Tel Aviv Diary - March 13, 2003 Karen Alkalay-Gut
March 13, 2003
If I've been complaining that atrocities committed by the Israeli Army - even by mistake or accident in the heat of battle - should be mentioned in the Hebrew papers, my complaints have been proving unfounded. Today's Ha'aretz has an article about that very pregnant woman who was buried alive when her house was blown up next to the house of a terrorist. Noha al-Makadama. The awareness, the attempt to humanize the other, gives me hope.
It's a little to early in the morning for my friend John in England to agreed to my publishing his 'love mail' - but i figure he's done it before, so he'll agree today. Here's what he wrote about my 'theory' that the Palestinians are the unexiled Jews from Babylon, so all we need to do is declare them Jewish and all our problems are solved.
"I loved your idea about adopting the Palestinians as lost Jews...but what if, by the same logic, they demand you convert to Islam?" -- John http://www.merseymouth.com
first - it isn't a demand - it's a fantasy i mean the facts don't support my little theory. Ii'm working on the principle of Shimon Peres who says that history is less significant than imagination.
Then after i sent my reply I realized I hadn't answered his question. Typical of me. But the idea is that it would solve OUR problems to DECLARE them Jewish. They don't have to agree. It's only for our little mythology. I don't believe in signifier and signified, you see.
March 14, 2003
As we are getting ready to go out we zap channels a bit and discover my old friend Eyal Megged, once a romantic poet, and now a poltical right-wing writer of power. The interviewer quotes him saying "Hope equals death" and asks him if it is true. Yes, he answers to hope is to (i may be quoting this wrong) become vulnerable to death. His example is from the Camps - where ... but i have ceased to listen. I am thinking of Kurt Gerron making this film of Thereisenstat for Hitler hoping he will save himself and these people by giving Hitler what he wants. But he and the others involved in the film are shipped off to Auschwitz and the film is snipped up and used to convince the west that there is no extermination going on - helping in the extermination of countless others. Kurt Gerron, who only wanted presence - to be in front or behind a camera seemed to evidence his existence - was destroyed because of his presence, and many others were destroyed because of his anticipation. In this way Megged is right.
In another way he is wrong. We go to dinner with the student editors of the anthology and discuss the extraordinary difficulties of translating cultures. It is not only that certain words don't exist in different languages, but that the entire concept of what poetry is, what language is, what culture is, is a world apart.
This effort - born of hope - to bring the cultures just a tiny bit closer in these terrible times - seems to counter Eyal's "hope is death". "Hope is life" I want to say. And if my end is similar to Kurt Gerron's, I have at least moved in a direction i am proud of. It comes to this - even if Eyal is right, and the naivete self-destructive, i'd rather die this way than behind terrified wise walls.
I understand the academy nominee for this year for best documentary film is "Prisoners of Promise" which is about Gerron in Thereisenstat. I haven't been able to get hold of ths film yet, so any reviews of it or spottings of it in Israel would be welcome.
Alan from London just sent me some reviews of the film. Apparently Gerron doesn't come out too well. Well he must have been a workaholic who thought that as long as he was doing a good job work could save him. In a way I feel that too - even though i know that tomorrow (Ides of March, remember) a spray of mustard gas could hit my neighborhood and i wouldn't be ready because I've just got to correct these papers. Know that feeling? And even though i know that there are moral issues in this country i'm ignoring - even as we speak - because they hurt so much to confront. So Gerron is still my guy.
I'm going to try and get over and wrap him up in bubble wrap in case there's a war and he gets bombed. But now I know why the painter, Shalom Sebba, was not all that interested in preserving Gerron's memory and gave the painting to Bandi and Sara - he was what is called in this country a "mashtap," meshatef peula, a collaborator. And he must have known the consequences. Yes. I like him.
So what did I do last night? Ah yes, I mentioned it before. I went out to dinner with ezi, shusha and the editors of the student anthology, that i hope will be called "huna - here - c'an" or here in 3 languages. I love that title because here is a different place in each language. And when we translate the word we change to a different place in a way. It's like what I always used to say about writing about Israel in English. I may want to write about some banal every day event but if it takes place in Armageddon the significance of the poem alters. We used to go to the sea of Galilee every weekend to water ski - and ezi was so good at it i used to sit in the boat and try to write about it - but walking on the water in the sea of galilee is different in english... I finally had to make a compromise with the language and include the problem in the poem. It's in Mechitza somewhere on the web.
To return to the anthology - when you see the poems in front of you - so absolutely different And I think that by writing this down now I am copyrighting the title for us all. But I'll finish the copywright procedure tomorrow to make sure.
March 15, 2003
When i complained a few days ago that the story of my aunt's husband (who gentlemanly rescued the other 3 partisan women from the burning barn before his wife, and so was responsible for her death)was paradigmatic of Israel, I wasn't totally convinced - thought i was once again being 'creative' rather than political. But today I saw a documentary of Pinchas Sapir, the legendary minister of finance who was largely responsible for the success of establishment of the state, and discovered this truth again. Sapir was a dove - and after 67 wanted very much to get rid of the territories. He was logically in line for the primeministership, but declared privately that he would never never counter Golda Meir. So she became prime minister and he remained finance minister. And the policies that in my mind would have saved the country were forgotten.
I may actually have heard this story before - because Sapir was always very dear to me - but buried it in my general angst.
March 16, 2003
We pass the city hall about five in the afternoon and it looked normal. we had dinner across the street and when we passed again the square had transformed itself. Robert Rosenberg said: Look how the children of Tel Aviv are working out their phobias. (hope this doesn't take too long to download)
This is this year's Purim - SCUDs dressed up - deactivated - as it were.
So we have a new economic plan - remember i told you Bibi never pays the trademen who work for him, or the restaurants he eats at, or the hairdresser... it looks like this policy has now extended to the whole country. He's imposing a capitalistic policy on a country that doesn't have any economic production any more - WHAT WE NEED IS A NEW DEAL! Where is Franklin when we need him?
Rachel Corrie was killed today when she tried to stop a bulldozer. The bulldozer drove over her and then back up over her again. Here's a picture of her that's a little less sweet that the standard one. It sounds like total brutality - but the same thing happened to Gadi Yagil a few months ago in Tel Aviv. A guy drove over him, realized something was wrong, and backed up. So it wasn't a bulldozer - and he didn't die. But the idea of an accident in highly charged circumstances like that is now only possible, but almost inevitable. I am very sorry for the loss of life, but the thing that bothers me is that the houses are being bulldozed and i don't even know why. There doesn't seem to be sufficient explanations. Why was this house about to be bulldozed? Why were there people there? Was there no warning?
And we have been on the eve of war for so many months that now we are not preparing any more - we are just panicking. What shall we do? As Ezi says we always prepare for the LAST war, but this one is going to be different. i assume we're in for a nuclear terrorist attack. So you know i write every day - and if i don't write you can assume there's a reason.
March 17, 2003
This of course obliges me to write even when it is painful to even listen to the news on radio. One thing I've been looking for in the maps of Iraq - especially of the routes U.S. troops will be taking, is the bridges over the tigris and the euphrates. the claim is that these bridges will become the bottlenecks where the Iraqi army will claim many losses of the Americans, and then the Americans - who have a short fuse when it comes to body counts - will withdraw.
An interesting theory, but what about iwo jima and WWII? The U.S. knew how to fight there didn't they?
To return to the point. I went to look up the bridges - and suddenly realized I was looking at the Garden of Eden, right? Tigris and Euphrates - somewhere where the 4 rivers meet...
In the meantime the Home front here has announced that people should finish up buying what they need for the war - the gas masks, the food stores, the plastic sheeting, duct tape. I thought everyone had that stuff already for weeks. But no. Most of the people I spoke to today look at me blankly when i ask. huh. war? food? masks?
Better that way - a Beduin family got asphixiated last night when their coal fire burned all night in a sealed room. The mistakes and accidents are endless.
At least with all the people leaving the country for the war, we'll have open roads...
Let me go back to the subject of Purim. I think I'm supposed to be reading at a purim party at the hebrew writers association on wednesday - but it is sooo sad i might not be able to drag myself to it. I was remembering tonight happier Purims in Israel - when we had great parties and the adults had much more fun that even the kids did. The idea of confusion was great fun - messing up standard values. Ah me. Right. I do have a piece about Purims Past and how we felt we were redeeming the Holocaust a bit by celebrating the triumph over evil. It's here. But
Tonight I was thinking about my cousins who were partisans with my aunt Malcah, Sima and Nachum. They came to Israel after WWII and began to live a great life of redemption. They were older (then me) but they had great fun -dressing up on Purim and having dance parties. Bandi and Sara used to go to the big Purim parties in Ein Hod, the artist community up north. There are a few pictures that make it look that there were no better times to be had in the world than at those parties, Ezi's uncle dressing up as King Farouk surrounded by handmaidens (His fez even turned up recently).
The whole RELIEF of Purim in Israel - the freedom to lose control - to go crazy - was a luxury i don't think we allow ourselves any more. I mean - after all - today Bibi released more aspects of his economic plan. Ezi likes it even though we are all choking. I am afraid for the poor here, because they are the ones who are going to suffer more than ever now. There are simply no reserves for them.
A woman from the food bank was interviewed today in Iraq - she was complaining that people only have food for 6 weeks at home, and then after that she's worried about how will they get the food to them. 6 weeks! i know people personally who can't afford to buy enough food for a week in advance! hell - for a DAY!
Many of them are Arab - who have suffered the most from this deep economic recession.
But I DO go on. I have an appointment to discuss the war with Kurt Gerron. I know it is only a painting of him. I know my obsession with him is a bit strange. But it puts together the loss of my parents and my in-laws, the holocaust, the fear of coming war, and most of all the questions of how to be moral in an immoral world - and i think he has a lot to teach me, both from his successes and his failures.
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