The Israel You Aren't Allowed to See

From the jazz-filled halls of Jaffa to the record-breaking success of Arab-Israeli students, this is the vibrant, messy, and resilient reality that the global protest movement chooses to ignore.

photo: Cole Keister/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Stacy Gittleman, a 15-time award-winning freelance writer.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Shortly before the COVID pandemic, Jewish humorist and writer Fran Lebowitz teamed up with film director Martin Scorsese to create the Netflix documentary series: “Pretend It’s a City.” Basically, the two sit down to weigh in on New York City.

The running joke of the series is Lebowitz’s jab to the tourists who visit New York City — the ones who slowly stroll along the sidewalks, staring into their cell phones, oblivious to the skyscrapers and the bustling speed and pace at which real New Yorkers conduct themselves on the same sidewalks where they are taking up space. To Lebowitz, these tourists have no clue and they are just getting in the way.

Meanwhile, I just got back from my sixth visit to Israel. And on this sixth visit, my husband and I got treated to hear the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra perform Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade” and George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.” It felt like the Israeli version of “Pretend It’s a City” — “Pretend Israel Is a Country.”

I highly doubt that the millions who have joined the “global intifada” have even set foot into this actual country, or could name a single Israeli musician, film, or television show. Heaven forbid that they could or would, because that would make the country they have demonized all too real.

My husband’s cousin for decades has played French horn for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and was able to get us tickets for the evening’s “denim” performance, where concert goers and musicians alike were encouraged to come wearing not tuxedos or gowns, but jeans to a concert that featured the music of George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein.

Making his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut that evening as conductor was world-renowned and Valencia-born Roberto Forés Veses, who is the winner of the Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition. From 2011 until 2021, he was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orchestre National d’Auvergne. The many orchestras he has conducted include the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Saint-Petersburg Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orchestre Philharmonique and others.

Featured musicians included Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman, acclaimed for his appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, London Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw under Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Tugan Sokhiev, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and other leading conductors.

Before the concert, a Zionist jazz trio played for us in the entrance hall and we Zionist music lovers were treated to watch other Zionist swing dancers as we sipped complimentary beer.

Before the evening’s performances, we had dinner with my husband’s cousin. While playing abroad in Europe and in the United States, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra faced discrimination, protests, and cries of accusations of genocide. Some protests became violent. In Paris, protesters inside the concert hall with a full audience lit flares and endangered the lives of all who were present. Our cousin informed us that it was the Parisian musicians themselves who, in advance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance, snuck in the flares and lit them to protest and threaten their fellow musicians. It was also musicians affiliated with the Los Angeles Symphony who protested against the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, our cousin told us.

So much for musicianship and the value of music being a global uniter and a vehicle of peace.

In the Jaffa Port, which is a wonderful mix of Jewish and Arab Israeli culture and history, my husband and I met up with a colleague who came all the way down from Haifa to spend the afternoon and evening with us.

A chemical engineering professor, he invited my husband to give a talk about fuel cell technology at a November conference at the Technion. The Technion, considered to be Israel’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a student body that is 20-percent Arab-Israeli, which mirrors the size of this minority population in Israel.

According to a recent report from Israel Friends of the Technion, in the last half decade, through special coaching programs for prospective students, workshops run by high-achieving students from Arab-Israeli society, and personal tutoring in social engagement, the Technion has been able to increase numbers of Arabic-speaking students and Arab female students by 200 percent and 350 percent respectively since 2004. The number of Arab-Israeli students deemed “outstanding” has risen by 1,800 percent, and the number of Arab-Israeli graduate students by 120 percent. Dropout rates among our Arab-Israeli students have fallen by 67 percent.

At a bar in Jaffa, my husband’s colleague explained the difficulty of being an academic in Israel. Since the beginning of Hamas’ war against Israel, scores of academics and higher institutions of learning across the globe have severed ties with their Israeli counterparts. He gave accounts of European academics — those he had working scientific, research and academic relationships with for decades — canceling their attendance to the November conference because of “security” reasons. In another story, he spoke of the security detail he needed while attending a conference he was invited to speak at in Europe, where he was met by a barrage of pro-Hamas protesters waving signs with his headshot accusing him of “genocide.”

On a stroll through the Tel Aviv Port, I stumbled upon the Dannon Cooking School, ranked as one of the greatest culinary schools in the world. The school’s classes are easily and invitingly visible to passers-by, with wall to wall windows where anyone from the outside can watch students measuring, mixing, piping, and blending. This woman is learning together with other Arab and Jewish students, who will soon be working together side by side in one of the thousands of restaurants in Israel.

On the night my husband’s colleague from the Technion met with us, we dined at Benny The Fisherman and were joined by my friend (a chef and a restaurant manager), her husband (who works in the hospitality and tourism industry), and their young son. Soon after we sat down, an Arab-Israeli family, the women wearing hijabs, were seated at the table behind us, and there was another Arab-Israel family at a table in the corner. Towards the end of their meal, the wait staff came to their table with a cake. The family sang in Hebrew — not Arabic — “Happy Birthday” to their daughter. All the restaurant sang along and clapped when the girl blew out her candles. And it was no big deal.

My friend met us after dinner, after checking in on one of her restaurant locations in Beersheva, in southern Israel. Over an endless supply of Israeli salads, she told me of the extraordinary yet mundane difficulties of running a restaurant during wartime. As if the restaurant business isn’t hard and stressful enough, my friend told me about losing inventory and taking on property damage when an Iranian missile hit one of their warehouses and adjacent restaurants, and how her supply chain of imports from Italy were disrupted, possibly by pro-Hamas protesters who blocked an Israel-bound ship claiming they were there to block arms and weapons shipments to Israel. But in reality, what got held up was imported pasta, olive oil, wine, tomatoes, and other imports for Israeli restaurants, which, mind you, employ Jews and Arabs alike.

At other times, supply chains were disrupted because the Yemen-based Houthis decided to bomb a ship laden with pasta, olive oil, tomato imports purchased for her restaurants. It only temporarily disrupted Israeli life.

Pretend Israel is a country, with all the complexities, imperfections, problems, and challenges that come along with any country, nevermind a country that is only now just coming out of perhaps its hardest, most existential war. Meanwhile, Apple just purchased an Israeli startup for some $2 billion, so the anti-Zionists might need to throw away their iPhones and MacBooks.

In Israel, there’s an expression: “Ha’klavim novchim, ha’shayara overet” — meaning, “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves forward.”

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