It is true that it is exasperating when among the crowds in
Sheinkin Street, the most "in" part of Tel Aviv, on a spring Friday
with usually pleasant weather, before the city gets sticky and
unbearable - you rub shoulders with someone who happens to be
walking in your direction and you think to yourself: Is this guy
interested in politics?
Actually, if you ask yourself the same question, how can you answer
honestly? Only one of those freaks who keeps up-to-date with every
twist and turn of current politics can give an unambiguous positive
reply. People like this generally find themselves friends of the
same ilk, so that they hold deep and tense conversations with each
other on the last ruling of the Supreme Court or on what is the
chance that Ehud Barak will make peace with the Syrians. These
fanatics, who hang on to every scrap of information and follow
every development, find it hard to believe that the people they
meet in the street don't know the name of the minister of justice
or whether the police is in order in investigating the Netanyahu
family. I talked to two such people.
Not Interested
Michal, 27, is the director of a successful company in the
entertainment business, dealing with local and imported products,
sales and marketing. On her own ground, she is completely at home,
enjoying good connections with all the main personalities in the
branch, naturally invited to all important events and accustomed as
the result of her grasp of the economic side of the work to
initiate projects and to close business deals. But she doesn't know
who the minister of the interior is.
Michal claims that most average Tel Avivians will be unable to
answer detailed questions on the peace process; she doesn't know
the difference between Areas A, B, and C, and neither does she
think that she should know all this. She supports the peace process
and the establishment of a Palestinian state, but she sees no way
in which she can promote such ideas, apart from voting in
elections. The truth is that, though in her own field of work she
has unusual knowledge, politics doesn't interest her.
Ran, 27, directs a large industrial enterprise that belongs to his
family. He has learned his job from hands-on experience and from
studying business administration. He makes giant business deals;
his enterprise is registered on the stock exchange and he employs
about a hundred people. In the elections he voted for an ecological
group. He doesn't really know what is going on in the peace process
and why it should be of particular interest to him. "Negotiations
are going on with the Palestinians, conducted by the politicians. I
hope the negotiations succeed, and this may benefit me also as a
businessman, but I live here in Tel Aviv and don't feel the peace
process on a daily basis and in any case - what on earth can I do
about it?"
When I sat with Ran, two friends from Tel Aviv came to see him:
Chen and Rami. They too are uninvolved in what is going on in the
negotiations with the Palestinians and they also hope there will be
peace. Rami was a soldier in the infantry when, in the early 1990s,
the Intifada was at its peak. He had to contend with an extremely
hostile population and, nowadays, he feels cheated: Why did they
send him there if, in any case, the territories would be returned?
But he repeats that he supports a Palestinian state and sees no
other alternative. When I asked Chen and Rami if they had ever
participated in a political event, they asked whether that included
the rally in memory of Yitzhak Rabin last year. Otherwise, they
have never been in a demonstration or a political activity on
behalf of the peace process, though they support it. Chen says that
"perhaps it was just laziness; I wanted to go several times, but it
never worked out."
Manipulating the News
I had coffee with Michal in her apartment and tried to find how
much she knew about Israeli politics. It was embarrassing, but she
glossed over it and explained that she knows the gist of things and
that is enough. She never watches the news on television and
listens to very little radio - mainly to classical music. She has a
degree in communications and has a problem with the way journalists
manipulate the news. "I know the media people tend to present only
part of what happened, or to project things in a certain way and I
don't believe in their reports at all. You often see a sensational
report one day and the next day it turns out to be nonsense. Since
I studied the subject, I know how the media manipulates information
and how competition between journalists makes them exaggerate and
present things in black and white."
Michal asks whether one contributes to society only through
following current affairs, or whether she contributes no less than
the political activists through providing the public with culture
and entertainment. "I know a lot of people who understand nothing
of politics and are disinterested in the difficulties of
negotiations with the Palestinians - but they create music, dance,
theater; they create Israeli culture, and this is a most important
contribution." I ask her what about those who are involved neither
in politics nor in culture, and she has her individualistic reply:
"Whatever they do, as long as they do it well, they are
contributing to society, be it computer experts, business people,
those developing technology, anyone helping the economy."
The Individual Comes First
She thinks that every individual has the right to develop his/her
personal self, and this is the only way to contribute to the
collective benefit, to the surrounding society. Sheinkin is a
street for individualists, everyone according to his/her taste,
wearing whatever clothes they choose, and we should let people do
their own thing, including not taking an interest in politics.
Israel is moving from a collectivist society in which the
individual is for the society, to an individualistic society in
which the individual is firstly for himself/herself.
It doesn't disturb Ran that he is not involved in the peace process
and has no idea how he can contribute to it. Neither does he feel
the need to do so, though, unlike Michal, he has no ideological
arguments. He simply isn't interested. Rami and Chen, on the other
hand, feel pangs of conscience, can't quite justify themselves and
would like to be more involved. For his part, Ran works neither for
the peace process and doesn't consider political activism to be a
social ideal. "Everybody should do what interests him. Anyone
interested in politics should get involved; as for myself, I don't
need it."
Are we speaking here of a phenomenon of individualism or of
egotism? Is it detrimental to a society that they are being
themselves and as such making their contribution? The fact that in
Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel people are doing their own
personal thing and they do not choose political involvement, didn't
prevent the peace process from getting under way. Perhaps those
people living ordinary, simple lives without making revolutions or
changing reality are the ones who preserve sanity in Israeli
society.