Water Park Diplomacy

Today, we started six days of travel around Israel. The first two nights are at Kibbutz Shefayim, where we are meeting good friends from home. The kibbutz, a wealthy kibbutz, is now known for its Water Park and relatively nice Kibbutz Hotel (it’s no Bel Air). As we entered the Water Park, this afternoon, I kept thinking of Golda Meir, whose autobiography I have just read. As a consequence, lately I tend to start every sentence with the words, “Having just read Golda Meir’s autobiography, I think Golda (I feel we’re on a first names basis) would feel. . .” this way about any issue we may be discussing. It’s admittedly fairly insufferable, but I can’t help myself. In any event, having just read Golda Meir’s biography, I could not help but wondering if the Water Park enterprise of Kibbutz Shefayim is the realization of Golda’s dreams for a socialist, agrarian collective. My first instinct is that she would find this a bastardization of all that is good with the Kibbutz system. However, on further thought, maybe she would be happy to see that in the midst of the chaos that is life in the Middle East, the Kibbutz has become a center for some plain old frivolous fun. Who knows?

The Water Park is the kind of place that I hate; it’s teeming with humanity, long lines, loud children and obnoxious adults. I have also never been big fan of fun. It’s too ephemeral. However, as I’m ushering my kids around the park, I noticed a couple of things. First, I was enjoying it. There’s something gleeful about sliding down water slides, being in wave tanks, shooting down slides in inner tubes, etc. It’s disarmingly fun. This brings me to my second point. In looking around at all of the annoying people, I noticed that there was a true diversity of people enjoying water park antics. Most interesting was that I saw a number of Muslim women fully covered, head to toe, prancing in the water next to their children. I also saw head-covered orthodox women doing the same. It seems that the joy of water park fun overcomes ancient hatreds and bigotry.

It got me thinking. Maybe had Yasser Arafat, Golda Meir, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hafez El Assad gone to a water park, the Middle East would now be a peaceful place. After a day of splishing and splashing in the water, would they really want to blow each other up? Somehow I doubt it. As I continued in this line of thinking, I started wondering what positions the various world leaders would have taken on the water slides. My guess is that Golda would have sat upright and stared straight ahead unruffled as the water flew by. Nasser would have dove head first on his stomach. Assad seems like a guy who would have leisurely slid down on his back. Arafat’s easy. He would have started down head first on his stomach, become nervous and then turned over and tried to climb back up the slide.

The only problem is that a number of the water slides is off limits to those below 10. As a consequence, Emma is considering starting an Intifada. I guess you just can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time.