Silence is Scary

There's a situation here that is nearly too complicated to explain. It is also too explosive to outline. First the state publishes a gag order forbidding anyone from writing about the case. The press keeps mumm, but the blogosphere is exploding with information. 

Then an actual figure involved in the story, a young journalist under secret house arrest, turns to bloggers and asks them to delete their posts. She is involved with a very serious legal issue and would prefer the flow of information to be minimized or at least controlled. 

The blog posts are deleted one after the other, her Wikipedia page disappears. Those in the know get freaked out. The double mechanism of direct state censorship and censorship powered by intimidation managed to erase the information.

Then it starts leaking out in other ways. The foreign press, not subject to Israeli law, is publishing it freely. Jealous Israeli newspapers find subversive ways to hint at the existence of the story. Legal experts express outrage. One radio personality spills the information out while on the air. He is likely to be tried for contempt of court very soon. 

We will all remain shaken for a while. Normally, it's the issue in question that should shake us the most: a revelation that the IDF has been assassinating Palestinian militants in disregard to supreme court orders. In action, it's this new experience with silence that scares us.

Usually it's the army that maintains gag orders, this time it's the court. Transferring authority from military and police establishments, which are subject to scrutiny, to civil establishments which are more immune, is one technique used by our current proto-fascist regime to grant itself flexibility. One example is the annihilation of the old immigration police, subject to the Department of Domestic Security, and the creation of the virtually omnipotent Oz unit, subject to the Ministry of the Interior. 

So it's a different hand than usual that's shutting our mouths, and it does so for a long time (over three months now) and very effectively. That should be enough to spook us out a bit. What provokes actual horror is the combination of that notion with what we already know about those in charge: their disregard for our democracy (non-violent protesters are arrested, sometimes after returning from the demonstrations), their disregard for the legal system (as in the case in question) their perfect willingness to turn Israel into a highly controlled state, isolated from the rest of the world (You can talk all you want, Mr. Obama, we're not listening), their racist, militaristic views, which leave no room for opposition. Their perfect arrogance.

Netanyahu is known for mocking his opponents as cowards. "They are afraid! They are afraid!" is a typical cheer at his election rallies. Afraid is how he wants us, and That's a good point to consider. Let's stop being afraid, and let's make sure we use this affair as a means of criticizing, discrediting and weakening the criminal, anti-democratic rule to which we're subject.

You've Seen One City, You've Seen Them All

O my hometown, I love you and I failed you. I betrayed you by leaving home for the day without my camera. There was still time to turn back when I hit Yeffet street. There, breaking my stride, was the Greek-Orthodox boy and girl scouts' easter march, complete with a bagpipe band. I chose to use my cellphone cam.


Then, when I met Daiva for a Sudanese lunch at the refugee quarter, it was already too late. No way to properly depict the impromptu decor of the restaurant's terrace. No way to capture the tangy aroma of the lamb and injera. The photo of the roll of toilet paper served to us as a napkin failed completely.


We then went to Daiva's place to break bread with salt for the holiday. She decorated eggs and we cracked them against each other in her own Lithuanian tradition. (notice the matza peeking from behind. That matza was blessed in a church.)

Armed with more decorated eggs, we walked to Jaffa and cracked a few with Itka, drank Lithuanian honey snapps in a little alleyway, scaled the fences of the old port's shipyards and met the mediterranean waters on both sides of the great jetty. O my city, How could I do this to you, snapping you with the cellphone cam as if you were a mere yishuv kehilati?

As the sun set, we went looking for a mimouna party. That evening marked the beginning of festivities for Morrocan Jews. They mark the birth of great scholar Mimonedes with a table full of sweets and dances in colorful garb. As you can see, we found a proper one. Seen dancing are Daiva, Kochavit and Itka, perfect partners with whom to expore Tel-Aviv-Yaffo-Glasgow-Khartoum-Vilnius-Casablanca on yet another typical day. O my city, it's anyway so impossible to frame you and shrink you into a snapshot, I might as well no worry and focus on the sweets.

The Swing

Passing the Charles Clore playground after sunset, I witness a miracle. Scores of hardcore Hassidic families are enjoying the fancy swings and slides, sharing them with Muslim families from Jaffa. Fathers in black "kaften" coats and mothers in green hijabs stand around the same sandboxes, observing their kids with the same care. The kids themselves run around with the same joy, unaware of the big lie: that which states that they are not the same, that which is law in this land.

I walk among all of them, snapping shots with my cellphone, when a woman approaches me. By her long skirt and fair hair she seems to be a moderately religious Jew. "Who do you work for?" she asks me in English.

"Nobody, I'm documenting this for my own pleasure."

"Too bad, I was hoping you're a journalist."

"I am," I smiled, "but off duty at the moment. Are you a native english speaker?"

"Long story, born in Switzerland, raised in Canada. I was actually thinking of calling the press. This whole family of Arabs took over the big swing over there. They wouldn't let our kids on. I'm so sorry you were not here to see that. I don't understand how come such people are allowed to set foot here."

"'Such people', as in Arabs?"

"Yes."

"But even if they were pushy or mean, it doesn't neccesarily have to do with them being Arabs. People can be rude no matter their language or religion. Families can be difficult to handle." I catch myself trying to educate her and decide to cut it short. "I think what's happening here is gorgeous. It's worth the wait for the swing."

She looks at me with such disdain that I just quit the scene. You know what, she's right. She's got to be right. After all, the majority in this country agrees with her, according to a study conducted in 2007 by the association for civil rights in Israel, 75% of Israelis would prefer not to have an Arab neighbor. A study conducted last year by Tel-Aviv university reveals that 50% of teenagers believe Arabs should not be given full rights in Israel.

The irritated lady, whose kids had to wait for a swing, reflects the majority opinion in Israel, and in a democracy, the majority rules. Here is does more so than elsewhere. People would be racist. It's the role of constitutions and state institutions to keep such tendencies at bay. We have no constitution and our govenment prefers to fan the flames. With openly racist Lieberman and secretly racist Netanyahu running the country, this is the hayday of anti-Arab legislation and court action, from decrees allowing rural communities to ban Arabs from buying houses, to a ban on marriages between Palestinian citizens of Israel and West Bank residents.

We are in control of the big holy-land swing right now. Like a kid with his head in the clouds, we live in the illusion that this will never end, that we'll just keep swinging forever, but our violent attempts to kick the other kid off may cause everybody to fall to the sand. This will end with more than a bruised knee.

(artwork by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Yinka Shonibare)

Bake Your Own!

I stopped keeping kosher on passover after baking my first matza. My ex-wife was a non-Jew who came from a religious home and loved the ceremony and symbolism of religious holidays. She came up with the idea: let's bake them ourselves.

The experience of baking matzot was so educational and so meaningful, that it made the restriction on consuming baked goods seem entirely meaningless. a matza must be prepared in no more than 18 minutes, from the moment water touches the flour, to the moment it's out of the oven. Preparing the matza in haste created a vivid simulation of the runaway experience. We actually felt as though we had only that night to excape from Egypt.

Passover is about keeping the story of the exodus in the culture and bequething it to the younger generation. Baking matzot does just that, eating matzot doesn't. I live in a country in which beer is banned from the taps for seven days. We can't buy breakfast cereal this week if our lives depended on it. Even soda bottles must carry a "kosher for passover" emblem on them in order to be sold (soda water included). What does breakfast cereal have to do with our mutual heritage? nothing. How does any of this bread-crumb paranoia educate us? It doesn't. In fact, it causes many to feel disdain towards the holiday. It's sacriligious.

Placing a culinary taboo can be effective in distinguishing a portion of the year as sacred and instilling a sense of uniqueness in people. However, in this case, it shifts the focus from the essence of the holiday to sheer nonesense, which is something Judaism's always been good at, as our various shabbat obssesions nicely reveal. The OCD behaviour common among the haredim at this time of year (they don't drink with the meals, lest a drop of water touched the matza and rendered it "chametz"), is further proof of that.

I call for a return to our roots. Lets seek reason, rather than act automatically on rules that have degenerated over millenia into idiocy. Let's eat lovely whole-wheat bread, pizza and hamburgers in a bun throughout passover, and lets bake matzot. I know it's hard to believe, but they come out tasty too.

P.S. Within minutes of publishing this post, top notch poet and editor Eli Hirsh added his two cents. He tells that in many Israeli communities in which chametz is difficult to obtain, passover has become the holiday of baking homemade bread. If anynoe needed proof that the restrictions beat the purpose - you've got it. Hirsh suggests mixing both baking experiences. I certainly have enough of an apetite to deal with that.

Lost in the Hills

The nearby, forested hill, is Israel. The faraway, barren one, is the West Bank.

The Jewish National Fund has for decades been busy foresting large areas of Israel, mostly west of Jerusalem but also in the north and the Neguev. This is really an act of reforestation - much of the territory was covered with woods of oak and pistacia, nearlly all of which were chopped for firewood over history. The JNF chose to plant pine. It grows quickly and gives the landscape a pristine look reminicient of eastern Slovakia, land of our ancestors and where we'd probably feel more comfortable.

So, in Israel even a forest is political. However, as my Palestinian friend Philip pointed out to me years ago, when I ranted to him about our woods, even a political forest is nice. Here, two kilometers from the Green Line, we can enjoy locally made cheese and yogurt

as well as meet those who make it.

At this time of year, the hillsides are exploding with wildflowers. We walk among them, not knowing their names. This is our native country, but we are not strongly enough connected to its soil. Our "cousins" from across the fence will know what they are called. In Israel, even looking at a flower is political.

All we wanted was to have a peaceful day in the countryside, to greet springtime and enjoy the last drop of moisture on the ground before the punishing summer arrives, but everything evokes thoughts. The JNF is a discriminatory organization, preventing Arabs from acquiring land. It is now expending its reforesting activities to the West Bank, closely coordinating its activity with the state, so that it fits in with the occupation agenda. A ten minute drive from where we had our cheese is Bil'in, where the fence keeps an entire village away from its lands. The Israeli supreme court ruled that the fence must be moved, and the state simply ignores the verdict, and shoots at those protesting in favor of the court. The instant Slovakian forests, which conveniantly cover up the ruins of villages destroyed in 1948, are oxidizing the soil and preventing the growth of more wildflowers... There's no end to it. How simple everywhere else seems! How difficult it is to clear the mind and simply be, for one moment only, just so as to remain sane.

Walking in these woods is no walk in the woods, but the flowers do comfort. They deserve a word of thanks.

Kadima!

When a bunch of Tel-Avivians, among them four journalists, one real estate agent, a cult folk musician, a single mother and a former Eurovision star, gather in an apartment in the city's Yemenite quarter, it can only mean one thing: that they are about to stage a play in Israel's largest sewege treatment plant.

"Kadima!" by Roy Chicky Arad (the guy in blue) was already staged twice in more concievable surroundings: Tzavta theatre and the Barzilai club. This Saturday night it participates in the first art event to take place among Tel-Aviv's filtering pools. It will be featured in "Redemption through the Gutters", a large scale artfest curated by the extra-talented Galya Yahav. (Here's the Facebook event, for all details.)

It may seem unethical for me, as a theatre critic, to function as an actor, so I'll hurry up and confirm: I would have given this show a dreadful review. It's a big anarchic mess, no one knows their lines (we're reading them off the page), most jokes are dreadfully juvenile, and the songs took thirty seconds to compose - I know this for a fact. I composed them.

But Kadima! (Hebrew for "onwards", but also the name of the Israel's major center-right party) does have one thing going for it: It makes one hell of a punishing political statement, and it does so in the rustic spirit of true satire.

The story is that of Tzvika Ofer (Yuval Segev), an IDF colonel whose negligance led to the breakout of the second Lebanese war. Ofer, scolded in Israel, escapes to Mexico and works there as military consultant for a dubius regieme. Then he meets a witch.

The witch tells him that she can send him back to one moment in his past. Ofer, cynical at first, finally decides to return to the days before the war's outbreak and prevent it. His wish is fulfilled, history is reversed. Elyakim Firstater (Moshe Ferster), the simpleton sodier who's abduction kicked off the war, is safe.

For lack of war, Ofer is discharged from the army and becomes CEO of the Trilanium weapons company, producers of a radium-spiked bomb called "The Smasher". Firstater himself gets a job there as a bomb-painter. sometimes fate just binds us with the wrong people.

Problem is, with no war in sight, the smasher has no market. The owners of Trilanium count on Ofer to produce one. When he learns of it, from the company's Chief Financial Officer, Benny Guetta (yours truly), he is in denial.

Ofer: but the IDF couldn't use the Smasher, the border is quiet.

Guetta: The folks at the Brussels office were hoping you could perk the IDF up.

Ofer: There was no war.

Guetta: This is solvable.

Ofer: Solvable?

Guetta: It's solvable, this lack of war, this endless wait for something to happen.

Ofer (loudly): They were expecting for me to arrange a war?

Guetta: There's no need to shout, let's speak softly.

Ofer: They wanted me to start a war? with whom?

Gueatta: Look, I am against wars, I hate wars. I was on the square where Rabin died, when they took him away from us. Then again, some situations are win-win. Let's imagine the "Smasher" were a success on the battlefield. It would have given it great promotion - advertisements on BBC, on AL-Jezirah... we could start a production line for the Smasher that could export abroad. People hear the word "war" and get startled, it's a real holy cow. But who could lose in such a war? If the Smasher works well, we may end up exporting it even to moderate Arab nations, like Morrocco or Jordan. It could improve our relationship with them and maybe even contribute to peace.

Ofer: The war?

Gueatta: Yes! War today isn't what you think, Tzvika, it's like peace, like peace - but with a dividend. Look at me, do I want war? Do I want battlefields? Do I want widdows and orphans? You know I'm left-leaning. No one wants war, but on the other hand, it's not a good idea to be stuck with marchendise.

At the end of the day, our bunch of clowns is a somber bunch. We've been through that war and we'll be through the next one, and the next one. Forever we shall be told that our security is the issue and that our army is the "Israeli Defence Forces", by those who pocket the dough. No dough for us, we play for nothing, just as we'll probably die for nothing sooner or later.

South of Jerusalem, North of Prague

My friend Y the Spy is now writing for a huge daily newspaper. A few days ago she was sent on assignment to Hebron. She returned strongly affected. I wasn't surprised.

Yesterday, while putting final touches on her piece, she rang me up and asked a quastion: "What's the name of the area in Hebron with the narrow streets and the little shops, where the Jews live on one side and the Arabs on another?"

"Little shops? Open shops?"

"Yeah."

"That's strange, in Hebron wherever the settlers live the shops are closed by order of the army."

A little bit of questioning taught me that she was referring to the Casbah. "but how come you went through the Casbah?" I asked her, "Israeli visitors are not allowed in there."

"Not allowed?"

"No. Who guided you?"

"The soldiers."

"I guess with them you can go there. Anyway, that's what they pointed out? that Jews live on one side and Arabs on the other?"

"Well, among other things."

"You know, those windows you saw over the Casbah are the back of the selttlements. Did you also see the front side?"

"I think so. Yes."

"So you did see the parallel street, Shuhada street, where all the businesses are closed and the Palestinians are not permitted to walk."

Y the Spy seemed baffeled. "That area did seem pretty dead, but wait, not permitted to walk?"

"Yeah, only Jews and tourists are allowed to walk there, the army welded the doors of the Palestinian houses. They can only leave through the roofs and make their way down to the Casbah, where they may walk, and that's only the beginning. Are you seated?"

Y. the spy went to Hebron to write about the "Shimshon" regiment. When I first visited the city, the soldiers at the deserted street corners were from "Nahal" units, mostly kids from north Tel-Aviv suburbs who were raised to respect human rights. Seemingly, they brought up too many hard questions and were eventually replaced with soldiers closer to the political right. "Shimshon" soldiers made news during their taking of oath ceremony. They presented a banner claiming they will not participate in the evacuating of settlements. These pro-settler soldiers were seen as just the right stuff for maintaining order in Hebron's H2 sector, where several hundred settlers are terrorising a population of nearly 30,000 Palestinians.

"What did they say about their relationship with the settlers?" I asked.

"Not much. They said the settlers give them pizza sometimes."

"This is problematic, they don't get pizza from the Palestinians, if they did, they wouldn't be allowed to eat it, but the settlers are their friends. That's how come they let them do whatever they want, even beat up schoolgirls on their way home.

"They said they have an order to interfere when settlers are harrassing Palestinians" Y the spy said.

"Well that's as may be, but the taste of the pizza is still in their mouths. There's an olive still stuck between their teeth! who will they protect?"

Y the Spy is not naive, and her research of the Shimshon-Hebron question is to be thorough. I'm confident. But I was left upset. Avi Benayahu, IDF's spokesman, who arranged the tour, is the deciple of some great teachers.

When the Nazis allowed journalists and members of the red cross to visit the ghetto at Terezin (Theresienstadt), they were taking them to the only ghetto in Europe where kids were well fed and the Jews' dignity was preserved. Directly across the mountains was Poland and its horrors. Those were not mentioned on the tour. There's no need to lie, half-truths work just fine.

The IDF spokesman's unit piled obstacles before Y the Spy and her paper. Only barely did she recieve a permit to visit Hebron with the soldiers and speak to them (and even then, only to a chosen few). I assume that the Germans were equally smart, "not wanting" for journalists to visit Terezin and finally giving in.

Mr. Bnayahu should be very careful about where he gets his inspiration. As for us, we should be careful about where we get our information. Israeli journalists are dependent on the IDF's spokesperson unit. Brig. Gen. Benayahu is known to have put pressure on papers not to publish material he considered problematic. That material, such as exlposive evidence about the Gaza war that was minutes away from appearing in prime time, vanishes. When it boiled down to it, the reporters could not afford to lose Bnayahu's cooperation and be denied access to information. All media sources, including the paper for which I write, are faced with this threat.

In this case the newspaper cooperated by sending to Hebron a reporter with no knowledge of the city. It's a smart move as far as its relationship with Brig. Gen. Benayahu, the article will not be harsh, but we all end up with less information in our heads and a strange taste of pizza in our mouths.

P.S. one day later:

I'm naturally getting a fair bit of criticism for "comparing to the Holocaust". This is not a comparison. I am drawing an analogy, and the difference is great. If my little sister draws an angel and I say it reminds me of an angel painted by Michelangelo, that does not imply that I consider her as great an artist as Michelangelo was, nor that I think we're living in the Italian Renaissance. However, if she does have the potential to become a new Michelangelo, we'd better be aware of that and nourish her talent.