Sderot, close to Gaza

June 22^nd

Up with the sun at 5:45 in order to savor the full glory of the early morning desert light.  We drove many kilometers shooting video footage, taking advantage of our snazzy vacuum-pressure camera attachment that sticks anywhere onto the hood of the car.

The light was perfect, the land rugged and redolent of time and timelessness, and we were virtually alone on the roads. Bliss.

After a hearty Bedouin breakfast including homemade bread, we drove north to Sderot, the town that recently gained unwanted notoriety for being the target of thousands of missile attacks since October 2000. We had been invited by Michal Shamir, an artist and professor at the Sapir College Art School, to give a presentation to her students there. They seemed very grateful for our visit as they do not have a chance to meet international artists very often. This school was founded only 4 years ago and caters to recent immigrant families from North Africa, South America and other groups of students who have been traditionally excluded from educational opportunities in Israel. What was fascinating to us was the discussion that ensued after our talk, when we were asked about the purpose of our trip to Israel. In that little classroom was a whole cross-section of opinions and experiences that embody the complexity of the conflict that we were curious about. It was especially interesting to meet a young woman who lives in a settlement in the West Bank not out of any religious or ideological reason but simply because the government provided her family with incentives to move there and build a  life there at a fraction of the  cost that it would take in more established areas of the country. This is a fact easily forgotten when we tend to think of the settlers as messianic religious zealots.

Parked outside the art department are 2 concrete shelters in order to escape the barrage of rockets that have been fired by Hamas during the past 9 years. The Israeli military has established a rocket-warning system that gives 21 seconds to the citizens of the town to run for cover. Some people never make it and we learned that 3 students from the college had died in rocket attacks in recent years.

At the end of the day, Michal took us to have a solemn view of Gaza from the edge of the town, not much further away than Manhattan is from New Jersey with only a couple of sheep fields separating them.

Unlike in Tel Aviv with its beaches and bars and cafes, daily life in Sderot is filled with reminders that this is, in fact, a country at war. Here on the border with Hamas, there is no cafe where residents can congregate, no where to sit and hang out with friends. Everything happens with extreme caution.

Masada and the Negev

June 21^st

The next day we took the cable car up to visit one of Israel’s most important historical sites, the Masada, an ancient palace and fortification on top of an isolated rocky plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. 

After the First Jewish-Roman War (also known as the Great Jewish Revolt) a siege of the fortress by troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of Jewish rebels, who preferred death to surrender and slavery. Despite a lack of undeniable archeological evidence, this story has become one of the central myths of modern Zionism and it was repeated and glossed over and over by the many tourist guides that were leading groups through the site during our visit. 

It was a hellish, hot hike around these vast ruins,  but it was fascinating and  illuminating to see what remains of this extraordinary site situated in such a glorious location overlooking the sea. Once again, we could get a real sense of what life might have been like during these early days and it boggles the mind to consider the vast human forces that were required to complete such feats of mass construction made entirely of carved stoned in a totally inhospitable spot.

We then drove onwards into the Negev Desert on way to visit Sammy’s niece Rivka who is just finishing a year-long volunteer and study program prior to her service in the army. She was based in Sde Boker at the College founded by Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and the architect of modern Israeli society.  This was an opportunity for Rivka to learn about life in the desert and to interact with Bedouin women and children who live in nearby communities. It was fascinating to hear her describe the dualities that go along with such an existence. On the one hand, these families are part of Israeli society, attending school and sometimes college and serve in the military; on the other hand, they belong to tightly knit ancient tribes that have their own unique customs and traditions. For example, they still expect girls to marry by the age of 12 in order to start a family and to serve the men in the community. There is a clear disconnect between these two opposing sets of expectations –tradition and modernity-- and many Bedouin women, according to Rivka, have an enormously difficult time shuttling between the two.

At the end of the day, we arrived at Chan Ha Shayarot, a Caravan’s Inn in the desert that provides traditional Bedouin hospitality complete with tents, camels and a delicious meal served to us while sitting cross-legged on the ground. It was very relaxing and quiet and seemingly authentic. 

A trip to Maresha Caves on the Way to the Dead Sea

June 20

We drove South today to the Dead Sea stopping along the way to visit the caves of Maresha, about 50 miles south of  Tel Aviv. A city from the 4^th century BC, its residents excavated caves to produce limestone for construction, and then created an intricate network of tunnels to connect the caves so they could be used as workshops, storage chambers and reservoirs. It is a truly fascinating labyrinth of underground spaces to explore where ancient times can be felt and experienced in a very direct way.

After the most delicious lunch of grilled meats an d salads at a nearby Moshav  (a kind of Kibbutz) called Segula, we drove through the rocky desert dotted with Arab towns on the way to visit the Dead Sea which is the lowest point on earth, 400 meters below sea level. The Sea, as most people know, is so dense with salt and minerals and magnesium that it is impossible to drown in it. You float to the surface like you are sitting in an armchair reading the newspaper. Truly magical place but especially hot in the summer as the air gets caught in this crater below sea level and there is no breeze. There is a strange stillness and tranquility there and it is a geological phenomenon and an important destination for its natural springs healing properties. Definitely worth the visit.

June 18^th

Recording voices.

Spent the morning recording the voices of two actor friends, Avi Pnini and Razia Yzreeli, who kindly lent us their time to read a few poems and biblical quotes that we hope to incorporate into the soundtrack of our project.

Here’s a fragment from Yehuda Amichai that  beautifully summarizes the interesting paradoxes of Time experienced here:

 

“ Through the window that is no longer there, we see our children

 searching the old ruin for toys they lost yesterday

 and turning up broken clay jars from centuries ago.

 The chasm between generations fills up with dust and sand,

 human bones, animal bones, a multitude of broken vessels

A broken jar tells the truth. A new jar is the lie of beauty.”

A trip to the West Bank

June 17^th

After several failed attempts at finding someone willing to show us around Ramallah, Diana Shoef put us in touch with Tsafrir Cohen, the director of the office of Medico International, an NGO that provides medical services in areas of conflict. He was happy to meet us there and even take us to lunch and point us in the right direction about seeing the town and learning from his perspective about the screwed up situation in Palestine. We embarked nervously on our journey to the other side, but we felt it was our duty to go, even if just for one afternoon, and peer into the eternal shadow of Israel.

We took the bus to Jerusalem and then boarded a mini-bus to Ramallah, the trip took about 40 minutes through various suburbs and where we could peek from time to time at the infamous separation wall. Entry into Ramallah was uneventful, the bus just passed over a couple of speed bumps by a checkpoint. The hard part, we were to learn, comes on the way back, especially for the Palestinians, who have to suffer the daily humiliation of not being able to travel freely in their own land.

Ramallah is a chaotic and lively place, rather shabby in some corners, but very much like any other small Arab town. The streets are bustling, and everyone seems to be going about their daily lives as if nothing else mattered. No one paid any attention to us, as they are used to foreigners coming in either as political tourists, journalists, or workers in the many relief agencies. Terrible as it sounds, we were somehow disappointed to find the goings on of everyday life so normal, without any visible signs of Israeli abuse or of Palestinian militancy.

Tsafrir met us in the Manara, the dilapidated central square that already looked familiar to us from seeing it on the news, sometimes under heavy artillery fire. Tsafrir’s story is in itself quite interesting and emblematic of the deep divisions that haunt the societies on both sides. He was born in Israel, managed to get kicked out of the army and then fled the country, finally adopted German citizenship, and now lives in the West Bank (with his German partner), trying to somehow help people get better access to health care. During lunch and then in his office, with the help of a chillingly clear interactive map, he showed us the Kafkaesque reality that the Israelis have managed to impose on the Palestinians, while at the same time grabbing more and more land from them. It was disheartening to walk through the hilly streets of Ramallah and see in the distance, always on the top of the neighboring hills, the red-tiled roofs of jewish settlement homes.

We cannot even begin to describe the perversity of the ways in which Israeli power has managed to subjugate and neutralize Palestinian society, and our short afternoon in their land made it crystal clear to us that the occupation of the West Bank and the construction and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank cannot be tolerated and is the real obstacle to any peace agreement that should lead to these two peoples living side by side. Needless to say, we are revolted by the terrorist tactics of Palestinian militants,  and also firmly support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state in this itsy-bitsy plot of land that is so essential to their history, but it is immoral to do so at the expense of the Palestinians being able to live a normal productive life.

Later in the afternoon we visited Arafat’s tomb, not because we hold any particular affection for the man, but because it was the only noteworthy monument in the whole city.

After a cup of very strong muddy coffee and sticky sweet desserts, we boarded the mini-bus back to Jerusalem, and it was on the journey back that we experienced some of the strongest emotions of the day. The bus stops at the checkpoint where all the passengers must disembark, then walk on foot to the other side through a dehumanizing warren of cages, turnstiles,  metal detectors, and Israeli guards behind bulletproof glass. We were lucky that we  and everyone else on the bus got by quickly, but it is known that sometimes there are awful delays at the crossing for no other reason that the guards woke up in a bad mood that day.

It was only as we were driving away from Ramallah that we realized that we were leaving a prison as the exit road skirts closely to the security barrier, topped by several layers of razor wire and dotted here and there by tall observation towers.

It was painful to realize and impossible  to comprehend how after Auschwitz could a Jewsish nation come to build such similar structures. Once again we were caught in the midst of an enormous moral dilemma.

**Note: a couple of days after reading this post, Tsafrir wrote an email to us with the following message:

 

Dear Anthony and Sammy,

I just read your blog. It's very good, though I have one question: "Israel as a Jewish state" - what does that mean for the 20-25% of the population living there who are not Jews? Does one have to accept Iran or Saudia Arabia as Muslim states? Germany as a German state? America as an American state or as a christian state or as a white, male, heterosexual state? What is the the point in stating that Israel must be a Jewish state, instead of saying "the right of Israel to exist"? What we see here is a shift in the discourse. Today, we must say things we didn't have to just 5 years ago. I believe this is part of a discourse forced by people, who aim atmarginalising the Palestinians (i.E. Israelis Arabs) living in Israel. Israel is what it is, no more, no less. It has - within the boarders pre 1967 - a Jewish majority and a large Palestinian minority as well as growing non-Jewish, non-Palestinian minorities, it has Hebrew as its main official language, and Arabic as its second. I believe, that we should not fall into this trap, just in order not to seem anti-Israeli and even-sided: We should all stick with what we say in other places as liberals and/or left-wingers: Any state is always the state of all its citizens (or if you want to be more radical: of all of its inhabitants). Point.

 

Best

 

Tsafrir

Razia's show - Dinner & Politics

June 14

Diana Shoeff from the Center for Contemporary Art invited us to attend a rehearsal for a play written and performed by Razia Yzreeli, an old friend of Sammy’s from when he lived here 30 years ago! She is an accomplished actress and she has been performing a piece she wrote called THE DENTIST which is going to be presented at the Endinburgh Fesitval in August. After performing it in Hebrew for the past 3 years, she is now in the process of learning to do it in english which is not easy for her as she is the sole performer (75 minutes). The play tells the story of the psychological and emotional wounds of a family that suffered for years because of a horrifying secret….the father in the story was part of a special unit at Auschwitz that was given the task of extracting the gold fillings from the mouths of corpses after the jews were gassed and before they were burned. 16 months of this service, millions of corpses, tons of gold extracted. All this was done so he might actually survive The Holocaust. He did in fact survive physically, but he was so scarred and traumatized by the experience (of course) that he could never lead a normal life. It is a morally scandalous story here in Israel among so many survivors and it was wrenching to hear it told with such emotion by Razia, a gifted and passionate story-teller.

After the performance, we went to have an delicious dinner at a charming, very bohemian restaurant in Jaffa with Diana and Razia and some of their friends – including a couple who turned out to be neighbors of ours in Brooklyn! - and as is often the case in Israel, there was much heated debate about the political situation here. Diana has been involved with the far-left movement here since the late 60’s. She has many informed opinions about the Zionist mythology and the brainwashing that she resents deeply. It has been fascinating to have dinner one night with Sammy’s Right-leaning family (father, nephews) who all believe profoundly in the mission of Zionism and then the next night to sit with Diana and her friends from the art/activist community here who are passionate in their opposition to the established rhetoric. Last night she said that she believes that it is the secret dream of the Zionist establishment that the Palestinians will one day become exhausted from the on-going conflict and surrender and disappear, and it is the same not-so-secret dream that the Palestinian authorities have about the jews, that they will just go away one day. It is an awful game of willpower, to see who blinks first, with many innocent lives lost along the way.

Gay Pride

June 12

 

The Gay Pride Parade/Festival in Tel Aviv is, like in many cities outside the US and Western Europe, still an important political event. Tel Aviv is an island of liberalism and tolerance but it is significant for the gay community to come out in full force to assert their visibility and civil rights. It was a festive affair, not as bawdy as those in Boston, SF, and NYC, etc., and was clearly designed as a gesture to remind Israeli society of its own diversity. With so many other pressing social and political issues pertaining to the rights of Palestinians the many problems caused by the extreme Religious Right, the gay community is free to live in peace. Even the all-night dance parties are uninhibited and un-policed. Nobody really cares what you do here in Tel Aviv as long as you are not carrying a pipe bomb with the intent to blow up a club, café or bus. Tel Aviv is a big party town in spite of  and because of the fact that it is in the middle of an endless war with itself and its neighbors.

Slaughter of the Lamb

June 11

After spending the night at the Colony Hotel in Haifa (highly recommended as it is a restored 19^th century building built by German pilgrims), we met up with Manal Mahamid, an Palestinian-Israeli installation artist who kindly offered to help us with one of our most challenging video shoots—the slaughtering of a lamb—which is an image we have been wanting to capture on video as it has symbolic resonance with many of the themes we are here to explore. Despite the raw violence of the killing, Sammy was unflinching as he kept a steady hand during the shooting of the video from start to finish. Meanwhile Anthony had to back off in horror after taking a few key stills with his camera.

Neither one of us had ever witnessed a death so up close like this before.

After the shoot, Hiel, the man who slaughtered the lamb for us, brought us to his family home in Yarka, a Druze village overlooking a beautiful valley filled with olive groves. It felt like a real honor to be invited into his parents’ home to experience their amazing hospitality as we were treated to a delicious lunch made from all the things that the family grows  on their land including organic goat yogurt and sheep cheese.

Spending the day with Manal, we got a much clearer picture  of the difficulties of what it means to be an Isreali-arab. According to her, they are looked down upon by both the Jewish Israeli establishment and by their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank because in 1948 they chose to stay in their homes and villages to live under Israeli rule.

Manal is a fearless, tough woman who was determined to stop at nothing so that we could get the  shot that we imagined and we are forever grateful for her perseverance.

Bethsaida Excavation Site in Galilee

June 9^th

Wake up at 4:30 a.m. to join the

 excavation party and visit the site. The digging is done from 6 a.m. to noon, as it is way too hot to work any longer under the sun. It is dusty, back-breaking labor, tedious, repetitive, and to us, completely fascinating. We videotape and take many photographs, and get to meet some colorful characters among the volunteers and Biblical scholars working on the dig. One of them is Nick from Montana, a real cowboy who learned about the excavation in a Bible study group and got so excited about it that sold his horse and his shepherding dog to pay for his trip “to do the Lord’s work.”

The realities of time and history become apparent in this place not only for the obvious unearthing of an ancient city but because the process itself happens over such a long time-span: they have been digging for 17 years, and there are barely the contours of a few buildings visible amidst piles and piles of rock and dust. Reversing time takes time too!

June 8^th

We leave early in the morning and start driving north. We stop in Cesarea to see themagnificent ruins by the sea of what was once the capital of Roman Judea. Despite a few Disneyfied  cafes and trinket shops, the ruins are very  beautiful, their location unsurpassable, and among some  historical trivia, we learn that the city was used as a settlement camp for Bosnian Muslims during Ottoman rule.

One of our goals for this trip to the Galil is to visit the excavations at Beith Saida, a city on the northern shores of Lake Kinneret which dates to 3000 BC.  We arrive by mid afternoon to kibbutz Ginossar, where the excavation team is lodged, just in time to hear the “pottery shard reading” session, where the archaeologists analyze ,classify, and catalogue the findings from the excavation. 

The director of the dig is Prof. Rami Arav , and enormously erudite and affable

man, who welcomes us very warmly. Going through tray after tray of pottery, broken fragments of glass, and animal bones, he gives a most entertaining and informative reading of the significance of each piece.  The excavation is done mostly by volunteer students from the US, in this case from the University of Omaha, Nebraska, who put in three weeks of really hard labor under the intense heat and sun for the greater good of unearthing the past and connecting to the birthplace of 3 of the Apostles of Jesus.

 

While visiting the site, we are staying in Tiberias, another ancient city, but a very ugly and creepy one. Our hotel sits smack on the lake, but between two semi-abandoned resort hotels that if we didn’t know better, we’d think they were bombed during a recent war.

Our hotel is filled with a motley crew of Orthodox Jews and Christian pilgrims following in the footsteps of Jesus, among them a loud group of Finnish teenagers.

One afternoon we find a peacock which escaped from an adjacent menagerie wandering lost and squawking among the decrepit abandoned buildings. Very strange and unexpected.

June 7^th

Sammy’s parents invited us to the theater but we never quite expected to be treated to such an extraordinary experience. We went to see a performance by “Na Lagaat” (Please Touch) a troupe of deaf, blind, and deaf-blind actors. It was an example of supreme goodness embodied in awful art. We were moved to tears in spite of the show’s sentimentality and clumsy execution as we were witnesses to an enormous triumph of the human spirit.

We were completely uncomfortable throughout the performance, which was truly pathetic in the truest sense of the word. In it, though, the smallest human yearnings attained a gigantic dimension when seen from the “darkness and silence” of the actors’ lives. There was an uplifting dignity in giving these people a voice, even if their show was, to quote Joan Acocella, “beyond criticism.”

That evening we were also joined by Sammy’s nephew Shmulik, and having coffee before the show we heard some hair-raising stories about his service in the army in a first response team helping citizens during the bombings in the north during the 2006 war.

In Israel the authorities take great care of the psychological well being of the citizens: if your house is bombed, for example, a team comes immediately to assess the damage and order the necessary materials and labor for repairs, another team takes you to stay in a hotel for a few nights, where you get counseling and all your needs met. In two days your house is fixed and you are sent home as if nothing had happened!

First Days in Israel

Arrived in Tel Aviv the 3^rd of June and greeted at the gate enthusiastically by Sammy’s  sister and nephew who were waiting with open arms to welcome us. Always a nice way to arrive anywhere, especially here, in this place that is so full of contradictions on every level.

Spent the day unpacking and getting situated and fighting off stomach flu and jet lag.

 

June 4.

Our first full day and we were taken by car to Jerusalem to witness the induction ceremony of new soldiers in the Israeli Army. Sammy’s nephew, Nadav, is one of these patriotic young men who is 18 years old, just finished high school, and recently completed 3 months of basic boot camp , where he got his unit’s highest marks for marksmanship.All those years devoted video-games  must have had an effect after all, and as usual with may things here, we were not sure whether to feel pride or despair

Yesterday, in front of the Wailing Wall and in front of family and friends, these young cadets swore their allegiance to the state of Israel and received each a gun and a bible.

It was a chaotic, very informal gathering that was punctuated by religious jews who aggressively continued their rocking and praying facing the holy wall , oblivious to the ceremony taking place all around them and the military marches and sappy patriotic hymns blaring from the speakers . There are many mysterious and irrational aspects to Israeli society, none more bizarre than the fact that religious far-right jews are given citizenship but do not have to serve in the army, and even more bizarre, some ultra-orthodox jews here do not even acknowledge that there is a state of Israel and the army is not necessary because in their view only the Messiah can return the jewish homeland and therefore, this one is invalid. These would be the ultra orthodox anti-Zionists as opposed to the ultra-orthodox ulta-zionists such as the most stubborn jews living in the settlements.

 

After the ceremony we all went  to have dinner in Abu Ghosh, an Arab village that chose to remain part of Israel back in 1948. We had the best Hummus & grilled lamb at a restaurant called “The Lebanese”. One more irony to check on the list.

 

To top the day off, we arrived back in Tel Aviv to hear accolades –from Sammy’s father no less, who is an avowed nationalist – about Obama’s speech in Cairo. The right wing here are panicked about the US severing their special status relationship with Israel, but apparently the speech was masterful in giving both Arabs and Jews  due acknowledgement for their respective suffering. Once again, we want to see this as a sign of real hope for better understanding between the two sides and not mere rhetoric . It is interesting for us to be here at this moment that seems to mark a kind of turning point in American policy towards the Middle East.

Meanwhile, life in Tel Aviv goes on around and through all this in the most normal way, with families playing on the beach and surfers riding the waves in the most carefree way.

There is such a strange and palpable tension between all these different sects and points of view that have been brought together in this one small area. This intersection is what we are interested in experiencing as we continue down this particular road.

 

 

June 5^th

After another frustrating day dealing with connectivity issues with the internet and email system, as well as Anthony’s ongoing bout of stomach flu, we spent the evening at the Cucher’s Friday night Shabat dinner with Sammy’s sisters, mother, father, nephews and nieces and brother in law. It was a rather momentous occasion since it was really the first time in 18 years of being partners that we shared such an intimate family gathering together. And Pepe rose to the occasion and made a  warm welcoming toast with everyone around the table to say how happy he and Lily were that we were all together as a family and that he made a special point to welcome me in particular, all said in perfect English. He was making a very  emphaatic gesture to Sammy and me and it did not go unnoticed. He is a very sweet, sincere man with a big heart.

 

We also talked a lot about politics, of course; it was very interesting to hear Sammy’s nephew Shmulik (23) provide us with a very clear, propagandistic view of how righteous Israel is in so many ways and how he is learning PR techniques as an official delegate who provides foreigners with an ‘accurate” picture of the real Israel. He is teaching the technique to other young Israelis (the party line) and he told us that he would demonstrate it for us before we leave. Shmulik is a smart, clever young man just out of the army and he is a product of a strong Zionist upbringing, the same one that Sammy grew up with but later became so skeptical of so many years ago.

 

June 6^th

Another almost perfect sunny Saturday in Tel Aviv in June, apart from Anthony’s ongoing stomach woes—we started the day at the gay beach surrounded by more pretty young things and packs of playful dogs and far too many children everywhere (the religious right encourages childrearing beyond all else).

 

We were then invited to have lunch at the home of Avi and Racheli Pnini, parents of Tom Pnini, a student at Parsons. It was a feast! But Anthony could not really eat more than the rice and potatoes. We have been promised another lunch in two weeks after we return from our upcoming trip to the north.

 

Tom’s father, Avi, is a very accomplished theatre actor and is quite famous here in Israel. They are both jolly, easy going, warm people, full of love and light. They were so happy to have us there and to meet their family and friends. One friend, Dani, is a professor of film studies and the curator of the Israelis section of the Jerusalem Film Festival and his mother in law, we were told, is the First Lady of Archeology in Israel, having made some crucial finds in various digs years ago. It was a day full of conversation about art, poetry, culture, travel, memories, and more. Not once did we discuss politics, as these folks clearly have a lot of other interests beyond the most obvious ones that preoccupy so many Israeli gatherings.

 

And finally, Diana Shoef took us to a protest march marking the 45^th anniversary of the Israeli Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The march went from the City Hall Plaza, past the Army/Air Force Command Center, and finished at the entrance to the Tel Aviv Museum. It was a gathering of the Far Left in Tel Aviv, groups gathering together around the common goal of providing a voice for those repressed in the Palestinian territories. There were perhaps 1000 people there, some arab Israelis, and many vocal opponents to the established party line. These protests have absolutely no effect on public policy,  but they are vital in order to show the world that not all Israelis support the occupation blindly. The OCCUPATION MAGAZINE at www.kibush.co.il contains daily articles, reports and eyewitness accounts from inside the territories.

 

During the Gaza invasion in January , we were told, it was extremely difficult for the protestors to march without facing the wrath of many people on the street who were horrified that a group of Israeli citizens would criticize the invasion while innocent Israeli lives were lost in the south and soldiers were putting their lives at risk on the front lines. They were greeted as cowards and their voices were not heard in the Israeli press. They were harassed, and even worse, ignored by the media.