I am reluctant to toss around the word truth, as if I possess it. That's Donald Trump's thing with his Truth Central.
However, having lived in Israel for a decade I believe I can offer a perspective. If you don't live here, then I know much more about this place than you do
Israel is surrounded by mythology. I doubt that there has ever been a place in history about which people are less careful to speak accurately. I'm not talking about the so-called anti-Semites and so-called self-hating Jews (the former being an overused term, the latter being simply ridiculous) who "dare" criticize anything about the government or military, no matter how obvious or factual. Zionists automatically accuse those people of lying about Israel. No, Zionists are the ones who lie about Israel.
Let's talk reality now and undress some of the Zionist myths.
Israel is not an affluent country. If you move here from America, your standard of living will drop by 75%. Read that figure carefully. That's not 75% of what it is now, but 25% of what it is now. Even if you come with money, the society around you, the dwelling places, the architecture, the roads, the medical system (more on that in a bit), the arts and culture are significantly, drastically lower than you are used to. Many of the cities, even famous ones, are dumps. For example, Be'er Sheva is a dump. Rishon l'Tzion a dump. Most of Tel Aviv is a dump. If you came from the Ukraine in 1986 (because Zionists closed off immigration to the USA) it might have been a step up, but the Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe.
Housing is many times the cost of America. An old apartment with four small rooms is $800,000. Cars are double the cost. Electronics are more expensive and not as good.
Israel is not a high-tech country. It's fine and dandy that it has some high tech companies on the NASDAQ exchange. That does not translate to technology in your life. The products here are second rate, bus card readers fail to work, even security is crude. Israel may show some know-how in high tech spying software and drones, but that doesn't help you in your everyday life.
The medical care is far beneath that of the USA in quality and availability. Have fun waiting four months for an MRI. And the care is not free as the liars at Nefesh b'Nefesh tell you. An emergency room visit will cost you 1,000 NIS ($350) with some deductions from the kupah, and since there are limited medical services outside of the hospitals, people are often sent to the emergency room to get things checked out. Hospitals are not found in many of the larger cities. You have to travel to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem for emergency services or anything more than getting a splinter removed.
Hebrew is a difficult language to learn if you are not a speaker of Arabic. I know all about the sorashim, the roots to verbs. Wonderful. It is a Mideastern language, not Germanic like English, not Romantic like Italian. An English speaker studying French will hear a word like homage or panache and recognize them from English. That doesn't happen with Hebrew. Also the definite article and possessives are attached to nouns (before and after respectively.) There's no verb to be. Hebrew is hard to learn and Israelis speak quickly with garbled words. Ulpan is not a magic language acquisition program, even though it has its own name. It's just a language class where the teacher and books don't translate into your native tongue. This doesn't aid language acquisition. It just makes it more stressful, which matches everything else in Israel. Moreover, most Israelis do not speak English. Government and business correspondence is in Hebrew, and not even the Hebrew you might manage to learn in Ulpan.
You are not coming home. That's what they tell, "come home". Well, it's not home. I moved into an apartment building full of Israelis, mostly Dati Leumi, and none of them ever had us over, even days after our very obvious lift arrived. They were unfriendly and unhelpful. The entire society is at war with itself. If you are Haredi, you will not feel at home in 95% of the land because the Chilonim and the Dati Leumi will be hostile to you. They are hostile to each other as well. I walk through a non-religious neighborhood every day and get stares even as I say "boker tov." No response, just glares.
Israel does not have a thriving democracy. The same people are in charge decade after decade. You don't even vote for them. You vote for a party who chooses who will assume office. Parties need a minimum vote count of several percent to take a Knesset seat so new parties struggle to get started. Existing parties that change their names because their leaders battle one another are not new parties. They are recycled parties. Israel does not have checks and balances. It is a parliamentary system where the Parliament (Knesset) chooses the PM and cabinet. There's no real Constitution. The court appoints itself and acts without restraint as it makes decisions based on what its liberal members deem reasonable.
The press is almost entirely anti-religious and never anything but hostile to Haredim. All of the major institutions are run by anti-religious, non-religious or barely religious people. This means the banks, the colleges, the press, the health systems, and the military. All secular. Contrary to the whining that you hear from the Chilonim, Haredim have nearly no power in Israel. They have only a portion of the voting block, but it doesn't amount to much. Despite claims that the Haredi community lives on government aid, the government provides little to Haredim, just minimal health care. Secular schools are far better funded. Students sit in real buildings. Haredim sit largely in trailers.
Schools are not as good. Teachers are not well trained and resort to shouting to control the class. Facilities are subpar to terrible. Libraries are few and small.
The military is not a safe place for religious Jews. Just check out the IDFBabes channel on X and you'll see what I mean. And the battle to keep Haredim from the military has reached a point of enormous difficulty since the court nullified all draft exemptions. Whatever yeshivish people you know who made 'aliyah' did it in a different political era. You can't just copy those people.
The military is also not the most moral on earth, and is not particularly effective as we saw on October 7. They failed to watch a fence.
Are you getting the message? Is there anything good about Israel? Well, it is Eretz Yisroel. There seems to be more hashgacha pratis here. There is some kiddushah in the air, maybe only in religious communities. There are strong religious communities, but not really any better than Lakewood, Monsey, Williamsburg, etc. No, people aren't frummer in Israel. That's another myth. They are less materialistic, but many suffer a materialism in their religious observance because the state becomes a false god to many. Many struggle to maintain good middos.
Yes, there are less goyim, but Jewish goyim can be a bigger problem. The culture here has more chutzpah and less derech eretz. There is some feeling of brotherhood in some of the people, by no means all. Some of them are horrible. I believe the worst are those who were most recently in the military as their rough treatment of the Arabs (and it is rough to say the least) rubs off on them. They come out of the military hardened and with PTSD from how the military treats them.
Can you handle all this, or have you been brainwashed to believe that criticizing an anti-religious society founded by atheists is lashon hara against the land? How ridiculous. How convenient a misuse of a Torah idea to provide cover for sinners and sin.
My view is that Israel is for Israelis and refugees (even if they be refugees created by Zionism). Refugees can include ardent Zionists because their obsession with Israel has made living anywhere else unpalatable to them. Shield yourself when they try to infect you with their disease. Most people and by that I mean 95% should stay where they are. Live where you can be the best Jew. A mitzvah in Texas is just as good as a mitzvah in Israel.
As for Israelis, this is all they know. They are made of the same material as a scouring pad, so they can deal with all of this. They are used to it. They have family here. They know the language. It's their home. It's not yours. Not yet. Wait for Moshiach. He'll lead the converting of Israeli society into home for all Jews. You will not be able to do this yourself.
Here's a 4 bedroom apartment outside of Jerusalem for $756,000. Here's your living room/dining room/den, i.e. one room.
Here's one of your tiny bedrooms:
Here's your luxurious kitchen:
2,790,000 Israeli New Shekel equals 756,837.99 United States DollarsAm I getting through to you?
"It was not the land that Moses had been commanded to proclaim to his people at the outset of his mission as מורשה, as the inheritance they were to preserve (Ex. 6,8). The Law, to be translated into full reality upon that soil, was to be the true מורשה, the one true, everlasting inheritance, the one true center around which the nation and its leaders were to gather as one united community. Herein lay the goal and the destiny, the character and the significance of the people."
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 62
