From fear to fortune: Tel Aviv's attitude

Bob Simon: What are you drinking?

Asaf Zamir: This is vodka soda because I'm on a diet.

Bob Simon: And there aren't any people who would be watching you on television and saying what the hell is our deputy mayor doing drinking outside a bar at two in the morning?

Asaf Zamir: This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I've done this-- I've been doing this before I got elected. This is my way of life and most of the young people in Tel Aviv-- we go out every evening. And I think the people that vote for me will find it fine.

Tel Avivians love to think of themselves as avant-garde. The arts scene is vibrant. New openings every week. Fashion is cutting edge, along with music and dance and theatre. And compared to the rest of Israel, Tel Aviv is not only more cosmopolitan, but more tolerant. People seem to get along. Religious and secular, soldiers and civilians, straights and gays. In a poll published this year, the city was voted the best gay destination in the world. Those old closet makers are going out of business and that's just fine with actress Noa Tishby.

Noa Tishby: It's such a non-issue in Israel. That's the thing, being straight, or being gay is a complete non-issue. I mean gays in the military, what's the problem?

Bob Simon: Here it's not "Don't ask, Don't tell." It's "Don't ask, Who cares?"

Noa Tishby: Who cares? Exactly. Don't ask. Ask, tell me. I don't care. Grab a gun. Go fight. I don't care.

All Israelis, men and women, are drafted into the army when they're 18. Gal Uchovsky did his three years service in the late 70s. Today, he is a gay activist and a columnist for one of Tel Aviv's hippest magazines.

Bob Simon: In many parts of the world, parents, definitely including Jewish parents, are not happy when their kid turns out to be gay. Is it the same here?

Gal Uchovsky: No. Here it's a little different because, you know, Israel is a war zone. It's been a war zone for many years. It's very hard to raise a child here. They can die in the army. They can die in a suicide bombing. So the whole feeling of an Israeli parents is that it's-- it's a big war to keep your kid alive 'til 21. So if at 22 you come-- or any age, he comes and says, "Okay, I'm gay," you know, it's not that bad.

And that chronic war continues. The very week we were there, in the bubble of safety that is Tel Aviv, less than an hour away, Palestinians and Israelis were going through their rituals on the occupied West Bank. Rituals which have been going on for decades and are as routine as a dinner and a dance downtown.

Gideon Levy says that for Tel Avivians the West Bank could be on another planet.

Gideon Levy: They have no idea what's going on there. This is their dark backyard to which they will never go, to which they have no interest, about which they know so little.

Bob Simon: And Tel Avivians don't really care.

Gideon Levy: Not only they don't care. They don't want to care. They really want to close their eyes.

And Levy says they've succeeded. He is one of the very few Israeli civilians who has any contact with Palestinians. He covers the West Bank for an Israeli newspaper. And every day, when he gets back to Tel Aviv from the occupied territories...that's when he's reminded that he lives in a bubble.

Gideon Levy: Because this is what a bubble is about: the illusion of the moment, the life for the present, and for the very, very short-run future. It can work for a while, until it will blow in our faces. And it will blow in our faces.

For the most part, Tel Avivians have become fatalistic. Many feel there's just not much they can do about anything. The Arab Spring, Palestinians, a nuclear Iran. There's a lot of uncertainty now, of course. But that's all there's ever been here. Uncertainty.

Bob Simon: Do you ever worry that this will still be a home for your great grandchildren?

Yossi Vardi: Look, I will not tell you that everybody's sitting here like an idiot, don't worry about the future. We have this damn conflict that I hope we will finish one day. And I hope we will do peace. But in the meantime, look what we created.

Bob Simon: You like it here.

Yossi Vardi: I don't like it here. I am addicted to this place. Not only like, I love it.

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[Marianne67]

Never have I seen a documentary programme as poorly researched as your item about my ciry of 14 years, Tel Aviv. The piece portrayed Tel Aviv as politically disinterested, dancing on the Titanic and fiddling as Rome burns. The reality is that the opposite is the case.

As political debate for decades centred on security issues and Israel, on paper at least, experienced an economic boom in recent years, it has not been translated into salaries or home buying potential.
All this came to a head in Tel Aviv in the summer which brought people in their thousands into protest tents (strangely seen in your programme with Gideon Levy walking through them, with no commentary) long before a single Occupy tent was up anywhere in the world.

Hundreds of thousands attended demonstrations in what has been termed the "Social Justice Protest" about the cost of living, lack of affordable housing, no regulation of the monopolies keeping prices of consumer goods high, political corruption, the role of Big Money in our economy, the widening gaps between rich and poor. There were widespread consumer boycotts too. This was not the just hippies and the anarchists - this garnered consensus support in the country, at one point scoring 87% support in the poles. The final demonstration on September 3rd 2011 was host to half a million demonstrators - in a city of 450,000, in a country of 7.5 million.

The mayor, Ron Huldai, interviewed in your piece, is not a supporter of affordable housing in Tel Aviv and continues to use legally spurious methods to suppress public display of the movement.

I feel your staff simply didn't research the piece at all but rather relied on one journalist who defines Israeli politics as dealing with his own area of interest - defence and the Palestinians as the only thing that may make people engaged in things further than "the next vacation, the next jeep, the next restaurant" and this, in a year when Tel Aviv has seen larger demonstrations on its streets than over any defence issue.

If 60 Minutes did film the piece while the protest tents were still up - as the mute shot of Gideon Levy strolling through them would imply - shame on your shabby reporting.

[lazar75]

The piece discuss Tel Aviv as a liberal and sane place. It is a place that a Jew can not marry a Gentile, the gays in the piece can never get married or even enter into a civil union. Tel Aviv is a place where foreign workers are constantly abused and risk being deported, even those who have been born and lived in Israel for many years. Similar fate to Jewish refugees like my parents during World War II.

[alinrodneyvil]

Israel is like what South Africa used to be like. They maintain their good life by keeping their boots on the Palastinians necks and and the use of brute force.

[BeverlyVivian]

This is just another biased piece by Bob Simon. The impression is that this is simply a hedonistic society. There is no mention of the protests that took place last summer in Rabin Square and which spread across the country in protest of the high price of accommodation and food. He does try to make the point that there is more freedom and equality in Israel than anywhere else in the middle east, but the point is made so obliquely with respect to gays in the military - that no one would realize the full extent of freedom of religion, equality of the sexes and full rights for the L, G,B ,T community. This piece is just garbage - but I would not expect anything better from Bob Simon and certainly would not watch anything on 60 minutes anymore.

[stopoil]

Imagine how much the Palestinians could have benefit by peace! And a lot of the blame is the press because they are such cowards. Simon could have added a few comments when showing the despair of the Palestinians. Plenty of report putting Israel under the microscope but their silence on Hamas is sickening. Hamas is the Palestinian government elected by Palestinians who are Muslim with an extreme agenda and is the only reason there is no Middle East peace. Palestinians elected Hamas knowing that peace will not be possible with Hamas in power because their agenda is to kill Jews and destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state. The issues are blaring at us, their fundamental Islamic agenda to destroy Israel and never make peace is even written into its charter. If that was not enough there is Iranian funding, its weapons stockpile and smuggling, its political actions to block peace, its propaganda campaigns to influence world opinion against Israel, its restrictions on dissent, its brainwashing on its youth to hate Jews and destroy Israel, its portrayal of Jews, in schools and their mosques.
The USA has been at war with the same Hamas Islamic fundamentalism for decades and over 10,000 Americans have been killed and over a trillion of dollars spent on wars by America and counting. Hey, but maybe that is not enough of a story to get the hypocritical press to point out the obvious, the elephant of the room. The politically correct continue to cower. Why are there no reports and outrage against the Palestinians to get them to elect a moderate government willing to make peace with Israel? Why are there no reports on the lack of campaigns by American Muslims against Hamas and others like Hezbollah that are responsible for 10,000 American deaths and over a trillion dollars that have been wasted? And now the Muslim Brotherhood is poised to take over the government of "liberated" Arab states of the Arab Spring. This week Time magazine puts Israel's Prime Minister on the cover as if he is the issue. Simon covers Tel Aviv. The issue is Palestinian Muslim extremism. What a sick joke.

[JCUTRED]

Shame on 60 Minutes for being used by the "Brand Israel" effort to rebrand their apartheid state as a "progressive," hip, cool, multicultural, tolerant place.

[Peoplecnxn]

I thought exactly the same thing. Or maybe it was something Simon was forced to do because of a mildly critical piece a few weeks ago. I agree with the recent European public survey that the State of Israel is the country that is the greatest threat to world peace...more than No.Korea or Iran. Because the US news has a blackout of anything critical of Israel, the public here is completely in the dark about what Israel is really like or how the occupation is really being conducted by Israel. Israel has truly gone to the dark side ans I resent that we are financing them at the level we are with all the things we need to be doing here at home in our own struggling economy.

[Objectivethinker_1]

Glad to see people living the good life...especially since it's subsidized by the outrageous amounts of financial aid given to Israel by the US. I am an avid history buff (particularly with regard to studying and trying to understand the horrors of the holocaust). I have always understood the need to "never forget". But (solely based on this one 60 Minutes report), it appears that the one group of people who would have the most to gain by never forgetting are the very same who are now living it up in "the promised land".

Ironically, for the first time in my life I'm starting to understand some of the (frankly rude) cliches that have been used to describe Jewish people for generations.

Do the people of Israel include in their list of things to "never forget", the genocide in Rwanda and Yugoslavia and Kosovo? The US certainly doesn't include these holocausts in their "never forget" list. If it seems like this is rambling and pointless...ask yourself this. If their were as many wealthy and powerful Rwandans living in the US as there are Jews...would we be sending hundreds of billions (since WWII) in aid to Rwanda? Probably so. I cannot help but think that there is and has been an incredibly powerful jewish lobby pulling the strings of government in the US since WWII. Pity the same cannot be said of the Rwandans.

[Rosetranslations]

Yes, we the People of Israel "never forget" the other genocides. We are the people that send IDF medical units to care for Rwandan victims,on site in the midst of the atrocities. We are the people who absorbed refugees, Muslim refugees from Kosovo. That same strong Jewish lobby sent solar ovens to Darfur! Yes, we remember and be sure never to forget our tragedies and others, can you @objectivthinker_1 say the same? I doubt it.

[holylife101]

WHAT'S MISSING from the report?
1. Huge 'Occupy Wall Street'-style demonstrations in Tel-Aviv last summer that show Israel is a vivid democracy which puts massive pressure on government and rich to ensure that the middle class grows.
Not everything is a bout partying.
2. Less radical-leftist journalists and more interviews with main stream representatives, community leaders, academicians, etc.
3. Nobody is afraid of the end. People leave near volcanos, in areas prone to earthquakes and tornados.
Despite past wars, Israel offers one of the best life expectancy figures in the world!
Young adults are safer in the Israeli army, statistically, than in US colleges. Check the numbers yourselves!
4. Last but not least, artificially separating Tel Aviv from 'the rest of Israel' is untrue. The landscape is highly dynamic and tightly connected to the rest of this small country. No bubble, just bubbling society hoping for region stability and compromise toward future good neighborly relations!

[smithpat4444]

US aid to Israel: 115 billion dollars
New data shows Washington has given more than 115 billion dollars in financial aid to Israel over the years, indicating Tel Aviv's great dependence on the US.

According to the report published by the Congressional Research Service Israel has received more assistance from the US than 15 European countries did to recover from the devastation caused during World War II.

More than 67 billion dollars of the Washington's aid to Israel has been in military, the report said.

The astonishing report adds that the US has allocated 3.1 billion dollars, around one-fifth of its defense budget, to Israel this year alone.

Americans also allow the Israeli army to use their emergency reserve ammunition stored in Israel. The value of the weapons held in the US emergency supplies is 1.2 billion dollars.

The US gives billions of dollars in American taxpayers' money to the Tel Aviv regime each year in the form of military and economic aid, legally justified as part of US government's foreign aid package.

Washington has never downsized its annual 3 billion dollars grant to the Israeli regime despite going through its worst recession in decades which has prompted the government to impose major cuts on most public service programs for citizenshttp://presstv.com/detail/234620.html

[cyclone]

A small price to pay for the access and intelligence this provides. Our ability to understand what's happening in the middle east and defend our interests would be massively compromised without Israel's accommodation...