Paul Bass Photo
Tzipi Shmilovitz at WNHH FM.
Tzipi Shmilovitz noticed something about how people in the U.S. think about the war their government has waged for decades: They don’t.
Shmilovitz notices a lot about the U.S., because that’s her day job: She has covered the U.S. for the past eight years as a correspondent for Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yediot Ahronot. She works out of New Haven; she moved here from New York last year.
In her native land, all citizens, men and women alike, are required (with some exceptions) to serve in the military — unlike in the U.S., which relies on a volunteer army.
As a result, Shmilovitz observed, “Americans don’t see war up close. It doesn’t happen. You’ve got a war in Afghanistan, it’s been 20 years, and most people completely forgot about it. In Israel, you can’t forget about war. Because it’s right here.
“Very few people really pay the price of war in America. It’s not mandatory service. They see things on TV. It looks like a movie. You don’t understand that this is ‘our guys’ and ‘our families.’”
Shmilovitz shared some of her observations of our country through the lens of a foreign correspondent during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
“Coming from Israel, I’m in no position to call any country crazy. But America is crazy!” she remarked.
“I think this is a continuous struggle between two Americas that never really got over the Civil War. We’re going a little backwards, a little sideways. That is the beauty of America; that is why I like it so much. This is a very strange experiment, unlike anything you’ve seen anywhere in the world. You’ve got a lot of people who you don’t think should be living together because they believe in completely different things. Somehow this is working. Right now it’s a glitch. But I still have hope.
“To me as a journalist, it’s fascinating. It’s a little too crazy now; I’d like to get some rest. But it’s one of the things that makes this country so interesting to me. Every second something can happen.”
Many of Shmilovitz’s stories track the overlap between culture and politics. She interviewed Israeli Itzhak Perlman, for instance, about his decision not to join other artists in boycotting North Carolina over its passage of an anti-LGBT law in 2016. Perlman reasoned that the symphony musicians with whom he performed were not responsible for the law. He did, though, donate his proceeds from the performance to LGBT advocacy groups.
Another story followed the outcry among Arab-Americans when Israeli actress Gal Gadot wore a Lebanese fashion designer’s dress at an awards ceremony.
Many of us reliant on American news services miss those stories. Shmilovitz aims for stories that would particularly interest Israelis, who constitute her readership.
A line she wrote back in 2012 after the Newtown massacre continues to resonate on social media: “America is not ready to talk about how it is easier to get a handgun than it is to see a doctor, not ready to speak about the video games that have extreme violence. It is just willing to sweep up everything under the carpet of tears.”
America’s gun culture continues to fascinate her.
“I think you guys are little too impressed with some part of the Second Amendment, not even the entire Second Amendment. At some point corruption took over. Now it’s all about the NRA,” she said.
“We don’t have mass shootings at all. For a country that is full of woes, we don’t have mass shootings. You don’t have somebody going into a school. We have a very, very serious universal background check. You cannot get a gun the way you can in America. No way! The people you see in the streets with guns, they all went through the army. They all have licenses. They all went through a very thorough background check.
“Here you have so many loopholes and gun shows. We don’t have gun shows in Israel!”
And yet … the country has won Shmilovitz over. Including New Haven, where, she said, she “like[s] the vibe.” As her native land has turned ever more rightward, she said, she is feeling that the U.S. is her home, a place she hopes to settle for years to come.
Click on the video to watch the full episode of WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” with journalist Tzipi Shmilovitz.
Gee, Is this how "Red States" must feel when they get a visit from journalists with The NY Times or New Yorker Magazine.