I should have recorded it

 

Tonight on the bus from Jerusalem, we endured a ticket checker who had quite the anger problem. He screamed and screamed. It started with a guy who might not have paid. Sometimes, the problem is the card. I once boarded a bus in Jerusalem, swiped my card at least five times because I couldn't tell if it worked or not. You don't get a receipt and the machine screen is not readable. You are waiting for a beep. People are behind me waiting. The driver waved me on, so I went. A ticket checker came on and ran my card through his little machine and couldn't find proof of my paying. I explained that I had swiped it numerous times and the driver waved me on. Didn't matter. The drive didn't back me up. The checker made such a scene and did his best to embarrass me. He was clearly a former army guy. Aggressive, hard faced, muscular. There was such a cruelty to his style. He seemed so proud of himself that he caught a Haredi looking person. They hate us so much. 

Sometimes the problem is confusion. Another time I was subject to a switch. I have a local zone plan. And the way it used to work is that if you are traveling to Jerusalem the card would automatically charge you for the long ride to Jerusalem. But seems the bus company changed their approach. It first assumes that you are traveling in the zone, which includes a stop just outside the city I live in and doesn't charge you to Jerusalem. You have to tell the driver, who wants nothing to do with you, to add on the extra few shekels. I didn't know this. They don't advertise it. So this ticket checker female gets on, swipes my card, and sees only the zone charge. She made such a scene. I explained I swiped. She accuses me of geneivah. They love using that word. These Israelis who violate every mitzvah on the list, get all worked up about geneivah. They scream the word every chance they get. She also did her best to embarrass me. Rather than just give me the ticket, she carried on for 15 minutes, yelling at me. I have to assume this is what they do to Palestinians, hurt them in every possible way that they can. You get this sense of utter heartlessness when dealing with a large percentage of the Chilonim here. 

So here too, on my trip today, we heard the word gezel about 15 times. This nut yelled and yelled and the poor yeshiva guy who he yelled at looked so embarrassed. 

But just when you though he might be done, the ticker checker screamed some more at other people. I should have filmed it, but I was too stunned to think of it. There were small children on the bus. There were women. Israelis like this, and there are many, have no concept of how to act around women and children. I have witnessed this many times. One time, I was in a yucky underground strip mall of tiny little stores and damp air, so common in Israel, and heard a man shouting for 1/2 an hour. He wouldn't stop. I was in the tiny little Judaica store trying to buy a book. I heard top of the lungs yelling. I finally walked over to see another over the top aggressive Israeli howling at a man who was holding the hands of tiny children. Turns out that the screamer was the property manager and he was screaming at one of the tenants about rent. Screaming and screaming. I said to him in Hebrew, Adoni, enough, there are children here. Amazingly he stopped at that point. He probably stopped from exhaustion. 

This ticket checker wouldn't stop. A Chassidic man who had been  reading a sefer the whole trip said gently, "Why do you have to yell?" The ticker checker  shouted back, "I want to yell!" Chassidic man, "What's your name?" Shouter, "I'm not giving you my name." And he continued shouting, this time at somebody else. Surely this was a former solder. You see it in the build, the walk. I wondered how he treated Palestinians. Must have been 50x worse. I don't even want to think about it.

This is Israel. Tyrants everywhere. If they get a whiff of power they get drunk on it. I have heard Chilonim shouting so many times. Once I was at the zoo. I saw this quiet humble Arab family in Muslim clothing. Next to them were Israeli chilonim screaming at each other. One time I was at a Chassidic sowing shop where these quiet Chassidic ladies sow. For some reason a family of Chilonim were in there, very out of place. They were all screaming at each other. 

They are crazy people these Israelis. They are so verbally abusive. This is just a fraction of the stories. If you want to see it in action, they are all over youtube, Israelis shouting Here are some examples of Israeli chiloni behavior and shouting:

Is this where you want to live? You think you can avoid these people? What you never have to deal with the government? You never rent a car? You never go to the hospital? I know one woman who was howled at by a head doctor at Haddassah hospital for not wearing a mask during Covid. He had her in hysterics, his screaming was so bad. 

You don't think that this affects the Haredim? They scream too. Not all of them. Some have resisted this culture, but many are sucked in by it. You are never safe from the environment. And the environment of Israeli society is full of arrogance, impatience, and abusiveness. 

The same rabbis who tell you to live near a yeshiva, to not go to college because of the environment, not to go to the mall, to stay close to home bein hazmanim, to stay away from your Modern Orthodox relatives, tell you to move to Israel which is the worst environment on earth for Jews, just as long as you move to one of the tiny Haredi enclaves. I'll talk about them sometime. Wikipedia lists 10 of them. I have been to all but one. None of them are Haredi only. Most of them are neighborhoods in Chiloni cities like Ashdod. Beit Shemesh is 1/3 Haredi, 1/3 modern, and half Chiloni, but the doctors, the pharmacies, the government offices, the police are nearly all Chiloni.

The Satmar Rav saw it all. If you involve yourself with Zionism in any way, you will become one of them. That is the Agudah now. You should see the so -called religious youth at the hardware store that I just visited. Tough faced, glaring, smashing my lightbulb onto the counter. That is most of the religious people here.

And the Chilonim? I'd rather be with any people on earth than them.