Catch The Jew!

by Tenenbom, Tuvia

  When I arrive at her office, the PLO HQ building in Ramallah, she isn’t there yet but her secretary, Maggie, a beautiful blond Palestinian lady, is. Maggie tells me that her German husband, who is “so straight, precise,” works for the German GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and that Germany invests huge amounts of money into building the Palestinian state.

  Sitting at her desk, a map of “Palestine 1948” (meaning one with no Israel) behind her, she is full of smiles and energy. She asks if I want Arabic coffee.

  This is not the cemetery and no Jacobs coffee is anywhere in sight, just pure Arabic coffee of heavenly quality and taste.

  Good that Maggie is Christian. Otherwise, in this Ramadan month, I’d be welcomed with only a smile and a map.

  The TV at the PLO HQ is on. Playing now: a variant of Sesame Street.

  “Oh, this is for the little child here. His mother brought her baby with her,” Maggie says, referring to another employee.

  As this Sesame is playing, Al-Jazeera TV, the most powerful Arab TV, is calling Hanan’s office. Could they come, they ask, for a few minutes to interview Hanan? “It will be only five minutes,” Maggie promises me.

  Waiting for Hanan, I look at Maggie’s Kharta.

  Kharta means a map in Arabic, and in Hebrew slang kharta means fake or imagined. The Hebrew slang originates, I think, from this very map, where even the city of Tel Aviv doesn’t exist. I say “I think” because not many Israelis speak Arabic and there are not many to ask. A few months ago, for example, Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech in which he spoke about the uniqueness of Israel. He mentioned the word “dugri,” meaning something like “straight,” and said that no other culture has such a word, only Hebrew. The Israelis, he was pointing out to the world, are the straightest people of the world and that’s why they have an additional word for straight. If he, or his listeners, only knew that dugri comes from the Arabic durgri, which means, what a surprise, straight.

  I need a cigarette. I was attempting to smoke before I arrived at the PLO HQ but people on the streets of Ramallah wouldn’t let me. Over and again I was told by passersby to immediately extinguish my cigarettes. “It’s Ramadan!” they yelled at me. I share my problem with Maggie and she shows me where I can sneak a smoke. I go there, swallow three cigarettes, one after the other, until Hanan shows up and I go to join her.

  Hanan’s office is nicely and cleanly decorated. She has a plate of cut fruit and vegetables, with many colors of the rainbow, at the center of her desk. There are some pictures hanging on the wall, all with good taste, but I can’t locate the ubiquitous al-Aqsa Mosque, the symbol of Palestine, in any of them. Hanan is Christian, and perhaps that’s why she doesn’t want a mosque in her office.

  We shake hands, I sit down, and the Al-Jazeera team enters just as I get ready to open my mouth.

  This Al-Jazeera team is the most professional I’ve seen in the longest time. It takes them less than a minute to set up their expensive set, and they are ready and in action in a snap. They know what Hanan thinks but what they want is a “sound bite.” Everybody interviews Hanan, why not Al-Jazeera? The correspondent laughs, chuckles, and smiles. And so does Hanan. They seem to know and like each other.

  Smiles end just before the interview starts, when faces change to serious. They remind me of actors in dressing rooms before show time. Gotta be serious now. Then, with a sad face in addition to the serious appearance, Hanan talks about how bad Israel is and the interview is quickly over.

  At the speed of light the Al-Jazeera team disembarks and exits.

  ***

  It’s now Hanan and me. How would you like to present the Palestinian people, and yourself, to the rest of the world?

  “As a people, we are probably like every other people in the world. We have the same aspirations; we want to live in peace and in dignity and respect for human rights. The problem is that as a people we have been historically prevented from that. So, even though we have been living in a context that is darkly seen, and is actually a tragic context of either dispossession and dispersion and exile or living under the boot of a military occupation, so to speak.

  “We also like to live; we love life. We like to create. We love to write, to read poetry and to paint and to dance, and to have festivals in Palestine. There’s a constant pull and push that you have to resist the occupation, you have to deal with issues of exile and dispersion, but at the same time you have to maintain your humanity and maintain your commitment to a larger goal as well, the fact that we are part of the human community.

  “So, this has been a sense of exclusion, constantly for us as Palestinians. We have been excluded from the human community, because we have been labeled, we have been stereotyped, and we have been described by our adversaries, rather than by our own selves. So, I believe, we are also a people like the ancient mariner, you know, we have a tale to tell, we have a narrative that we want to present. That narrative has been absent from human discourse, and we are trying to make it recognizable. It’s authentic, it’s our narrative, and we don’t want the rest of the world to deal with us through the perception and the discourse and diction, let’s say, of political control like this, the Israeli occupation.”

  Hanan surprises me. Watching her on TV, or reading about her, I always had the impression that she was a harsh lady, a person who lives at a distance and a woman of cold personality. But sitting opposite her, feeling the warmth in her voice, I cannot but be touched by her and respect her. She is smart and well spoken. Unlike Arieh King, she speaks long sentences and has a rich vocabulary and, it occurs to me, she is no broker. If she tried to sell me a house while answering every question I had with her long sentences, most likely I’d invite her for coffee and cake and stay in my old house another few years.

  Maybe I should be more precise in my questioning and see if she can give me shorter answers.

  But before I have a chance to butt in, Hanan has more ideas to share.

  “To me, the startling fact is that the Palestinians have been living on their land historically for hundreds and thousands of years and suddenly they are told that they have to give up most of their land and that another state will be created.”

  Hundreds and thousands of years is quite big news to me, and I’m happy that she tells me.

  “Israel has been victim – not Israel itself, the Jews in Europe have been victims of one of the worst chapters in human history. I mean we talk about the Holocaust; that’s the worst the human mind can come up with in terms of cruelty. So in a sense we have become victims of those who have been victims of European anti-Semitism.”

  She talks and talks and talks, as if giving a lecture to hundreds of students.

  “We are a people of the land. We are a victim of a myth, the myth of a land without a people for a people without land, so all ours lives we try to prove that we exist, that we are the people of the land.”

  I butt in.

  You were talking about a culture of hundreds and thousands of years, long before Israel. Give me a sense of Palestine before –

  “Palestine has always been pluralistic, and has never been exclusive. I, as a Christian, see myself as the expression of the longest standing Christian tradition in the world. So I don’t need to prove myself to anybody.”

  Hanan is an educated, erudite person, and I must view her from this angle. This brings me back to my university days, and I try to evaluate Hanan’s argument according to academic standards. She is trying to prove to me Palestinian rights to this land by claiming that they are a people of the “longest Christian tradition in the world.” This would be a nice argument had this been a reality, meaning if Christians were the majority of the Palestinian people. But this is not the case. When Israeli forces moved out of Ramallah, I read somewhere, Christians made for 20 percent of the inhabitants. I bring this to her attention.

  How many Christians are here, 20 percent?

  “It went down from 20 percent to 1.5 or 2 percent for a variety
of reasons.”

  Oops. This means that after Israel’s withdrawal it was the Muslims who kicked out the Christians, the truest Palestinians. The argument she has built against Israel is collapsing with one fell swoop. Yes, she spoke of a “variety of reasons,” but she did not elaborate. I start pushing.

  Why?

  “I don’t want to disc – ”

  She stops in mid-word. My professor is getting lost. “Is this the subject?” she mumbles, obviously irritated that I brought up this issue. This doesn’t look good, and she knows it, but quickly she regains her composure: “First of all, the occupation. Second of all, the low birth rate. Third of all, connections with families outside.”

  But most of them left, right?

  “I guess so. In Ramallah you can say that.”

  Twenty percent to one and a half. In how many years?

  Hanan pauses. A worried expression shows on her face. She would prefer to talk about other issues, not this one. But being the pro she is, she regains composure, maneuvers a bit here and a bit there, and tries hard to regain my trust.

  “We are the result of so many cultures and tribes. Probably in my background there are Jews.”

  And then she gives me this line:

  “Palestine is open, is accommodating.”

  So accommodating, I point out to her, that when I smoked on the street today I was yelled at.

  “Really?”

  ***

  Hanan the Erudite knows what happened here thousands of years ago, but not what’s happening today, at least this is what she is conveying, and so I try discussing history with her. Could she point out to me the exact date for the creation of Palestine, not just “hundreds or thousands” of years ago?

  “People say we were here when the Jews came (in biblical times) and killed the Palestinians.”

  Then, quickly enough, she softens on this her assertion before anybody can accuse her of accepting any Jewish historical claim to this land. “Jewish tribes have been here,” she tells me, “but there was not, you know, a state.”

  Was there a Jewish Temple here?

  “I have no idea. I’m not an archeologist.”

  Did you ever think about it?

  “I don’t pass judgment. If an archeologist tells me there was, fine. If an archeologist tells me there wasn’t, fine. This land is not an onion; this land has so many layers. When you peel an onion, you reach the core and there’s nothing left.”

  I actually love onions and I think I get her. Finally. Many thousands of years ago, though she does not supply the exact date, there existed a pluralistic state by the name of Palestine, and Jewish tribes came in and slaughtered its cultured residents. Biblical Israel never existed, no matter what her Christian Bible says, and nobody has ever proved that a Jewish Temple existed here either. Too bad for Arieh King, who speaks in terms of a Third Temple, as if the First and the Second indeed existed.

  She then tells me: “I say: if your God tells you that you are chosen, our God didn’t tell us this.”

  Hanan was one of the chief architects of various peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and I bring up this issue.

  Will there be peace here at any point in our lifetime?

  “I don’t know. I promised my daughter, when we started the peace process, and my young daughter said: ‘I lent my mother to peace, the peace process, the negotiations, so she could make peace and spend more time with me,’ and not only didn’t we make peace, she lost her childhood, her teenage years, and now in adulthood, as a woman, and a mother, they [Israel] took away her ID card so I cannot have my grandchildren.”

  She is choking, fighting back tears.

  “All my life I’ve been struggling for peace. I made promises that I couldn’t keep. So I can’t tell you. But I think eventually there will have to be peace.”

  And now Hanan is crying, covering her face with both her hands.

  Where is your daughter living now?

  “In the States.”

  Which part of the States, New York?

  “No.”

  Strangely, Hanan adamantly refuses to tell me in which state her daughter lives.

  Well, if I can’t get any info about the Daughter of Hanan I try to get some about the Son of God.

  Do you believe in Jesus?

  “Do I believe he existed? Yes, I believe he existed.”

  As a deity, as a God?

  “No.”

  Do you believe in God?

  “I don’t think much about it, frankly.”

  Are you an atheist?

  “Haaaa. I . . . I don’t label myself.”

  Are you an atheist?

  “I really don’t know. I really don’t know. Why do you want to label me?”

  I don’t want to label her. It was she who asserted Palestinian rights to this land by saying that Palestinians are of the “longest Christian tradition in the world,” yet she does not believe in the one thing Christianity is about: the deity of Jesus. In addition, she who blames Israel for all the ills in her society would not point one single accusing finger at the Muslims who chase away the Christians from this land. Hanan has this intellectual capacity to avoid facts, just like Professor Omar of Al-Quds University, only she’s more poetic in her language than he is.

  As I bid her farewell, she orders her staff to connect me with other Palestinians of interest. I assume that her office will introduce me to people who would make her proud and not to extremist Palestinians, and I’m very grateful. Before leaving, an official at Hanan’s office asks if I would like to visit the Mausoleum of Rais [President] Yasser Arafat, the first Palestinian president, buried at the Muqataa compound not far from here, and I respond that it would be my honor.

  I guess that so far I’m doing very well in this part of the world, going from one dead to another: from the Mount of Olives to Arafat’s Tomb.

  A man arrives and takes me from Sesame to Rais Arafat, where I pay my respects.

  I wonder what the soldiers standing at attention here would say, think, or do, if they knew who I am. For my part, I tell them I’m German. “Welcome to Palestine,” they say to this German and take a few photos with me.

  ***

  Photos done, I walk the streets of Ramallah, a gorgeously beautiful and rich city, when my eyes catch an interesting house: Dar Zahran Heritage Building.

  I enter. Zahran, who is the founder and owner of this private museum, avails himself to guide me through an exhibition of Palestinian life in the last two hundred years. He pours me a cup of coffee and tells me the history.

  “Somebody wanted to empty the Middle East of all Christians in order to show that the Arab world is a closed community, so that the Western world wouldn’t support Palestine.”

  Who is that somebody?

  “The occupation.”

  Who are they?

  “Israel.”

  How did Israel do it?

  “They made propaganda, spreading the story that locals were being killed by the government. The people heard this, got afraid, and left.”

  Makes a lot of sense. But why did the Christians leave and the Muslims stay? The Muslims stayed, didn’t they?

  Zahran gets very upset with me for asking this question. A radio journalist interviewed him the other day, he tells me, and that journalist didn’t ask him this kind of question.

  Where was the journalist from?

  “Germany. ARD.”

  I don’t know this reporter but perhaps he’s one of the German journalists who applauded at The Gardener press conference. The questions I ask Zahran are questions that every journalist, using basic standards of journalism, should ask. Yet they don’t.

  It’s getting late and I have to go back to Jerusalem. Ramallah is pretty close to Jerusalem but I’ll have to cross the checkpoint into Israel first and, according to many media news reports, this can last hours.

  As I get to the checkpoint I check the time on my iPhone, so I can determine the precise number of hours. It
takes exactly two minutes and fourteen seconds.

  I get home, ignore the cats, and go to sleep.

  ***

  Thanks to Hanan’s office, I’m to meet the “Spokesperson of the Government” this coming Friday, and one or two other people. I happily oblige.

  Going from Jerusalem to Ramallah on a Friday of Ramadan is an experience. When I arrive at the Arab central bus station in an area Arabs call Bab al-Amud, Jews call Sha’ar Shkhem, and most others call Damascus Gate, no bus is at the station.

  Where are the buses? I ask people walking by.

  “Straight up.”

  The central bus station has moved up the road for Ramadan.

  I walk up the road, walk and walk. A kid and his papa pass by. The kid carries a huge plastic rifle. Gift from papa, I guess.

  I keep on walking.

  Another kid, carried on his papa’s back, holds a plastic bag. Sticking out of the bag is a shotgun, also of plastic. At least this is what I hope.

  I keep on walking and see a big stand where a man is selling unique holiday items: tons of plastic guns, rifles, shotguns, and pistols.

  Moments later, navigating my body around an endless stream of people, I mount a bus to Ramallah.

  With Allah’s help I reach Ramallah and safely arrive at the office of Dr. Ehab Bessaiso, “Spokesperson of the Government,” at the Ministry of Information, State of Palestine. Following a UN General Assembly vote in 2012 which recognized Palestinian statehood, the “Palestinian Authority” officially changed to “State of Palestine,” Dr. Ehab explains to me.

  Dr. Ehab has tons of other information he’d like to share with me.

  Palestinians are like any other nation of the world, he tells me. They have thousands of years of history.

  When was Palestine founded?

  During the Canaanite period, he answers.

  When did his people develop from Canaanites to Palestinians?

  “You have to check this with historians, specialists in ancient history.”

  Do you have a historian here?

  “Not on a Friday.”

  Ehab might not know about history, but he knows about “Information.” And on this fast day this Spokesperson of the Government has food on his mind.