(Y2) politics

I began my stay in Israel in favor of a 2 state solution as the best of the bad choices of solution and i still hold the same opinion. when the plo comes out in favor of a one state solution and begins to advocate east jerusalem arabs signing up for citizenship that will be the point when the rubber hits the road in terms of how left i am willing to be.

I went to a few rallies: two rallies in Sheikh Jarrah where i felt alone and out of tune with the other rally'ers. one saturday night rally in favor of the new left contract, i arrived at the tail end of the rally because buses after shabbat start real late and the rally which was mostly for out of towners started real early and my reaction was mostly argumentative. some rally near the prime minister's "residence" that was either about corruption or about freeing gilad shalit, i don't remember which. I remember arguing a couple (at least 3) times with people at the "women in black" in kikar paris. I argued against a sign that said, "obama shut up" at the december 09 anti settlement freeze rally in kikar paris. the right wingers are a bunch of shits. i've had people tell me to leave israel, some asshole getting on a bus near mashbir and the people at the "obama shut up" rally and after the new left rally when arguing with rightists.

if any single event changed me politically it was the gaza war. I think the war went on too long and was too destructive and in retrospect they could have changed the siege rules to reach an agreement.

i was repulsed (too strong) at the rally against the turkish embassy in the aftermath of the mavi marmara (that i saw on t.v.).

my participation in the mondoweiss web site and even before that in the jewcy web site moved me to the left because of my needs to reach an intellectually consistent opinion, which is only necessary if one argues with leftists and is not necessary if i am sitting alone in my room reacting to each headline one by one.

my visit to karnei shomron was my most advanced stay in the territories and i have written about that before.

I didn't vote for obama.
I am against attacking the iranian nuclear project by israel and probably by america as well.
carey fredman's advocacy of attacking it plus his motorcycle accident afterwards, plus micha odenheimer's wife's vehement opposition to it, clarified the validity of the opposition to israel's attack on it.

I met phil weiss. i met shmuel from italy.

I felt the attack on the merkaz harav school before i even read about it.

I studied arabic and saw lots of arabs at the malcha mall.

I tried to cop in the old city but various factors stood in my way.

(Y1) my yerida

nothing is written in stone and there are no guarantees in life, but my plan is to leave israel about july 1st. i have been here a little less than 4 years and i don't feel at home. my cousin zev wrote in a recent letter, i never understood why you made aliya. you are a new yorker and will always be a new yorker, so why would you move to israel.

here's what i wrote back today:i do not regret my time spent in israel, if only for the writing that i've done. it was also something that i had accepted as "fact" when i was young. (i will move to israel when i grow up.) and even though various other facts i had accepted when i was young (i will be religious when i grow up, i will get married when i grow up, i will have children when i grow up) were not borne out by reality, i accept that i wanted to make the aliya thing a reality. i do feel that there is a bit of a contradiction between loyalty to israel and living in america and thus an attempt at aliya made sense on that level. i think most americans who make aliya go through crises during the first seven years of their aliya, but whereas they have kids in school as a factor which keeps them in israel, my childlessness is an "advantage" in this case. I am also glad that i got to experience living here and learning as much arabic as i did and i regret many things i didn't do here that i had imagined i would do here, but when elvis or sinatra sing "my way", i change the words to- "regrets i have a few, but then again too many to mention."

i should add that because mention rhymes with bentsching that is usually included at the end of whatever verse i try to follow up the "my way" verse with.

"And thanks, the food was good, but will somebody please start the bensching."

at the midr'chov a guitar player played dylan's tambourine man as i was leaving and some song that said home is wherever i am when i arrived there. is new york home? is jerusalem home? i certainly feel like prison here. certainly the deprivation of ganga is a major player in my moods and that element confuses me: am i going back to new york just for the ganga? but there you have it.

mich, norm are the primary concerns of regret. but the fact that i have not informed tova and pnina yet of how solid my plans are, also indicates that there are other regrets.

I guess i am glad i was in israel for amital's funeral and got to say hello to him one last time at kenny's son's wedding.

jews of lebanon

last day of august.
i'm not sure how many days it is since my last post to mondoweiss, but here's to keeping that streak going. if they had immediate posts i'm sure i would not be able to restrain myself, but given the lack of immediate posts it is entirely feasible.
i started trying to put bmp in order (meaning lighting a fire under it and thus absolving the language problem by making it immediate instead of weak) by changing 3rd person to 1st person.
dreamed of judy the k. and wasted time and plugs that don't go into outlets and sharing quarters with others and hairy female stomachs. reminded of hanging out at the k. residence in some dreams.
so someone on mondoweiss has posted regarding the lebanese being superior to americans that they have rebuilt a synagogue despite all the attacks from the jewish state, whereas america does not want the mosque near ground zero.

as christopher hitchens has pointed out on slate, the opposition to the mosque has a lot to do with other subjects other than the attack on the world trade center: namely the fact that white america feels under attack by the growing population of nonwhites that will recede from majority status to plurality status some time around 2040. that it is this insecurity that is at the base of the opposition to the mosques that they have as much to do with insecurity regarding immigration as they have to do with the attack on the WTC. does lebanon need to fear jewish immigration. when the numbers of jews in lebanon hovers somewhere between 50 and 1000 and the jewish community does not dare to vote so as to maintain their discretion, no. Lebanon has nothing to fear from jewish immigration. the jews have something to fear from their presence in lebanon despite some public relations statements made by nasrallah. the reestablishment of the synagogue is pure P.R. and to equate the new mosque which is meant to attract a truly universal population that visits new york and an increasing muslim population that is immigrating to america to a synagogue that has no rabbi, because the jewish community is too small and too scared to have a rabbi is to compare an open society to a society that is not opened to jews, but is near the end of a lengthy process of kicking out the jews, if not by policy than by acts of hatred.

visit to Karnei Shomron (as reported to mondoweiss)

By chance, one week before Shmuel spent a Shabbat at his sister’s, I spent a Shabbat at a West Bank settlement as well. While he had the excuse of his nephew’s post wedding Shabbat, I had no such excuse, only a desire to see an old friend from 40 or so years ago and a desire to see him on his home turf. I found the experience quite confusing, besides the usual: friends of old who have kept the faith with Torah, with large families, looking forward to retirement, the presence in a settlement nowhere near the lines of 67 added an element of unusual confusion.

Although as has been noted the two state solution is nowhere near, that is still my hope and thus my friend’s home, would have to be evacuated like the Gaza settlements. I imagined receiving a call in the middle of the night (Friday night) from the IDF, telling me to help evacuate the family of my host from their home, to ease the process of evacuation.

In fact my only mention of politics was at the lunch table, “Do you think Israel will ever annex the West bank?” and my friend said, “Not today and not tomorrow.” Although the heat was intense my friend and his wife took me on a tour of the settlement and from the fringes we could see the surrounding hills, mostly empty. My friend’s wife said, “See. There’s plenty of room here for everybody.” I didn’t argue. If everyone would get the vote and full rights, she is right. It’s not a lack of room that’s the problem(although there is a lack of water, it seems.) but the lack of a political agreement.

As a rule I try to minimize my participation in prayer services because they tend to send my compass’s needle twirling instead of pointing towards true north. But Shabbat afternoon I participated, but when I reached the paragraph that prays for peace, I found the contradiction between my vision for peace and the fact of the settlement a bit too glaring.

(M66) look back in anger

Jimmy (Richard burton) is angry. He is married to a pretty dull blonde and he is friends with a noncombative passive sort of fellow. his wife is pregnant and he doesn't know. he sells candies, though he has a college education. his wife burns herself on an iron when jimmy knocks it over. jimmy has a soft heart for a woman who is motherlike towards him when she visits town. later she dies. the dull blonde invites her friend, claire bloom to visit. jimmy and she argue. jimmy is a trumpet player and he plays loudly in order to tell us he's angry. jimmy and his friend interrupt a rehearsal where claire bloom is on stage and they make havoc of it. the blonde is sick of jimmy beating up on her emotionally and so eventually she leaves town. claire bloom falls in love with jimmy. turns out the friend doesn't like claire bloom and so he decides to leave town. then jimmy's wife shows up. she has lost the baby (and the ability to have kids). now that she is a sufferer she and jimmy can get along together.
tortuous to watch.
B

(M65) Escape from alcatraz

Clint- a prisoner who has been sent to alcatraz because he has escaped from other prisons arrives. He meets the warden, a sadist. (This is established when the warden takes away painting privileges from an inmate who goes nuts when this is done to him.) Clint meets the other inmates- first a quirky sort who feeds food to his pet mouse. Then the local bully who wants to fuck him, but Clint beats him up in the shower. When the bully tries to stab Clint in the yard, Clint succeeds in foiling the attempt. The offender is sent to punishment, but so is Clint. (the cruelty of the place.) Clint befriends a black inmate. Clint tells his plan to three others- his neighbor and two others who have access to materials needed for the escape. Painstaking preparations including welding a spoon onto a nail clipper, including a narrow escape. Guard almost sees the welded instrument when the neighbor cannot whistle in time. Right before the escape: bully gets out of solitary and black friend stops him from attacking Clint. Threat of bully causes a moving up of the escape date, which thwarts the warden's plans to move Clint. Clint's neighbor decides not to escape and then regrets his decision, but ends up in his cell. Clint and the other two swim away on a homemade raft. The only evidence of their survival are crysanthemums left on the island adjacent to Alcatraz. (that flower was the signature of the painter who cut off his own hand in protest of the removal of his painting privileges.) we don't know whether they made it or not. Based on a true story.

B

paranoia? bullshit!

Robin- The first thought that comes to mind is that old joke, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” I have counter protested pro Palestinian protesters in the streets of New York and at times they find it to their benefit to hold hands with blatant Jew haters. And then they dare to call me paranoid! This doesn’t apply to you, because I do not recall anything in your posts that resembles that idea of holding hands with Jew haters.

Fear is innately irrational because it is an emotion. When one steps away from the emotion and tries to analyze whether intellectually there is or isn’t something to fear, then one can analyze whether it is a rational fear or an irrational fear. Paranoia is a disease. If a fear has some basis in the present reality rather than in some incident that occurred in connection with another person years ago, then it is not paranoia, it is not a disease. It can be called (whatever you want to call it, but assuming you wish to use the language with some degree of precision rather than talk or write like an ignorant street rabble rouser) exaggerated fear, but it is not paranoia.

If I read the Hamas charter and take it at its word, does that make me paranoid. It may be a bad argument because the Likud charter is bad too. But this is not about arguments per se, this is about whether my fears are so irrational to be labeled diseased. If I take the Hamas charter at its word does that make me diseased? I think not. If the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the “mother” organization of Hamas were admirers of Hitler, this might not be argument enough to avoid negotiations, but it certainly is enough to remove fear of Hamas from the category of diseased.

I could go on in that vein, but I think the accusation of paranoia is just bull**** and should be avoided, unless you wish to use words in an imprecise and thus unhelpful manner.

To associate Palestinians with the hatred evinced by Nasrallah is a disconnect of sorts. But this would be truer if Nasrallah’s appearance were followed by some Palestinian saying, “This guy is a total shit, do not pay any attention to him. He is a man of violence and we do not wish to be associated with him, his speeches, his methods and his ideology.” But Nasrallah is not followed on t.v. by someone saying such words. (How far do you think Beirut is from Jerusalem? Closer than Philadelphia to NYC? Closer than Washington, D.C. to NYC, that’s for sure. He’s not Palestinian, but he is an Arab and a Muslim who lives near me and words in his praise are poured in this blog’s comments section and words of criticism of him have never been typed by the authors of this blog. If I am wrong, show me that Phil or Adam or any of their guests have ever spoken poorly of Nasrallah.)

The fact is that no matter what anyone could prove to me about the intents of the Palestinians the Israeli public is nowhere near to approving a one state solution. The fact is that I am not about to advocate such a solution unless I do not feel conflicted about it. Even if I were allowed to see the future, say the next 100 years, and it would indicate that a one state solution would not lead to bloodshed, I would still feel twinges of regret about advocating it, for there is the idea that the Jewish people need a country of their own and this country has been handed to this current generation of Jews and Zionists and it is the duty of this generation of Jews and Zionists to keep the faith and pass the Jewish country to the next generation. A twinge of regret that I would be willing to bulldoze over because 100 years of peace would be enough of a motivation for me to drop the duty that the previous generation has handed to the present generation. But if you think I am going to hand over the keys to Hamas to endanger my nieces and nephews based upon the premise that the suicide campaign of 2000 to 2005, killed only a quarter as many Jews as it killed Arabs, or was based on their sense of grievance which will disappear as soon as we share the land, despite their written word that the Jew has no place in this land, then you are just plain wrong.

Tony Judt's faulty thesis

The original article by Tony Judt, PBUH, in the NYRB is three quarters regrets and one quarter prescription. Regret that the current (2003) situation was so unpromising and one quarter prescription- nationalism is an anachronism, so why not adapt to the new century and go with binationalism.

The assertion that nationalism is an anachronism seems faulty to say the least. Is Yugoslavia still there? No. Why not? Nationalism. Are people killing each other in Iraq? Why? At least in part- nationalism.

Judt spent the first part of his great work “Postwar” describing how Europe feared that the postwar peace would fall apart and how various factors contributed to keeping that peace. A peace that took 45 years and a nuclear standoff to maintain. And still what keeps the peace in the former Yugoslavia? NATO forces. So it is an imperfect peace. To pretend that the rest of the world has gone through the same learning process that Europe has endured is precisely that: to pretend and not to appreciate the various realities and indeed the various chronometers that apply in various corners of the world. That is what is faulty with his thesis. It is poor scholarship to apply the lessons learned in Europe to areas where the lesson has not yet been learned or is still being learned on the bodies of the dead in Iraq, for example. Is the fragile “peace” of Lebanon, where a military victory last spring by Hezbollah has forced the forces of dissent to go kiss Assad’s ring in Damascus, a sign that the lesson of Europe has been learned all over the world? Hardly.

Judt’s assessment of the unpromising nature of the reality in 2003 was all too accurate. The suppression of his views were a sign that certain opponents of his weak thesis were not willing to debate him in public and preferred the “behind closed doors” policy that had worked for them in the past. But one should not confuse his courage and his scholarship (regarding Europe) with the thesis regarding nationalism throughout the world as an anachronism. One can hope and pray that the rest of the world (including Europe’s former Yugoslavia and the Middle East from Iraq to Lebanon to Israel and Palestine) will catch up to the lessons learned by certain of Europe’s countries in the years ‘45 to ‘90. But to assume that such lessons were learned because one wishes they were learned is in fact a thesis without proof and with most evidence present (unfortunately) in the negative column.

my knowledge of israel

I learned to read Hebrew in Winnipeg in the first grade from a Canadian born male librarian. I learned to speak Hebrew from an Israeli woman (born in Czechoslovakia) in the second grade. My third grade and fifth grade Hebrew teachers were Israelis as well.

Israeli students were added to my class in the third and fourth grade.

Before I ever went to Camp Moshava I was sent one Sunday to attend a meeting of Bnei Akiva. A map of tiny Israel was placed on the blackboard. The fact that they spoke Hebrew there did not scare me. But the fact that they only had a few hours of television every day on only one channel I found truly frightening.

In 1964 I attended Camp Moshava for the first time. Singing Hatikva was already familiar to me as was the Israeli flag. Now there were new nuances- kibbutz, a motto of Torah and labor, and the Bnei Akiva (Sons of Akiva) youth group anthem.
“A brotherly hand is extended to you,
O’ beloved youth
Around our flag all of us
Will encamp ourselves.”

I had started reading the newspaper in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. When we moved to Chicago in 66 after the fifth grade the newspaper changed from the Winnipeg Free Press to the Chicago Sun Times.

Soon after Passover of ‘67 saber rattling was heard from the Middle East. The chanting of Psalms now joined the regular prayers as a constant feature. “From the depths we cry to you, o’ Lord.”

On the first Monday in June the war broke out and by Wednesday the political cartoon in one of the papers featured the God of the Jews beating the Arabs. On Thursday the report of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty interrupted the celebration of my class. On Friday when a report of Nasser’s resignation caused joy from my classmates, I demurred. I was politically sophisticated enough to anticipate that the resignation was just a ploy.

Reading the magazines after the war I discovered the Arab refugee problem. Arab families were shown in a photo crossing the barely usable Allenby Bridge in the direction of Jordan. New refugees were being created and the older refugee problem was for the first time revealed to me.

In the eighth grade debates were one mode of teaching us English and history. My subject was school busing. Among the other topics was the war in Vietnam and the concept of trading land for peace. We got to vote after the debates. The boys class voted against trading land for peace and the girls class voted in favor.

In the ninth grade we moved again this time to Queens New York. In Social Studies class (1969) for extra credit we held a debate regarding what to do regarding the Israeli Arab conflict. My side was in favor of returning territory for peace. Although my partner emphasized the beauty of peace, I emphasized the demographic problem. If Israel held on to the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians would be 40% of the population by 1990 was the key quote from Time Magazine.

In my sophomore year for Jewish history class (1970) I wrote a report on the Palestinian refugee problem . That was when I first heard of Deir Yassin. I reported various possibilities for what caused the flight of the refugees. I came out in favor of compensation as the cure for the refugee problem, no matter what the cause.

In September of 1970 Palestinian fedayeen (guerillas, terrorists, choose one) hijacked a bunch of airplanes headed out of Israel on one day. I had relatives on the flight that avoided getting hijacked through the maneuvers of the pilot putting the jet into a deep dive in order to throw the hijackers off their feet. My great uncle Favish was interviewed on the national news, “I wasn’t feeling so well and I had just asked the stewardess for an aspirin, when all of a sudden…”

one god (mondoweiss)

Certainly the presence of crosses, statues and images of saints are one of the reasons why Christianity might be mislabeled as idol worship. But there is a valid reason. God is one, not three and to say that God is both three and one (by some mystery) strikes the pure monotheist as polytheism. God is the creator and alone. Only to him is it worthy to pray. Christianity says that something existed with God from the start and that is the Son and the only way to pray to the father is through the son. This is not monotheism.

The issue of prayer: that God only hears prayers that are channeled through Jesus is particularly galling, if not from the idol worship point of view, then from the “God only hears our prayers” point of view. I’m not sure all Jews would agree with this, but my impression was that the Jewish God had particularly good hearing and even if you prayed to your ancestors (as long as you had a broken heart) God was near to you and heard your prayers.

If God is particularly attentive to prayers at a place (Jerusalem’s temple) or at a time: (Day of Atonement and fast days are when god is particular attentive), these contain elements of impurity: that God has human traits to be attentive at particular times. In fact to attribute to God caring about humans seems to give God a human trait as well. Some Jews (Maimonides) believe that the sacrifices in the Temple were a concession to human frailty and thus were limited to a particular time period. But even Jews who believe that the Temple will be rebuilt and the sacrifices reinstituted, still it is to the one God that the prayers and the sacrifices will be dedicated and aimed.

In fact the two names given to God in the Hebrew Bible- (YHWH) pronounced Adonai (or Adoshem) , meaning Lord and elohim pronounced elokim, meaning God can be taken for the start of a nonmonotheistic strain (thread) of Judaism. Certainly there are those who see Judaism in its roots to believe in many gods, but that Adonai was the most powerful of the gods. but the Kabbala attributing the element of justice or punishment to the name of elohim and the attribute of mercy to the name Adonai, to this day complicates Judaism’s purity of monotheism.

My own attitude is that God (or the god that I wish would exist) is close to the broken of heart and hears all prayers. I accept that there is a type of intolerance present in monotheism that seems not to be present in polytheism, but because of the emphasis on God’s oneness in the key prayer of the Shma I cannot get past oneness as a key attribute of God and a true understanding of God. These days my God is very laissez- faire and a bit weak as well. I do not accept earthquakes for one as being a necessity, but rather a fact that illustrates the imperfection of God’s creation. I consider the creation of life- from insects to humans to be something that cannot be explained by science and indicates to me some creative force beyond explanation and this I call God. I pray, because I prayed when I was younger. I struggle so that my prayer does not excuse my inaction, but there can be a type of humility that prayer contains and I find the alternative of arrogance at the root of most of humanity’s problems. There are certainly pitfalls contained in belief in God, as in the arrogant believers who believe their God entitles them to oppress others. This is an abyss that may be difficult to avoid. But part of life is a struggle to attain a true assessment of reality and the existence of a god, one god, who hears prayers, (even if he does little about what he hears) is part of the reality that I live in, in my believing moments.