Israel: Where every era remains open in another Internet Explorer browser tab

So last week, Shlomit from the insurance company told me I needed to fax my hospital documents in order to get reimbursed for my latest emergency room extravaganza.

“Fax?” I asked.
“Fax,” she confirmed.
“I can’t send a fax from where I live.”

There was a pause.

“Where do you live?”
“2026, Shlomit. I live in 2026.”
Another pause.

Apparently she thought I was being difficult.

And this is Israel, after all, where technology exists in a state of quantum uncertainty. We have missile defense systems that intercept rockets in midair. We have artificial intelligence that can summarize entire books, diagnose diseases, and probably compose a decent prayer for Jerusalem if you ask politely.

I can order groceries while sitting in a bomb shelter.

I can pay for a babysitter using an app.

But if I want reimbursement from my insurance company, I apparently need to build a Time Machine and locate a fax machine.

A fax machine.
Not a scanner.
Not an email address.

A fax machine.

(And don’t get me started on the post office.)

It’s literally bonkers: Somewhere in Israel, a piece of office technology that peaked around the same time as shoulder pads and cassette tapes is still standing between me and my medical coverage.

And that’s when I made a disturbing discovery.

My time machine appears to be working.

Because while I was trying to send paperwork through a technology that belongs in the Reagan administration, I opened the news and learned that Israel had taken Beaufort again.

Beaufort, Crusader fortress in southern Lebanon. The fortress that became one of the most famous Israeli outposts during the Lebanon years.

The fortress where Israeli soldiers stood watch through endless nights in the security zone.

The fortress we left behind in 2000 when Israel withdrew from Lebanon after eighteen years.

And now here we are again.

I stared at the headline.
Then I stared at the fax machine.
Then back at the headline.
Then back at the fax machine.

And suddenly everything made sense.

Israel has not entered the future.
Israel has become a temporal vortex.

It tracks:
The Crusaders fought over Beaufort.
The Mamluks captured it.
The Ottomans ruled the region.
The PLO occupied it.
Israeli soldiers stormed it in 1982 during the First Lebanon War.

A generation of Israeli mothers and fathers spent the 1990s wondering why their sons were still guarding distant hilltops in Lebanon.
Then came the withdrawal in 2000.

For many Israelis, Beaufort became a symbol of an entire era finally ending.

An era of convoys and outposts and casualties announced on the evening news.

An era that many assumed had passed into history until October 7.

And now, in 2026, the fortress is back in the headlines.

Which is how I realized that Israel doesn’t actually experience time the way other countries do.

Other countries move from Point A to Point B.
Israel moves from King David to the Crusades to the Ottoman Empire to 1982 to artificial intelligence before your second espresso.

You can walk through Jerusalem and pass Roman stones, Byzantine ruins, Crusader churches, Mamluk arches, Ottoman fountains, British Mandate post boxes (that probably functioned better than our current postal system,) and people arguing on smartphones about events unfolding in places mentioned in the Book of Joshua.

Everything is happening simultaneously all at once.

The Bible is not over.

The Crusades are not over.

The twentieth century is not over.

And apparently neither is the farkakte fax machine.

Somewhere, an insurance clerk is waiting patiently beside a machine that screeches like a maligned seagull whenever it receives a document.

Somewhere else, soldiers are once again looking out from a fortress that has been fought over for nearly a thousand years.

And here I am, standing between them.

A citizen of the future trying to transmit hospital records through the past while reading headlines from a conflict that refuses to stay put in the annals of history.

The machine whirred. The pages disappeared.
A sequence of electronic shrieks echoed through the room.

I imagined my medical records traveling through space and time before emerging in some fluorescent-lit office where a clerk would stamp them with satisfying bureaucratic finality.

Civilization trying to stay civilized.
Transaction complete.

Perhaps this is simply who we are. Not Start-Up Nation. Not even the Holy Land. We are the country where every century remains open in another browser tab, on Internet Explorer apparently. Where medieval fortresses return to the headlines. Where ancient prophets share real estate with artificial intelligence. Where corrupt leaders are always clinging to their thrones. Where terrible wars never end. Where the future arrives carrying admin requirements of 1993.

And where, despite everything, the insurance company would still like you to fax that over as soon as possible.