The Amália Lesson

Sometimes we get lucky. A dear friend working in the diplomatic community invited me and my girl to the grand opening of the Portuguese film festival in Tel Aviv. We didn’t even know what movie was to be screened, but enjoyed the port served in small glasses and the company of dignitaries wearing neckties. Israeli society is extremely informal and the attire common at events of the international community make one feel pleasantly “abroad.” Then we stepped into the theatre, the lights were dimmed and suddenly we were back home.

The film was named “Amália,” and told the story of Fado legend Amália Rodrigues. Its first scene showed a 1974 concert Rodrigues gave in Lisbon, only a few days after the Carnation Revolution was completed and the totalitarian Nova Estado regime toppled. As the singer joins her musicians onstage, the crowd erupts in protest. Someone yells: “Fascist!” another: “Your beloved Salazar is gone! What will you do now?”

Rodrigues, portrayed by the talented Sandra Barata, began singing, and I began thinking of the West Bank settlement of Ariel. In recent weeks the arts scene here gushed over the opening of the first center for the performing arts across the Green Line. Major Israeli theatres, among them the national theatre “Habima,” are scheduled to send their productions there in the coming year.

About 50 members of the Israeli theatre scene signed a letter stating that they would refuse to perform in the occupied territories. This won them plenty of disdain from the Israeli public and reprimands from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture. Quickly, this exceedingly rare act of protest by Israeli performing artists began to fall apart. Several of the signatories demanded that their names be removed from the letter, citing a “misunderstanding.”

Who's misunderstanding what? Amália Rodrigues misunderstood history. She refused to be the people’s voice against a corrupt and violent regieme. Historians now tell us that she did support dissidents in secret, and in the film she is shown bribing an official in order to free a poet friend who was taken a political prisoner. Still, in public she never said a word against Salazar and his murderous PIDE policing force. She drank chapmagne with him while others were tortured by his thugs. She could not see past the present moment to a future in which Salazar would be seen worldwide as Portugal’s greatest historical enemy. Her reputation survived (with a voice like hers, how could it not?), but it suffered as well.

The artists who agree to perform in Ariel, and those who fear voicing an opinion against the use of Israeli culture in reinforcing the occupation, see only the present and only the narrow local perspective. Around here, the occupation is taken with a shrug. Most Israelis accept Ariel as being “Israel proper” depite the fact it’s built in the very heart of the West Bank, designed so as to render direct transportation between Ramallah and Nablus impossible. We’ve been taught not to care that its sewage is polluting the water of nearby Palestinian town Salfit, or that it was built largely on land stolen from local farmers, or that its existence forces hundreds of thousands to go through humiliating checkpoints, or that its very existence is a huge obstacle on the way to the peace we all say we want.

The artists who accept such notions and embrace the settlements may one day find themselves facing a hostile audience (as they already would – abroad). Times change, regimes fall, occupations end. I would advise every Israeli artist to think about Amália Rodrigues, then think about singers who took the cause of human rights and liberty even when those were unpopular or unsanctioned: Mercedes Sosa in Argentina, Victor Jarra and Violetta Parra in Chile, Vladimir Vysotsky in the Soviet Union, Fela Kuti in Nigeria and more, and more. Think about all of them, dear artists, and ask yourselves who would you rather be.

(this post also appears on +972, the new joint initiative of English-blogging Israelis.)

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)

How Shall we Sing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land?

If there's anywhere that scares Israelis, it's Ramallah.

We have several good reasons not to go to Ramallah, even if we put aside the incident of the year 2000, in which two soldiers who lost their way and wound up here were killed by a mob. That event took place in the height of hostilities, immediately following the death of Mohamed A-Dura in Gaza. Still, it's a precedent, and many people here hate our guts.

So there's one good reason not to visit Ramallah. especially at night. Ramallah is not the capital of streetlights.

A second good reason not to visit Ramallah is that coming here is a criminal offence by Israeli law. No one checks us on the way in but we risk arrest, interrogation and then imprisonment or a heavy fine if caught on the way out. Palestinian police who find us must hand us over to the Istraelis. So that's another good reason not to visit Ramallah, especially if you have a nice Jewish face like mine.

But observe the photo above and you'll find one good reason to visit Ramallah. When was the last time you got served your coke bottle with a straw in it? that is so 1982!

Ramallah retains in it the charm of decades gone by. which is why we just had to come here and attend a Boney M concert. Boney M? You've got to be kidding me! what won't I give to stand with the Palestinian people who've known so much hardship, and sing with them that eternal anthem of oppressed nations:

By the rivers of Ba-ha-bylon (dark tears of Babylon)
Where we sat do-hown (You've got to sing a song)
Yeah-hey we we-hept (sing a song of love)
When we remembered Zi-ha-yon (yeah yeah yeah yeah).

facing all the arguments for not coming was the one decisive argument for coming: Disco!

Boney M were to appear at the open air theatre right outside the Ramallah Cultural Palace.

There were less hijabs to be seen here then on the streets, both because there's something deeply un-Islamic about lines such as "Rasputin, Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine" and because at least 30% of those present were internationals. I did find a few, though, dyed here by a glam boa scarf that someone waved over my lense.

And boy did we ever wave these glam boa scarves. Today's Boney M features only a single member of the original ensemble, the unbelievably energetic and lovely Maizie Williams. she totally justifies using the famous brand and the rest of her team was terrific as well. They strutted their hits: "Daddy Cool", "Sunny", the very applicable "Belfast"...

As well as Boney M's famous cover version of Marley's "No Woman no Cry".

Then suddenly the lights went out.

It was towards the end of "No Woman no Cry." The microphones died too and the band fell silent, but the audience kept singing: Everything's gonna be alright! Everything's gonna be alright!

It took Williams a second to understand that she was faced with the true spirit of Ramallah. If there's any city in the world that's used to the lights going out and knows that everything's gonna be alright, it's here. She returned to the front of the stage and swayed to the chanting.

When the lights returned. Everyone was in full form. and the rest of the evening simply rocked. We had only one major disappointment: Babylon was not sung. I can only assume that the festival organizers banned it for fear that the word "Zion" (as in "Zionism") would offend the audience. Sometimes deeper meanings are lost on people. The crown chanted "Babylon" harder than it chanted "everything's gonna be alright" but to no avail. A token identification with the local struggle was the best we got.

So we went away with dear Palestinian friends we bumped into, looking for somewhere to sit and weep. The best party in Ramallah these days is a house party. Grandma Aniseh died, and her offspring turned her old home into a popping bar: "Aniseh's House".

No one killed us.

No one arrested us.

It was only paying for our Taybeh beers in Sheqels that reminded us the occupation even exists. We pocketed the change and focused on the extraordinary hospitality of our neighbors, easing the shift between the glittery clothes we saw on stage and the uniforms we would meet at the checkpoint later.

Oxymoron City

On our way to the birthplace of the redeemer, we bumped into a fan of his. Frère Christian was fueling a car belonging to his Trappist monetary. The contrast between his robe and the Renault was the first of many on our excursion. In fact, sharp contrasts and dichotomies would turn out to be a staple of the trip. Welcome to oxymoron country.

Take the contrast between the open countryside and the many walls running through it. This one isn't even the famous "separation Wall". It's another wall, shielding a road used mostly by settlers from Palestinian houses.

We were going to Bethlehem because such walls haunt my dreams. A short while ago I was in Beit Jala to watch the World Cup semi-finals screened on the separation wall. Afterward I found myself waking each morning with troubling visions of barriers and gates on my mind. I had to come and see what Beit Jala was like during the day.

I also wished to experience once more the intense feeling of being an illegal. As an Israeli, my government strictly forbids me from visiting any Palestinian city and returning to Israel through the checkpoints demands know-how and cunning. The experience of being only a few meters away from a home I may not easily reach was intense (though all ended well, thanks to the help of a few kind smugglers). Going through all of that through a few hours of a dark night, on which none of the world across the wall could be seen, left a mark on me. I had to come back for closure.

We took a tricky path in and were back in Beit Jala, where the contrast of the Jacir Intercontinental hotel and a distant Israeli watchtower greeted us.

This time, Itka and Ben couldn't come. Instead I was with Bea, who rears from the tiny princedom of Lichtenstein, and Ron, who rears from the slightly larger land of Israel. We came to the place where the game was screened. The screen was still there, along with the restaurant's menu, providing another peculiar combination.

I could see over the wall this time, there were other walls there.

It was the walls proximity to the town that shocked me so much on the initial visit. As Israelis, if we get to see the wall at all, we see it from afar. Here it's part of the urban fabric.

It's so much a part of life, some people find it funny.

Having taken it all in, we went on towards central Bethlehem, the city to which Beit Jala is a suburb. New contrasts abounded. The palestinian cityscape as seen through the windshield vs. our Israeli parking sticker stuck on it.

The old Arab city

Vs. the new Israeli settlement of Har Homa, across the valley and the wall from it.

The abundance of the market


vs. the empty shopping mall, a true indicator of the state of Bethlehem's economy. The only stores open offered overpriced goods for tourists. all prices were in U.S. dollars.

There was also the quaintness of the renovated central district

vs. the rustic outskirts.

And finally, the size of a normal human being vs. the doorway of the Church of Nativity.

Now that we mixed into the tourist crowd, I can show the faces of my brother and sister in crime.

All of us enjoyed the best of Bethlehem, its peculiar architecture,

its amazing children

its striking street names

its perfect kebabs, consumed at a hole in the wall restaurant with the best ceiling ever


and the company of Mohamed, a local zucchini farmer/real estate agent who joined us out of nowhere and chatted with us for nearly an hour.

We also all enjoyed the thrill of succesfully breaking back out to our side of the wall. I felt much better following this visit. The light of day changes everything.

The return to Israel of course provided the most intense contrast of the day. We drove directly across Jerusalem to the Hebrew University atop Mt. Scopus where graduates of the Betzal'el art school showed their final project in a massive exhibition. I found much of the stuff to be worthwhile.


In one of the corridors, guest of the exhibition were encouraged to participate in the exhibition by letting their creativity go wild.

I couldn't help but offer what was on my mind.

Ignoranceright

We had a lovely couchsurfer stay over for two nights. Leora is an American art student who's just been through a "Birthright" trip and needed to recuperate before heading on a journey through Europe.

Leora is intelligent. She's seen something of this world, having moved away from her New Jersey home to the very unJerseylike mountains of North Carolina. She's creative and special and she's here to explore and learn. I would expect a person like this to benefit from a Birthright trip, as uncomfortable as I may be with the concept.

What makes me uncomfortable? According to the organization's website "Taglit-Birthright Israel provides the gift of first time, peer group, educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26." The youths are flown for free and journey Israel from a Zionist perspective. I have nothing against a Zionist perspective, its a legitimate perspective held by my very beloved parents.

Maybe it's just the name "birthright" that bothers me. A Jewish youth who's never been to Israel can arrive here and become a full citizen in a matter of weeks, while people born on this soil, whose great great grandparents were born here, are denied basic rights. Birth doesn't count for much in Israel, Ethnic background does.

Leora has the right Ethnic background to enjoy Birthright, yet she emerged from the adventure full of doubt. While having lunch together on Ben-Yehuda st. she asked me to give her my own angle to the history of this country. I started talking and soon found out I had to explain everything. She's never heard of the war of 1948, nor of the war of 1967. She did not know about the existence of the separation wall. They somehow managed to hide that eight meter tall atrocity from the eyes of the travelers.

At one point I brought up Bedouins. "Do Bedouins still exist?" Leora asked.

"They do." I said.

"We went into this tent and were served coffee by 'Bedouins', but I wasn't sure they weren't some kind of an historical people."

"Oh, they really exist, though the map won't tell you that. Most local Bedouins live in shanty towns in the desert, but these towns are "unrecognized" by the state, so they don't get connected to water or electricity." I asked to have a look at Leora's map, and pointed the area around Beer-Sheva, mostly blank of names. "This area isn't really empty. It's one of the most densely populated parts of the country, but the state wishes these people weren't there, so it pretends they're not there."

Oh, and if we have to admit they're there, why not present them as a Biblical-style people that pours coffee to Jews? I was beginning to lose my wits. Had Birthright been presented on the onset as an opputunity for Jewish girls to develop crushes on the armed bodyguards escorting them through the country, that's one thing. But the website does use the word "educational."

It's only "educational" if an effort isn't made to conceal any difficult truth, just as it's only a "democracy" if everyone gets equal rights.

"Do Bedouins serve in the Army?" Leora asked.

"They often do. They're considered excellent trackers."

"And yet they don't get water to their towns."

"Well, not to all their towns." I didn't want to fall into the Birthright trap and start telling things from a one sided perspective.

Nevertheless, I would love to see a birthright tour visit a Bedouin town like Rahat, pictured below, that is indeed connected to water. I would love to see the guide point out the poverty and decrepit infrastructure and then tell them this: "The money that could have made this place acceptable is used for the immigration grants of middle-class North Americans like yourselves."

I would love to hear him tell them to feel free and decide whether or not they wish to live in this country, but whatever the case, they must work to better it, to make it fair to all, because right now this isn't the case.

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.