Trouble in Tel Aviv

It's probably not a good idea, when newly arrived in a foreign country, uncertain of one's bearings and the exchange rate, to go racing off to a bachelor party. But there I was on Saturday, just a night after arriving in Israel from Lebanon, with more than a dozen guys in a Georgian-Russian bistrot in Tel Aviv, eating beef and goose dumplings, doing shots of chilled vodka, and mooching cigarettes from pretty girls. And that was the healthy part of the evening.

It's hard to resist the seedy charms of Tel Aviv. It's called the White City, for the row upon row of bleached Bauhaus-style villas that stretch behind the beachfront high rise hotels. But to me its more like the Off-White City, indeed, the Off-Color City. People there really don't give a damn. They've got all the Olympian attractiveness of the Mediterranean species, but having grown up in a post-collectivist society with a stint or two in the army, they've had the subtlety and vanity beaten out of them. When someone in a crowded bar climbs up on a table in Tel Aviv, it's not to vogue a la Libannaise. It's because they actually want to dance.

The problem with partying in Tel Aviv is that is that it comes at a cost. Tel Aviv is safe thanks to the Israeli Defense Force, and the Separation Barrier, and the fact that the Israeli government has refused to let those Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in 1948 return. For me, this night on the town in Tel Aviv was a particularly guilty pleasure. I'd spent almost a month earlier this year working on a story about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and I've seen the squalid, concrete purgatories where they live. But here I was having a grand old time in an Israeli restaurant with painted blatt tiles, soaring ceilings and arched doorways, that was clearly once an Arab home.

It may be unfair to single out the inhabitants of one particular city or country or region, when many of us live unsustainable lives built on sacrifices or injustices that are as easy to ignore as greenhouse gases. And indeed, the beautiful people of Beirut don't let the fact that Palestinian refugees have lived in their country for 60 years without civil rights keep them from table dancing on Saturday night. So why keep harping on Israel and the Middle East? Because the mess and the metaphors are so vivid.

In fact, driving back up into the Jerusalem hills the next morning, I could think of no better place than than to ask the question: how to live a just and righteous life, when normal life is anything but? Looking for an answer may not have helped me with my wicked hangover or find my mobile phone lost at some point during the evening's silliness. But it may help salvage some of my dignity.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem