Israel's New Tourism

People have already forgotten the difficulty of the new wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Absorption? Assimilation? Having to build new neighborhoods and new cities to accommodate all those new immigrants?

It was an intelligent migration, in two respects: holders of advanced degrees in fields Israel could never use, educated and experienced experts in their respective fields (from medicine to music, across the sciences and everything in between) who suddenly had to clean streets to earn a living; and many, it is said, chose to immigrate to Israel even though they were not “really” Jews, since Israel allowed them an escape route into the Free World (Israel and beyond – America).

Today there is a “Russian” Foreign Minister, Lieberman, whose constituency is predominantly the Russian-speaking community in Israel and who initially was labeled almost an outcast. Now he has earned the respect and the ear of Israel’s most outspoken and bitter enemies.

Just this week Israel boasted that Russia has become the second largest source country for incoming tourism. Let us read the headline:

FROM TODAY: RECORD NUMBER OF DIRECT FLIGHTS FROM MOSCOW TO EILAT. TOURISM MINISTER STAS MISEZHNIKOV: "RUSSIA, WHICH HAS BECOME THE SECOND LARGEST SOURCE COUNTRY FOR INCOMING TOURISM, WILL REMAIN A FOCUS FOR THE TOURISM MINISTRY'S 2011 MARKETING ACTIVITIES, SUPPORTED BY INCREASED RESOURCE ALLOCATION."

During a recent trip to Israel I discovered a new type of tourism, predominantly from the former Soviet Union, but even from the USA. People combine a trip to Israel, seeing the holy sites, enjoying the Mediterranean sun or the nightlife of Tel Aviv, a city without stopping, with medical needs.

An annual exam as part of a trip to Israel is a very popular trend, making Israel a unique tourist destination. From dental work, implants and crowns, to colonoscopy and all the other checkups and examinations, from youths to adults to the elderly, it is apparently much cheaper in Israel and done at the highest level of sophistication and professionalism.

The organized transport that takes one to the Dead Sea, Jerusalem or Nazareth also has scheduled stops at the clinics. Things one would normally dread, or that young people will put aside for later years, take place there and now.

Israel’s advancements in the field of medical services are recognized around the world. From being the very first to erect a fully operational field hospital in Haiti, thousands of miles away from this tiny spec of light along the shores of the Mediterranean; being the hospital of choice for Hamas and other terrorists, not to mention the Jordanian monarchy and some of the Saudi royalty; now everyday people like you and me travel to Israel and combine an annual exam, often a very invasive one, with a trip to the Holy Land.

I am still at awe that Israel is the preferred destination for all things medical, including those we dread the most, like colonoscopy. Purely amazing.

I am even more impressed by the sheer numbers and the industry that has developed, from promoters to organizers overseas to local clinics throughout Israel with some of the best facilities, doctors and nursing staff – Israel’s new “export” is health and wellness.

As Israeli doctors are being boycotted and prevented from participating in conferences, they continue to do their job, irrespective of who the patients are. They can be terrorists that just detonated explosives strapped around their bodies, or those who used their bodies as a live bomb hosting military grade viruses or bacteria. They can be Gazans who came for medical treatment and returned to inflict death and mayhem. They can be Arabs or Jews, and still the same treatment is extended.

These are the same Israeli doctors who do the best job in Israel and abroad, and have to fight the lies by bodies that call themselves “Doctors without Borders” and the like.

These are the same doctors who are later accused wrongly by Syrian national TV and other outlets around the world of harvesting the organs of young Palestinian males.

Israeli doctors are blind to anything but the patient before them, the patient’s condition and what needs to be done to attain full recovery. Jewish people have always taken their dedication to medicine very seriously.

Thus, I guess we cannot blame these doctors for doing their job and being unable (or not wanting) to diagnose the State of Israel’s dire condition. They diagnose and treat patients; they take Israel for granted. Perhaps, if only they thought of Israel as a patient…

I, lacking almost any medical experience, look at Israel’s medical tourism with awe, and I cry as I see Israel’s enemies dismantle Israel’s successes and paint her evil, turning her into an abyss of inferno. Her enemies excel while Israel remains blind. They attack mercilessly and too few stand to defend Israel, preoccupied with their daily lives, with excesses, excuses and stories.

If only Israel realized; perhaps these vast talents would have been used to defend her.

When Israel’s Ministry of Tourism talks about greater number of overall tourists to Israel, and the fruits of the Ministry’s hard work and dollars spent, I think of yet another tourism industry that has developed and perfected over time, a trip to a fantasy land to see up close and personal all of Israel’s accused wrongdoings.

Journalists, liberal groups, individuals and high-ranking visitors to Israel are taken around by “handlers” to show them highlights of the propaganda machine against Israel. Almost every official visit to Israel would be incomplete without a visit to “Palestine” to experience first hand Israel’s supposed brutality, life under “Occupation.”

Thus, foreign journalists are invited to the eastern part of Jerusalem to see a well-staged ambush of a father and son driving. A car slows down deliberately and stops on the right, allowing the other driver to pass. The first car then blocks the passing car from the back, while an innocent, playful, half naked, rock-throwing, youth starts throwing stones at the car in which the father and son sit.

Others join, encircling the car from all three sides, thus preventing escape, as the lead car is now blocking the back. The stones thrown are not children’s toys in a playground. They shutter glasses and wound, they murder.

The journalists are standing a very short distance from the scene, looking hypnotized at the ruthless Israeli and his son in the car. Why are they here, in the Capital of Palestine? Why are they driving freely on this road? Why do these so-called Israelis insist to be here, they must go back to their countries – Germany, Poland, the USA.

None of the reporters moves an inch, mesmerized by the unfolding scene: Something sinister is about to happen any moment. That is what they were promised, and this is exactly the feeling in the air. It is an animalistic smell of blood, a craving for a prey to die. It is a Kodak Moment, a Pulitzer Prize waiting to be awarded.

The father’s heart is racing in the meantime. He has not seen the reporters on the side, he does not know the scene is staged. He wears a yarmulke, identifying him as the enemy. In his mind pictures are racing: Two innocent reservists who took a wrong turn and were bitten to death, their bodies thrown from the second floor of a Palestinian police station, while they were still alive, to the mob downstairs to finish the job.

He is trapped, surrounded, and the innocent, playful youths have surrounded them.

He speeds, and two of the young “boys” playing in the street with life and death are hurt.

A field day for the foreign press: Israeli settlers deliberately murder Palestinian youths in the streets of East Jerusalem.

This is not the first time such a scene-made-for-the-world is aired. A decade earlier a father, this time Gazan, is shown protecting his son behind a very large rock. Israeli soldiers (whom we do not see) supposedly fire at the father and son for forty-five minutes.

The soldiers are so inept at what they do that after forty-five minutes the father is still alive, only the boy is dead, but there is not a single drop of blood.

Later investigation would show that Israeli soldiers could not have shot from their post in this direction – the laws of physics made it impossible.

After the staged forty-five minute shooting spree, the dead boy adjusts his position a bit; apparently lying for too long was somewhat inconvenient for him.

These little shows are well directed and executed as part of the Palestinian propaganda machine now so effective throughout the world.

In Jenin, where a “massacre” was conducted by Israeli soldiers, children’s brand new toys were planted amidst the ruins and then pictures taken to be disseminated quickly around the world: The Palestinians went out to plant memorable, photographable items, like a brand new teddy bear or a doll, colorful and new. Only these survived – so fit for broadcasting.

It was a scene taken from Spielberg’s Holocaust movie, substituting the toys for the red dress and the lighted Shabbat candles. Why not use an idea that worked so well and captivated the minds of millions, creating a fake image of a “Jewish holocaust” to claim a land, to fake the reality of what is actually the real truth about events in Palestine?

Israel’s enemies will stop at nothing. They are perfecting the methods and the results are their success. Like a film crew in Los Angeles, with a trailer solely dedicated for catering, other trailers with wardrobe, lighting and other equipment, and even police escort, so has the level of sophistication of the Palestinian propaganda machine achieved new heights.

The script: Show Israeli religious settlers burning mosques, writing graffiti and cutting down olive trees. Use the mosque and the olive tree as symbols of the fight for freedom, even though the first is the highlight of subjugation to a religious ideology that restricts almost every freedom and the latter has taken its image from the Bible (the waters have subsided, God’s wrath has calmed down) and from the Jewish People for whom an olive branch is an extended hand for peace.

Lately mosques are burned down with signature signs left behind, lest the viewer be unable to relate immediately “BURN DOWN THE MOSQUE” with “RELIGIOUS ISRAELI SETTLERS.” Immediately after the criminal act by the Jewish Occupiers, hoards of foreign tourists are brought to the area to highlight what it means to live under this so-called Israeli “Occupation.”

The Jewish neighbors, who respect a house of prayer whether it is theirs or another’s, come to share in the outrage. They bring Korans, the books of prayer for Muslims, to replace those that have burned. Their efforts are met with ridicule, for they are now willing participants in the greatest show in earth: “BRING DOWN THE JEWS!”

Olive trees are not spared. They are brutally attacked, trees that stood and lived for hundreds of years, well before the “Palestinian” identity or nationalistic aspirations ever were born in Arafat’s mind, uprooted and burned.

The “Palestinians” care not that these trees are – according to them – sources of livelihood, symbols of peace. They are ruthless, brutal. The yield of a burned tree for the cause of the elimination of the Jewish state is by far superior to any stories they tell the world of meager existence and dependence on the world’s billions to better their lives. The money will keep flowing, ever increasing with each staged occurrence for the gullible audiences around the world.

The greatest writers throughout the centuries could never have dreamed the evil ways of Israel’s enemies. The worst stories, the most hideous realities humanity has experienced in the past during her darkest hours, pale in comparison to the sick minds of the people behind the propaganda machine against the Jewish State.

Israelis in the meantime are busy living their lives, doing good unto others and ignoring the attacks against them. They have become so used to this evil machine, they do not even respond any more.

The devil in the meantime with his helpers are dancing around in excitement, in a trance reaching a crescendo, anticipating that moment when the body of Israel falls into a grave the Israelis themselves have helped dig.

The journalists stand on the front line of the spectators, and behind them droves of tourists, all there to participate in this sacred ritual, chanting a melody so ancient, so sinister, so sweet – “DOWN WITH THE JEWS!”

### The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.

The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.

This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.

Thanks Ari Bussel.

...People have already forgotten the difficulty of the new wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Absorption? Assimilation? Having to build new neighborhoods and new cities to accommodate all those new immigrants?... holders of advanced degrees in fields Israel could never use, educated and experienced experts in their respective fields (from medicine to music, across the sciences and everything in between) who suddenly had to clean streets to earn a living... Today there is a "Russian" Foreign Minister, Lieberman, whose constituency is predominantly the Russian-speaking community in Israel and who initially was labeled almost an outcast... Just this week Israel boasted that Russia has become the second largest source country for incoming tourism... People combine a trip to Israel, seeing the holy sites, enjoying the Mediterranean sun or the nightlife of Tel Aviv, a city without stopping, with medical needs. An annual exam as part of a trip to Israel is a very popular trend, making Israel a unique tourist destination. From dental work, implants and crowns, to colonoscopy and all the other checkups and examinations, from youths to adults to the elderly, it is apparently much cheaper in Israel and done at the highest level of sophistication and professionalism... Israel's advancements in the field of medical services are recognized around the world.

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