You must admit: this could be great entertainment.
“Abu Ali,” Jibril says, “the German wants to talk to you.”
All present focus their eyes on me. Most of them have walked for hours, and now it’s perfect time to relax while listening to the romantic sound of the German language.
I take the phone.
How, oh dear Jesus, do I avoid your fate on the cross?
I put the phone closer to my mouth and I go on a religious fervor. “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” I scream from the top of my lungs and throat over and over, and when I’m done I start singing it.
No German worth his name would protest against a brave Abu Ali when he feels the need to pray to Allah.
If Jesus doesn’t help, Muhammad will.
The people present are elated. “Your Arabic accent, Abu Ali, is excellent!”
Thank you. Thank you.
“You know,” adds another, “it would have been very good if Rommel had succeeded.” He is referring to Nazi Germany’s attempt in WWII to enter Palestine. “We would have had all the land,” he says, since no Jew would have survived.
“My blood is German,” another says to me. “All of us, all Palestinians, are German.”
There is a swimming pool steps from our dining table, and some of the walkers decide to jump into the water, inviting me to join them. I respectfully decline. I will only swim with Eva.
What a world. I started the day as a Jew, continued as a German, and now I’m an Austrian.
When I arrive in Jerusalem I give the cats some meat and they laugh at my Austrian jokes.
Gate Twenty-Six
Lawmakers: from the granddaughter of a Zionist leader accused of collaborating with the Nazis to the granddaughter of a persecuted model who survived the Nazis.
IT WAS GOOD YESTERDAY, WHEN THIS AUSTRIAN VERY MUCH ENJOYED WALKING in the corridors of power. What powerful grounds will this Austrian walk on today?
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, could make for a good choice. I’ll have to hide my Austrian identity from those Jews, but this is a small price to pay for the pleasures of power. The only problem is this: Jibril Rajoub is not in the Knesset, sadly, and I’ll need to get myself a friend there who will walk me around. The question is: Who?
I must devise a plan. Perhaps I should corner the MKs. Yeah. As simple as that: When I see people of power, MKs that is, I’ll stop them. Brilliant idea, I just hope I won’t get arrested.
I get to the Knesset and I ask myself: Whom should I corner first? Well, whoever walks by me.
***
My first victim is a lady who answers to the name, MK Merav Michaeli.
I don’t know much about her. The little I do know is this: Merav, MK for the centrist Labor party, has written opinion articles for Haaretz, the paper Gideon Levy writes for, and is a former talk show host and anchor on Israeli TV and radio. She is also one of the better known of Israeli feminists, and is normally identified with the Left, despite her centrist affiliation.
This is not enough material to intelligently engage her in a conversation but, being the famed Austrian that I am, I also know that lack of knowledge has never stopped my people from achieving the highest of positions. Unfortunately, this great piece of wisdom does not help me to know more about this MK, and so I ask her to fill in the dots. I use nicer words to say this, of course. We sit down and have a chat.
MK Michaeli, tell me about yourself, about your country, about your dreams. Share with me what’s going in your mind, deep inside.
“This is an open question.”
Yes, it is. I want to know who you are. Tell me anything you want. Dream together with me. Think I’m God, or His messenger, who comes to you and says: Let’s chat. Share with me, please, your most intimate thoughts!
I have no idea how I came up with such an ingenious line of questioning. But, what the heck? I want to have some fun.
The MK, a bit lost, finally talks: “My thinking, I think, starts with the place called gender. Gender division, dictated by culture, a division between man and woman, this division, I think, is the starting point of all other divisions.”
Oh, Lordy Lord! I, Abu Ali, was shooting for some dirty thoughts and what I get instead is a brainy discussion on nothing and nothingness. Who is this lady?
Well, this is who she is and I have to suffer through this interview. Her Intelligence continues: “The system that divides people, starting with gender division – ”
God, this is going to be a long lecture!
Her Highness continues: “When I think of a society that is more equal, a society that’s better, where everyone can enjoy the best, I think of a world that offers more options.”
Brilliant!
“I imagine a world in which you don’t have to be a man or a woman – ”
She must have an IQ of at least 255. I, with my IQ of only 25, try to understand this glorious dream she’s sharing with me, and I ask her: Can you give me an example?
“No, there’s no example. Today we have sub-gender, let’s say gay and lesbian. But I don’t know. It can be that you are a manly man but at the same time you can wear anything you want.”
At this point I decide to pour my heart out to her. “I don’t understand what you are saying.”
She tries to help me. “Male and female is the sex; but then man or woman is what is built around it.”
Was she like this on TV? How do you change the channel in real life? The Israelis might have invented an app for this.
As luck would have it, I can’t find such an app on my iPad, so I try to use my tablet to summarize what she’s been trying to say. I write: “Equality is the name of the game.” Did I get it right? No, she says, I got it wrong. What am I missing? One word: solidarity. So, I rewrite her thinking: “Equality and solidarity is the name of the game.”
She is happy. But a minute later she is worried. “Is it too abstract? Did I go too far?”
I calm her down. What she is saying, I tell her, is understood because it is actually also the thinking of the modern liberal people of Europe and America. I don’t know what I’m talking about, but if she can talk gibberish, why not me?
I’m getting good at this, actually. I say things I don’t understand myself, and it works!
Getting deeper into my own bullshit, I ask this respected MK when she started to have these great ideas of hers – did she just wake up one morning and the thoughts just dropped into her head?
She takes me seriously, and is even impressed with the depth of my intellectuality.
General Jibril thinks I’m Aryan, MK Merav thinks I’m a Western intellectual.
“It has to do with my history,” she continues, “the Kasztner family. My grandfather was murdered here, after being accused of collaborating with the Nazis. The truth is that he saved many tens of thousands of Jews” from certain death by the Nazis.
This is the last thing I expected to hear today: Dr. Rezső Kasztner and the Kasztner Affair. The Kasztner story dates back many years, and is arguably one of the strangest chapters of the Holocaust, if not the strangest of them all. It happened in 1944, when the Nazi leadership realized that soon they would end in defeat, and when some of the Nazi leaders started thinking of the Day After. They had just arrived in Hungary, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were still alive, and the Nazi leaders thought that they could use the Jews as a card to their own survival.
Adolf Eichmann, the man in charge of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, negotiated with Dr. Kasztner, a Jewish leader in Hungary, a deal known as “Blut für Ware” at the time: spare the lives of one million Jews in exchange for ten thousand trucks packed with goods. To prove that he meant business, Eichmann allowed Kasztner to choose a number of Jews to be sent to safety out of Hungary. The “Kasztner Train,” with fewer than two thousand Jews, indeed left Hungary to eventual safety in 1944.
But the Allied Powers, and perhaps the Zionist leadership as well, didn’t approve of the ten thou
sand trucks deal and so the Nazis went back to their original plans. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were promptly ordered to board the trains that would take them to the crematoriums, only the Jews did not know that this was to be their destination. Dr. Kasztner didn’t tell them. They burned in the ovens; Dr. Kasztner did not.
In subsequent years Dr. Kasztner was accused by some of collaborating with the Nazis, and the State of Israel brought charges against one of Kasztner’s accusers. But the state lost in court and the chief judge asserted in the court’s explanation of this ruling that Kasztner had “sold his soul to Satan.” An appeal was filed before a higher court, but before the court had the chance to rule on it, something happened. A gunman approached Dr. Kasztner when he was on his way home in Tel Aviv and asked him if his name was Dr. Kasztner. When affirmed, Dr. Kasztner was shot on the spot.
Merav is Dr. Kasztner’s granddaughter.
With this information, this Austrian loses steam. I become more respectful.
We talk for a while longer and she shares with me one of her biggest dreams: to become a prime minister. I think there is a bigger chance that Dr. Kasztner would be resurrected than that she will beat Benjamin Netanyahu at the polls, but I don’t say it.
I get up and walk around from one hall to the other in the Knesset building. Then, in one of the halls, I spot MK Ayelet Shaked, of the Jewish Home, a far-right party.
***
What I know about MK Ayelet is more or less on the level of what I knew about MK Merav before talking with her. The only item about MK Ayelet that I have is this: various leftists have mentioned her name as the most compelling example of utter stupidity, brainlessness, and idiocy of the Right.
I approach her. Would the esteemed MK mind sharing her time with me?
Let’s go to my office, she suggests, and I gleefully follow her.
Tell me what you want to tell the world!
“I would like to explain our position about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and why we are against the two-state solution, and why I think the world shows its hypocrisy when dealing with Israel. The Arab world, as can be seen in Arab countries around us such as Egypt and Syria, is collapsing, yet at this very time there are countries outside that try to force us into negotiation with the Arab world and want us to give up part of our country to regimes that are anything but stable. Our party is against it. Every parcel of land that we gave the Arabs in the past, such as Lebanon and Gaza, is today under the control of fanatics, be it Hamas in Gaza or Hizballlah in Lebanon.
“The way Europe is treating us, enforcing boycotts against us, is in my eyes shameful and hypocritical. The EU and the UN are obsessed, I don’t know why. I expected Germany to stand by us, not to be in the camp that is against us, only this is not the case. Germany should adhere to a moral and historical responsibility when dealing with us, and for sure not join any boycott against us. I had hoped that Germany would stop the boycott.”
Ayelet doesn’t know who I am. This interview was not arranged via her spokesperson, and all she knows is that I’m German. Yes, I forgot that I was supposed to be Austrian today. Ayelet looks me in the eye and asks: “Are you Jewish?”
Yes.
“Is Europe anti-Semitic?”
And then, speaking quietly, almost swallowing her words, she answers her own question: “Most of them.”
What’s your husband doing?
“He’s a pilot.”
Commercial or military?
“F-16.”
For the record: his name is not Jonathan Shapira. Also for the record: Ayelet graduated from Tel Aviv University, in engineering and computer sciences. Another item for the record: Merav Michaeli’s academic achievements: high school. Of course, since Ayelet is a rightist and Merav is a leftist, it is Ayelet who is called stupid, brainless, and an idiot. Why people cannot have political disagreements without name-calling is beyond me.
I leave Ayelet’s office and resume wandering in the Knesset zoo. Who shall be my next victim? Maybe I should try hooking up with Haredi MKs. I’ll walk around and the first MK I see with a big skullcap I’ll capture.
***
Hunting takes some time but eventually I spot a Haredi MK standing at the entrance of his office. The sign on his door states that he is part of the Haredi Sephardi party, Shas. He might even be a friend of Rabbi David Batsri, of the masturbators redeeming unit. I open the door, say hallo and sit down. It is just then that I realize: I don’t know this MK’s name. I walked in too fast. How am I going to call him? Well, what the heck: I don’t have to call him, he’s already here.
And he speaks: “We have an exemplary state, with respect to almost every category, especially from an ethical and moral view point.”
Ethical and moral, really?
“Yes, of course. But this has not started now. This has been a continuation of the history of the Jewish people, from thirty-five hundred years ago. There were powerful empires thirty-five hundred years ago, but they have disappeared. Not so the Jewish nation; we are still here. Same culture, same intellectual capacity – ”
Nothing has changed in thirty-five hundred years? You really think that this is the same culture?
“Yes. Even better!”
I really would like to know who this guy is. Two MKs of his party spent years in jail for stealing money, the former Israeli president was found to be a common rapist and is presently serving time, the former chief rabbi is accused of stealing millions, the former prime minister is now in court for a variety of financial misdeeds. And this guy is talking about ethics and morality?! I have to find out more about him. I ask: Where are you from? Where is your family from?
“I was born here, but my family comes from Tripoli, Libya. And where are you from?”
Poland.
God, how I mix up the countries today!
“My grandfather’s home in Libya and your grandfather’s home in Poland were the same homes. The character, the intimate shine of both of them is the same. Same ethics, same thinking, same Light unto the Nations. Yes, yes.”
Wait: What are the Jewish ethics?
“First off, who gave humanity its ethics? Judaism. In the beginning everybody around was a cannibal, with no ethics and no morality, but then the Jews gave the world the Bible. The nations of the world copied it. Our Bible, the Jewish Bible, was translated into more than seventy-two languages.”
You know, dear MK, that most Israelis do not follow the Bible. Come with me, I can take you to the beaches of Tel Aviv and show you the Jews –
“Let me explain it to you. Something happened here in this land, something that your grandpa and my grandpa didn’t even dream of. Israel, you see, was founded by Russian radicals who were atheists. But that’s over. What you see on Tel Aviv’s beaches is still a result of what those radicals did here years ago, but there’s a movement in the nation toward the roots, to your grandpa’s and my grandpa’s roots. You can see it – ”
I can see what?
“In three years, the majority of kids entering elementary schools in Israel will be Haredi.”
Are you serious?
“Yes, yes. Those kids have already been born!”
Are you telling me that in fifty years, let’s say, the majority of Israelis will be ultra-Orthodox?
“Like your grandfather and my grandfather.”
In fifty years the beaches of Tel Aviv will be empty on the Sabbath?
“Not totally empty. There will still be a few secular Jews, but they will be the minority. Blessed be the Lord, for the secular culture will soon disappear.”
At exactly this point the time is 2:00 p.m. Every hour, on the hour, there’s a news broadcast on Israeli radio. The MK turns on the radio to listen. He wants to know what’s new in Syria, Israel’s neighbor. He listens, and listens, and listens.
This is an Israeli thing, a unique habit, and he reminds me of it: listening to the news every hour to make sure, may God help us, that Israel still exists.
This habit is one of th
e most interesting, most touching, and most frightening realities you would ever encounter in Israel. It contains no words, almost no emotions, just one short move of a finger pressing a button or clicking a screen in order to turn on a news broadcast. But don’t think of it, for if you do you might start crying for these people.
“No war,” he says after he’s heard the news, happy that he can still cling to life. He turns off the radio and talks again.
“The Jewish nation has survived because they kept a unity amongst themselves. Do you know why the nations of the world hate us?”
They do?
“Yes, they do. They are anti-Semites. Do you know why they are anti-Semites? Because they are jealous of us!”
The nations of the world hate you?
“Certainly they do.”
The Americans too?
“The Americans I don’t know. But there is anti-Semitism all over, let’s not speak of individual countries. There’s anti-Semitism, the lot. Look, last century the Germans wanted to kill all living Jews. Why? What did we do to the Germans? What kind of fight or argument did we have with them? Why did they kill us? What’s the reason? Why? Is there a logic that could explain their hatred? Is there any reasonable explanation for their action?”
He reflects a bit, thinking through what he has just said, and he shares another thought with me. The anti-Semitism of the world is coming from Christian countries, not from Islamic countries. Before Zionism, he tells me, Muslims and Jews went along just fine.
I change the topic.
What do you think of Rabbi Batsri?
“Righteous like the rest.”
How is he accepted in the community?
“Like the other rabbis. They are all wise, they are all smart, all are well versed in the Bible.”
Catch The Jew! Page 20