We

Israelis who feel more and more estranged from the collective psyche have some thinking to do tonight. If Holocaust commemoration day, which was observed last week, is charged, then Israeli memorial day, which begins tonight at sunset, is truly a challenge.

Israel has a powerful collective identity. We say "we" a lot, referring to Israelis as a whole. This is rooted in Jewish culture. The Passover Haggadah direclty states: "In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as if he himself had come out of Egypt." Later on in the text, historical first person is introduced: "He took us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to festivity..."

Us?

Ok, let's fulfill our obligation and assume it was us. It shouldn't be difficult, since there's no baggage involved. "We" probably shouldn't feel bad for inflicting the ten plagues. Firstly, it was "him" who did it, not "us". Secondly, "we" were slaves. Alex Haley would have approved.

A week following passover comes yom hashoa - Holocaust commemoration day. "We" had our beards cut off on the street in the 30, "We" were starved and gassed in Birkenau, "We" were slaughtered in Babi Yar.

Yes, several of the people who live in this country are Holocaust survivors and can use the word "we" in its original sense. The rest of us should probably be more humble. We were never in Babi Yar. We have no idea what it feels like to be starved and tortured. Sabras poked fun at refugees who came from Europe in the late 40's, calling them "soaps". This state has for decades been delaying compensation payments to survivors.

The trauma of the Holocaust does of course filter to the younger generations. It is very real and effects the actions of the Israeli society and state, still, the collective Holocaust identity is problamatic. It carries even less responsibility than that of the Hagaddah. "We" may have inflicted one or more bullet holes on the SS men in the Warsaw Ghetto, but "they" deserved it big time. By the way, "They" are now in Iran and Gaza and even Jaffa and the Oval office. A collective fear and grudge can be an enormous political treasure.

Then comes Yom Hazikaron - memorial day. "We" mourn "our" dead, victims of the wars and acts of terrorism. The fact that hostility in the region is a current reality that tragically effects both "us" and "them" is forgotten. The idea that the definition of "we" may be expanded to include everyone who lives between the Jordan and the sea, or maybe even every human being, is not acknowledged. "We" are always the same "us", so "they" must always be the same "them". No chance we'll make this day a day of mutual mourning and of aspiration for peace. What? after Babi Yar?! You must be kidding us!

There are several brave individuals who challange this concept of identity. Tonight at 21:00 an alternative memorial event will be held in Tel-Aviv's Tmuna theatre. It is organized by "Combatants for Peace" and features the voice of Palestinian pain as well as the Israeli one. I attended the Tmuna event last year and left it tantalized. a song by Zeev Tene about losing a friend at war and a speech by Bassam aramin, whose ten year-old daughter was killed by soldiers, both left me in tears.

Tonight I'll skip the event and go have a low key dinner with friends, but trust me, I'm mourning. "I" mourn our fallen and their fallen and the very fact anyone has to die for this sad strip of gravel. Once "we" are no longer the issue, the actual dimensions of the tragedy are revealed, and the day becomes all the darker.

(Artwork by Samuel Bak)

Aux Armes

Sitting on a bus going through the slushy Polish countryside, I overhear a conversation about the two Warsaw insurrections, that of 1943, and that of 1944.

Oops. what is that about? I grew up learning of only one insurrection, the insanely heroic, ill-fated Ghetto uprising of 1943. I interfere the Pole and the Englishwoman who are chatting behind me and ask them about the other one.

The Pole then tells me an amazing story: As the Red Army was nearing the Vistula, in 1944, the people of Warsaw decided to take arms against the Nazis, in hope that Russian aid was near.

The Russians chose to wait west of the river and let the locals "do the job". While they waited, 250,000 Warsaw residents died in battle or were murdered by the Nazis. After two months of strife. The Germans kicked everyone out of the city and burned it to the ground as an act of revenge. 80% of Warsaw was destroyed, the carnage was greater than that of any other European city.

Dramatic, ha? How come I've never heard of any of this? I'm 33 years old, my roots are Polish, my people's history is strongly interwoven with that of the Polish people, but none of it was ever told to me in class, in Yad Vashem, in conversation about history... It seems as tough the Israeli education system makes sure we see no one's disaster but our own.

Is it an accidental hole in our education? I doubt it. Keeping silent about the suffering of others, or belittling it to the point that it's "not even worth mentioning", facilitates portraying us as eternal victims and the rest of the world as antisemitic. I hate to say so, but ignorance is a political tool in Israel, as it is in many other places.

It works, too. If you ask most Israelis about the relationship between Poles and Germans during the Holocaust, they'll tell you the Poles are an antisemitic people who handed Jews in to the Nazis gladly. No word about insurrections, about the murder of multitudes, about Polish prisoners in the camps, about destroyed cities.

We are vaguely aware of Poles who protected Jews, the "righteous among the nations". i'm glad about that, but even that is a Jewish issue. We know nothing of the disaster suffered by Poland during the war. The first time I arrived in this country, after finishing 12 years of Israeli schooling, I was stunned, no one told me any of this, and for a reason.

Last summer I traveled through Galizia with a group of Israeli guides who show the death camps to groups of Israeli schoolkids. the tour, organized by the polish government, was meant to show the guides "Polish Poland" so that they can give students background on the country, not only from a Holocaust perspective. Jewish and holocaust sites were also featured by the Polish planners, but they were not the focus.

For the most part, the Polish sites were canceled by the Israelis, who cared nothing for them. On several days we ended up visiting only Jewish sites, especially the remains of old synagogues, sometimes four in a day. Those additions to the program were truly moving places, relics of the tragically lost world of Galizian Jewery, but focusing on them beats the purpose: to learn more about something besides our own history.

It is very important that we develop empathy, because we seek empathy. It is also important because without empathy, compassion is impossible, and in our situation in the Middle East we must develop a capacity for compassion.

Knowing of the suffering of others is the key to both empathy and compassion. The Israeli ministry of education, especially under the current minister Gideon Saar, consciously keeps that information away from students, and not only in the case of Poland. prefer unquestioned patriotism to these two qualities.

Fetch the Broom and Lift the Rug, Akhi.

Haaretz is first to expose testimonies of IDF soldiers who participated in the Gaza war. Those were spoken at a gathering of graduates of a pre-military preparatory course in Tivon.

Soldiers said they felt they were performing cold blooded murder. One told of taking over a family's home and smashing photos frames, dishes, any remnant of the family. Why? "because they're Arab". Instructions for opening fire were astonishingly lax. You see someone you don't like - shoot in the air, he doesn't run away? second shot is to the face. More than 1000 people were killed in Gaza during the operative, among them over 350 children.

The IDF is now said to be examining the matter. Gotta work out how to explain this to ourselves so we can calmly move on to the next war. There must be a way. This is, after all, the most moral army on earth. The justifications must be there somewhere. Give us a month or two.

On Tour

Crossing an Ashdod street, early yesterday, was a sodier holding a different kind of weapon.

I came here to meet him. Israeli newspapers only carry patriotic stories these days, even on the culture pages. I've made several sacrifices, choosing not to write in a way that goes against my conscience. It ended up so that soon I'll be starving.

I finally agreed to go south and write about military entertainment troups who perform for kids in the bomb shelters, not fully happy about it. Then, following the guitar yielding sodier into the shelter, I bumped into Amir.

We were both stunned. Amir is a friend of Flashky and one of Israel's most talented young concert musicians (he appears in a photo on this blog, two posts ago, playing the double bass with Merhav Yeshoron). Currently doing his regular service, Amir and his talent were conscripted to bring some joy into this region. I decided to join him for the day. He was headed for the bus. I boarded too. There was combat gear on the vacant seats.

On other seats sat Israel's youngest and brightest musicians. The military accepted them as "excelling musicians" sending them to perform classical music to soldiers in times of peace. Now, at wartime, they must switch repertory in order to please a much younger audience. Amir swapped the bass and the Baroque recorder, his usual instruments, for a "darbouka" Arab drum. Him and his troup mates: Inon the guitar player and Gilli the flutist spent the ride trying to figure out what songs Ashdod's kids would like.

We soon arrived at a shelter in Ashdod's working class "Gimmel" neighborhood.

The kids liked theme songs from television programs, they liked Mizrachi songs, they loved playing along,

but most of all, they completely adored the performers.

The irony is obvious, a qassam shot away, young people wearing the same uniforms are actually killing children. This is painful to percieve, yet is hardly the fault of the "excelling musicians", who chose to spend their military service making music rather than war, nor certainly of the kids who are living now for weeks in a scary, difficult situation, without school or much of a sense of normality. I decided to give a hand myself and taught them how to sing Arik Einstein's "My Mommy". Call it unjournalistic behaviour.

Back on the bus, we were joined by members of the IDF's theatre troup. Their improv show, designed for soldiers, had to be adjusted to fit seven year olds. It worked! they were all high on the experience, playing around with the combat gear and being goofy with the musical instruments.

I, too was still inspired.

The landscape around us was spelendidly peaceful (we were instructed that if an alarm sounds we must leave the bus, go as far away from it as possible and lie with our stomachs to the ground and our hands over the backs of our heads).

Finally we arrived in Sderot, a mere 5 kilometers from the fence surrounding the Gaza strip. While Sderot isn't exactly a ghost town, most of the people around were memebers of the media. the street leading up from the main shopping center is a forest of television cameras. I haven't been to Sderot in a year or so. It has changed in another way: the bus stops have been fortified with concrete and can serve as shelters at an emergancy.

The musicians were brought into the bomb shelter of an apartment building in a socio-economically weak neighborhood. Many of the residents here are of Ethiopian origin and at least one family is actually Arab - of Bedouin stock. What the Ashdod kids have been experiencing for a week, the kids here have grown up with. Add to this the usual problems kids face in slums, and you have a nice coctail.

Their parents received the soldiers as gods, instantly showering them with requests for militant songs these pacifist Tel-Avivians have never heard of. Actually performing was futile, this became, instead, a party.


Again, it was difficult to decide who's cuter, the kids or the musicians. I have my nominee for cutest of the day, and perhaps cutest of the war. I found him at a far back room of the shelter, building a winged car out of Legos. There were only so many Lego pieces there and only so much light and the room smelled moldy and a war was going on, but he was focused on creating, oblivious to it all for one sweet, brief moment, like we all were.

My Country, 'tis of Thee

You never bomb a school. No matter how much you are being shot at from within it. There are situations in which an army is blocked. It happens in chess, it happens at war. I'm no military expert, but there are ways to deal with being shot at from a school that has become a safe haven for civilians. You must consider it a fortress surrounded by an extra wall, one that will only be removed when all civilians are evacuated, and if they can't be evacuated, you retreat. The IDF prides itself on warning people to run away from buildings that are to be bombed, a few days ago it actually showered Gaza neighborhoods with leaflets calling for residents to evacuate, but where exactly? The Gaza strip is the most populated region on earth, it's a fenced corral. Everyone within it is trapped.

You never bomb a building that is home to families that escaped from homes you already bombed. My nation's military did it tonight, killing between 30 and 40 people and wounding scores. My tax money paid for the ammunition.

My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.

But what really kills me is how Israeli news media refuses to even refer to this as a tragedy; they only talk about how difficult it would be to justify this in the face of international press. We have ceased to be human. Everything boils now into "but they shoot qassams at us", the difficult living conditions in the south justify use of limitless force in the eyes of Israelis. They fail to see how the completely impossible living conditions in besieged Gaza were used to justify the use of force there. As in September 11th, the "terrorists" are "evil doers" without motives. They deserve the most brutal treatment, even when that treatment costs Israeli soldiers their lives, even when no long term, pragmatic plan is discussed, even when over 180 children are killed within a week.

We certainly gained a lot from bombing that school, we gained security for the south, no more rockets will fly there. We made good neighbors by bombing that school. We weakened Hamas. Now everybody in Gaza loves us and hates them! War makes wonderful sense. These words are written from an Israel in which racism is going through the roof and empathy has become nonexistent. Jaffa is lit in blinking blue, full of police cars waiting to arrest protesters. In the case of Jaffa protests, the participants (mostly Arab) get photographed and arrested after they return home.

Tomorrow I'm heading south to Ashdod to visit a bomb shelter and experience the anxiety there, but this war has already marked me with anxiety. Thank heavens for good friends, for Wassail and Jacques Brel. They help me go through this dark time, but if any darker times are in score, I will be singing of my country a very dark song.