Combat Rock(s)
How the Libyan war intersects with debates about multiculturalism in the EU. The second installment of my weekly column, in Monday’s edition of Souciant.
Archived entries for Palestinians
Home is Where the Hummus is
Arab grocery store. Golborne road, west London, February 18th.
Signifiers of comfort food. Maramia Cafe, up the street, the same day.
At Home He’s a Tourist
Since the Six Day War, Europeans have tended to think about Israel relationally. French comparisons between Algeria and the Occupied Territories immediately come to mind. Reposition oneself in Italy, and you encounter the same basic reflex, as a book in this display would have it, with Ethiopia. Antique shop, Via Castaldi.
Italy is less well-known for its Palestinian community than its North African immigrants. Needless to say, in Milan, Palestinians are visibly present, their political struggles made obvious by informational kiosks repped by this Via Venini storefront mannequin, as well as by progressive, anti-colonialist inspired flyers and graffiti.
Merlot Shoah
Walk three blocks in either direction from our home, and the discourse is the same.
Genocide is bad, freedom for Jews and Palestinians, good. The local used book store carries vintage Israeli vinyl, while bumper stickers decry Israeli foreign policy.
The interesting thing about all of this isn’t that it’s not recognized as a conversation between neighbors. It’s that records like the one pictured above are not appreciated for their irony.
Blue and White Blues
If you haven’t read Roi Ben-Yehuda before, you’re sorely missing out.
One of the best writers I’ve ever worked with, Roi’s articles epitomize the sensibilities of someone who has grown up in both Israel and the US, and remains rightfully suspicious of one-dimensional appeals to all forms of nationalism and xenophobia.
His latest piece, on the ideological limitations of Israel’s flag, was published yesterday in Haaretz.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
One of the most pronounced themes in my book is an expressed concern with the way Israel gets ‘constructed’ by its proponents in America. Without explicitly specifying it as such, I continually press against the versions of Israel I encounter here, as though there is something alien about them, continuously wondering whether they have anything to do with me, or are merely the stuff of fantasy. I feel oppressed by this experience, oftentimes suffocated, to the point of wondering whether this was the country my family failed to create. As though they were admonishing us, new pioneers have come to conjure something different, something that ignores ‘the natives’, in much the same way that the original settlers saw Ottoman Palestine as a wild and empty place.
Thus, I was reminded, as I listened to a sixty something New Yorker explain the good he thought Israel had achieved through its seizure of Arab lands in June 1967. The Six Day War improved the lot of American Jewry, he argued, because it completed the process of Jewish integration, helping us secure the truly remarkable level of equality we live with in this country today. Suggesting that the war’s fruits outweighed its failings, this gentleman’s argument was truly curious, as though he were inferring that it’s social achievements in the US were sincerely worth the last four decades worth of displacement and terrorism the occupation has gifted both Israelis and Palestinians. Though I did not ask the guy whether he believed that the occupation ought to continue for said purpose, I still ask myself whether he might believe such.
It is for reasons like these that I am increasingly uneasy about the ways in which fellow progressives tend to rationalize ongoing Diaspora support for the occupation. Traditionally inclined to see such dispositions as being products of a fundamentalist or reactionary approach to Judaism, I am concerned that such arguments have obscured the prevalence of equally common secular positions like these. Specifically, in terms of whether one can ascribe right-wing Diaspora support to the present Israeli status quo on the grounds that it’s never-ending violence is the only guarantee of Jewish equality in multiethnic societies. If that is truly the case, no wonder it feels as though Israel is continuously ignored. Because it’s not Israel that matters in the end, but the Diaspora.
San Francisco to Lebanon
“They’re extending their range of fire,” my father said as I answered my mobile phone. Before I had a chance to ask him why, he stated, “They finally managed to hit Afula.” Almost a week into last year’s war, this was not reassuring news to hear. “Well, Abba,” I responded, trying to sound comforting, “That’s still far away from your home. At least they didn’t point the weapon southwest. ”
What more could I say to my clearly anguished father? That a strike on a nearby town was better than one on our own? Of course not. He knew what I meant. But with each missile fired at Israel’s north, it was clear that they were slowly getting closer. “Well,” my father said, clearing his throat. “Our pilots are doing the best that they can to knock these things out…”
I’d taken the day to work out of my house, and was standing in front of a local, Arab-owned convenience store as my father and I spoke about the situation. When we were done, I told Elie that I loved him, and walked inside to buy some smokes. “Your family in Israel?” asked the clerk, who clearly had overheard the conversation. “Yes,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable. “They live in the north.”
“My parents are under fire too,” he said. “In a Christian town, just across the border.” “Have you had a chance to speak to them?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied, sounding worried. “Apparently their power has been cut off, and they’re running out of food. I am puzzled by this, because they are Christians, not Shia. Why are your people targeting us? It’s stupid. We used to be your allies.”
Though I have since quit smoking, I have gone by the convenience store several times, hoping to say hello again to the fellow and hear what ended up happening to his beleaguered family. He’s never reappeared. Since then, I’ve chatted several times with his replacement. A Christian from Bethlehem, he told me that he’d escaped to the US during the siege of the city in May, 2002.
Spotting him sitting outside the store yesterday, I wondered if his Lebanese colleague’s parents were lucky enough to have done the same. Oftentimes, I ask myself why I just don’t ask him what happened to the guy, whether his parents survived. Seeing as several rockets did eventually fall near my parents’ home, I think it’s because something inside me prevents myself from asking, as though I already know why.
Recommended Reading
The timing of this book’s publication couldn’t be better. As Israelis and Palestinians resume peace negotiations, its also an opportunity to consider what separation really means, and why there can be no such thing as a total break.
Using Jewish and Arab literature to demonstrate how their respective identities both overlap and inhere in one another, In Spite of Partition makes a compelling case against simple-minded and destructive notions of cultural difference.
If you live in Los Angeles, on October 14th, Gil Hochberg will be speaking about her new book with fellow UCLA professor Saree Makdisi. Click here for more information about the event.
Anarcho-Kibbutzniks
Believe it or not, the kibbutz movement is not dead. So argues James Horrox in the October issue of Zeek. Excerpted from a book I am currently editing for AK Press, this young British political analyst shines a new light on Israel’s troubled left.
Time Traveler
German was the last thing I expected to hear that morning. But, as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I could hear my grandmother screaming, "Raus, Nazis, raus." I didn’t know what to think. I imagined that I’d been dreaming, and tried to go back to sleep. But my grandmother wouldn’t stop. She was absolutely terrified. Nervous, I looked at my watch. It was only six AM. Finally, I decided to get out of bed and see what was going on. "Yoel," Safta announced as I reached the bottom of the staircase, "Arafat is hiding in the bushes outside. He’s wearing an SS uniform, and has a couple of German shepherds with him."
While I was only nine at the time, I was old enough to know that there was something terribly wrong. "Safta, doesn’t Arafat live in Beirut?" I remember asking her. "No, mottek, he’s the head of the Gestapo, here in Israel," she replied. I started to tremble. I’d begun reading newspapers, and knew that Arafat was leading the Palestinians next door in Lebanon’s civil war. "Safta, do you think you could call Abba in London and ask him what we should do?" I asked. "No," she said sternly. "We shouldn’t use the phone right now. It would be a dead giveaway. Just go up to your room, lower the shutters, and be quiet."
Sitting behind my closed door, for the next two weeks, the only sound I could hear was that of my eighty- four year old grandmother’s mind blasting apart. Speaking to herself incessantly, in Hebrew, German, and sometimes even Arabic, at varying volumes, she’d recount imaginary reports she claimed to have heard on army radio about how the Gestapo had finally returned to Palestine (not Israel) from Lebanon, with the sole purpose of kidnapping Jewish children. Unable to distinguish between the mandate period and independence, it was the first time I’d ever heard the Palestinians described as though they were Nazis.