Sakhim, They Don't Mind When Other People Suffer

A few months ago, a Hebrew blog emerged entitled: "Sakhim, they are everywhere". the term "sakhi" is Hebrew slang derived from Arabic. It was originally used among consumers of canabbis to imply "sober": either someone who doesn't smoke or one who does, but isn't effected. "Sakhim" is its plural form.

In recent months the term came to be used otherwise. It now represents the mainsteam, bourgeois Israeli, as compared to the offbeat urbanite. On the "sakhim" blog, the sakhi is described as "the typical, politically correct Israeli, bereft of self awareness."

The anonnymous authors add that: "Sakhism can be percieved by the sakhi as something cool or just. The sakhi is mistaken. while innovative forces always seek to advance and broaden the barriers of the possible, sakhism will forever draw backwards and inwards, to the mainstream, to the common, to the avarage. Sakhism is not dependant on social status or ethnic origin and it appears in the 2010 Israeli sphere in various forms."

The sakhim blog, mainly showing Israelis making fools of themselves in weddings and other social gatherings, gathered some interest, especially from Tel-Aviv newspaper "Ha'ir" which dedicated two front page stories to what it perceived as a new social divide in the city, that between sakhim and "hipsterim", who seek more experimental lifestyles.

The attempt to paint sakhim as the ultimate conformists and the hipsters as their opposites failed, mainly because hipsters tend to be equally conformist, albeit within their narrower communities, as well as miserable fashion victims.

"Ha'ir" hoped to depict a contemporary version of the split which existed in 1960's Israeli society among the "salonim" and the "tnua". At the time, the salonim, who took on a rockn'roll lifestlye represented western influence on Israeli society, while the tnua kids stuck to the values and dress codes of the Zionist youth movements. Today, foreign influences are everywhere. Both sakhim and hipsterim are westernized, not to say Americanized. They're really not all that different.

Having realized this, I stopped reading the Sakhim blog and went back to concentrate on other things, until today this blog carried the following photo gallery, taken from the Facebook page of a young soldier girl, which was and still is open to the public. The caption on top runs: "Sakhim, the army service is the happiest time of their lives."

This is indeed the girl's heading for her photos: "My military service: The happiest time of my life :)". in two of the photos she is seen mocking blindfolded Palestinians. Such photos are nothing new, we've seen blindfolded Palestinians fed Matzas before and made to play other games. It's that innocence, that Sakhi spirit in which the photos are presented, that draws my attention.

Are hipsterim less prone to be cruel towards helpless individuals when given the chance? Are they more prone to make a big deal out of someone doing so? I wouldn't bet on it.

There are rare people, like the ones who author the sakhim blog, who are appaled by the state of our society and put the time into crying rage, and even they do so in a sardonic manner that signals an acceptance of the dark reality rather than a desire to change it. In action, we're all sakhim in one way or another. We are all of us children of the occupation.

The City with no Mongolian Waitresses

Last week the government of my country decided to deport 400 children of work immigrants. These children were born here, speak Hebrew and know no other surroundings, but they belong to the wrong ethnicity. Minister of the interior Eli Yishai cited fears for the "Jewish character" of the nation if these 400 kids remained in the country. "It's time to let these families know that the field trip is over," said Yishai.

Today Yishai proposed paying 1000$ US to any family of work immigrants who would just pack up and leave the Jewish homeland (to which his parents arrived as North African Jewish immigrants in the 50s). 1000$ arent enough to buy a decent sofa these days. Yishai's attempt to buy people's lives at such a sum shows what he thinks these lives are worth. Foreskin-crowned Goyim are to him no more than filth that can be bought out.

Funny thing is, Yishai has a point. If we are to follow Zionist logic, then slanted-eyed and black-skinned children really should be deported and the rest of the lot encouraged to leave. Zionism states that this land belongs to the Jews, not to the Chinks. Niggers - out! there is no black in our blue and white flag (except insofar as Ethiopian Jews are concerned, and we treat them with appropriate prejudice). This is the land of the Jews and we deserve it because of the great racism to which we were subjected.

It baffles me how short-sighted Zionism is. It really did start off as a way to escape the pogroms, to dodge violent and dark racism. The early Zionists saw only the murderous Russians and themselves, it didn't occur to them that Filipinos existed in this world and that one day they'll figure into the equation. Hell, they didn't even notice the Arabs. Theirs was "a people without a land going to a land without a people".

Today it's concept of a Jewish state ends up making Tel-Aviv the only modern, westernized city in the world where foreigners are unwanted by law by virtue of their ethnicity rather than citizenship status. A friend of mine sojourning in Berlin writes about the beauty of a Mongolian waitress who served him at a restaurant. This land will be thankfully clean of Mongolian waitresses as soon as they bite the 1000$ bait.

It's time to admit it. Our short-sighted forefathers have created a monster, and we've nourished it and helped it grow. Ours is a country where police will be soon searching for children in attics due to their ethnicity. Today a public debate over the fate of these children is raging, tomorrow the public may internalize the full meaning of the "Jewish state".

Our only hope is to ditch the whole Jewish state concept and replace it with something else, perhaps an "Israeli State", where little Yuval, whose parents speak Tagalog can feel at home. We could also search for some other term, one that would even allow Little Ramzi from Jaffa to feel that his native land embraces him lovingly.

(Artwork: "Roots", an iron sculpture by my mother, Orna Ben-Ami. Photo: A. Hay)

La Zona

Its trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5SzXJe-NMk) makes it look like a mediocre thriller, but make no mistake. Rodrigo Pla's "La Zona", currently in Israeli Theatres, is one of the most merciless, disturbing and fascinating films you'll ever chance to watch. It tells the story of a juvenile delinquent trapped inside a posh gated community, following a burglery to which he was an accomplice and which ended at a shootout. The hunt for him, conducted independently by members of the community, exposes all the ills of society within and without the complex's concrete walls, from plain police corruption down to self-loving, pretend-activism (at one crucial point, a more moral members of the community urges a like-minded friend to act quickly and save the child. Rather than act, he sits her down for a bleeding heart conversation on the philosophical folly of life within walls. It's one of the most cynical scenes i've ever witnessed on a screen.)

La Zona attacked me just as my mind is full of thoughts about money and its social implications. Ehud Olmert's lavish and corrupt life style, bought (such are suspicions) by cheating American philantropists, is coming to light over the last few months, but the experience is also personal: This past week I traveled around the country as guide to a highly affluent Parisian family (at one point they discussed an email exchange with "Sarco"). we stayed at the delightful and firmly secured complex of the Scots hotel in Tiberias. Another gig - that of restaurant critic, took me to Moule- Yam, One of Israel's finest culinary establishments, where bottles of wine are sold for the price of an avarage Israeli's bimonthly salary. I had fun in both cases, and I'm no advocate of poverty, I realize that only great social gaps allow the culinary art of Moule Yam and the decadent gardens of the Scots Hotel to exist, but compramise and social justice are better still. As La Zona demonstrates, high walls of concrete and of fine seafood can easily obscure that from the eye.

Blood

It's been quite a day around here. Residents of the Gaza Strip blew up holes in the wall separating them from Egypt and scores of them rushed into the northern Sinai to buy food. Egypt let them in, Israel and the U.S. protested. Of course some of them will return with guns, but that doesn't change the basic fact: a million and a half human beings are starving, while we're keeping them under siege, waiting for them to die, and hurrying up the process by bombing them from the air.

2008, 1.5 million human beings corralled by a wall in an area smaller that that of Queens, with no support and no hope. Anyone who criticizes them for getting weapons, has to prove to me that he or she too is corralled by a wall, is starved and being shot at. I will not take criticism or condemnation towards the Gazans from anyone who is not in a similar situation, since empathy seldom come naturally.

Of course I don't empathize with violence or fundamentalism, but the way Israel treats the strip there makes it looks like we are being payed by the Hammas to empower it. There's too much suffering going on one hour down the coast from where I am and it turns into violence and fundamentalism. How should we solve this? should we cut off their electricity? already tried that. Should we deny them access to food and fuel in the middle of winter? hmmm. tried that. Should we kill them at a rate of 19 a day? been there, done that. So how come Gaza isn't flowering into a kind, moderate, pro Israeli and affluent community?

Could it be that we are just dumber than pickled carrot?

Now to another war-front. I went to a second doctor yesterday, since things aren't getting any better. He gave me another diagnosis (some mystery virus) and sent me to a lab in Bat-Yam, south of the city, to give a blood sample.

I got there this morning at 9:00. The nurse was extremely hostile because the lab is open precisely till 9:00. She didn't use the needle to hurt me, bless her heart, but later called and told me that she can't find the name of the doctor who sent me on the computer, so she's "getting rid of the blood".

"What?!" I started, "Don't get rid of the blood! I'm ill! I can hardly make it out of home, I don't want to go to Bat-Yam again at nine in the morning, or I mean before nine."

"Stop lying!" she blurted.

"When did I ever lie to you?"

"Your doctor is not on the computer, I need to go home, I've wasted an hour on this already."

Following continued pleas, she ended up agreeing to keep the blood sample at the Bat-Yam clinic, "If you get results, good. If you don't, you don't." She said and hung up(!)

Don't blame Israeli chutzpa, she's Russian. Don't blame lack of experience, she's unflatteringly middle aged. I called again to ask her her name, at which point she claimed she already threw away the blood. I then called the manager of the clinic to place a complaint.

At least I have someone to complain to when I'm met with a lack of empathy. Sure, the nurse deserved empathy too. She wanted to go home, maybe her kid is ill, maybe she has an appointment for getting her nails done. Maybe I should have spared her and not placed a complaint, like the Hammas should refrain from shooting at Sderot, but the fact is, when you get unnecessarily provoked, are left at the mercy of an unemphatic stranger and your blood gets pointlessly spilt, you look for a way to retaliate. That's the way of the world.

Big Cage, Small Cage

I was invited to a New Years' party in a town 35 kilometers from my home, but I can't attend. I'm not legally allowed to visit that town.

Since the beginning of the Intifada all large Palestinian towns have been out of bounds for Israelis by decree of the military. The party is in Tul Karem, just east of the Israeli city of Hadera. I called a friend who sometimes sneaks across the lines to visit Ramallah and asked him how easy it would be to go to Tul Karem "under the radar" of the soldiers at the checkpoints. He said Tul Karem was completely out of bounds and if I did get in, getting out would be highly difficult. If I'm caught by the Palestinian authorities while in Tul Karem, they are obliged to turn me over to the Israelis, who would then have to interrogate me about my contacts with the enemy.

Just to be clear. I don't have enemies in Tul Karem. The people there who are furious towards me don't know me, because I'm not allowed to go there and converse with them. The people on this side of the wall who are afraid of people in Tul Karem can't think this fear through. They are not allowed to visit and get to know their scary neighbors. What a brilliant way our leaders have found to perpetuate war.

The ban that forbids me from going to Tul Karem, to Ramallah, to Lebanon and to enormous chunks of Africa and Asia is minuscule compared with the travel bans imposed on the Palestinians by Israel. We are talking about millions of people who are not allowed to leave their towns without going through an often humiliating inspection, who must travel unpaved, winding roads, while Israelis zoom by on roads paved only for them, who are barred from visiting the holy city of Jerusalem, found mere miles away from their home, and the Mediterranean coastline that they can often see from their windows. These are people for whom international travel is virtually impossible. Their world is as narrow as their village and the nearby town - if they're lucky. In times of turmoil, Palestinians are often placed under curfew, sometimes for months on end. They are not allowed to leave their houses under threat of death.

The security considerations cited by Israel are not legitimate. Yes, there have been terror attacks in Hadera, Tul Karem's neighbor to the west, as well as in my city of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo. Yes, I also want security. I love life and I benefit from the fact that this year had seen less Israeli victims than any year since the 80s, but nothing justifies the bending of human rights. We want security? let's find a legitimate way to gain it. Such a way exists. The current policies only offer symptomatic, temporary relief while nurturing disdain and anger that would later stir more violence.

As someone who loves travel, the condition at which my neighbors are placed by my government is infuriates me. Israel has turned the West Bank into a terrain of concrete walls, barbed wire fences, intimidation and sadism. Gaza, in turn, became a besieged disaster zone where multitudes are allowed to rot and die, trapped away from the public eye. Tonight a "critical mass" bike ride will take place in Tel-Aviv to protest limitations on travel. I bought a bike so I could join in. It's a cheap bike, but let's paddle it forward. The freedom to move is a basic right of every human being. Something has to change in 2008.

What Would the Buddha Do?

Things in Myanmar are getting rougher. The police is currently shooting over the heads of the protesters. In 1988 they shot into the crowds and killed "thousands", you can always tell a murderous totalitarian state when "thousands" is the only figure available.

I'm going crazy in this room without any way to help the courageous Burmese people, and especially the Buddhist monks who are leading the protests. I'm a citizen of a nation that takes part in training the Myanmar army, the army that is killing them and enslaving them. I pay taxes that are used to fortify the junta in Myanmar, then again, so do the Burmese.

So many of us are exploited by violent factors without being aware of it and without doing much about it. Buddha is said to have taught: "Let us live in joy, in peace among people who wage war, among people who wage war, let us live in peace." (Dhamapadda, Chapter 15). This sounds like peacenik religion at its most passive, but in fact it is impossible to live in peace without being active, otherwise you end up becoming a tool of war.

The monks of Myanmar recognize this. This is why they are out on the streets, fighting tear gas. This is why they are in dungeons, experiencing torture. They know that sometimes Buddhism is exactly about breaking out of the lotus position and fighting for human rights and justice. I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear a call to action by my window.

Ok, I Want to Talk About Ireland

Ok, I want to talk about Ireland, specifically I want to talk about Armenia, and in particular I'd like to talk about Watertown, Massachusetts.

The best way to learn about the current drama going on around the issue of the Armenian genocide is to log on to Mimi Asnes's excellent blog "A Stranger in a Strange Land". Mimi is a native of Watertown as well as a professional peace activist, so she's been following the issue closely and intelligently.

While living in Boston I used to visit Watertown for Middle Eastern goods. That little suburb is home to large Lebanese and Greek populations, which translates into excellent delis with olives and knafe and what not. It is also Boston's Armenian quarter, which is a lovley thing, but inevitably a "memento mori". While walking down its streets I would often catch myself thinking about the historical wrong than nation has known, and I don't even mean the genocide, I mean the denial.

This week something happened. So far the Jewish Anti Defamation League's refused to call the murder of close to 1,500,000 Armenian's during WWI a "genocide". This caused its new educational initiative to be banned in Watertown. The bad publicity over the event forced The ADL to announce this week that there indeed was a genocide. Bravo, I'm proud of them, proud of Abe Foxman, proud even of Alan Dershowitz, who usually just makes me cringe, and this week came to the support of pro-acknowledgmentists in a Boston Globe op-ed .

But that's hardly the end of the story. Now Israel is being pressured by Turkey to reprimand the ADL. So far Israel, a nation itself traumatized by a genocide, has helped Turkey deny the Armenian Genocide, under threat that if it failed to do so, it would lose its only ally in the middle east. I love Turkey, Turkey is my beloved friend, but sometimes a friend needs an arm around the shoulder and a fearless advice. I advise the Turks to grow up, face history and start apologizing.

As long as they fail to do so, both Turks and Armenians will remain in flux, as well as certain Israelis, Bostonians and others who posses a sense of justice. Sinead O'connor has a song about the Irish potato famine of the 1840's, a disaster caused largely by British occupation policies and one that is still unacknowledged by Britian. She sings:

"I see the Irish As a race
Like a child That got itself bashed in the face,
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding."

Turkey, I want to be proud of you too. If the Germans can do it, you can do it. Israel, don't yield to the pressure. I will gladly give up the right to visit Istanbul's fair minarets, the beautiful nights by the Bosphorus with Efes Pilsen and music by Ibrahim, the support of a Muslim nation in the face of the Arab world, the good olives and knafe of Anatolia (better than Watertown's!), everything, only to see a small first step forward made towards processing and reconciling.

Meet Me in St. Louis

Refugees from Darfur who arrive in Israel have a couple of problems:

1. They are refugees

2. They are black

3. They are Muslim

For these three reasons they will not be received here, in a land populated by many former refugees and victims of racism, with open arms. In fact, this week we gleefully kicked a couple of them out to Egypt, "back where they came from". I hear that Egyptian soldiers beat several of them to a state of unconsciousness before the eyes of the deporting Israeli soldiers.

My view of the world while growing up was marked by the story of the ship "St. Louis". In 1939 that ship took close to a thousend Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba. By the time it arrived, Cuba's government changed its mind and allowed only 22 of the passengers on shore. The ship continued to sail around the world. Its passengers were denied entry to every country they approached, including the United States. This country was at the time under British rule which forbade Jewish immigration on the onset. The refugees were eventually taken back to Europe and put on the trains to the slaughterhouses.

I understand the governments of Cuba, the U.S. et al. Is it their fault that the Jews are hated in Europe? What, is Cuba a dump site for unwanted people? When the African refugees were to be settled in the Israeli town of Hadera, its mayor notified the press that "Hadera is not Israel's trashcan." Amen to that, I certainly hope none of these politically dangerous, money sucking members of an inferior race gets dumped on my lawn. I hear that they carry a revolting and highly infectious disease called P.T.S.D.