This is a cross post by Marc Goldberg from The Times of Israel
The latest and final instalment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy left me breathless. The action, the excitement, the twists and turns of the plot were all so intense that I barely noticed the fact that the air conditioning in the cinema stopped working half way through the screening.
Almost 3 hours of watching Batman and his alter ego Bruce Wayne fight and win against both physical and psychological demons left me wondering whether it would be worth living in Gotham City just to see the man drive the Batmobile and fly the Bat thingamabob around in a constant quest to beat up but absolutely not kill the villains.
Mind you the fact that you need someone like Batman to protect you means that you must have some pretty dodgy enemies, the kind of enemies who have no qualms about blowing up a hospital or nuking you and that’s without even delving into the dozens or even hundreds of innocent people who get killed along the way. I mean it isn’t going to be much consolation to the dead and their families when Batman eventually saves the city now is it?
So no, given the choice between a Gotham City protected by Batman or say…Miami Florida protected by the city’s finest boys in blue I think I would have to go with the latter as a place to live. But then when I came to that conclusion I had to ask myself what on earth I was doing living here in Israel where we have the double shocker of both terrorist attacks and a Bibi rather than a Batman to watch over us.
I mean at least the Joker and Bane have some charisma, perhaps even some class. Hassan Nasrallah certainly can’t compare to those kings of corruption and villainy and don’t even get me started on evil mastermind lightweights like Ismail Haniyeh, he didn’t even have the balls to fight when Israel moved into his turf in 2006 preferring to hide out in a bunker! This is an unheard of tactic amongst the nasties of Gotham all of whom actually engaged Batman in combat close up…and lost, hmmm perhaps what the real villains lack in charisma they make up for in survival instinct.
Anyway…
Don’t worry, I’m not about to go off on one about all of the amazing things that Israel has to offer, plenty of my fellow bloggers have already done that.
What I will say is that living here in sunny, humid Israel I am part of the ongoing saga, part of the story that others can only talk about with wondrous emotion. Living in Israel puts me at the centre of the universe the place that everyone is watching from afar with bated breath, waiting to see what will happen next.
There is something…special about living in a place that is so hotly contested, just by being an Israeli I am making a statement, I am telling the real life Jokers of the world, the Nasrallah’s and their ilk, that they have no hold over me, that their scare tactics are all to no avail.
Here in Israel is where we all make our own personal stand against the evils of this world, where just like Bruce Wayne, we fight our enemies both real and psychological, where we put on a uniform, pick up a rifle and move towards the line drawn by our forefathers. The line in the sand drawn by those very same forefathers who screamed to the whole world “we’re right here come and get us if you dare!” And then overcame all of their previous hardships to bring us all back from the ashes of Europe.
We came and we settled and we built this thriving nation in the face of, in spite of and in direct response to the kind of terror suffered by the citizens of Gotham. Now, living here, I am a part of the story, an actor in a epic that has been going on for as long as civilisation itself and I will play my part in full.
And so here I am in my very own Gotham City, Batman is nowhere in sight, Bibi is working to full of effect and I have no intention of leaving anytime soon, regardless of which super villain shows up on the horizon
