On July 14, 2015, I arrived in Israel. I am still very confused about the place and I am feeling a bit lonely, but when I read about news from the USA over just the last week I have no regrets. I did not leave the USA, the USA left me. I feel a little guilty since I am not a religious Jew nor particularly gung-go about Israel, but I hope that will help me get over the bumps in the road. I have no misplaced beliefs that Israel is perfect.
As to my fellow Americans I remain saddened and extremely disappointed. You have abandoned the common sense and decency that made America great. What future can there be for a nation obsessed with delusions?
I wish you luck, I hope to leave my socialist country behind within the next year as well, but I will stay in Europe.
I am confident that I made the right decision in leaving the USA but not so sure about Haifa. Lovely place to visit but I don’t know if I want to live here. Getting simple things done, like finding an apartment, buying simple business equipment, seems so difficult and expensive. I am finding it difficult seeing myself living and working here. And it sounds like the rest of Israel is more or less the same, only more expensive. Also I seem to be very much out of sync with everyone here, not necessarily bad, but… I talk about business and everyone talks about jobs. That is not business to me; investing, entrepreneurship, that is business. As for jobs I have not had one since 1990, but if I did need a job it looks like there is very little interest in a 50 year old Anglo lawyer with experience in business in the USA, Latin America, and Europe. It would seem that after diligent study in my Ulpan I might get a position as a janitor in some old rundown building, if I was lucky. Just not very appealing, and certainly not the stuff of motivation. I do have business opportunities popping up for me since I have arrived, but they are in Georgia, India, China, and Eastern Europe. Traveling out of Israel is easy but seems to interfere with aliyah process. In fact it seems to be treated as a sort of betrayal. Don’t have a place to live here, don’t even know where to start looking. Feeling very old. And Israel is not a good place to feel old. There seems to be few crimes more despised than getting old. There is nothing really compelling for me here, and basing myself out of Israel seems very problematic there being more appealing options elsewhere. All very troubling for an old man, and I am feeling very old.
I am sorry that your first impressions of Haifa/Israel (in regards to liveability) have been bad, but hopefully things will change for the better as time passes, if not, then I think that visiting the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv and asking them about getting Polish citizenship would be a good idea (at worst you will lose a few hours, at best you will get Polish citizenship and thus the right to settle in the 28 EU countries + Norway, Iceland and Switzerland).
It is an idea. I remember seeing a lovely travel show about Krakow. Seemed like a very nice place, and so close to rest of Europe.
Krakow is definitely a beautiful city, even though it might not be the best Polish city business wise (that would probably be Katowice or Warsaw), but as I already wrote above, you would have the right to settle in at least 31 European (I am not sure what (if any) benefits EU citizenship brings in regards to Monaco, Andorra and similar European countries, since moving to such countries has never interested me, so I never looked it up), so you wouldn’t have to live in Poland at all (unlike Israel, Poland doesn’t require you to live there to gain citizenship (by descent).
I consider Poland to be a good option, I believe it is the only European (or at least EU) country that has had constant GDP growth since 1992, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon, even though there are still some problems leftover from the period of communist occupation (for example the judiciary still isn’t at the level it should be), but overall I think that Poland is one of rare countries in Europe that is generally heading in the right direction.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.822513 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/17/israel-and-saudi-arabia-forging-ties-could-mean-war-with-iran-commentary.html
So, Israel (and Israel’s government is supposedly right-wing) is against Poles who don’t want their country to end up like Sweden, and at the same time is becoming friends with Saudi Arabia (the World’s main state sponsor of terrorism)? You made the right decision in leaving Israel for Georgia, something is obviously very wrong there.
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5091404,00.html
I used to be pro-Israeli, but if Israel’s right wingers are retarded enough to attack the country and people who shielded Jews for centuries (while pogroms and expulsions were common in the rest of Europe), the country where the biggest amount of people (by far) risked their lives to save Jews during WW II, the only country in nazi-occupied Europe which had an organization dedicated solely to saving Jews (Zegota), the country which suffered the most from nazi and communist war crimes, the country which is one of the rare ones against Europe turning into one big Jewish-hating Caliphate, one of the rare countries which didn’t oppose Jerusalem being recognized as Israel’s capital in the UN, the country which even though it is not rich, still spends significant amount of it’s taxpayers money on restoring Jewish cemeteries, synagogues, etc., one of the rare countries in Europe where the Jewish population is actually growing, and so on and so forth, then I really see no reason to support Israel, people who launch unfounded smear attacks on their friends and allies don’t deserve support, and idiots like Netanyahu and Bennett certainly deserve no support.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/poland-said-mulling-cancellation-of-israel-visit-over-fm-anti-semitism-comments/
The Israeli leadership have proven once again that they are a bunch of morons.
I really don’t understand this. The initial statement from Israel came from a false report that took a statement out of context. But the proposed Polish law is terrible. Poles did collaborate with the Nazis; just a fact. Just like some collaborated with the Soviets. It was not the actions of the Polish nation, just individuals. But to try to suggest that it never happened, and that stating the truth will get you put in jail is wrong-headed. That said, I think the Israeli government could have addressed this in a more diplomatic way. After all there were Jews who collaborated as well. Everyone collaborated to one degree or another if they did not rise up in revolt. And those that did rise up in revolt were murderously killed by the Germans, and betrayed by the Soviets. You were damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. But I still do not understand the Polish position here.
1) The Israelis have been making disgusting anti-Polish remarks for years, so I don’t care for Netanyahu’s “I was misquoted” cop-out.
2) The only terrible thing about the law is that the cucks who run Poland watered it down, and the law wouldn’t have punished with jail those who claimed there were some Polish individuals who collaborated with the Nazis (which the Polish government itself doesn’t deny, so how could they send somebody to jail over it?!?), rather “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.”, I fully support the law as it was proposed before being watered down after Israeli and American pressure, I am tired of hearing and reading anti-Polish slander.
3) As you have written yourself, there were Jews who collaborated with the Nazis, so would it be OK if the Polish leadership and media constantly suggested that the Jews committed the Holocaust and that Israel (which didn’t even exist back then) is responsible for it? Of course it wouldn’t, it would be retarded slander, the kind of which the Poles have suffered from the Israelis for years.
The Israelis are just lucky that the Polish leadership has no self-respect and no balls, nobody helped the Jews more in WW II or in the last 1000 years in general than the Poles, and how do the Israelis show their thanks? By whining and showing contempt, hatred and being slanderous towards the most pro-Jewish nation in World history, I hope that one day Poland will get an actual nationalist government and declare all of these anti-Polish morons to be personas non grata in Poland.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree, but when it is individual Israelis saying things about Poland it is “Israel” slandering Poland. But when the Polish government attempts to white wash history and threaten criminal prosecution against people who say things that the prosecutor does not like (true or not) that is just irrelevant and non-sense to worry about.
Poland has a very long history of discrimination and abuse of Jews. In many ways worse than Russia or the Ukraine. The Poles have traditionally been brutally oppressive against Jews.
The Poles did nothing to help Jews before or during WW II. In fact the Polish resistance, what little of it there was, mostly refused to cooperate and assist Jewish resistance units.
Polish resistance would often give the Germans information about these Jewish units. They also cooperated with the Germans on other levels in regards to the Holocaust — entering into tacit cease fire agreements so that the Germans could more effectively round up Jews without worrying about attacks from the Polish resistance forces.
These are facts. It was not just individual Poles who cooperated with the Germans in order to get more food for their family or avoid legal problems. Units of the Polish resistance forces betrayed Jews to the Germans en masse. These Poles later became key leaders in the Polish government and security operations.
During WW II Poland ceased to exist. However, some elements of the Poles who were acting under name and authority of the Polish Nation, whatever that might be, did in fact cooperate and facilitate the Holocaust. Should I go to jail for stating that?
1) The “individual Israelis” who are slandering Poland are members of the Israeli government, thus official representatives of the Israeli people, they are not some random people on the street in Tel Aviv (who wouldn’t be given media exposure to begin with).
2) Traditionally oppressive against Jews? Yes, they were so “oppressive” that millions of Jews settled in Poland to avoid prosecution elsewhere in Europe.
3) Right, Zegota is a figment of my imagination, as is the fact the the Poles are by far the most numerous amongst the so-called “Righteous among the Nations”, Jan Karski risking his life to tell the World of the Holocaust is also a figment of my imagination, etc., what a vivid imagination I have!
4) Nobody who was “acting under the name and authority of the Polish Nation” cooperated and facilitated the Holocaust, the government of the Republic of Poland in-exile (which was the legitimate government of Poland) most certainly didn’t participate in the Holocaust, and there was no collaborationist Polish government instituted in Poland itself, so I have no idea who these “elements” you write of are, but the point about whether you should be jailed or not if you said it publicly in Poland is a moot point either way because the Polish leadership is made up of a bunch of cucks with no backbone, so they will never institute jail time for those who publicly slander the Polish Nation.