Nonsense from Nefesh B'Nefesh

So here's what I'm talking about, here's some copy from a NBN ad:

"Mediterranean beaches, the Carmel mountains, career, culture & community.  Can I have it all?  Try Aliyah to Northern Israel!"

That's the way they sell aliyah, like you are an orchestra conductor moving to Tuscany. This kind of talk makes me nauseous not just because it isn't Jewish but because you won't get those things moving to Israel. This borders on lying. 

Or at least it's quite a stretch. There are mountains; although I wouldn't recommend random hikes because there could be terrorists lurking out there, Heaven forbid. There are terrorist incidents here every week. The phrase Carmel Mountains in conjunction with Mediterranean suggests Tuscany. There's a whole culture in Tuscany, a culture of ease and laughter and lovely cottages and wine and funny Italians and vineyards. Israel has some mountains, but no cottages and no ease and no laughter and no funny people. It has humorless people, nebach, they get ruined in their time in the army.

As for Mediterranean beaches, that's also a sham. There are beaches, but it's nothing like the American or European beach scene. The beaches here are hard to get to and quite lame. NBN is liable to tell you all about the separate beaches. There are about five of them in the entire country, each 40 yards wide, next to 500 yard wide mixed beaches. And the immodest women are lingering around as the two aren't separated. 

Career options are very limited for olim and  without fluency in Hebrew, which is quite hard to attain, nearly impossible. You are more likely to find yourself sweeping floors or working a customer service line 11 hours a day. There's very little culture, nothing compared to any major city in America or Europe, or any college town or even Raleigh, North Carolina. It's not clear that there's even a symphony orchestra in Israel. I went all the way to Tel Aviv, a two hour trip, to see 15 musicians sitting on a stage. That was the orchestra. I have been to college productions in America where 100 musicians took the stage. And here it's mostly mid-age Russian immigrants because Israel isn't producing many of its own musicians. It produces soldiers. 

The community is also quite lame, particularly outside of Haredi areas. People are combative and unfriendly. Nothing magic happens even in that department.  

So NBN lies.  They are shameful. 




 


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