Why aliyah seemed like a good idea at the time.

After four and half years of living in the land of milk, honey and a bitter after taste I’m still frequently asked, “Why did you move to Israel?” What I’ve noticed is that this question is little more than a polite mannerism Israelis ask immigrants in the same most people ask one another, “How’s it going?” No answer is expected, no answer is needed and, all too often, no answer is wanted. But, no! There are many good reasons explaining why a guy like me is in a place like this. I thought to take the opportunity to list a number of them – Zionism and Judaism not included.

1) I grew up eating Jaffa oranges. Call it gastronomical Zionism if you will but many Diaspora Jews have taken to eating Israeli produce as a show of support for our war torn homeland. More often than not, Diaspora Jewish commitment to Israeli produce is so strong that it supplants actual physical visits.

Every time I peeled my dimpled, orange sphere it’s possible that I was thinking I was peeling away the Zionist state itself. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But it is true that Jaffa oranges are tasty and orange. So it seemed that moving to the place from where they came was a good idea.

What I didn’t know is that there are multiple varieties of oranges that come from outside the US, where I grew up. Specifically, Valencia oranges, which, if I’m not mistaken, come from Spain. I was in Spain recently and it’s really fucking nice. It turns out that the Jews have a lock on the media and the banks, just not produce.

2) At one point during my university career I was approached by a Mossad agent. He presented me with a very simple choice – move to Israel or get cancer. After weighing the pros and cons to each scenario, aliyah edged out cancer – though it wasn’t really a fair competition since the Mossad agent never told me what kind of cancer it would be.

3) Without a doubt, I moved to Israel for the women. Israeli ladies are fucking hot – and that’s an indisputable fact no matter what end of the theo-political divide you come from. Then again, none of these women seem to be interested in giving me any pussy. So, what was the fucking point again?

4) I had heard from, if I remember correctly, a Conservative Rabbi, that when a suicide bomber explodes on a bus candy rains down. Having witnessed a couple attacks since moving here, it turns out that, rather than delicious candy, horrific chunks of human flesh fall all around. This leaves me with the curious uncertainty as to whether what I originally heard was an outright lie or if I simply misunderstood whatever it was. I’m inclined to believe it was a lie since that is what Conservative Judaism is based upon anyway.

5) Having been born too late to own a slave in the United States – my family, on both sides, were living in the Ukraine during slave times anyway – I thought it would be awesome to own a Palestinian. Sure, prefacing “nigger” with “sand” is just another way of saying “sub par,” but I was really fucking tired of doing my own laundry, cooking and picking my own cotton.

It turns out that the whole notion of owning a Pallie (as I imagined Palestinians might be marketed) is moot. First, it seems that you can’t actually own a Palestinian here.* And, second, cotton doesn’t grow in the desert.

6) I thought I’d get a kick out of paying double for consumer electronics. Turns out I was wrong about that.

So, there you have it. Some very possible reasons I made up to explain why I made aliyah, which, I should have pointed out earlier, means to ascend as much as it does to get fucked in the ass. Feel free to leave some reasons for making aliyah of your own.

*It turns out, perhaps ironically, that you can take a Palestinian’s land, shoot at them if you’re in the army or a settler, blow them up (same two scenarios), harass and humiliate them (again, in uniform or across the green line), force them into Bantustans and exploit them as a work force, but, for some reason, not own them outright.