American Aliyah - What you want to read - Articles about Israel

I've never been more shocked and embarrassed in my whole, entire life.

Would you believe that your Israeli airline customs officials actually forced me to open up my luggage, in front of everybody, right there in the middle of the airport, and they rummaged through everything I had? Don't you have any privacy laws in Israel?

Then they told me that I was bringing in things illegally.

What did they mean by illegal things? I was just bringing in some basics for my kinderlach! Is there a law against bringing joy to little Israeli children? Don't they deserve these things? I can afford it more than they can.

Just because my grandchildren live in Israel doesn't mean that they should be deprived of these toys. I found out that the prices in Israel are much more expensive than they are where I live, so I just wanted to help out. I don't want my grandchildren to have to live like Israelis.

Those greedy customs officials threatened to take away my gifts unless I paid a tremendous tax on it. What a ripoff! You know, I have my rights and he can't take my money like that.

Do I have to pay just because I don't live in Israel? I had already paid for those things once, and they wanted me to pay almost the same amount of money all over again, in order to get permission to bring it into Israel. If this is the way that they treat us, then there's no wonder hardly any tourists come to Israel. I'm going to tell my friends what happened. Let's see if they come to Israel after that.

I had planned to spend that money in Israel. I was going to help stores and hotels. Now these customs guys took it. How do they expect me to pay for anything now?

Don't they understand what a Bubbe is all about? I'm going to make sure that other parents don't go where they take away our hard-earned money. Just you wait - they'll be sorry for taxing honest people like me.

Then you expect me to spend money in your country? No way!

Trees

I saw that movie Sallah Shabbati and I didn't think it was all that funny. I began to get worried about that tree that I had purchased from your JNF. I want to make sure that they planted and watered it properly. By now, it should be very tall and strong.

You know what? The movie is right. Those guys really didn't know where my tree was. They couldn't find it in their records. They said things about forest fires and wars and missiles and other excuses. None of that stuff matters to me. I want to know where they put my tree.

I'm furious. I gave those guys my good, hard-earned money to buy a tree and they can't even tell me where it is.

Don't they know that trees don't grow on money?

I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to protest. I'm going to make those crooks close down the JNF office in my city. I'll also report them to the Better Business Bureau. I'll make them end all of this corruption.

Merchandise

Don't you guys know how to make a store? Your stores are all tiny, and they don't have anything in them. Well, maybe there's a little bit of stock on the shelves, but certainly no decent selection. And the quality - don't you know that competition raises the quality of the products?

There's more. Don't your salesclerks know how to smile? I mean, you're supposed to want me to come back to shop by you. How do you expect me to come back in after you give me a sourpuss "Gveret" or "Doda" or, even, "Savta'le". How dare you announce my age to everyone around? And I'm not your aunt or grandma! My grandchildren will grow up differently, with nice American manners.

This is a major problem that must be resolved immediately. It should be your top priority. After all, you're no longer a new country, and you can't use new country ideas as an excuse any more. You should learn from the way things are done in advanced countries like mine.

Would you like to hire me as a consultant?

Where do you want to go now?