Addicted to Crises : Israel: The Stress Lab of the World

HAIFA, Israel — When columnist Yoel Marcus of the newspaper Haaretz returned recently from a two-week visit to the United States, he described coming back to Israel as “like being batted over the head.”

“What madness! What a dizzying pace!” the journalist said, suggesting that maybe the answer is to treat Israel’s drinking water system with Valium.

While Marcus’ suggestion was made with tongue in cheek, his observation about the pressure cooker that is everyday life in Israel was dead serious.

Israel is described as “the stress laboratory of the world” in a brochure on the Ray D. Wolfe Center for the Study of Psychological Stress at Haifa University. And even the most unobservant tourist is struck by the air of constant tension, unless he spends all of his time on Eilat’s beaches or around the pool of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

2 Compounding Factors

Modern life generates plenty of stress in other countries, too, Wolfe Center researcher Dvora Carmil acknowledged, but at least two factors make the problem worse in Israel.

“Israel is a small country, so when something happens, everybody is involved,” she said. And, on top of that, the problem of personal stress is compounded here by an underlying national insecurity.

Carmil explained: “The American is worried about himself and his job and his children and whatever. But he doesn’t worry about America as such. Israelis are worried about themselves--they want to achieve a lot; they’re very, very ambitious and competitive. But (an Israeli is) also worried (about) . . . the Israeli situation. He’s worried about the country’s future--not only his own future.”

Israeli politics are a major contributor to stress, Carmil said. This country’s political system seems unable to function unless it is plunged in real or imagined crisis.

‘Our Daily Crisis’

According to Jerusalem Post reporter Macabee Dean: “If Protestants in the U.S. pray: ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ in Israel, the prayer must run: ‘Give us this day our daily crisis.’ It is part of our Jungian makeup, our atavistic responses. We are a people addicted to a daily crisis.”

Whether the general population takes its cue from the politicians or the other way around is not entirely clear. But the tone of Israel’s Knesset (Parliament) and the chaotic atmosphere of Jerusalem’s main outdoor market on a Friday afternoon before the Sabbath are often remarkably similar. The Knesset was once described as a combination of the British Parliament, a turn-of-the-century Zionist congress, the biblical Sanhedrin and a meeting of rival Mafia chieftains thirsting for blood.

Journalist Dean suggested there may be method in Israel’s crisis-ridden, political madness. “It pairs our political leaders off, one against the other, neutralizing their detrimental effects on the innocent taxpayers and on the country as a whole.”

Israelis follow the news so passionately that much activity virtually halts every hour, on the hour, as people listen to the latest radio newscast.

“An Israeli who has been deprived of a news broadcast for more than three consecutive hours is a human being reduced to a mass of worried, jelly-like material possessed of no other personality trait than a massive dose of anxiety,” according to “The Rogue’s Guide to Israel,” a popular, English-language introduction to this country.

To call an Israeli on the telephone between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m, when the main television news is broadcast, is considered the height of poor manners.

People are glued to their radios and TV sets “because in a state of uncertainty, they are hungry for any crumb of information, good or bad,” according to Carmil. “The logic behind this is that a person thinks that if he hears about something one hour earlier, he might yet manage to change something.”

Israelis, Carmil added, “are constantly in a state of high alert, which is an unnatural state for the body to be in.”

Tranquilizers in Demand

While problems of alcoholism and drug addiction are not nearly as numerous here as they are in the United States and Western Europe, Israelis are very heavy smokers. Tranquilizers account for about 30% of all Israeli prescriptions. And, according to Carmil, Israelis go to the doctor three times as often as their counterparts in other countries with similar health care systems, reflecting a combination of high anxiety and a cultural emphasis on health.

Stress contributes to a suicide rate here that is higher than in many other industrialized countries.

Carmil also blames stress for much of the rudeness, intolerance and aggressive behavior shown here. In a national emergency, Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated an enviable capacity for pulling together. But short of crisis, the guideline is more often every man for himself. “The roads are a reflection,” said Carmil, referring to Israel’s reputation for having much more than its share of inconsiderate and impatient drivers.

Israelis readily admit that they are a nation of queue-jumpers, almost constitutionally incapable of waiting their turn.

“In the United States, a line is a line,” columnist Marcus said with a chuckle. But “an Israeli is a restless man. Everybody’s for himself. You can see it in the lines, on the roads, in everyday life.”

There is a tradition of one-upmanship here so pervasive that there’s a slang Hebrew expression for it: le’ho ci et ha’mitz. It means, literally, “to squeeze the juice out” of somebody.

Returning to his car in a parking lot after an appointment one morning, an American journalist was distraught to find that someone had parked directly behind him, blocking his way out. Ten minutes of knocking on doors and tooting his horn to try to find the offending driver were to no avail.

Then a helpful bystander said he was sure there was enough room between two cars parked nose-to-tail at right angles in front of the journalist’s vehicle for him to get out that way. After considerable jockeying, with the bystander’s animated supervision, the American managed to squeeze through the narrow gap with only a fraction of an inch of clearance on either side.

At that, the bystander walked over to the vehicle that had been blocking the journalist from behind, hopped in, started the car up and drove away.

The journalist’s Israeli companion nearly split his sides laughing. “That’s le’ho ci et ha’mitz, “ he explained.

Carmil says such behavior leads to a “spiral of stress.” The harried Israeli who jumps to the front of a line angers those who were there before him and makes them more tense.

“If you are impatient, and you are angry and you are hostile and irritable, you do inflict those feelings around you and make other people behave or react the same way to you,” Carmil said.

While it may be unnatural, the phenomenon of stress in Israel is in many ways understandable.

This country has fought five wars in 40 years and faces the continual threat of terrorism. Virtually every bus and public building has signs prominently posted warning patrons to beware of suspicious packages that might be terrorist bombs.

Jerusalemites have developed a finely tuned ear to distinguish among the sounds of a bomb explosion, a sonic boom and the blast of dynamite as builders clear the rocky ground for a new construction project. But many still wince at every loud noise.

If not fearful for their own safety, Israelis are concerned about that of relatives serving in the army. Three years of military service for young men and two years for young women are mandatory for most. And Israeli men serve a month or more a year of reserve duty.

With Israeli soldiers still targets of Muslim terrorists in southern Lebanon and of angry Arabs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the whole extended family is under stress while one of its members is on military duty.

A study among Haifa University students found that 21% of them had lost someone close to them in one of Israel’s wars, and 52% of them had fought in a war themselves. “These are astronomical figures!” said Wolfe Center director Shlomo Breznipz.

Jewish children have frequent nightmares about being carried off by terrorists, according to sociologists; Arab children dream about being abused by Israeli army troops.

In addition to the Arab-Israeli conflict, there are serious clashes here between religious and secular elements in this society, and between those of European origin and those with North African or Middle East roots.

Carmil said that stress is linked to rising political extremism here. “Those who find it difficult to cope with the situation go to the extremes, to the solutions which appear clear-cut,” she said. Others are turning to a fundamentalist form of religious observance.

The Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews in Nazi death camps during World War II, has left permanent psychological scars on its survivors here and also on their children.

More mundane concerns contribute to stress, too. Israelis complain constantly about the frustrations of dealing with the bureaucracy. This is a country founded largely by people of Eastern European origin, and that legacy is obvious today in the way government pervades almost every area of daily life.

The level of many basic services is spotty, at best. Intra-city telephone communications are an example; attempting an inter-city call could have taxed the patience of Job. Israeli researchers say that, intentionally or otherwise, the average citizen can expect to dial every other citizen four times in his lifetime.

“Six times last week I tried to reach my brother in Beersheba,” one Israeli complained. “Once, I got a Chinese restaurant in Tiberias; twice, I got a gas station in Dimona, and three times I got my brother’s next-door neighbor.”

The economy is more stable now than it was less than three years ago, when inflation peaked at an annual rate of more than 800%. But taxes and import duties are still high, the rules seem to change constantly and Israelis remain very nervous about their financial future.

Even the climate conspires to aggravate. The weather here is much like it is in Los Angeles, but relatively few Israeli homes and almost no government buildings or private automobiles have air conditioning.

The Ministry of Transport announced last week that air conditioning will be mandatory on cars with engines over 1.5 liters, beginning in the 1989 model year. The reason, the ministry said, is medical evidence that Israel’s hot summers lead to “nervousness” among drivers and therefore a higher risk of accidents.

On top of everything else, Israelis complain, there is virtually no escape.

The country is about the size of the state of Massachusetts, and half of it is desert. It takes little more than an hour to drive from the Mediterranean Coast to the Jordan River, and less than seven hours to go from the top of Israel’s northern panhandle, at Metulla, to its southern tip at Eilat.

Meanwhile, the borders on the north and east, with Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, are closed. The border with Egypt has been open since the peace treaty of 1979, but many Israelis are still uneasy about traveling there.

Israel is “such a tiny . . . little country that everybody is stewing in everyone else’s juice,” university student Yael Hedaya complained bitterly. “You have no choice.”

Thousands are active in the country’s Society for the Protection of Nature, which offers an extensive program of hikes and outdoor study programs. But for those who can afford it, the favorite antidote to stress is to go abroad at least for a little while.

A travel tax imposed as part of the government’s austerity program has sharply reduced the number of Israelis going overseas, but one in six went anyway last year.

“Here we have the spontaneous reaction of an animal under pressure,” said Wolfe Center researcher Carmil. “Running away.”

Bill Blum, an American-born Israeli psychologist, described the feeling of finally arriving abroad after a long period here: “I feel like I was shot out of a cannon!”

The only problem, as columnist Marcus pointed out, is that after a relaxing trip abroad, the shock of re-entry begins the stress cycle all over.