Tel Aviv Diary - March 3, 2003 Karen Alkalay-Gut

March 3, 2003

i was sitting with a fine woman in a cafe today and recalled that last year at this time I had sat there with Samech and he was shaking with fear - couldnt wait to get back to Nazareth. What was he afraid of? she asked - being blown up i said. Could I have been mistaken or did she want to say - let them understand what it feels like. But she didn't - maybe sensitive to my feelings about my friend. But - and this is the ringer - i didn't blame her for what i projected as her feelings. Just as I wouldn't blame someone who said, I understand what makes someone a terrorist. Because all these feelings are legitimate here.

We are driving and I am thinking about the sign on route one in Jerusalem warning cohanim to drive in the left lane (because the right lane goes over a cemetery and cohanim as member of the priestly class aren't allowed to go into cemeteries) and we are on Lillienblum Street in Tel Aviv which is full of bars. And the contrast between my thoughts and the place is immeasurable. We go into Shesek to meet Oren and they are doing some wine tasting so we have cheese and sausage to clear the palate and the dissonance is even greater. And then I remember the booklet that came out recently for foreign workers advising them of Jewish laws so they can fit into religious families. And I am trying to remember the advice - if only so i can tell Oren. But by now I'm totally drunk and can barely remember who was Haman and who was Mordechai.

A typical night in Tel aviv.

March 4, 2003

The morning brings a call from my cafe partner. What projections are you making in your diary? "Is this possibly guilt that you are not relating to all the Palestinians killed yesterday - including terrorists but also including a woman in her ninth month?" And I must admit that I have been avoiding the more painful subjects lately because they make me feel so helpless and i become catatonic. "Stick to the facts, then." She says. Thank Goodness for sane friends.

Another sane friend, Shaindy, who has written about holy spaces, told me about this site kotel cam, where you can see the wailing wall and every send a virtual prayer. I don't have any prayers, having been taught that God is to be praised not pleaded with, but maybe you have a different relationship with Her.

I spent part of today talking to my insurance agent about the war - there is government insurance that apparently covers very little - but is cheap. So why am i not opposed to the war? I just sent Robert Rosenberg at Ariga my Purim poem. Did i post it here already? I forget and i really don't want to read this until i don't have to write here any more because as soon as I do I'll start hamming. So if I gave it to you before, here it is again. Its about the fact that on {Purim you're supposed to drink so much that you can't differentiate between Mordechai and Haman (as I did last night in preparation) and also the fact that not only was Haman hanged, but his 10 sons as well:

PURIM THOUGHTS

What if even one of the sons of Haman was not evil –

didn’t even carry the evil gene, and might have been

so much of a reaction to the evil he had seen

his only thoughts were of love.

What if he had been the one

to father the peace maker of Persia

in our time

how can I celebrate until I do not know the difference?

So if i'm such a goody-goody, how come i am not opposed to the war against iraq. My good friend, Alicia Ostriker, writes me:" you are about the only person I know personally who is supporting the war (I'm not), and I know you ARE sane so I don't get it--isn't Israel in MORE danger if there is a war? If Saddam has missiles he can use against you isn't he MORE likely to use them if we atack him? You think it isn't about oil, I think it is--true, we are importing Iraqi oil right now, every day, but that's not good enough, we want to own it. Or maybe we want to own the puppet that owns it. But no, it isn't just about oil, it is about power, and the Bush doctrine is quite open about this--that we are to be the one overwhelming power in the world. The stated plan is world domination.

We do cause suffering, mainly to Iraqis, by continuing the policy of containment (which worked for Stalin who was a whole lot more dangerous thatn Saddam). But unless you think the wqr is going to be over in an eyeblink, this suffering is nothing compared with what willl be when we attack. And we want to attack Iraq (not, for example, North Korea) BECAUSE Iraq is not dangerous enough to hurt us.

These are powerful arguments, and I'm sure they are mostly right, but here is my little gut list of responses:

(1) because if Ilan Ramon and those other Israelis had not bombed the nuclear reactor long ago i'd be glowing in the dark today. (2)because i sat shivering under the kitchen table for weeks every night 11 years ago (watching the dog to see if he was showing the effects of nerve gas) before i moved down to the shelter and watched my neighbors watching the dog. (3) Because the Al Samouds that are now being destroyed could easily be fitted with additional engines and chemical warheads. (4)Because i think this guy has been cooking up anthrax and smallpox to send to me in a small suitcase.

paranoid? well, yes. and far enough away from the burning Bush to ignore the fact that he thinks he was sent by God to smite the infidels and bring home the loot.

So my opposition to Saddam is based on fear. I can never remember the exact numbers of thousands of people he gassed, or murdered, or tortured - they are too vast and too terrifying. I read a number - and the number blurs into eyes, wombs, lips, arms. But I know that the deeds of Nicolae Ceausescu pale in the comparison with Saddam.

Did I tell you about this guy who arrived in Israel about 2 years ago from Iraq? Nissim Cohen his name was. He was one of the Jews arrested for conspiracy in Baghdad and after a few years of torture got released. Well he was the right age and had the right looks for me to get all excited about fixing him up with some of my ex students - but he had that blank, beaten look that make it impossible to make contact with anyone. Michal, my cleaning lady, rummaged through my closets for blankets she thought i could do without and some of my son's old clothes because she said he is constantly cold, needs layers and layers to warm up. Later he began to tell stories about torture that she couldn't repeat without crying, and since she has enough to cry out, we left the subject for later.

Now about human shields:

If in my house some bad guys came in and said they wanted only me and wouldn't hurt anyone else unless it was to get through me, I'd step out and say - here i am. I am not a hero but i wouldn't want to see other people murdered because of me. So the idea of Saddam placing himself strategically surrounded by vulnerable civilians so that when they get hit they will create a positive propaganda for him does not appeal to my (albeit crippled) sense of humanity. I would like to drop flyers all over Baghdad saying - "Free Vacation in Paphos for a week! Come fly with us! Return Tickets assured!" and then bomb the shit out of Saddam. But who is morally responsible for these people if something happens to them? I think i put Saddam at the head of the list. Bush second. Me third.

None of this answers Alicia's question. I am not even aiming for facts, i guess.

Now as far as the connection between terrorism and Saddam. Yes, he supports it. i've even seen on tv the giant checks he passes around to the families of suicide bombers. but some big checks is not enough to kill him. what is enough is the mentality of destruction of enemies that he generates in the area, and the much bigger checks he gives out for weapons of mass destruction here.

The whole thing is iffy at best - if the US manages to slide a smart bomb into Saddam's bunker - then who will take over? There are not only problems of power within Iraq - which has been seething for a generation, but Iran is not such a nice place anymore either. And guess what. They too would like to kill me.

Do you think me mad? Then know, I still have a t-shirt i made from the Gulf war with gunsights over my heart. It gave me comfort to realize my fears.

Now tell me, Jerry and Alicia, how do i make a rational decision in the face of this?

Actually I think the whole issue of war here is a double bind - remember that poem I put on the "Poets Against War" site? Civil Defense. It basically says that war is no win.

There is another element of this world crisis Alicia introduced that is particularly ironic - North Korea is the big threat now, right? they've got the bomb and they are not pulling punches about it. but the U.S. doesn't go for them. It's the old looking for your key under the streetlamp because even though you dropped it in the bushes its too dark there to look.

But there is a logic here. First - NK came after. Iraq was first. well first in public consciousness at least. all right, first to voice a threat on the media.

but seriously - if Bush backs out of confrontation with Iraq now, how would it look to NK? Huh? He'll be a wussy and it will be that much harder to bargain.

Forgive me, I wrote through the night and didn't put on today's date, March 5. But you got it anyway, right?

My ex mother in law is, according to my calculations, due to leave the hospital today and may be going home to rest after her cancer operation. She lives on Shmariyahu Levin Street in Haifa – a stone's throw from the explosion a few minutes ago. And there is a chance my daughter went to see her. My daughter often doesn't answer her cellular phone so there is no reason for me to panic. And my daughter is only occasionally communicative so there is no reason to be surprised if she hasn't called. But having reached my son I am partially relieved - since he seems to be totally untroubled and too busy to talk.

How many have been killed? How many arms and legs flew into the air? How many of these attacks have been prevented in the past month? I think I keep a running statistic in my head. And I'm pretty good at speculating like a lotto what the number will be. I see their faces in my head even at this moment while I fear the worst for my own child.

two minutes later and my son calls back - "no - the explosion is not that close orit is at work" I calm down a bit. After all he should know he's seen bombs being dismantled in tel aviv. My knowledge is only virtual. Then i remember Sapi's face in the newspaper among the dead last month in tel aviv.

May all of you have only virtual knowledge of terrorist attacks – or war for that matter.

and may writing be a joyous celebration of life and not the querulous analysis this diary is becoming.

she turned up!

March 6, 2003

Once i found her, my attention could begin to expand to others. A few hours of cold sweat over what might have been concommitant with a few hours of worrying over who was killed.

Even in situations like this we make little bets with ourselves. Is it old people? children? is thre anything that could ameliorate the number 15 killed? The identities come slowly - a soldier, a 13 year old boy, a girl, a mother. Oren was right, Orit was no where near and therefore didn't think to call. then i see a man was talking on his cellular to his 13 year old son who got on the bus that exploded. he heard his son die.

the suicide bomber, 20 years old, praised the twin tower act.

i think we have a problem with relative values.

A student wrote today to complain that he had seen me at a memorial ceremony for Talma Yizraeli I had helped organize two days ago. He had seen me crying over a friend and yet i didn't mention it in my pages here. I try to put the personal in only where it absolutely relates to the public. But maybe just the fact that the situation here doesn't give you time or focus enough to work through even the most intimate details of your life is relevant. There is much more pain and joy in my daily existence than i touch on here.

One detail: My fascination with the German actor Kurt Gerron causes me to peek on the internet whenever i get a chance. I haven't found the film "Karosell" on his yet, but I will be bringing his enormous portrait into my tiny living room this weekend, so last night i looked him up again. It seems that after all the torture of making him make Nazi films, he was send to his death in Aushwitz singing the song that make him initially famous, Mack the Knife. I gave you a link to Amazon's clip a few weeks ago, before i knew that detail. Oh, if I could take a year off work id do a bio of him. the poor guy really deserves it.

March 6, 2003

The stories coming from Haifa are terrifying - a father talking on the cellphone to his 13 year old son is suddenly cut off, when the boy says "I love you" and then the father finds him in a sack hours later. Multiply that story by 15. Reali High School, which lost 2 students last year in an explosion in a restaurant, now has 3 more to mourn. A star student from Dalit El Karmel, also 13, blown up also.

The news is also filled with death of the 11 people in Gaza. Horrendous. The Israeli Army claims they didn't aim at the people, but at an RPG, that there was an explosion not of their making... who knows? When you have people with weapons, people get killed. The peace process has to begin again. It just has to. Until we all realize that no one is going to get anything this way, everyone's life is in danger.

After i recorded this little telephone interview with Israel radio station about my putting a poem on the "Poets Against the War" site, i fell asleep - very frustrated that i hadn't said half the things i really wanted to say about the war - and i heard myself in a dream saying "Even if one is forced to kill someone who is threatening lives, it is forbidden to rejoice over their death." Now i think this is a stolen line - but i have no idea who my dreamself stole it from. at least not right now. It is certainly something i believe with my entire soul - even though it can lead to a self-righteousness that is far worse than outright pleasure at victory.

In fact that may be one of the few sins that worries me the most - unexamined self righteousness - whether it comes from the left or the right, the Israelis or the Palestinians.

If you want something to help you get through the weekend, check out Rowena Silver's poem and Srinjay Chakravati's poem on Ariga.

Hell, check out Ariga. period.

March 8, 2003

Movies! Steven Spielberg's film archive! There is some great footage of old Tel Aviv in the twenties and thirties. And it reminded me that once we marvelled over all the things we now take for granted.

There are lots of other wild things on that site, but i'm trying to stay focussed here.

My email is full of the injustices of CNN and the crooked reportage that equated a terrorist bomber killing 15 on a bus with 11 killed in Gaza when the Israeli army aimed at attackers. I Do tend to believe the Israeli army reports that the explosives in Gaza were not exploded by the army but by their attackers, but i've given up believing in the possibilties of my intelligence actually ferreting out the truth here. I just listened to the U.N. report on weapons in Iraq, for example, and if they are really right, then I've been wrong all along about making war.

No, I'm not ashamed to admit my errors. I'm scared that if i can make such mistakes, what about the people who are actually making policies.

(later) Then i listen to Colin Powell, to Amnon Lifkin-Shahak (who should have been prime minister last time around in my book)and i start rethinking my rethinking. It all comes down to who you believe.

And who can you believe? In Kiryat Arba tonight terrorists dressed as observant Jews entered and opened fire. I have no details - but even without details this is terrible.

Today in Tel Aviv as we sat in Cafe Olga I kept remembering the times I used to go there 30 years ago - I used to meet with Yishayahu Avrech, who had offered me a job in the Labor Union as cultural organizer or something - and the whole place was Labor party and union people... It was a world of socialism, and the belief in the triumph of the working class and all of humanity, and it was so far removed from today's vigilance of terrorists.

But to return to Iraq - I hope someone is noticing the fact that Iran is finding it hard to sit on its hands waiting to conquer what's left of Iraq once Saddam is gone. And Iran is not much nicer than Saddam. And will be much more powerful once it's digested (burp) Iraq. When someone told me tonight that I am not opposed to the war on iraq because i think it will be good for israel, i pointed this out - that i fear just the opposite is true.

And we visited Muma's chemical tent today - she set it up in Sara's bedroom - for the whole family in case of war. It's amazing the different solutions we are all coming up with - when none of us are sure what the problem will be. Chemical? Biological? One hour? One day? One week? One month?

I'm taking on too many different subjects tonight

and none of them are clear and final.

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