I had one of these great conversations yesterday that stays in my head, turning around and around so I can analyze and re-analyze it for a long time.
A fellow in my office, about my age but born in Israel and lived here his whole life, asked me about my Aliyah – am I Jewish, what I’m doing here, why I came here, if I like it here, etc. I gave my normal answers for those questions (yes, but don’t tell anybody; living my life; conviction; usually, but it doesn’t matter, since I came from conviction). Then he asked another ordinary question – what I think of Israeli women.
My normal answer would be to say that a) Israeli women are the most beautiful women in the world, which I don’t exactly know to be true, but which I also don’t know not to be true, and that b) they are challenging, but in a good way.
Instead, when I got finished talking about how hot they are, he asked me if they’re more demanding? No, I said, American girls of the Jewish faith are demanding, which is one of the reasons why I don’t like them very much and have never had a serious relationship with one. The problem I see with Israeli women, I explained to this guy, is that they are not very feminine.
He was very confused and asked me to explain. I immediately regretted saying it, because I’d just basically called every girl in his life – girlfriend, sister, mother – butch. So I explained myself like this: Israeli girls spend the first 18 years of their lives being groomed and prepared for military service, which is absolutely the most masculine activity that exists. Then they spend two years wearing a uniform like the men; getting bossed around by the men, and perhaps eventually bossing the men around; often carrying a rifle like the men; cursing, smoking, spitting and belching like the men; and generally being trained in aggression and vulgarity, and internalizing all sorts of values that are great for a killer but terrible for, let’s say, a young lady who’d like one day to be a nurturing wife and mother.
So I explained all this with the aim of describing how Israeli girls are less feminine than other girls I know from abroad, making sure to clarify that I believe there is not only one way to be feminine and that I think the army also does great things for girls (I don’t really think that). At the end of it all, he was utterly and totally confused.
Doesn’t the army make them more feminine, he asked me? No, I replied. Clearly we were both confusing each other.
But, he said, the army teaches girls that they can do anything they want to do, that they can be equal to men!
And it occurred to me that this guy didn’t know the difference between feminine and feminist. That, my friends, is the problem with Israeli girls.
Yeah, but Israeli girls with guns are frickin’ HOT!
Interesting POV – Im Jewish too, and from America, and have always been struck by how much more feminine Israeli girls are than American girls! No kidding, I precisely hit on that one quality as one of the things which seperated Israeli girls from American chics. They just seemed more demure somehow, less loudmouthed and aggresive and assertive and in your face than American girls – they even smile shyly in this cute way American girls never do – and ironically, I always attributed it to the Army and the eole it plays in perpetuating a masculine atmosphere in Israel, in maintaining the patriarchy, and in maintaining traditional gender roles.
You have to realize that the girls who serve in the Army most certainly dont serve in combat but in supoprting roles for the men, and they ae subjected to a very masculine environment where they are often treated as not quite the equals of the men – there is in fact a saying in the Israeli army that women soldiers are mattresses, the meaning of which is obvious. Further, the need for military preparedness, has, in my view, kept the atmosphere in Israel a million times less feminized than any other Western country I can think of. And finally, roughly half of Israelis are culturally from the Middle East with notions of gender differences quite different from Western ones, and even though of course that has changed masively over the years and the general attitude is Western, it seems likely to me that the Sephardim had some influence on how women are viewd over the years.
Anyways, its fascinating how different people can see the same facts and react to them so differently!
@Lugo I know! Unfortunately, due to recent military regulations in the past few years, jobnikim (non-combat conscripted soldiers) do not carry their rifles home at the end of the day. Consequently, we get to see very few armed female soldiers any more.
@Aaron Have you ever spent time in Israel and dated Israeli girls? I’ve never actually discussed this with anyone, so I’d be eager to see if more people see it your way or mine. At least insofar as the words you chose – “loudmouthed and aggresive and assertive and in your face” – both male and female Israelis have a well earned reputation for being the worst in the civilized world. I find that the SWPL American girls I know from growing up are considerably more pleasant than Israeli girls, though the Jewish girls I knew in America tended to be awful. We might just have to accept that it’s a Jewish thing.
In some ways, you’re right, the military does extend masculinity in Israel, but it’s masculinity of the worst kind – machismo. Beyond that, it does more to send Israeli boys into a state of arrested development than to mature them into men. Consider that Israeli parents all have the cell phone numbers of their sons’ commanders in the army, and they don’t hesitate to call the commanders to find out what their kids are eating, when they’re sleeping, what time they’ll be home for the weekend, and to second-guess them on every tiny detail. This is not a military, it’s day care.
I’m also fond of the old “mattress” line, but I take it to mean more that there are just way too many girls conscripted to military service, so many that even a legendary bureaucracy can’t find jobs for all of them.
I think you’d be surprised about the level of feminization here, especially with regard to the army. Consider, for example, that for most of the 2006 Lebanon war, it was regular people in northern towns and cities who bore the brunt of the enemy onslaught, while the ground invasion was delayed because the brass were afraid of casualties. We have the only country in the world where the civilians suffer and die to protect the young men in uniform.
I beg to differ about the general attitude in Israel being western. Of course this is open to a great deal of interpretation, but I know western and I know Israel, and they are not the same. Israel is a profoundly middle eastern country in many ways. I’d say at least four fifths of the girls I’ve dated in Israel have been completely of ashkenazi descent. I’d prefer it not to be that way – I definitely find the mizrachi girls better looking – but I am not ars enough for most of them.
Genius,
First off I want to ask you about the mizrachi and ashkenazi divide in Israel – Im ashkenaz and Ive always felt that the mizrahi girls were way hotter and have been wondering if thats how its percieved in Israel as well? Yet when I go to Israel the ashkenaz girls seem plenty hot too, so its hard to say, and all the beautiful models and acctresses, like Rafeli and Natalie Portman are ashkenaz, so that makes it even more confusing. But Ive been very interested for some time now on how these things are perceived in Israel and whether there is a general sense that one group is hotter or less hot than the other. Maybe you can shed some light on that.
Yes Ive lived in Israel for five yrs when much younger and visit almost every yr because I love the vibe and all around fun atmosphere, and Ive dated a few Israeli girls in my time and generally interact with Israeli girls all the time. You raise a number of interesting points that Ive thought about in the past – for instance, the rep Israelis have for being loud and aggressive and pushy. Its almost proverbial, isnt it? Before I go further I must say I live in NYC so you know what standards Im measuring against. But the amazing thing to me was that after being away from Israeli for a few yrs and then returning in my late 20s I was shocked by how seemingly reserved and quite Israelis seemed – I was expecting monsters of aggressiveness and bad manners, but I didnt find that. I really do think Israelis have a certain kind of masculine reserve and calm – their faces are much more composed and expressionless than Americans, and they display far less stray emotion, they simply lack that emotional ebullience or bubbliness – whatever you want to call it – so typical of Americans, even in NYC, and they simply didnt seem as loud or in your face in day to day situations. Now granted, I will say this, that when Israelis are provoked they will react with an aggressiveness often far out of proportion to the situation – I think that goes a long way to earning them the rep of extreme aggression – and that in certain situations they are indeed loud and in your face. But overall in day to day life they seemed reserved. Again I attributed that reserve to the tense situation and the masculinizing effect of the Army, and again I might be crazy because Im measuring this against NYC, which isnt exactly the politest place in the country. Still, though, I think the point is true in a broader sense.
Furthermore, the Israelis Ive met travelling in India and Thailand were exactly the loudmouthed aggressive types you mention, but I think thats their behaviour overseas and not so much at home.Israelis are horrible tourists, but not so bad at home. I wont go into the reasons for why I think that is.
As for the machismo thing, unfortunately that can be quite annoying, but my sense is that this is mostly a problem with the lower echelons of society – the arsim – or am I wrong about that? Amongst the educated and the proffessional class it didnt seem so bad – it seemed more like a quiet calm confidence -, but then it seems that machismo is a characteresitic of males on the lower rungs of all socities. Maybe the military does exacerbate the problem in Israel.
Ive heard about the parents and their children in the Army, and I agree thats deplorable, but I also think its a reflection of the general softening of Israeli society following the increase in wealth and improvement of the security situation, and while ridiculous and in many ways awful, maybe its inevitable. Im not supporting it, though.
Re the Lebanon war – I cant defend the conduct of the Israeli government in that war, which was admittedly disgraceful, but I did read an interesting military analysis that explained that the Army had a plan to send in troops in the needed necessary amounts and wipe out the Hezbolla rocket launchers, but that in the event the rockets caused so few civilian casualties that such a massive ground operation with the much larger military casualties it would have entailed seemed inadvisable, In other words, the rockets succeeded in killing so few civilians that losing lots more soldiers wiping the rockets out didnt seem necessary. Im not saying I agree that that was wise, but just offering another perspective.
As for Israel being Western or not – I kind of know what you mean. I dont know if Id call it Middle Eastern, but it definitely feels so foreign and alien coming from America, and I speak the language! But to me, thats whats so fantastic about it – its in many ways very Western, but also so profoundly different in this exciting way.
I’m also ashkenazi (genetically – I oppose the distinction and wish it could be permanently overcome). Personally I believe the mizrahi girls are hotter, at least when they’re in their 20s, at their peak. Of course Natalie Portman and Bar Refaeli are 10s, but they’re 10s in that look that they have…. but I think the middle eastern look is prettier. What’s even better is the mixed girls, those with different ancestry. In general I think the society still tends to view light skinned girls are more beautiful, but the change toward a more realistic interpretation of beauty is already underway here and arguably more advanced than in America, where the ingrained image of the archetypal black woman is pretty negative.
I am also mainly comparing against New York, since I lived there for four years before I made Aliyah, but also against American girls from the South and from growing up in a relatively affluent east coast suburb. I think what Americans have is the tendency to let their generally positive outlook about life display itself on their faces. When I come to America once a year to visit, I’m always shocked when I step off the plane into the customs and immigration section of the airport and see a room full of gloomy, irritated and irritable people all grinning at me, just like my dog does all the time. I have really never experienced any “masculine reserve” here. The smallest slight leads inevitably to an arms race of escalating insults and matters are resolved by whichever party has fewer scruples. No Israeli is ever “calm” – he’s just confident that, at that particular moment, he’s not being made into a freier by anyone around him. But if he suddenly has reason to believe that he’s become a freier – for example, by getting stuck in a traffic jam – he will suddenly transform as if possessed by a demon – because only a freier waits for the road to clear up and then moves forward in an orderly and dignified way. The Israeli fear of being made into a freier really informs a lot of their behavior. It isn’t true that Israelis tend only to be aggressive in reaction – aggression against a weaker party is utterly ingrained into his normal behavior at every level. That is why companies here are so brutal to their own customers.
The internal tourism here is pretty bad. Go take a look at any of our beautiful national parks – as a rule, they’re completely covered in trash. I’m afraid this is a habit we’ve learned from the local Muslim population, which actually despises this country that they claim to love, but in no way can we blame them for our atrocious littering. There’s a phenomenon in the past decade of all the (public) beaches around the Kineret being closed off and turned, illegally, into private beaches. People here get really angry about that, but they don’t understand that if they treat a public resource like crap, it will become crap and thus be totally useless. I recently suggested a system for beach access like the one I knew in America – sell season passes in advance at a steep discount to local residents or at an elevated price during the season, and expensive day passes to people from out of town who only want to use the beach a few times a year. Everyone here thought it was the dumbest idea they’d ever heard – but they don’t think there’s a problem with the trash on Tel Aviv’s beaches.
You’re right that it’s reflective of the lower echelons of society, but the big problem in Israel is that we don’t have a higher echelon. This country was founded by poor socialist Jews from central and eastern European ghettos and shtetls. Those people had no manners and there’s no reason to think their grandchildren will have learned any manners in the mean time, as they haven’t. I will say that Israelis who have spend a considerable amount of time abroad for education and business tend to be much better, but also that these people tend to have such a difficult time re-acculturating here that they tend not to return for long periods.
It’s not because of the money or the security. It’s because everyone here thinks he knows everything about every topic, and that if there’s anything he doesn’t know, it’s best to act as if he does know it, because is there really any difference? And it’s because people forgot shortly after the Six Day War what a military is and what it’s supposed to do. And it’s because of the freier issue I noted above: if my kid is being taken advantage of, then he is a freier and by extension I am a freier, so I can not let that happen.
I’m aware of this line of reasoning; I appreciate that you’re not advocating it, but it’s pretty much a perversion of what a country is and what a military is, and it’s why I argue that Israel no longer as a right to exist (no state has a “right to exist” anyway, but that’s a different matter). What you read wasn’t an interesting military analysis, it was typical tripe and propaganda that could have been produced by any senior military officer in any democracy. There’s a good reason why American presidential candidates with more military experience keep consistently losing elections to candidates with less: Americans wisely know that generals are not capable of the right kind of critical thinking to run a country. And there’s a reason why generals run Israel: we aren’t that wise.
“So few civilian casualties” is an insane notion. Even a single civilian casualty – even a single missile or rocket launched with no casualties – even a stockpile of missiles and rockets without launching them at all – should have resulted promptly in the annihilation of Lebanon. There is no tolerable level of Hezballah operation on Israel’s border whatsoever.
Well, I definitely think we are as far from being “western” in the western European sense as it’s possible to be. I have said that the Israeli ethos is essentially Russian (from the Second Aliyah and Third Aliyah, not from the past 20 years), so at least for now, I’ll stick with that.
Genius, the image of Black women in America is justified, as is the image of Blacks in general. If you read the short report The Color of Crime, you will find out that Blacks are vastly more violent than Whites.
http://colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.html
Second, the image of Blacks in this country can’t be so bad considering that America just elected a Black to its highest office.
The fact that black people are overwhelmingly more likely to commit crimes against person and property is true and it explains a lot, but the American way of understanding race is very complex, much more than if just crime and violence were the only factors.