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Israel at 50: Beloved Country

Tourism and public image

The country's problems and debates have muted the upcoming celebration of Israel's 50th anniversary of statehood.

Tourism is one of Israel's biggest industries, a $3.3 billion-a-year business. Last year, a record 2.3 million tourists visited, 450,000 of them Americans.

But the Iraqi crisis in January and February caused a lot of Americans to cancel plans -- or not make them -- to come to Israel for the celebration. Tourism officials are hoping traffic picks up later in the year.

The plans were rocky from the start, mostly because of internal squabbles -- lawmakers questioned whether a 50th anniversary was worth the effort, then slashed the $70 million jubilee budget in half. The tourism minister resigned. Arabs and Jews of Middle Eastern descent complained that the plans for fun runs and military parades reflected a European bias.

But the art shows, music festivals, state ceremonies and military shows will go on. If Israel is concerned about security, it doesn't show. A tourism official was quoted recently as saying there are enough gas masks and bomb shelters to go around for the tourists, too.

If tourists don't come for the 50th anniversary, the Israelis have another celebration coming up, the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ in 2000.

Israel is expecting 4 million visitors for the Christian millennium, but tourism officials admit that will depend on world events -- and what the rest of the world sees on the evening news.

Even Israelis on the street say image matters, and theirs needs polishing. Like many Americans, they tend to blame the media for the message.

"CNN caused the drop in tourism," Jacob Winternitz said. "This is a country that could absorb millions of tourists, but every time we have a problem, they don't come. It's influenced the economy."

Winternitz and others often say that Israel's security issues and its assertive military are overemphasized by outsiders. Perhaps.

But it also is true that Israelis have become accustomed to combat along their borders, to the rifle fire and explosions of terrorist attacks and counterattacks in their cities, to the military checkpoints and the soldiers in their streets and plazas. They take for granted, and even overlook, things that visitors might expect to see only in a country at war.


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