No Sign Of Trouble
When my English family and friends ask me if I feel secure in Tel Aviv I say “yes.” Fortunately in the five years since I made ‘Aliyah’ here I have never personally witnessed or even heard a bomb.
I was in town during the war between Israel and Lebanon, and though I met many lovely Haifa residents on the run to Tel Aviv, that was as much of the war as I could tangibly feel.
Often I pick up on local fears of insecurity but you know how it is, you can’t really fear a situation until you’ve experienced it or someone close to you has. And for sure I am no way seeking the experience.
Less Crime
But is not just about the bombs. Truth is, I feel safe in the streets of Tel Aviv.
No can deny that in cities like London, New York or Paris, at the least, wallets frequently disappear on rush hour public transport, people get mugged and a woman walking alone at night in an unfamiliar area is possibly “asking for trouble.”
Here in Tel Aviv I find myself taking walks alone at night, especially at the beach, and I am casual when it comes to my things – like going around with my handbag unzipped and not strapped to my body and maybe just thrown casually on to a spare chair beyond easy arm reach when i'm sitting in a cafe.
Though the feeling for me is that there ain’t the crime in Israel that i left behind in ‘Babylondon,’ I know it’s not all milk and honey in the promised land and especially not in Tel Aviv.
Where's The Danger?
My friend Meerav is quick to point out the horrors of road rage, terrorism and nuclear war threats that surround Tel Aviv. However she did have the bad luck to recently experience being hijacked.
She was sitting in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s car whilst he was at the cashpoint machine when a stranger jumped into the driving seat. Fearlessly Meerav struggled to get hold of the wheel, the car came to a standstill as it hit a small boulder, and the would be thief ran away.
Scary as this story is, the truth is that violence, conflict and crime can happen anywhere in the world.
So what dangers do I find in Tel Aviv that are unique to this city?
Admittedly I have momentary anxiety when I go to a mall and everybody’s impatiently waiting to have their bags checked and it feels like you could smuggle in a weapon as easily as you could a kiss (how ironic that the hebrew word for weapon - ‘neshek’ is so similar sounding to the hebrew word for kiss - ‘neshika.’)
I also get myself into a sweat when I occasionally, irrationally, take a bad mood out on a taxi driver. Tel Avivian taxi drivers are a confident, no-nonsense lot, and they don’t take well to someone arguing the fare, especially when the fare has already been agreed.
But as angry as some taxidrivers get with me - the beauty of this Israeli nation is that in any moment that peace is established we can become the best of friends and get on with the pleasantries like, “Where do i come from?” and “Why do i want to live in Israel?”
These days I tell taxi drivers that I live here because I feel safe. I expect them to respond, “Safe?! Are you crazy? Don’t you know what’s going on here?” But they are all agreeing with me that it is safe to live in Tel Aviv. One taxi driver even added that with his two sons in the army I should feel secure, and would I like to give him my number to meet the eldest of his offspring.
'Matcot' Makes Me Mad
Possible bombs and personal conflicts are not as bad as it gets for me. My big unsettling experience of Tel Aviv is the national beach game, the one that I don’t find anywhere else in the world, ‘matcot.’
Nervously I pass along the shore as players, mainly men, are being mad for ‘matcot.’ And when I am trying to relax on a bed chair and focus on the gentle lapping of the waves, the smacking of that little rubber ball from one wood bat to another really unrelaxes me.
If I dare to watch the ‘matcot’ action which of course I do because the noise is hypnotic, then sweaty males, especially the ones who play regularly and seriously, seem to rev themselves up and hit the ball even harder.
A few times the ball has hit me too and though of course the offenders said it was unintentional – well hell it feels intentional...and a ‘sorry’ not an embarrassed laugh is more apt for this Brit.
Tennis is how Israelis explain ‘matcot’ to me, but isn’t tennis always played on a tennis court which usually has a wall of mesh netting around it?
But everybody loves ‘matcot’ – when i ask scores of Israeli men and women on the beach why they play, they all tell me because it’s fun! And every time I have played, it is fun.
And it is very fun when one of the guys ‘matcotting’ near you is a super hot, possibly not gay, Israeli hunk, and your ball just happens to keep landing on his turf of sand, and eventually, he does actually see you and flashes you a smile. And you can feel secure in the thought that if his ball should hit you, then you may just be in his line of vision.