When I visited Israel for the first time in 1984, making a long distance phone call was not for the weak of spirit. With no direct lines out of Israel overseas (at least not for those of us living in private apartments; maybe offices had them but I was just a poor student back in those days), what we had to do was call a specific number where an Israeli operator would take your details, then call back in 10-15 minutes and place the call for you when a line was “free,” all the while charging an exorbitant fee.

At the time, there was something charming about the whole low-tech process. The operators were usually eager to practice their English and would often engage in a lengthy conversation before getting down to business.

“How’s the weather where you are?” “You still have family in the States?” “What do you think about this whole Lebanon mess?” (referring to the first conflict that started back in 1982).

The overall experience then seemed to confirm that Israel was nothing more than a third world backwater out of step with modern world, and that the 8,145 miles separating Jerusalem from California where my family lives were not only a physical but a figurative representation of Israel’s technological isolation.

How things have changed in the last 22 years.

The Israel of 2006 is every bit as computer savvy and communications-sophisticated as the rest of the Western world, and any distance from our little corner of the world to the U.S., Europe or the Far East is being rendered increasingly irrelevant.

I was thinking about this as we were having lunch with a friend who is here from the States for a year. Instead of taking a sabbatical year break, she’s been able to continue with her job at IBM as if she was there. Technology has evolved to such a point that her actual physical location means absolutely, positively nothing.

I’ve had a similar experience. In the last three years, I’ve kept a steady stream of consulting clients happy without ever meeting them in person.

It’s not just that the phone service has gotten better. In the last few years a number of key communications tools have come out that have made all the difference in bridging – no transforming – the geography gap.

So for anyone contemplating taking a year off or running an entire business from Israel – for that matter from anywhere overseas – here’s what I’ve found essential:

1. The Internet and Email. This almost goes without saying, I know, but I’ll repeat it here anyways. Before the Internet, living in Israel meant being cut off from the world. Newspapers in Israel – like most places – are primarily provincial and if you had a hankering to hear about more than the latest political machinations between Likud and Labor…well, you were out of luck. Now it’s all available in real time via a broadband connection that’s every bit as fast as one in Palo Alto or Fort Lauderdale.

Email is, similarly, a great leveler when it comes to two-way business and personal communications. I can’t even remember the last time I wrote a snail mail letter (much to my parents’ chagrin who would really prefer an old fashioned birthday card to the e-cards I routinely send out). Touch typing is the new penmanship.

2. Broadband Telephony. Companies like Vonage and Packet8 have broken the monopoly of the phone companies by redirecting phone communications via the Internet. While Vonage is positioned more as an alternative to the Verizons of North America, for us expatriates in exotic locations, it’s also a way of maintaining a U.S. presence anywhere we go (see this article on the Vonage website).

For example, I have a phone number with a Manhattan, New York area code. When someone calls me, they don’t need to know where I am. And I don’t bring it up. The phone rings in my office here and if I’m not available, it goes into voicemail and later shows up as a message in my email.

I conduct a lot of interviews with executives over the phone. Before I had Vonage, I would be forced to say something like “Hi, I’m calling from Israel. I know you probably won’t or can’t call me back, so please send me an email and let me know a good time and I’ll call you.” As you can imagine, it was nearly impossible to do business that way.

Sometimes I’ll be asked “you’re in New York right?” I’ll usually answer. “Yes, I’m on East Coast time.” Which is true. I’ll answer the phone up to midnight, 5:00 PM EST.

Although Vonage is my primary phone number, I’m a huge fan of Skype which I find provides the best call quality around for Internet telephony and, if you’re talking computer-to-computer, is absolutely free. I was once talking with my brother in San Francisco on Skype and I could hear everything as clear as if I was sitting in the room with him, including the sound of buses passing his street through the open window. Very cool.

Our latest trick: we have started using Skype to conduct video calls. So far, it’s only been between us in Israel and our parents in California who get a huge kick out of being able to see their grandchildren live if not in person. One time, though, I had set up a Skype call with a business client and I realized I had the camera set to turn on by default. I quickly hung up and disabled the video. I wasn’t wearing a shirt, you see! Maybe that's why the video phone has never quite caught on.

3. Internet Radio. I love music. I listen to it at home, on the road, and in particular (since that’s where I spend most of my day) at my desk while I’m working. During my first extended visit to Israel, I was dismayed that there was only one pop music station – Reshet Gimel which at that time played mostly Euro disco crap and the U.K. Top 40. DJ Yoav Kutner played more alternative fare on Galei Tzahal – but for all of a whopping one hour a day. In certain parts of the country I could pick up John Peel’s 15 minute Friday afternoon roundup on the BBC’s tinny AM signal that faded in and out tempting me with snippets of The Smiths and the latest from The Cure.

I remember at some point, it must have been somewhere during 1985, thinking, “Well music isn’t that important to me. There are other reasons for being in Israel.” But music was important to me then – and now. Fortunately, Israeli radio options have improved. But the big change has been radio via the Internet.

I regularly listen to terrestrial radio stations from around the world that stream their signal via the web (KEXP, WXPN, and Minnesota Public Radio's The Current are my latest faves), but what I really love are the Internet-only stations like the fabulous Radio Paradise, SomaFM and WOXY (the former broadcast station from Cincinnati turned Internet darling, first made famous by Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man who repeated the station’s catchphrase “97X Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll”).

And now with the advent of podcasting, I get delivered to my iTunes a daily download of new music that I synch up to my iPod and listen to during my exercise routine (check out Brian Ibbott’s Coverville, a brilliant show of just cover music).

4. Instant Messenging (IM). This is not just an online chatting tool for teenagers with too much time on their hands. I have worked with software developers around the world. In addition to the U.S. and Israel, I have had teams going in both Egypt and India. Now here’s the crazy thing: I have never spoken to any of the techies I work with by phone. It’s all via IM. Yes, sometimes it takes longer to write down what you want rather than saying it over the phone. But you also get a written record that you can review afterwards to make sure you got it right. Especially when you’re working with teams where English is not their mother tongue, this is not just an optional means of communication but a necessity.

In our house, we take it a bit too far, though. Since my home office is on the third floor and my kids are on the first, we regularly send each other IMs. It beats calling across the house “Abba, time for dinner!” Although there’s something rather odd about the idea that a message from one room to another is being routed through a central server somewhere in Seattle.

5. Peer-to-Peer File Sharing. OK, this may not be 100% essential for daily workday tasks, but it’s bridged another gap that has been particularly agonizing to a media-junkie like me. Regular readers know I like TV. The problem is, the TV we get in Israel just isn’t up to snuff. Especially the imported American shows that get here two years too late and aired at 1:00 AM when I invariably forget to set the Yes Max (Israel’s slow-witted answer to TiVo ). So the possibility of being able to get my favorite shows from abroad at the time they air there via peer-to-peer network sharing (such as Kazaa, LimeWire and BitTorrent) has radically altered my tube viewing habits. Remember my article on Battlestar Galactica a few weeks ago – the new season isn’t airing yet in Israel, but the U.S. is already up to episode four.

Now I can already hear you say: but that’s illegal. And I’ll admit when I first discovered the world of P2P, I dabbled in the dark side. But then my moral brain took over and I stopped BitTorrenting movies and music that I knew I could have, all right…should have, paid for. Now all that’s changing. Many of the major U.S. TV networks are streaming their top programs online for free. iTunes allows you to choose from a wide variety of episodes for $1.99 an episode. Google and Amazon are all getting into the game. There’s no reason to feel deprived any longer.

So there you have it. Five tech tools that have helped close the geography gap. Thinking of moving you or your business to Israel? Taking a sabbatical year without missing a beat? Now you have no excuse.

See you here...and online!

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Got something you’d like to add? A tech trick or tool I missed that you think ought to be on the list. Drop me a line at brian@ThisNormalLife.com, or leave a comment here on the blog.

I’m still not sure how the fight broke out. Eight-year-old Aviv and I were out in the courtyard in front of our apartment on Shabbat afternoon, throwing a ball around, when this man who I don’t know started yelling at our neighbor Yossi, something about an altercation between their kids.

Yossi tried to calm his enraged combatant down but to no avail. The volume rose as did the tension in the courtyard as neighbors began to stream out of their houses to see what all the commotion was about. Yossi and the man alternated between Hebrew and English, with the man I didn’t know – an Israeli – mostly speaking in broken English, and Yossi – a recent immigrant – speaking mostly in accented Hebrew.

Finally, as the argument reached his most feverish pitch, the Israeli yelled at the top of his lungs - in English - “Go back to Brooklyn!” He then ascended his stairs in a huff and slammed the door.

Yossi returned to the assembled crowd, looking both flustered and furious. “No one here is even from Brooklyn,” he muttered, but that wasn’t the point. The invective uttered is one of the most hurtful anyone who has made the move to Israel can hear. It’s even tougher at this time of year, during hol ha moed Sukkot, when the country is crowded with tourists from all over the world, many of whom could be potential new immigrants. It’s saying: “This is our home, you don’t belong, and we don’t want you here.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard such an attitude. Usually it’s couched more in disbelief than fury. “Why would you move to Israel?” the sabra will ask, the subtext being “we’re all trying to get out of here and emigrate to America, why would someone willingly choose to come here?”

With other immigrants, such as those from the former Soviet Union or Ethiopia, it’s still possible to suspend that disbelief – Israel can be seen as a step up the socio-economic ladder in those cases – but even still, there’s no more sense of welcome.

Why all the vitrol? Do those veteran Israelis who think like this fear that we’ve come to take jobs away from them? Do they believe we’re somehow getting a better deal – special privileges and I’m not sure what else – that turns them into freiers, the Hebrew for suckers, and about the worst thing that could happen to an Israeli.

I’d like to tell our Israeli accusers that being an immigrant is no cakewalk. Yes, immigrants who arrive these days on Nefesh b’Nefesh flights get a nice wad of cash when they hop off the plane. But we ultimately have to endure far more hardships than any government-sponsored benefits we receive might offset.

For many of us, our Hebrew sucks, putting us at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to just about any form of communication, both oral and written. Read the fine print of a service contract? Hurry up and give me a pen so I can sign my life away. Chat with your child’s homeroom teacher? Forget about it. We nod our head as the teacher tells us our kids are failing six subjects, have terrible head lice and are about to be expelled for dressing inappropriately. No problem. Just let this meeting be over soon, please.

Immigrants don’t go through the same army training as those raised here which, while that may not sound like a bad thing, takes us out of the great social melting pot that the armed services provides. We don’t know the system, so it’s easy to take advantage of us. We are doomed to be perennial outsiders. Our children snigger behind our backs at our essential immigrant-ness and our clumsy, mildly quaint accents.

And as far as jobs go, we give up a whole lot more than we gain. We pay higher taxes and earn lower salaries than we did before we came. For many of us, we could have achieved much greater success had we stayed back in Brooklyn or Berkeley or Boston. Coming to Israel severely limits our opportunities – we may eventually rise to be bigger fish in a more compact pot, but there’s no getting around the fact that, at the end of the day, the pot is smaller.

Why do we do it? The usual reasons. For our kids. For idealism. For religious conviction. For everything I’ve written about over the past four years in This Normal Life. We give up what’s comfortable to throw our lot in with a bunch of third world whiners, in a country missing much of the raw natural beauty we grew up with (especially for those of us who hail from picturesque geographies like California), and what do we receive in return?

“Go back to Brooklyn.”

And oh, by the way, where are you from, I’d like to ask our accusers. Were you born here? Were your parents? Israel, like the U.S. is a nation of immigrants; Israel even more so, given that daily actively-promoted immigration is not just a memory but part and parcel of our contemporary reality. You’d think that such a country would be even more welcoming to more of its own.

Maybe my expectations are too high. The U.S. has not always embraced newcomers and immigration issues still loom high on the national agenda. Why should Israel, which emulates America in so many ways, be any different?

“Go back to Brooklyn” is even worse than it sounds, though. It’s a code term for “coercive religious fanatic.” That’s who comes from Brooklyn, in the mind of those Israelis with a religious chip on their shoulders. Brooklyn is the homeland of all those crazy Americans who’s aim it is to turn all of Israel into one big yeshiva…or one big settlement depending on where you stand in the political divide.

“Go back to New York” or “Go back to Chicago” would mean something entirely different. But Brooklyn…that’s for the black hat kooks. Is this what Israelis are really afraid of? That North American immigrants will import some “foreign” religious values they essentially disagree with?

When I heard this epithet being hurled in my own courtyard, I thought for a moment, “OK, you don’t want us here, fine, we’ll go, you win. I can take a hint.” But that would be disastrous – not only for us but for Israel as a whole.

What would Israel be without its immigrants? Half the size for starters. The Russian aliyah alone contributed a million citizens in the last decade or so. Then there’s all the immigrants from Iraq and Iran and Morocco and Yemen.

Israel without its immigrants would also be considerably more provincial and backward than it at times already is. Immigrants bring different perspectives, not to mention invaluable expertise in everything from medicine to music (pop stars Rami Kleinstein, Noa and Danny Sanderson all grew up in the U.S.) Would Israel have even the modicum of the recycling and environmental sensitivity that exists today without a push from the immigrant community? I think not.

Immigrants have been leaders in business and hi-tech, bringing innovation to every corner of the country. Immigrants have also made it to the top of politics. It’s been awhile since we had any prominent Anglo leaders, but let’s not forget that Golda Meir was from the U.S., Chaim Weitzman grew up in England, and although officially an Israeli, Bibi Netanyahu was strongly influenced by his U.S. education. These days, Miri Eisen, Israel’s top government spokesperson, hails from overseas.

Not every English-speaking immigrant is a boon to the country of course: Meir Kahana and Baruch Goldstein were certainly rotten eggs. But that’s no reason to take your wrath out at an entire community.

My friend Mick says I’m taking the wrong approach entirely. Rather than positing a defensive posture about my fellow immigrants, I should just call the guy in the courtyard what he is – a bully – and recognize that his antagonism is not the norm. Most Israelis are above that.

And deep down, I know that’s true; I know that we’re wanted here and that, at least some of the time, the Israel I’ve come to love embraces all of its far-flung populations.

Even those of us from “Brooklyn.”

I have long been a big fan of science fiction literature. My favorite first authors were Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Ira Levin, and Isaac Asimov, and despite the fact my reading routine has expanded somewhat in the intervening years, my interest in alien societies and their interaction with human beings has not waned.

On TV and the big screen, I’m just as much a sci-fi fan. From Star Trek to Star Wars, The X-Files, Planet of the Apes, three Matrix movies, several versions of Dune, plus all of the Terminators (and a few too many of now Governor Schwarzenegger’s less notable action flicks), I’ve seen more than my share.

But I wasn’t prepared for what I think is clearly the most compelling sci-fi series made yet: Battlestar Galactica.

Because Battlestar Galactica is not just about pointy-headed humanoids who somehow speak English fluently while wreaking havoc on the space-time continuum (no offense intended, Gene). Rather, BSG is about the world we live in today, and how bad it could get if fundamentalist terror is not stopped.

Battlestar Galactica, you see, is a not so loosely drawn metaphor for a universe torn apart by jihad. The show returns for its third season on the Sci Fi Channel Friday night, October 6.

Keep in mind that the Battlestar Galactica I’m talking about is not the cheesy series of the late 1970s that featured cute kids and a robot dog named Muffit.

The new Battlestar Galactica was launched as a mini-series by the Sci Fi Channel in 2003 featuring high-end production and superb acting, writing and direction. It quickly rose to become the top rated program on the network. Episodes are also available online for $1.99 each on iTunes.
 
Battlestar Galactica’s protagonists are human, but they’re not from Earth, rather the “12 Colonies of Kobol” that seem to share with us a common Homeric legacy (the planets have Greek-sounding names like Gemenon and Virgon).

In this parallel universe, human beings have created a race of artificially intelligent robots known as Cylons to serve man. In standard sci-fi style, the robots rebel and war breaks out. An armistice is drawn and the two sides separate for 40 years until a surprise nuclear attack by the Cylons kills billions, leaving less than 50,000 humans alive in the galaxy.

The humans who survived the genocide were those who had been “off planet” during the attack, most onboard what the show describes as a “ragtag fleet” of spacecraft defended by a single aging warship – the Battlestar Galactica.

Over the course of the next 33 episodes, there are battles between humans and Cylons, inter-species intrigue, and plenty of mythology and back-story to keep even the most die-hard sci fi fans fully engaged.

But Battlestar Galactica – which has been described by critics as “the best show on TV today” – is not really about space at all. It’s more a drama that happens to be set in space. The show is about human relationships and what happens to survivors after a holocaust of such immense proportions.

Now, here’s where the parallels with our own universe become sinister. The Cylons – the genocidal bad guys – are monotheistic believers in what they call the “one true God” while the humans are a bunch of polytheistic pagans who pray to little idols they keep in their storage lockers.

The Cylons believe God speaks directly to them and their actions – however morally and ethically reprehensible – are according to a carefully laid out (and slowly revealed) “Big Plan.” The Cylons have somehow internalized a belief that they are the new inheritors of the mantle of Moses (or Zeus in this case) with humans as the infidels who must be eliminated at all cost.

Sound at all familiar?

The Cylons have also developed – in their 40-year absence – 12 “new models” which are indistinguishable from humans. They have become so intermingled with “regular” people that it’s no surprise when one of them becomes the sci-fi world’s first post 9/11-suicide bomber.

In one particularly politically challenging episode, a group of survivors decides that it’s human beings who are really at fault, that the reason Cylons hate their creators and have murdered most of humanity is that humans simply treated the Cylons poorly. All humanity has to do, this groups argues, is admit its wrongdoing, appease the Cylons and they will willingly lay down their arms and stop trying to kill the survivors. The military responds that giving in to terror is not an option, but it is another suicide bombing (this one by the humans themselves) that ultimately derails the debate.

Such parallels for our own Middle East reality – and the global war on terror in general – are what make Battlestar Galactica at once riveting and deeply disturbing.

Despite the BSG’s overall depiction of good guys vs. bad robots, the show consistently confounds the ability for viewers to easily take sides. The Cylons are for the most part beautiful and sexy. They are wirelessly networked to each other in ways to which our own bio-silicon designs can only breathlessly aspire. And when a Cylon dies, a unique system of guaranteed digital reincarnation makes the human concept of heaven seem a much dicier proposition.

The humans, on the other hand, engage in petty squabbles, descend to fisticuffs on regular occasions, swear, sleep around, drink and use drugs. There is inter-human gang warfare and a brutal black market replete with corruption that extends to the highest echelons of the political leadership. When a captured Cylon tells the human commander of the Battlestar Galactica something along the lines of “maybe you don’t deserve to continue on as a race, maybe we are the new chosen ones” the words do not ring as patently ridiculous.

Battlestar’s second season ends on a compelling cliffhanger (spoiler alert: if you’re still catching up in preparation for season three’s launch this week, skip the next paragraph). Over the course of the show, we learn that, despite their strong monotheism, the Cylons are no more uniform in their beliefs than humans. Two influential Cylons convince their fellow evil-doers to declare a truce – what would be called in the Middle East a hudna of sorts.

The Cylons can’t exactly “convert” the humans (after all, even though they bleed, the Cylons still are robots). But there will be no more killing…as long as humans agree to live as second-class citizens, lacking equal rights, under the benign, “loving” occupation of their robot masters. It’s a twisted space age dhimmi. How this plot line will be resolved is the focus of the first several episodes of season three.

The show – while clearly fictional and intended for entertainment – asks tough questions that are particularly relevant and “in your face” to someone such as myself, living here in the gritty reality of the Middle East.

What if terrorists, or states that sponsor terror, get their hands on weapons of mass destruction?

What if the “normal” assumptions about the power of détente to constrain both sides don’t apply? We’ve already received a taste of that in the past summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah. What if that had been a nuclear conflict?

What if our standard, soothing Western logic about the sanctity of life is irrelevant to our enemies, such that they would be willing to launch a nuclear attack to annihilate anyone with whom they disagreed because they believed it was part of God’s plan? Is surrender or cooperation ever possible with such a jihadi mentality?

When you live in a tiny country that is the subject of daily threats of total annihilation from a near-nuclear neighbor, and have lived through a punishing barrage of more than 4,000 missiles in 32 days, the questions posed by Battlestar Galactica can sometimes feel too close for comfort.

Battlestar Galactica is a dark depressing show. It is not surprising the new envisioning of the show caught on after 9/11. Could it happen in real life? Is there anything we can do to prevent it? These are the kind of decisions that need to be made…in the halls of diplomacy and/or on the battlefield.

I would posit that, as unseemly as it sounds, perhaps watching Battlestar Galactica ought to be required viewing for the leaders of the free world in our own decidedly non-alternative universe.