dare you traitors weaken our morale when my son is in there fighting to defend you, you leftist piece of trash.” These were the shouts of passersby when they stumbled across a protest in Tel Aviv calling on the country’s leadership to stop the killing.

The media wasn’t exactly helpful either. With Gaza sealed off to journalists, the Israeli press was only too happy to focus almost exclusively on the suffering on “our side.” Endless images of harried  grandmothers shuffling into shelters in the wake of bomb sirens and burnt-out cars, struck by Palestinian missiles, painted a picture of very real distress in the country’s south. The nation’s sympathies truly went out to the residents of the south – but it came at the expense of the knowledge that the other side was suffering from daily air raids, tank shells and a muscular ground invasion.

After the fighting finally ended, the smoke cleared to reveal a new political landscape. Whether it was a conscious political decision or not, the war had managed to push all non-security issues to the fringes of the political debate. The country was in no mood for such “luxuries,” and people were looking for the proverbial “strong leader.” Fed up with their lot, and perhaps despairing of a better future for themselves and their children, many people began to sound less and less rational, and the political discussion turned increasingly shrill and emotional.

Into this mess stepped Avigdor Lieberman, an immigrant from the former USSR, a settler and a hooligan. With his cold stare and slogans like “Only Lieberman understands Arabic” and “No citizenship without loyalty,” it was clear to everyone that Lieberman was just the guy to finally put those Arabs in their place and show everyone in the Middle East who’s boss. Lieberman, cool and calculated, was only too happy to play on the deep-seated fears and anxieties of his countrymen.

And so, today, as America awakens from eight long years of stagnation, a familiar visitor like me can still catch a glimmer of hope in peoples’ eyes. After almost a decade of Bush, people are understandably weary, and cynical about government and politicians. And with the economy going down the drain, people are clearly withdrawing into their own worries. And yet, there is hope.

In Israel, where for so many cynicism long ago triumphed over hope for a better future, we are entering a period akin to the Bush years in the States. Yes we can? In the Israel of Bibi, Lieberman and their cronies, there is no Obama effect. The people have spoken, and they have received exactly what they asked for: stagnation, misgovernment, war-mongering and above all a deafening absence of hope.