Affixing a position

One of the many things that have become crystal clear to me since we moved here is that Israelis have no problem wearing their politics on their sleeves… and on their cars.

Gil wrote a wonderful piece about how the anti-disengagement crowd seems to have cornered the market on the color orange. In fact, so much so that anyone who is not firmly in that political camp has by now discarded any clothing with even an accent in that particular day-glo hue.

Because I do so much driving every day, I get to absorb a lot of political ideology in the easily-digestible form of bumper stickers.

I’m not talking about the funny ones we used to point out in the states, like:

"My karma ran over your dogma"

"My kid just beat up your honor student"

"I love animals (they taste great!)"

"Nuke the gay whales!"

"Horn broken… watch for finger"

"Honk if you’ve never seen a pistol fired from a car"

"Visualize using your turn signal!"

"Guns don’t kill people… postal workers kill people"

"Jesus Saves… he shoots… HE SCORES!"

I’m sure you have your own favorites (feel free to share).

No, living in ‘the territories’ the overwhelming majority of ‘bumper lectures’ I see tend to express right wing sentiments:

"The nation is WITH the Golan"

"The nation is WITH Gush Katif"

"Oslo criminals to justice"

"This is not ‘Shalom’, friend"

"Hevron… now and forever"

"We want a different peace"

You get the idea… I’m sure you’ve seen many more of this kind.

Obviously, whenever I go to Tel Aviv I see more of the vehicle signage from the other side of the spectrum:

"Peace is a greater ‘Height’"

"Seek peace and pursue it"

"Peace Now"

"We are the majority"

"Disengagement Now"

As with the right wing stickers… there are countless other left wing ones.

For the longest time I wondered where all these bumper stickers came from since I hadn’t seen many actually being sold in stores. Then I started noticing that during periods of intense national debate, teenagers would magically appear at intersections dressed in tee-shirts bearing political slogans, and offering matching bumper stickers to motorists stopped at the red lights. Needless to say, the message on the stickers would vary widely based, for instance, upon whether the intersection was closer to Ramat Gan or Kiryat Arba.

On several occasions I wasn’t fast enough (or perhaps not forceful enough), with my ‘no’, and I ended up having to pull over a few blocks away to disengage the latest missive from my bumper or rear window.

My only firm policy about politics is not allowing political bumper stickers on our car.

Not too long ago a catchy song by HaDag Nahash called ‘Shir HaSticker’ came out which gave a very amusing portrayal of the Israeli propensity for crystallizing political / religious ideology into terse sound bites and catchy bumper sticker slogans. Not only was it a wonderful song… but it also (hopefully) made a few people realize how silly and dogmatic they really sound (OK, probably not).

Personally, I don’t worry about silly, though.  I worry about the real dangers presented by this oversimplified form of expression.

First of all, it leaves people who are closer to the center and those who don't like to be pigeonholed (like me) without a voice in the public debate.

In my humble opinion, the last thing you want to do is make the centrists (i.e. the more reasonable segment of the society) feel they are disenfranchised and therefore should not participate in the political process.

And more importantly, by fixing a firm position on their cars, both right- and left-wingers are making a public statement that they are no longer able or willing to be swayed, no matter how compelling the argument or what new facts / opportunities may come to light.

This last seems startlingly un-Israeli to me.

Israelis have historically been masters of tactical thinking. Israeli military (and political) doctrine has always been about staying mobile… ‘Hit and move’… ‘Never dig in’… ‘Do the unexpected’… ‘If something isn’t working, try something new!’

The old joke goes, "Israelis have the uncanny ability to get themselves out of difficult situations that any other nation would have the good sense not to get themselves into in the first place". The kernel of truth behind this joke speaks directly to the pragmatic gift for improvisation and tactical thinking that has always served Israel (and Israelis) so well.

However, by anchoring themselves to one-line policy statements on the back of their cars, an enormous chunk of the Israeli population seems to have inexplicably decided to ‘dig in’. They have chosen static WWI-era trench warfare and immobile WWII-era fox holes over the option to employ their historical gifts for tactical/creative problem solving.

[sigh]

I miss the days when the most common sticker you were bound to see (no matter where in Israel you lived) was the one stuck on the panel behind the driver’s seat on every Egged bus that read, "Love your neighbor as yourself".