Back on the bus, we drive along the Carmel ridge on the way to Haifa. Ronit informs us that the communities with the orange roofs are the Jewish areas and the block houses, many of which are uncompleted, where there is laundry hanging from balconies and look very shabby are the Arab areas. She then goes on to explain at great length why Arab areas look the way they do. I assume what I was told is accurate but there maybe details that I wrote down incorrectly so with that disclaimer out of the way - Arabs, when they build, do not necessarily apply for zoning approval or submit plans to any governmental authority. They also do not pay their taxes (not sure if they completely refuse or just don't pay fair share). In addition, the children stay with their parents so the eldest son will build above the father's house and other siblings may also add on to the existing structure. When parents die, the offspring move into the parents house and the siblings rearrange their living quarters. Over time, this results in neighborhoods with streets either blocked or so narrow that garbage trucks , emergency vehicles, etc can't get thru. Then the Arabs complain that they don't receive any services. Quite a balagan (you can look on-line for the translation to this frequently used Hebrew word - think SNAFU). There are other Arab communities populated by Druze (more about them later) who do pay taxes and don't have extended families living on top of each other which look much better and comparable to Jewish areas. We all had dinner with a Druze family and I'll touch on that subject later in this blog.
We arrive in Haifa, take a brief tour of the city by bus and then stop for a photo-op of the B'Hai Gardens which we did not have enough time to tour.
Bahá'í Faith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ronit talked for awhile about the German Colony in Haifa which was founded in the mid 19th century. Many left in the 1930's to join the SS or Wehrmacht and the rest were thrown out by the British. The Germans were hostile to the surrounding Jews (no surprise there). There were no 1/2 timbered houses but the style looked somewhat like houses in Germany.
On the bus ride to Akko (Acre), we talked about Russian and Ethiopian immigrants assimilating into the Israeli culture. Generally speaking, Ethiopians assimilated OK but the Russians were not so easily assimilated (I didn't write down the reasons for this so maybe someone could comment, if you remember).
One thing I forgot was to mention that Arabs generally don't stucco the blocks used in construction so it's easier to add on (you don't have to destroy existing stucco to build out). There doesn't seem to be any way to edit the blog once it's posted so the Comments are the only mechanism I have.
ReplyDeletePosted by Joe Marx for Harvey Hoffman
ReplyDeleteI do seem to recall that Ronit mentioned that the Russian's watch cable TV in Russian and have less need to learn Hebrew.