Israel med finländska ögon

Dagens gäst är Linda Brunell som efter 14 år i Israel skriver om sitt "nya" hemland.
Texten publicerades ursprungligen på Hadar Israels blogg.
From Finland to Falafels
Questions still being posed to me on a regular basis after nearly 14 years in Israel – You’re from Finland? Why Israel? Are you mad? And my standard response... “my parents dragged me here... ha ha”. The perplexed reaction comes almost exclusively from born and bred Israelis as opposed to other “mad” olim.
Leaving aside the fact that my parents did little dragging and more of a gentle push in the right direction (guess that’s what’s called clever manipulation) in having me accompany them and my three younger sisters on aliyah. Having never been to Israel before my aliyah, what started off as a journey mostly in the mindset of adventure and curiosity, has become a discovery of the Zionist in me and an unexplainable love of this little speck of a country in the middle east we call home.
Although the adventure materialized more in terms of food-poisoning from falafel (twice!), persistent Israeli men who intimidated me and my sisters into dying our blond hair red within our first year of aliyah and struggling with the aleph- bet, than any romantic notion I may have had about moving to an unfamiliar and exotic country. The curiosity did however stem somewhat deeper and was a longing, however vague to a then 20 year old, to live in a country where everyone is Jewish. Coming from a country with app. 1,500 Jews and a town with 6 (now zero), the thought of living in a country where everyone from the bus driver to the milkman is Jewish was a risk I felt I simply had to take. OK, so I’ve never actually met a milkman in Israel, but you know what I mean.
Today, should the questions of the perplexed Israeli continue, my response would be “the same reason any Jew moves here… we’re very Zionistic”, hoping to end the conversation at that. How can I possibly explain the logic? Why would any sane Finn move to Israel? Finland was recently voted the best place to live in the world by Newsweek, due in part to its economic competitiveness and unrivaled social benefits. Israel, on the other hand, is a tiny country in the Middle East under constant existential threat, having fought 7 wars in its 62 year independence and a high likelihood of more to come (I am ever the optimist).
True, I haven’t been to the Israeli army and seen fellow soldiers die in battle, nor have I had close friends or relatives die in a terrorist attack, so it’s completely understandable why the average Israeli might deem the alternative of living in a place where the height of excitement is the forecast of a warm, sunny day, to be the wiser choice.
Logic aside, no one can deny that in Israel we are certainly all one family when it counts. I may get yelled and cursed at in traffic, but my Finnish politeness will quickly take second priority in such cases. I can expect an argument with most customer service representatives, but when it counts we’re all one.
I hope we can find more strength in that unity and in our uniqueness. Israel IS different than all other nations and while we may often be held to a double standard and are the victims of a biased international media, if we live without unity, then all the world sees is a nation in confusion. We need to strengthen our unity and exercise that strength to the rest of the world by not apologizing for defending our borders and citizens and by highlighting our uniqueness as a people and nation.
Yes, Israel is a powerhouse of hi-tech innovation. We have beautiful beaches and malls and such hasbara may boost some tourism, but let’s not forget the strength in our roots which ultimately is the reason we have a Jewish state today. It’s the reason thousands of new immigrants from all over the world keep landing in Israel every year with the wish to plant their own roots and continue that dream.
A longing for the land has throughout history been an element in our daily life. Our prayers, our literature, our customs on weekdays and holidays – the context was always our hope and belief in the return to Zion and the reconstruction of our homeland.
I don’t expect to ever become a fully-fledged assimilated Israeli – my future children will have that benefit – but rather to be yet another colorful piece in that 2000 year old Jewish dream of rebuilding our rightful homeland.
Linda Brunell