If You're Going to Jerusalem on Foot, Be Sure to Take a Tel-Avivian Duck With You

The Preparation.

The drying up.

The 5:00 AM streetcorner.

The morning traffic.

The passing under a bridge the most difficult way conceivable because it was Anna's bright idea.

The Anna.

The roadside.

The raspberry juice served by complete strangers.

The right direction.

The snack.

The shofar.

The field where they grow milk containers.

The marshes of despair.

The legs that have just traversed the marshes of despair.

The evening walk.

The haystacks of a new day.

The flower I picked and brought home to Itka.

The laughing Catholic volunteer from Hong Kong named Ting Ting.

The mysterious home by the roadside.

The highway at Bab Al-Wad seen from above.

The yummy grapes.

The Elvis

The ditch I had to walk in.

The cupious amount of trash.

The twighlight in which I found myself again in the ditch.

The only road going into the city that didn't involve walking in a ditch.

The real gate of Jerusalem.

The first image of me in Jerusalem, taken by a little girl named Shoshana.

The arrival of the pilgrim at the temple (the Uganda bar and bookstore) and handing of the offering (Dakka 6 poetry journal).

The end.

BTW, while the title advice stands true. It's also advisable to bring a good friend along. I'm deeply indebted to Anna Wexler who sacrificed the wellbeing of her legs for this.

The story of the pilgrimage will appear in full in the Succot holiday edition of Israel Hayom. For more about the duck and its legendary creator Dudu Geva, read here.

Away Game

There's a place in east Jerusalem where the ramparts of the old city are only a few meters tall. A steep bluff renders scaling them difficult, but not impossible. I often dreamed of giving it a shot. Living in this country does that to the spirit. you see a wall, you want to get past it.

There are plenty such walls to work the imagination. Last night, for example, we took a bus from a terminal directly across that bluff to the town of Beit Jala - a neighborhood of Bethlehem. Beit Jala lies immediately across the separation wall from Jerusalem, which means Israeli law forbids us Israelis from entering it. There will be no checking of documents on the way in, but there should be on the way out. We haven't yet figured out a plan of how to dodge it. We risk arrest and interrogation leading to a fine of several thousand sheqels, but we just have to try. There's a wall there, you see.

Also, there was a game to be watched there, a football match. Friends belonging to the American and European journalist community let us know of a special event: A Beit Jala restaurant is to screen the world-cup semi-finals on the wall itself. Ben, Itka and myself decided to head down after a long workday. Neither of them has been in the Bethlehem area before. I visited it often in the 90s, before the seperation became definite. I had only faint recollections and was awed by the city that greeted us, with its fine exteriors

and interiors

All of which are now surrounded by the most insanely opressive prison wall.

Construction of the separation wall began following the second intifada. Israelis were told that it would reduce terrorism within Israel and thus many, progressive, human-rights minded Israelis, scared to death following a wave of bombings, supported its construction. Guess what? there really is less terrorism inside Israel. Guess what again: the wall isn't the reason for that. There are ways to bypass it (as we will prove later in the night, by being easily smuggled into Israel). If terrorism receded, it is thanks to a changed political situation and and a temporary, undeclared ceasefire. This ceasefire began before the wall was built, with the "Hudna" ending the second Intifada.

Moreover, the wall works on terrorism in the same way a dirty band-aid works on an open wound. For the time being it may trap some of the blood flow, but ultimately is infects the area, making things much worse. Imagine growing up at the shadow of this monster. What would you think of those who trapped you and your family? What sort of fate would you wish for them? and if an organization supported by God himself offered to provide them with a punishment, with your kind help, would you not offer your hips to the explosive belt?

The answer depends on one's mental condition. Palestinians across the wall are working hard to keep their mental condition good and avoid violent thoughts. The owners of the Bahamas restaurant in Beit Jalla are looking for advantages in the wall. For starters - it's a great place to post their menu.

Where do they get mussels? every single mussel in the world is to be found on the other side of this wall.

Anyway, the real talk of the town, every town on earth, from Beit Jalla to all the settlements surrounding it, was about another mussel: the Spanish Mussel eaten by Paul the oracle octopus, predicting a Spanish win in the game. Over a hundred people gathered outside the Bahamas to see whether Paul was correct. About half of them were Palestinians, the other half - foreign journalists and diplomats stationed in Jerusalem. For the most part we felt comfortable saying we're Israelis and using our given names, a bit less comfortable admitting we support Germany. The public in Beit Jalla was overwhelmingly pro-Spain.

Some supporters of Spain brought an authentic Vuvuzela.

As You may have heard, Paul was right. This photo, taken during the first half of the game, is the last image of me smiling.

I actually stopped smiling well before the final whisle was blown. During halftime I took a short walk in the vicinity of the restaurant and discovered this: a house surrounded by the wall on three sides. This family, who built its home with a view to the hills and to Jerusalem, found itself imprisoned for no fault of its own. The concrete is only a physical manifestation of the humiliation and intimidation these people have suffered by the occupiers, by us.

After seeing that, the Spanish could win and the Germans could grill their octopus for all I cared. It'll take a long time till football will actually matter for anything in this world.

Home on the Range

Sloping steeply directly across from the walls of Temple Mount, Silwan is dramatic.

It's dramatically ancient too. The western part of Silwan has been inhabited since Neolithic times. It is here that the residential heart of the city stood from the second millennium BC to Hellenist times. When the Ommayads arrived in the 7th century, they found the hills inhabited with cave dwellers. A thousand years later, during the 19th century, Yemenite Jews came up from the desert and lived in the same caves.

The days of caves are over. Silwan today is about houses. Since conquering East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has been incredibly stingy about giving building licenses to the Arab population.

According to the Betzelem human-rights organization, 46,978 housing units have been built over the years on open land in East Jerusalem (designated as "municipal" since the occupation). All were built for the Jewish population. Not a single unit was built by or for the Arabs, who make up 33% of the city's population. Consequently, most Arab construction is deemed "illegal", and is designated for demolition.

The arab population grows naturally without anywhere to expend. the houses of Silwan are adorned with endless artificial add-ons, not all of which are fully sturdy. Silwan today is a dramatic mess, completely neglected by the authorities who would prefer to see it vanish.

Since the eighties, Israeli governments have been working to get houses here demolished. One excuse for the demolitions are the unavoidable illegal constructions, another is the need to expose archaeological remains "from the days of King David." The dead King David, whether real or mythical, counts for much more than do 45,000 living residents of the neighborhood.

Did I say neighborhood? We call Silwan a "village" as we refer to any Arab community. "Tamra" in the Galilee is a village, despite being twice the size of the "city" of Katzrin, a Jewish-Israeli community on the Golan heights. If Silwan were a village, its troubles could be considered smallish, but they aren't. They are dramatic.

Most dramatic of all is the problem of the settlements. The ElAd organization is using donations money to Judaise the neighborhood. I'm Jewish, I think any neighborhood in the world should be open to Jews, but I also read the Mishna. In the tome of Avot, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai asks his deciples what would be a true righteous quality in a person. Rabi Yossei replies: "A good neighbor".

If you go as an Israeli to live in Silwan, in an absentee property from which the tennents were kicked out by force, you're not there to be a good neighbor. Silwan attracts right-wing activists who don't believe in the right of Palestinians to live where they were born. Thanks to the 50 families living there today, life in the neighborhood is highly controlled by the military.

Indeed, thanks to them, to the humanist minded ElAd organization and to the generous municipality of Jerusalem, distrust is abundant. I've never taken a walk anywhere where my camera evoked so much suspicion. Most were convinced that I am working for the house demolition authorities, but I came to shoot Silwan's beautifully painted walls, welcoming the Haj pilgrims upon return

and its Esheresque staircases

and its abundant style.

I didn't at all intend to write an angry post, but it's enough to walk around with open eyes and anger appears: raw anger, frustrating anger, anger that is as intense as the topography and as grey as the concrete, anger as dramatic as this place is.

La Ville S'endormait

I am sitting in an empty Jerusalem "sherut" van at 1:00 AM, waiting for it to fill up and take me to Tel-Aviv. It doesn't fill up, not even partially. I am the only one there, the last man in the city. The driver is smoking outside when I decide to leave on foot. Naturally, he begins yelling at me.

"Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say nothing, it's nothing, just sad dreams, or something like that... Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes, and you would mark them." I've quoted these words of Martin Amis once before, blogging from an internet cafe in West Berlin. I'm crazy about daylight, make no mistake, but there's something about being stranded too late at night in a moody city with nowhere to sleep. You get a free, precious lesson in the blues, and what could be more precious?

Jerusalem by night. The "Bass" is closed. The "Uganda" is melancholic. The green neon lights of a mosque over Silwan distinguish a finger pointing to God from the darkness about it. At dawn the song will rise from its tip to mix with others in the brightening sky, but dawn is far.

Someone lets me into the old Ron Hotel, today the "Jerusalem Hostel". The staircase over reception is still stately and lavishly carpeted as in the glory days. Reception itself is closed. In the lobby sits a silvery-bearded American, clearly a religious eccentric, across from an attractive girl in her early twenties. She's his daughter. They couldn't get a bed and decided to sit the night out.

I remember doing the same at the Genoa railway station, talking to a crazy Canadian neurologist in a bright red nylon rainproof jacket about some scary research he was conducting. What was scary about it? Can't remember, but the old unease follows me outside to the silent roadwork barriers on Jaffa road.

This is only the beginning. The ghosts of other nocturnal towns will haunt me as I walk. Where was I? climbing up the silent hallway of Bulgakov's Moscow home with Vola, whom I had just met at a club, her pointing out the passages inscribed on them by his fans: a black painted cat, a love letter... Scaling the walls of the Foro Romano at 3:00 AM and bumping into two slum rascals who did the same, a drunken boy and girl. We wandered into a garden where huge roses grew. I picked one and presented it to the girl. She laughed and warned me not to approach a certain fallen pillar. "This is a cursed place" she said, "people who go by it later die in strange accidents."

And there was the cold night in Frankfurt, watching television through a shop window on the Zeil and shivering. I could not afford a hotel, having spent my last pfenning on airfare, but at sunrise the airplane was to take me Utah, where the most dramatic love story of my life was to begin in earnest.

This is how it works. The loneliest, awful wee hours sometimes remind us how rich life is, and if they don't, dawn would, and if dawn won't, maybe the morning's first coffee, in my friend Keren's kitchen, with Glenn Gould playing on the old boom box.

Nocturn in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket

We were on a rooftop, at a nice party thrown by friends of friends in honor of independence day. There were wonderful chicken wings on the grill and a guitar going around. The sky over the Jerusalem, that sky which always feels somehow like a low ceiling, was warm and peaceful.

I came with Daniel the cellist and his boyfriend Hussein, as well as with the ever adventurous Daniella and another American girl named Emily, who got stranded in the country due to the volcanic ash. In fact, the roof was full of Americans, mostly that particularly lovely breed of religious J Street supporters. I was chatting to an attractive rabbi in the making named Annie. Then the fireworks started exploding over the city.

We turned our heads in the direction of the explosions. The fireworks were being shot from the rooftop of the Sheraton hotel. My mother used to work at that hotel when I was a child, when it was still named "The Plaza". I remember my seven year old's pride, standing on King George street among the plastic hammer yielding masses (this was before they invented the foam or the huge inflatable hammers with the flag printed over them) gazing at up at thunder and color, knowing that my mother worked at this hotel and none of the other kids' mothers did. I was closer to independence day than anybody.

This year I was further from it than most people I know. The legislating of the "Nakba law", which forbids Israelis from observing a mourning day for the Palestinian disaster of 1948, estranged the truly liberal-minded Israelis. What independence are we celebrating if we're not free to decide how we view history?

All in all, the current state of politics here hardly brings out the flag fiend in me. My Prime-Minister talks like the scariest extreme right-wing fringe party leaders in Europe, claiming, among other things, that African refugees take work from Israelis and threaten to turn this into a "third world country". His sidekick, the Foreign Minister, is a fan of totalitarianism, who models his politics after such enlightened leaders as Lukashenko of Belarus. The masses become gradually more affected by the fear tactics these two employ. Change-seekers like myself are now seen as "traitors". A song released to the radio on the eve of the holiday describes us as back-stabbers, literally.

Then there are the old issues, not improving one bit. When I was seven years old and gazed at the fireworks, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip was only 16 years of age, itself a child. Today it's 42. Jerusalem is a city where people are being thrown out of their homes simply because they're Arab. Hostile, reactionary fanatics move in instead of them, with no plans of being good neighbors.

Boom! Boom! the night over the Plaza - green and purple.

The fireworks in these days of white phosphorus bombs turned out to be the same as they were then: not sophisticated or high-tech, not choreographed even to provide even so much as a climax. Standing on that roof, a half-eaten chicken wing in one hand and a plastic cup full of whisky in the other, I found myself looking at that exact moment in my childhood, and that, of course, is enough to shake a strong man. My innocence, that of a child who does not even know he lives on a settlement in the West Bank, who believes his country is always right and will be growing stronger and more beautiful in days to come, exploded in my face, yet it did so so sweetly. Those fireworks resembled a bouquet of flowers that somehow ended up being brought to a funeral, but can't help looking cheerful.

Touched by the distant rumble, I even mumbled: "there's something nice about this nation after all." Hussein, sitting next to me, smiled quietly. Then the fireworks died down.

(artwork: "Nocturn in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket" by Whistler)

What's in a Flag?

As we approached the demonstration, a Palestinian kid about ten years old stopped us, asking for IDs. He was playing the Israeli soldier to Israelis. I showed him my passport with a smile, not realizing what a complicated game of national identities was yet awaiting me.

We came to East Jerusalem to protest with the Palestinians. In the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrakh, several families were kicked out of their homes to make room for extremist right-wing Israeli settlers. This is only a part in a scheme to "Jewify" East Jerusalem and enhance Israeli control of it. I'll leave the history of this scandal and its legal aspect to greater experts. My story today is one of symbols.

As we joined the great crowd that gathered in the neighborhoods soccer field, several flags were already flying, most were Palestinian, a few were red. The political left takes the cause of human rights here and elsewhere and I respect it for that. However, when more communist-inclined groups arrived, all of them sporting crimson flags, I started expecting Tovarich Lenin to come onstage and greet the proletariat masses.

In one corner, a woman was giving out blue and white flags with the word "shalom" (peace) replacing the hexagram of the Israeli flag. I decided to pick up one of these.

The first person to approach me over the flag was a Palestinian kid, about the same age as the joker who inspected me earlier. He was dying to hold it. I let him wave it a bit and show it off to his friends, then took it back. There were only four or five such flag in a crowd of 3500 people. I didn't want the kid to vanish with it. The demonstration was a cooperation and it was important to show that. If the TV cameras only caprute red, black, white and green, the Israeli public would feel estranged from the cause and the struggle would achieve little.

Next I was approached by a group of Palestinians in their 20s. "Get rid of this flag" a woman said to me, "get rid of your fucking shitty zionist occupation flag right now I tell you."

"Let's talk about this" I suggested.

"No, this is not open to dialogue. You are going to get rid of this flag right now. We are from the neighborhood and you are in our neighborhood now."

I lowered the flag out of respect for the locals, but on second thought and with some encouragment from friends, raised it again. Another Palestinian came over with similar tones, accompanied by an Israeli activist carrying a red flag.

"Put the flag away", the Palestinian demanded.

"Ok," I said. "But I don't have another flag. My country may have become ugly, but it's my only country and this flag is my only way of stating that I am here too and that Israelis support the struggle. Waving it here is my only way of trying to infuse it with new meaning. not an occupation flag, but one that can also represent opposition to the occupation."

They found the idea of infusing blue and white with new meaning laughable. After 40 years of occupation, the Israeli flag seems to be beyond hope.

"It's all I have," I repeated, "You don't like it, give me another flag." I was secretly hoping the Palestinian would remove the kaffiya he wore as a scarf and hand it to me, symbolically inviting me to join him shoulder to shoulder in the struggle. Instead, it was the Israeli who handed me the red flag.

"Stalin!" I retorted.

"What!?" he acted offended, "I am a communist, Stalin is my biggest enemy, he hijacked the values of communism to benefit his murderous totalitarian regime."

"This is the same thing Netanyahu and Lieberman are doing to Israel," I suggested. "If the red flag can be waved despite Stalin, the Israeli flag can be waved despite them, and don't tell me that Stalin is dead and that the occupation is still going on. People are still opressed under this flag all over China, North Korea, Transnistria, Cuba..."

"Listen," he said, "In Israel I would wave this flag proudly, but not here, east of the green line."

"I'm the opposite. I would never wave it in Israel. There I'll be taken as just another supporter of our augmenting fascism, but here, where everybody knows what I stand for, I would."

"Have it your way," said the Israeli, ready to seal the argument. Some other Israeli activist, a girl, hastened to add: "I just want to see you wave this flag after getting beaten up by soldiers and tortured by the Shin Bet. Why don't you try that and see if afterwards you still want to wave this flag".

"I understand what you're saying" I told her, "and that the flag scares and offends some people here, but you're not pragmatic. For things to change we need to be here together and try and influence public opinion. You don't want things to change! all you want is to be radical and beautiful in your own eyes!" It finally happened, I lost my temper. The Palestinian already vanished into the crowd, looking for someone less hopeless.

Onstage, Palestinian playwright and theatre director Samih Jabarin was attacking those waving blue and white flags. Afterwards Israeli activist Elisheva Milikovski came on and apologized to the public, saying the demonstration was inclusive of everyone who wanted to support the cause.

I remained there confused, with my flag at half mast, until the same little Palestinian kid appeared again, his eyes asking for it. I handed it to him and he ran gladly directly to the heart of the flag jungle. His flag was not captured by the media cameras. The demonstration, which was attended mostly by Israelis and was the largest mixed demonstration in a decade, was taken for another Palestinian gathering and didn't even make the front page of Haaretz.

Later that night I did get to hold a kaffiyah, a Palestinian friend handed it to me in a Shiekh Jarrakh restaurant, but my spirit was low. It was hard to see the Judean People's front and the People's Front of Judea fueding like this. We're doomed to our flags just as we're doomed to this situation. I hope to God we can somehow fold all of our differences away and make progress.