 Hi there. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosel here, and I wanted to record a video talking about a blog post that I wrote earlier today and This is just in the spirit of what I talked about yesterday about these what I see or predict as these really diminishing lines delineating between text audio and video content and this was one that I probably should have recorded firstly as a video just because It's such a sensitive subject and it's something I've been holding in for such a while And I know I am certain that there are so many people living in Israel Jews Zionists who feel exactly like this and they feel so disempowered By the dynamic we have going on here and that's what I want to talk about in this blog coming 100% from the heart Now before I get into that if you do want to go ahead and read this post for yourself Then it's up on my medium account and that is at the following web address Daniel Rosel dot medium comm now This just mean I've been blogging on medium for a number of years now as a hobby Develops sort of this kind of spiraling web of content on everything from tech to Israel, etc So that's the kind of context that it that it fits in the blog post is called you didn't ask but the only reason I live in Israel is because I'm Jewish and Forgive me just one more slide. I'm just gonna bring it across. So, you know This anyone anyone who wants to go and read it. This is what the blog post look like looks like up there on the website now Something I've noticed is that once you move to Israel once people move to Israel of my persuasion so I grew up in Ireland and All my none of my friends were Jewish. There was effectively no real Jewish community in the city I grew up in which was called Cork and By and large I had very very good memories of growing up in Cork Yes, there was a couple of incidences of small what you could call Marginal anti-Semitism and discomfort, but what really led me to Israel was just more this when I talked about this in different posts and videos Just this kind of sense of look. I am Jewish There is a Jewish state in The world that was not the case for 2000 years and now that that exists Doesn't kind of make sense to live there now I had a turning point when I went on this thing called birthright Which is this tour that these organizations bring you on of Israel and I did that when I was about 16 And I think it was just impossible for me to go back to the kind of conventional life path After that point of wanting to continue living in Cork Maybe go to London or Dublin or New York. These were all the kind of destinations I think my family probably Envisioned that I would be going to and then I surprised everybody by moving to Israel and now I'm bringing you this blog post from Jerusalem so there you go Cork Cork to Jerusalem. I can't happen Now when I moved here to Israel, it was purely on that Ideological basis I moved because I didn't only see it as an opportunity to live in Israel. I Saw it as a responsibility to live in Israel if there was a Jewish state at a time when throughout most of history there wasn't and if you accept and I propose that this is a this is is historical fact that the Jews are In indigenous people to Israel and that's our homeland then for me this national mission of replanting our homeland Straddled way more than just geography of this is a place to live if you read the Jewish sources It's very clear that the connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel is much more metaphysical or Connected to spiritual concepts. So for me, it's not just about a geography or a place in the world It's about this is the place that as Jews as a Jew I should be and that's the entire reason I live in Israel There is there there are no other reasons and it's weird because I get these phone calls business phone calls You know, I work for myself as a marketing consultant and you know, there's a steady stream of phone calls and potential clients and clients to come through and They you know a lot of the time they ask oh you're from you're from Ireland. So what are you doing in Israel? And it's weird because how can you answer like that? and you're gonna you're gonna talk to someone you've never met and tell them about the the the Jewish Commandments in the Bible and It's a little bit too much. So I generally just sort of lapsed into laxadaisical reasoning and whatever, but There is something that I've increasingly felt Pulls me apart from a lot of Jewish people now. I didn't grow up again. I didn't grow up in a Jewish environment No Jewish friends Love my friends still in contact with many of them frequently but and That's this. I never kind of came to Israel thinking that Israel was a perfect country or going to be a perfect country. I Came here because I thought it was my duty to come here and to participate in both Zionism and making Israel as good as it possibly could be Now I find that since I came here. I hate to sound like such a winger. I genuinely do but I have been very critical of certain things in Israel certain dynamics in this country And if you do want to go on to that medium Dot-com URL, I'm gonna put I'm gonna be cheeky and put it up there one more time on the screen Daniel Rosel dot medium.com. I've written about you know Ireland and Israel Ireland versus Israel and Crazy financial stats in Israel. I've a whole series of posts up there on this topic. I Mean very very critical about many things in Israel. One of those things is the cost of living in Israel It's the eighth highest in the world nobody seems to care and It's stifling so many of my friends who made Aliyah with me went to Ulpan with me have left Israel and I'm counting in that circle even Higher earning professionals than me. I'm just a marketer Middle-class yes, but not, you know necessarily towards the top of the salary bracket But I've had software developers known software developers who've gone back to California because Even earning what are considered very high salaries in Israel. It just doesn't make sense Not only is the cost of living extremely high the cost of a real estate is the second highest in the world Why aren't people talking about this and they are talking about it but the politicians get a free hand in this country because Everybody just talks about security and that's totally understandable The Israel I know the Israel that I came to is a relatively secure Israel speaking broadly. I don't know the Israel of suicide bombings. I don't know the Israel of Skud rockets falling in the north of the country and a lot of my Israeli contemporaries do so I accept that We're coming at it from a different perspective But when I look at Israel as sort of somebody who came here from Ireland seven years ago and Whenever I go back to Ireland or whenever I go back to go outside of Israel So I was in the US this summer for three weeks in New York Connecticut Dallas One other place long lot and not long Island and Cape Cod Cape Cod I was in those places and there are certain things when I go outside of Israel I say this is vastly better life is just so much easier when I go back to Israel one of the first things I wanted to do was get a cellular router I'm not going to bore you with technical details because The the Linux penguin in the background can probably do that better than I but I Wanted a cellular router and why did I want cellular router because the internet sucks in our apartment? And it's just kind of things like this that you say well It's objectively better outside of Israel It seems a bit weird that in this country that constantly talks about how good it is a technology The internet isn't very good So I tried to get the cellular router and that was my first customer experience in Israel after being out of the country for three weeks Being in the US where everybody is dear sir. How are you sir? Thank you, sir. What can we do for you sir? Amazon and It was dealing it was I don't admit I don't want to mention the company because I can't because in Israel the defamation law is ridiculous If you say something bad about a company even if it's true truth is no defense against Israeli defamation law You can be sued so what's the point to me telling you the name of the company only to be sued for this little YouTube video? So I won't do it, but And it was a terrible experience this getting the SIM card. It was a travail They never they told me to go to pick up the SIM card. It was closed when they said it was open I went again. It was close again. I told them, please could you just career you wasted two evenings of my time? Could you kindly career it career it to my house tomorrow? No, we can't did they apologize No, they didn't and you come back to this stuff and you say why the customer service in this country is shocking The lack of manners is shocking You just apologize doesn't take much to apologize to say look, we screwed up. We're very sorry. We'll send it to you by courier National telecom company ten bucks off the budget. No big deal. And there's just this not this culture in Israel I'm not talking about customer service It's just a culture of how far can we push people that I've seen way too much of so I Don't want to get into a big negative big, you know, sort of tarantula. Why here's what I would say about this I write critical things about Israel because for me the writing I do is now mostly a hobby. I plan to go into journalism and then I went into marketing and comms and You know, I write a lot about tech during the day and then at night time I sort of do a bit of personal writing and I don't see the point in not discussing these issues now I know that a lot of people feel strongly in the pro-Israel community that you can't say anything bad about Israel and I've spoken to people From that community who have told me that One-to-one we are policies not to say anything bad about Israel We don't want to turn people off Israel and I get the reasoning but I still think it's ridiculous I still don't think it helps because it just you end up in the situation where you have people like me or my wife or my friends who come to Israel and It just doesn't the picture doesn't match you come here And you see that there are problems here the poverty rate in Israel was once the highest in the OECD Which makes sense when you consider the cost of living and the salaries in this country the working hours in Israel 9 to 6 are very long the minimum vacation Mandated by law of 12 national days is kind of rubbish to be honest. There's just so many things and I Don't know I don't want to attack Americans my wife's American her family or lovely people are Americans But I find that it's this this kind of feeling is particularly prevent prevalent Among American Aleem that you can't say anything bad about Israel and that's that's people. I'm talking about you are living here and I Don't hate Israel at all. I Just live here and see that there are good things and there are bad things and the only reason I'm here is because in Jewish and That's why it's just very strange when For me what motivates me about Israel about Aliyah The motivator is that it's not perfect to come here to work on making a bit little areas Honestly with what's in Israel today. I would say noise pollution You don't think that's an issue. I believe it's a major issue. I've been living in Very close proximity to building sites I might sound crazy, but just hear me out here for like half my time in Israel I'm not kidding. There is construction going on right below me It's going to start in about 10 minutes and for the entire duration of the day until four o'clock. There'll be Drilling I work from home This is like the fifth time a multi month multi month Drilling thing has happened when I lived in Israel. It's a kind of abnormal Honking aggression aggression on the roads all this stuff It's just really it's negative and when I go back to Ireland or the US That's one of the first things I noticed is just like how peaceful it feels Everyone's known people aren't yelling driving there is fine People are courteous. They get let one another go ahead of each other and This kind of stuff is just missing in Israel. So in terms of what's good in Israel to offer some balance here Everything related to Judaism, it's the Jewish country the only Jewish country I think it's my mission to be here to make it better to succeed here Even a possible great jobs here would be amazing And I just don't see it as part of that mission or congruence with that mission to say We don't speak bad about Israel. Everything here is perfect. The work's done because if the work's done, that's kind of boring Like what's what's what's there to achieve? Israel has made such tremendous advances since its foundation malaria was cleared. There was no country here There was no I mean they're a little bit of infrastructure, but The high-tech economy But but the high-tech economy constitutes only about 10% of the workforce I mean the 90% of the Israeli economy is constituted by Businesses that have some of the lowest rates of productivity per capita in the OECD That are very often extremely Uncompetitive they only survive because Israel is so small there. It's protectionism event is You if you ever move to Israel, you know exactly the type of company. I'm talking about Buying here is dysfunctional buying stuff on the internet here. It doesn't make any sense There's no customer service often your customer service law or watchdog is Doesn't really do much So the way I look at Israel personally For those who wonder two things one this guy hates Israel so much. What's he doing living there number one? I don't hate Israel This is just my mind frame. I like to write if I see something. I think it is not not good And I think that could be done better. I Write something and I try within the best of my ability to think of solutions and that's kind of For me, I feel like even the defamation law piece. I wrote recently I'm not qualified to really write a sort of piece about what could be I just want to point out that the defamation law we have in Israel right now is silencing a lot of customers with very legitimate grievances and that's not good But I don't I don't hate I don't hate Israel at all I've written positive things about Israel I've tried to I've recently bought a website called remote from Israel. I'm trying to encourage international companies to Do business with Israelis and for Israelis to look beyond the Tel Aviv bubble to look for remote opportunity worldwide So It's it goes both ways for me, but that that's just the way I would naturally approach it I'm not gonna say everything is perfect here. So that that's just this weird thing this weird dynamic That's been bugging me for so long of it's kind of like it's a package deal if you are Pro Israel if you are Zionist if you believe in the Zionist mission and that it's your place to be here You also have to subscribe to the rest of the package, which is saying that Israel is perfect. I'm very geniuses and The fantastic state of Israel blah blah blah blah blah and it's like it's not all true There is like legitimate problems here and not everything is that great like internet connectivity here internet connectivity here Based on where I am right now and doing all these crazy things to get good internet. It sucks. It's better in Ireland It's better in rural Connecticut. I measure the connection speed so yeah, these are all like these are all really small examples, but I'm just trying to make the point that of how sort of Devalidating it feels when you get these big echo chambers here when you move here and you know, you say guys like what's up with this? This is an issue. Let's just take salaries. Let's say Someone raises their voice on social media. I've seen this many times and they say I'm an accountant I'm earning this much money. How does this work? This is like half what I earned abroad and every and then they just get attacked and silenced and Then you have these pockets on the internet with the Jewish Internet of places where it's safe Those are very very small spaces and often then it's polarized way to the other side people who really really hate everything to do It's Isra, so it's a frustrating place and I often feel very alone In that space as somebody who supports Isra But my support I don't see my support as being everything's perfect here. I see my I see my mission. I see my My Zionism as being no stuff isn't perfect. Can we talk about it, please? Can we talk about this stuff that's wrong here because it's a pretty relatively small list and It's just kind of this national. It's just kind of ethos of Israel Here the swamps and built this high-tech thing and we're done. It's amazing already and We have to celebrate everything about it and I just don't connect with that at all and I see So much of it. It's like kind of a propaganda machine. You can quote me on that really Anything anything I say on YouTube is attributable. I may later retract the quote, but it's it's on the record So that was basically what I wrote about let me just show you the tweet that sparked off this thought now This isn't an attack by any means on the author. This is a woman. I follow on Twitter called hiya And she says I'm writing an article about why young people should make alia But not for the usual reasons of our great economy job safety help your queen. I don't let me know why you made alia now Just it Usually I agree with what this person tweets, but that is to it's kind of representative of the attitude now I'll put across the alternative opinion of hiya and say I think the only reason to make alia is because You're Jewish and you want to come to the project and play a part in the homeland I think by any other measure there are when I mean this sincerely and not as a dig on Israel But I think there are better places in the world to be than Israel You want to be somewhere that's sunny you want to talk about jobs. She talks about jobs honestly For most Western olim coming from coming from places like the u.s. Ireland the UK Well educated etc. I Would contend that they have better economic opportunities outside of Israel And it's just that kind of dynamic of you know, why should people make alia because everything's wonderful here No, I don't think so personally. I think that there are plus pros and cons just like any country And the only reason people should make alia the only Rational reason to make alia to move from somewhere like Ireland or from Ohio or from San Francisco to uproot your life to move to the Middle East is Because you're participating in something much much bigger than yourself much much bigger than an Employment picture much much bigger than whether or stuff like that. So anyway, that that's is what I've been holding in for a while I've as you say I felt so lost often in these debates in Israel because I Feel like I'm on this kind of small a main to the spectrum of people who Support Israel. They're not anti-Israel. I would never consider myself anti-Israel support Israel but Don't believe in the whole Disneyland thinking if you want to put it like that Thank you guys for watching this YouTube video if you'd like to get more very opinionated thoughts about Israel Technology and just about everything else Feel free to hit this subscribe button