Tel Aviv Diary - March 8, 2003 Karen Alkalay-Gut
March 8, 2003
To save our souls we went on a long tour of nature in our neighborhood this morning. I am now going to try to post some of the pictures Ezi took and then explain.
The stairs are brand new - from the train station to the university. the herons live in a tree across the street from the university. and the view is basically from the university. so there isn't much of the breadth and depth of the country here.
but i was in need of some self-examination, an evaluation of my own soul and the soul of this people at the present time.
March 8, 2003
I couldn't even write yesterday. There were two groups of people killed by enemies of each other and I kept comparing them in my head. First: Israelis fired 4 missiles at the car of Ibrahim al-Makadme, one of the founders of Hamas and head of the organization's military wing in the Gaza Strip, We say he engineered a number of attacks that killed 28 Israelis. His three bodyguards were killed as well. Alrahman al-Amudi, 27, Khaled Juma, 29, and Ala Shukri, 24.
Friday night in Kiryat Arba two Palestinian terrorists dressed as religious Jews cut the fence, entered and first shot a couple walking by the security fence before entering the home of Rabbi Elnatan Horowitz and his wife, Dina and killing them plus injuring two other Israelis before being killed by the Israel Defense Forces. Four soldiers were lightly wounded in the gunfight that erupted.
I never report the news because you can get it in more authoritative places but the contrast and similarity drove me mad yesterday.
The result is that people were killed. It may be silly to say but i'm sure noone of these people wanted to die. The neighbors of Dina Horowitz, heard her screams as she ran through the house trying to escape this fate. A teacher and mother like me, and close to my age, it is natural that I would identify with her - especially since I have grown up with the nightmare of being murdered in my house by enemy soldiers who have no personal grudge, but hate me because I am Jewish (comes from living with Holocaust survivors). Now someone like al-Amudi certainly saw Dina Horowitz as a dangerous enemy, as dangerous as we saw him.
In a way the moral dilemma here is simple - al-Amudi planned the murders of others and therefore deserved to die; Horowitz merely lived in a place whose 'ownership' is disputed.
But, what do you know, this distinction solves no real problems, and only helps to elevate the intensity of the cycle. Hamas has already said that they are now going after our own leaders (as if their killing of Minister Rehavam Zeevi 2 years ago didn't count) and we'll have to 'do' something about the murder of the Rabbi and Rebbitzin... so here we go again.
One of the things that makes this cycle continue is the fact that we don't think of our enemies as human beings - the beautiful picture of the Horowitz's is on the front page of Ha'aretz but we didnt get one of al-Amudi. I don't mean that the press is to blame - although there is certainly a slant in all of the news on both sides - but that we all have to get beyond all this.
How do we do it? How is it possible to 'delete' the information? Two cultures who believe in the strength of collective memory?
In the past I have suggested the need for total creativity. Here's one of my mad solutions:
When the Jews were exiled from their land to Babylon, we know that only the leaders and troublemakers were taken away. Most of the people remained to till the land, fish, hunt. By my calculations these are the people who were later converted to Islam. So it seems that the Palestinians are the unexiled Jews, right? So all we have to do is declare them Jews, bring them all into the 'fold' like we did those million russians, and we have a multinational state that is also a jewish state and a Palestinian homeland at the same time!
Change the coordinates.
To return to the issue of the objectivity of the press, there have been numerous complaints by journalists about this. One such is by Ehud Asheri in the 'shots across the bow' section of Ha'aretz this weekend. It's the second piece. There are far more complaints about the inaccuracies and slants of CNN around here, and they too are justified, but since few people here read the Arab papers, there aren't too many complaints about them.
Some people say it is a diaspora mentality for the Jews to always blame themselves - but I think it is healthy to struggle constantly to be objective and to try to be just - even if it hurts. especially when it hurts.
Speaking of diaspora mentality, I haven't heard a word from anyone about all i've said about Kurt Gerron. Doesn't anyone know anything about him - or care?
In the mean time I stare at the yard wide portrait of him - painted in 1928 by Shalom Sebba when Gerron had probably just made Mac The Knife a famous song - and wish we could talk.
March 10, 2003
I wish i lived in less interesting times - Not like the Chinese curse - I don't want a boring life, but one that can be conscribed in a daily entry in a diary. A page a day at best. Ladies my age know what I mean - where the highlight of the evening was writing about whether he kissed you or not.
But instead we get conflicting instructions every minute, differing perspectives, and no orientation.
Linda reminded me when I told her about the 'solution for peace' (about declaring all the Palestinians Jews) that this was a solution we came to together when all the genetic research was coming out about the DNA similarities between Palestinians and Ashkenazi Jews. In other words, it was research made in preparation for peace. Who would instigate that kind of research today? Who knows, maybe with Abu Mazen as Prime Minister we have a chance.
Hope he doesn't become like Hubert Humphrey... (Remember Tom Lehrer's song "Whatever became of Hubert?" If you don't know it I'll post the lyrics). I've put my faith in so many leaders who have disappeared one way or another that I worry about my ability to trust any more. As soon as I started to root for Hanan Ashrawi she got nasty and then silent. And Marwan Barghouti... oy...
What about Israeli leaders, I hear you cry out... All right I was in love with Shimon Peres. I couldn't see how he could lose. But he lost, like my second love, Amnon Lifkin-Shahak, because he was too straight, too honest, and too polite, letting the other guys have a turn even though he knew he was the best for the job.
Politeness. My mother lost about 10 siblings, their spouses, and their kids in the war. All of them except one were shot in the market place in Lida one day. (Details of that story are way back at the beginning of April in this entry and this entry diary.. The youngest one, Malcah, was a partisan. She was hiding with three other women and her husband in some barn, and the farmer turned them in to the Nazis who came to burn the barn. Malcah's husband - a proper Polish gentleman - helped the other women out first. By the time he got to his wife she was burnt alive. (There's a related poem on a poet born. He escaped and after the war made it to New York. My mother never forgave him and never spoke to him. After she passed away I heard from my father's sister that his name was Katz, that she had been in touch with him, and he had recently died.
I suppose I should have learned from this not to respect Polish gentlemen.
Here's the poem about her from In My Skin
MALCAH
Sometimes, on a quiet summer night
I smell her flesh burning.
The shack ignited by Aryan soldiers
flares up again: the informant farmer
watches from the barn.
The women scream
as my uncle
pulls them out
one by one
leaving her –
perversely,
heroically,
for last.
And there she
remains
for me –
my Partisan aunt –
Queen of burning flesh.
Forgot my point.
March 11, 2003
Didn't have a point - that was it. Ever since I've started getting deeper into Kurt Gerron I keep finding ancestors of mine from the Holocaust and it distracts me. Yes I did have a point - the point was that even my selection of political leaders is related to the ideals masculinity and leadership i got from the diaspora home i grew up in. Maybe my mother never forgave Mr. Katz but she married a man who was probably similar in personality - idealistic, a bit vague about reality, good hearted. Now this is not exactly the kind of leader who makes it in our society, right?
I want to go out to dinner but at the risk of keeping Elli waiting I do want to respond the people who keep writing me about Bush's agenda. I am sure you are all right - he does want the oil - he does have an agenda. So does Germany and so does Russia and so does France. And they are all involved in oil. Whose agenda are you going to support? And at what cost?
March 12, 2003
I keep thinking of the Iraqi people - especially of the families in Baghdad who live near Saddam. He announced a few weeks ago that everyone can dig a foxhole in his garden, but that isn't going to help much is it. Let's say I am a widow with 6 little kids. Can I take my kids to the country? Can I leave? Can I store food? How can I keep them safe? If there is anything that makes me want to keep out of the war it is this image - of the citizen who has suffered enough. Apparently the number of Iraqi people Saddam has had killed exceeds the projected number of dead in a U.S. led attack, but these statistics only increase the intensity of the suffering.
I am getting a little tired of hate mail lately - I know i expose myself to it by putting my address and my diary on line and i have no right to complain, but so little of it has any productive value, and only serves to reminds me that some people would like me dead. period. Can i ask that we see if we can start talking instead of insulting my family and ancestors?
Yes, hate mail. Look, if you want to join in with something constructive I'll put it in my diary, but this is the last word i'm going to say about simply nasty letters.
I read through the instructions in English for protection from chemical and biological warfare - much less scary in english. I gave the address last week on email but now i got a copy for my foreign housecleaner who is freaked out totally. She lives with her family in the heart of Tel Aviv, in an apartment with no windows that seal, and has to BUY her mask for 200 shekel. And now they are saying that the masks they are selling are expired.
After all this anticipation of a war, isn't it to your advantage now that it begins to look like there won't be a war after all? This from Jeff in California who has been telling me for two months that he is against the war for my sake (well "my" sake metonymically). Now Iraq won't attack you, he says. But if they were going to attack me because the US was attacking them then they DO have the bloody weapons the US says they have. And appeasement is not going to work in the long run (around here the long run is 1 year max).
One very good thing about the news today is that the US is waking up to realize that IRAN is as big a threat as Iraq is. And that its been playing with bombs that light up the environment for years. HELLO.
Why is that good? It isn't. I'd rather be wrong about that.
Hell, I'd rather be wrong about Iraq, France, and a few of my relatives.
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