But He’s Their Buffoon

A meeting out in Ramat-Hasharon.   We’re early.  I walk to an ATM and pass the police station and a store with dial-up phones and key punch typewriter antiques in the window.  Returning I find the restaurant, obfuscated beneath vines and competing signs telling you to go elsewhere.  Edna, feels family-like, once inside. Our host arrives and informs us, that it has been here ever since he was young.  I have a chicken leg stew that is supposedly a family dish.  The proprietor and family hailed from Persia.  The waiter insists twice, that I have couscous as a side he’s right, it’s all delicious.  All the conversation is all about Shanghai, which feels rather far away as streets and neighborhoods are called to mind.

Now we’ve driven to Herzliya and not for the first time, driving to one and then another high-powered tech company in a suburban setting with both garish and glittering I consider Hsinchu in Taiwan.  Perhaps it’s just the mood of Taipei that comes to mind, and which I’ve superimposed over this and then another substantive meeting with smart people doing disruptive things in small companies. 

Back in Tel Aviv our driver takes us to the wrong place.  “That’s not here.  You need to walk over there,” they tell me inside.  Ten minutes of plodding sounds much worse than it ends up being and soon we’re at Sarona, a hip compound of low, twenties buildings, amidst a sea of skyscrapers.  We have arranged to meet a friend of a friend who’d spent some years in China.  He asks if his “gf” can join, and we of course say “yes.”  It’s happy hour at the faux German beer haus, in one of the compound’s atmospheric houses.

Israelis tend to like Trump.  This is unfortunate but understandable, particularly for people who are not responsible for him and do not have to consider the toxin of his mendacity directly in their own body politic.  Many, smart people, like this couple were frustrated with Obama and enamored with Don.  They’re thrilled he off-ed Soleimani, they applaud the realism of Trump’s new peace plan.  They see him as a friend of Israel.  Surely, they acknowledge that he is a buffoon, but he’s their buffoon.  An achingly disarming discussion ensues, about the military crucible they’ve been through which has shaped their perspective. 

Sunday, 02/09/20