Leon's No News Bulletin 122 Sun 11th Oct 09

 

 

 

Dear Friends, shalom,

 

One of the first things that strikes a tourist as he makes his way, usually in a luxury bus, to his first exciting visit in Israel is the excellent road system and the high quality of the roads.

 

This probably is something one would take for granted in one of the countries regarded as modern like the USA or Europe but is surprising to a visitor whose imagination has been stuffed by childhood Sunday school teachers with camels, desert sands dotted with angels dressed in white “galabiyas” and leather thong sandals talking to God.

 

 pioneers to

demonstrate their ideal of rejuvenating the ancient Jewish Homeland.

 

Road building gangs were a common sight in the early years of modern Jewish settlement of Israel .

 

They were made up of painfully realistic (therefore very brave) young Jewish boys and girls who had foregone the pursuit of the delusion of gold lying free for the taking in the streets of the USA and South Africa to sing songs of the dreamland they were creating by sweating as they swung pick axes to break rocks for new roads.

 

They had a dream and they weren’t sitting with arms folded waiting for a rich sugar daddy to do the work to realize the dream because rich sugar daddies don’t swing pick axes to build roads. If you 

 

to build a road build it yourself.

 

The beautiful, double lane coastal road I travelled on from Haifa in the dead of night, after dropping my tourists off at the Celebrity Equinox, the biggest ship to dock on Haifa harbor, with 2500 passengers and 2000 crew on board, was built in the 1950’s by such group of Jewish pioneers and I and the road and the harbor are the realization of the dream of the pioneers on the road gang.

 

If a modern road building company turns a good profit employing workers from every country in the world except Israel it doesn’t mean that the Jewish pioneering spirit is dead. On the contrary; previously it thrived at the bottom of the ladder of development now it’s alive and well at the top end of the ladder.

 

All levels of society are joined to each other, like mountain climbers struggling to reach the peak; the one at the top was originally at the bottom, then as he moved up the rungs of the ladder he pulled the climbers under him up the ladder as well.

 

Jewish idealism established the State of Israel to reach for the top of an ideal society. The Arabs can choose (as many have) to tie themselves to the Jewish “climbers” and so reach the top also or they can try to topple the Jews from the top and end up in some ridiculous, interminable battle.

 

Once “pioneerism” has started there’s no turning back. This is what makes the battle interminable. Pioneers never stop, they just climb higher and everybody who lives here is tied to them. We can cut the cord but the fall is long and retying the cord isn’t easy.

 

Wishing you a great no news day

Yours truly

Leon Gork

 

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