My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

But the real cause of change, Nini says, is drugs. They’ve hit in a really big way over the last five or six years. And every year it gets more intense. Every time he comes back from Amsterdam he notices it. So now the feeling in Tel Aviv is that it’s okay. Everybody is doing drugs. The whole world is doing drugs. And they do fantastic things, these drugs. It’s time to say it. They make everyone happy. They liberate you. They open things up, especially Ecstasy. It’s the drug of the millennium, Ecstasy. It’s not a trip, it’s not LSD. It doesn’t remove you from reality but makes you feel better within reality. It started off as a drug for very angry people. It was a pill that softened them, made them gentler, more loving. And that’s what it did for Israelis. It made them less uptight, less tense. Look at the street, you can see it. Sometimes you get the feeling that they poured loads of Ecstasy into the National Water Carrier to make everyone happy and laid-back. Take the gays, Nini says. Only a few years ago being gay was really underground. When he walked down the street with his long hair in a ponytail, people would shout: You maniac, you fag. And the gay scene was hidden, in the dark, not more than one or two hundred people. But now there are thousands, tens of thousands. And they are not ashamed anymore. They’re not afraid. They don’t give a shit. “Did you see the Purim carnival in Rabin Square?” he asks. “Did you see the Love Parade? And the night Ehud Barak won the el...