Garbage and a warm beach day

There’s quite a bit that goes on here with everyday life that you would be hard pressed to find in North American media outlets.  Negative aspects of living in a city show up wherever you are in the world and Jerusalem is no exception.

Jerusalem has a population of over 730,000 spread out over an area of 49 sq. miles.  By comparison, Thousand Oaks has over 126,000 people spread out over 55 sq. miles. (these stats are courtesy of Wikipedia).  The crime rate in Israel is much lower with 3 murders per 100,000 people and 6 per 100,000 in the US.  Thefts in Israel are 3,221 per 100,000 and the US is again higher at 3,805 per 100,000.  If you reduce the numbers of crimes associated with terrorism and “honor killings”, the numbers come out much lower.

One of the biggest problems in all of Israel is traffic accidents.  There are more people killed here on the roads than anything else.  Seeing how they drive I can definitely see why.  Driving on the wrong side of the street occasionally is commonplace and honking should be an Olympic sport with Israel being a front runner for the gold medal.  I have only seen one bad accident though which was tonight on the main road into Jerusalem.  A car must have flipped and landed upside down. 

Litter is everywhere.  This is a sore topic for me.  For many years the Jewish people have fought to establish a Jewish country.  Why are they trashing it??  There is really no apparent effort to have people keep the city clean.  Construction areas look like dumps.  Arab villages have piles of garbage all strewn about.  I have seen garbage landfills not properly lined and adjacent sludge ponds that are uphill from the Hula Valley Nature Preserve.  One above average rain season and you’re looking at an ecological disaster.  The Haredi are the worst.  I have already mentioned that Lag B’omer is later this week and that they have been camping out in preparation.  Apparently they discard tons of trash in Meron and burn all kinds of wood that shouldn’t be burnt, like telephone poles.  Every year there are reports of trash being found in the stomachs of dead endangered-list animals.  I really doubt that these extremists could show me in their form of religion where it says that it’s ok to muck up the environment.

J

The clinic went well today.  One odd thing happened.  There are various flags displayed on the walls from countries that have sent dentists to the clinic. The Finnish flag is white with a blue horizontal and blue vertical bar.  A mother came in today and saw the flag thinking it was a Catholic cross.  She was offended and left with her kids.

The weather was perfect today….nice and warm…. So I decided to go to Tel Aviv and hang out by the beach for the afternoon.  Even on a weekday it was full of locals hanging out at the bars, playing paddle ball in the surf, or just sitting and people watching.  Tel Aviv is a very cosmopolitan city with many nightclubs and non-kosher restaurants.  It’s not a place where you see many ultra-orthodox walking the streets.  The photos I posted do not do the area justice.

Tomorrow is my last day here and I will be heading to the airport in the evening so only a couple more posts!