One thing I play with in my upcoming book, beyond the pure governmental stuff, is the culture shock of living in Israel and working for the Israeli government.  (Eg., being offered leftover salami from Ariel Sharon’s lunch, being verbally assaulted at every turn, etc.)

My friends at Zabaj, a blog run by a group of Anglos living in Israel, regularly do a similar thing, finding levity in the way things are a bit…different… in Israel.

Usually they’re just funny, but occasionally they’re somewhat more cutting – and probably more honest.  They recently had a post about strikes at Israeli universities (In Israel, apparently just to be difficult, the students sometimes go on strike), the specifics of which probably don’t much interest readers of The Contrary Son, but which included this sentence:

Well, I’m going to argue that this all goes back to the same thesis that seems to underlie any theory I’ve had on Israeli social behavior: short term thinking and an overwhelming sense of entitlement without responsibility are to blame for this.

Hey, I didn’t say it!  My friends still living in Israel did, so you can spare me your angry emails.  But with the Annapolis summit approaching, and senior members of the Israeli government demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state before even sitting down at the table for negotiations, while Israel still hasn’t lived up to its own obligations under the Road Map, maybe Zabaj is onto something deeper than their usual goofiness.