Dispelling Some Myths about Israel

There are many myths and misperceptions about Israel, that many people (often Americans) think. This document aims to dispel some of them.

• Publication Date: 16-May-2007

• Last Updated: 29-September-2018

While the southern part of Israel (the Negev) is a desert, most of the northern part has growth, and supports a lot of trees, bushes, shrubs and fauna. There are many pictures over at the Israel Images site.

Most Israelis live in the northern part of Israel, which is quite lively.

Israel is a civilised country. It has stone buildings, roads, cars, trains, lower education and higher education, an industry, electricity and good Internet connectivity, and an abundant food supply.

Most Israeli Jews are not Haredi Jews who dress almost completely in black. In fact a lot of them are secular Jews who mostly don’t even wear a kippa, or religious Jews who still lead a normal life. Religious Jews can be distinguished by look by the fact that the males wear a Kippa, and the females dress dresses or skirts, instead of the usual pants or more fashionable dresses that women wear.

While most of the Israeli-related news is about terrorist acts (or acts of retaliation of the Israeli Defence Force against terrorist activity), Israel is in fact a very peaceful and safe country. Here are several more serious problems in Israel than terrorism:

1. More Israelis were killed in road accidents, than all those killed in terrorism and wars.

2. It has very high taxation (sometimes over 60% of the wage), many irrational welfare laws, and a very poor middle class.

3. There are many irrational regulations.

4. There is a lot of theft, and other crimes.

Some Israeli soldiers (both males and females) are required to carry a gun with them during their service, but most don't. Moreover, Israelis who are not serving, are not required to do that, and most of them do not make use of gun-bearing privileges to carry a gun daily (assuming they have a good reason to apply for a gun licence).

Despite everything, according to the Wikipedia, Israel has the 21st highest life expectancy in the world.

This document is Copyright by Shlomi Fish, 2007, and is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-by) 3.0 Unported (or at your option any later version of that licence).

For securing additional rights, please contact Shlomi Fish and see the explicit requirements that are being spelt from abiding by that licence.