“I think that Obama is going to engage in a war with Syria because he wants to show the world that he is a big man, that he has power.”
What will happen after Obama has attacked: Who will win and who will lose?
“Muslims can make new kids in one night,” he explains, and at the end they will win, no matter what happens in the meantime. People here have faith and they won’t lose it. The Arabs will win, because they are connected with the land and will stick by it. Not so the Jews, he shares an important piece of wisdom with me. “The Jews are connected with their bank accounts, not with the land.”
He likes to talk about Arabs and about Jews, and I want to talk about the Druze. What is the Druze religion?
“Druze is a group of humans who believe in reincarnation.”
What else do you believe in?
“This is our religion, this is our belief.”
What is unique about your faith?
“We believe in the mind, not in the body.”
What are you going to do with stupid people?
“They are bad.”
What’s the holy book of the Druze?
“Hikmeh.”
Did you read it?
“No.”
Aren’t you curious?
“No. I have read the Quran, the book of the Christians, the book of the Jews. That’s what I’m interested in reading.”
Is it true that you’re not allowed to read your own holy book?
“The Holy Book, Hikmeh, is a secret book. You can’t find it on the Internet. There are no printed versions of it, the Holy Book is written by hand.”
Hamad might not know his Hikmeh, but he knows the news and he knows European style and taste. Clouds fill the garden of his house every morning, and from his house, he says, “You can see Syria on the left, and the Occupiers on the right.” Hamad has built a special room, with 360-degree glass windows, to serve journalists for the next war.
Hamad shows me a YouTube clip of a movie his company produced, Apples of the Golan, which was paid for by Irish, Swiss, and Austrian companies.
“The land always has five of these seeds,” the film teaches us, as we see an image of Golan apples cut into two, with five seeds in each. “The Syrian flag stars have five points,” the film continues, while the star of the Israeli flag has six points.
What does this all mean? This cannot but mean: the Golan Heights belongs to Syria. The earth has spoken. Period.
Out of 139 Arab villages in the area before 1967, the movie asserts, only five have remained.
Hamad calls Israel “the daughter of America,” and accuses it of planting mines all over the Golan during its war with the Syrians. I ask him: Before 1967 this area belonged to the Syrians; could it be that they were the ones to plant the mines?
Instead of giving me a good counter-argument, he offers to take me on a tour of some deserted old houses on the mountains, a la Itamar’s tour to Lifta, whenever I want.
But Hamad is not Itamar, definitely not. Hamad is a warm Druze, not a cold ex-Jew. When I ask him to feed me hot food in addition to the hot coffee, he arranges for me to have lunch with a Druze family. I love it! I’ve never been to a Druze home before and I can’t wait to experience one.
Aqab, a Druze teacher of English and sport in the neighboring Boqata, is the man of the house, and he tells me that the Muslims and the Druze are Arab brothers but that the Jews are occupiers. He prefers, he says, to live in poverty and under a dictatorship, as a part of Syria, to living in riches and in a democracy as a part of Israel. To him, Jews are occupiers not only in the Golan Heights, but also of all the land around.
The Jews, he argues passionately, have no right to have a land of Jewish nationality, because this is racism, but the Arabs have a right to have a land of Arab nationality because this is not racism. I ask him to explain this obvious discrepancy to me but for the life of him he can’t. I ask him instead of giving me a reply to my question to give me his beautiful daughter for a wife. In addition, because I’m such a good-hearted do-gooder German, I even offer to pay him for her. We laugh a lot about it, but she is not for sale to a non-Druze. But if I offer a new Mercedes, we might find a way.
His wife is feeding me Druze food. I don’t know what it’s made of, but it is as delicious as his daughter is beautiful. Paradise.
The Golan: from the height of its Heights to the lowest of its wadis, it is one huge celebration of nature. Nothing I have seen in any mountainous area anywhere, including all of Tyrol, is as beautiful, as gorgeous, as cruel, as naked, and as rich as these mountains here.
***
There are more cities and towns that might be affected by flying missiles, if they indeed are to come, and I again drive to Tzfat, the picturesque city among these mountains and valleys, the city whose hospital I visited just days before, but I did not walk around the city. Tzfat is a city celebrated for its long line of mystics and traders, a city where the famous Holy Ari lived ages ago and where he first came up with his Tikkun Olam, a term used these days not just by Rabbi Arik but also by President Obama and celebs such as Madonna.
Tzfat reveals itself to me in its most naked form. Its old city and its new, with their mazes of stores and eateries, which are all closed, shut down in observance of the Jewish New Year. Here, as in some other cities in Israel, the Haredim rule with an iron fist. Businesses must be shut on Jewish holy days and only what is holy is to remain open: houses of prayer, ritual baths, graves, and tombs.
Tombs are a big business, as I find out. People from all over the country have come to this most mystic of cities to spend the Holy Days in the presence of Dead Holy Men.
Not just the Ari’s grave is here, but his holy ritual bath – the one he bathed in hundreds of years ago when he communicated with angels regularly – is also here. It is a very holy place, I’m told, and if I bathe in it fascinating things will happen to me.
I go to see what is supposed to produce the miracle for myself. At the entrance to the site there’s an announcement: This bath is for men only; women who try to bathe here will be bitten by a snake.
Wow. What a holy place.
The bath is much smaller than I imagined it to be. Only one man at a time can bathe in it, and men are waiting in line.
Here is a man, totally naked, immersing his body up and down seven times. This would be a perfect place for gays, I think.
“Are you a Jew?” a naked holy man asks me.
What’s the difference?
“If you’re not a Jew, bathing here won’t do anything to you.”
Why not?
“Are you a Jew?”
The most Jewish of all!
“Then go in!”
Why did you ask me if I was Jewish? Are non-Jews not welcome here?
“If you go to Rome and the pope sprinkles over your head what popes sprinkle on the heads of Christians, will it do anything for you? No. But it does for Christians. Right? Here it’s the same. Now, you go and immerse your body in the waters and you will feel it. You’ll become a changed man. It will affect your soul in the most powerful of ways.”
How?
“Try and see.”
But can’t you explain to me what will happen?
“Not in words. This is spiritual, and the spiritual you cannot explain. Take off your clothes, jump into the bath, and you’ll see for yourself. If you need a towel I’ll get you one. Want to try?”
Maybe this man is gay. Go figure. Pointing at the water, I ask him: Can you just describe what happens while you are there?
“All your sins disappear, and you become like new.”
Just by jumping naked into these waters –
“You must immerse yourself seven times!”
Why seven?
“Mystical secrets. That’s the way it works. Try. Try. You’ll be a new man!”
Honestly, I’d rather have a Diet Coke now. Sadly, no store is open for miles and miles. These religious people want me to have water around me, not in me. They wan
t it holy, not sweet. They want it natural, not chemical.
I criticize them but I must admit that these kinds of places have a certain aura. Ancient baths. Graves. Tombs. They are a bit like horror movies, and horror sells quite well.
A ten-minute drive from here there is the tomb of the Rashbi, another mystic, in the neighboring city of Meron. I go there. Outside I see this announcement: Whoever owns an iPhone will not enter Paradise.
Bingo.
I guess spirituality as practiced here is not my cup of tea. I take my iPhone with me and I leave.
***
I head north again, this time to the highest elevation in Israel, right by the Syrian border. To be in sync with Mother Nature of the Golan and its apples I put on my head a baseball cap made in the image of the Syrian flag, as I reach Mount Hermon.
A Druze sees me and gets very excited. “Are you for Assad (Syria’s struggling president)”?
Yes, I am.
“Assad with the people,” he shouts with pleasure, in what amounts to: Long Live Assad.
There are two daily tours to the Hermon, which take tourists for a walk to the top of Mount Hermon. I missed the last tour but I still want to go. Two Israeli soldiers, stationed at a barrier stop me: “Sorry, you can’t continue from here.”
Why not?
“You can cross this point only with a tour guide, who knows where civilians can and cannot walk. It’s also for your safety because part of this area is mined.”
Who mined it?
“Doesn’t matter.”
You or the Syrians?
The soldiers don’t seem to like me that much, and I can’t blame them. With my Syrian cap I don’t really look my best in Israeli eyes. I try to argue with them that I should be allowed to cross, saying that my tour guide is waiting for me.
“Where is he?”
Up there!
“Where?”
I look up, pick some imaginary point, and say: There!
Well, don’t try to outsmart Israeli military. In no time a jeep fast comes my way. In it is the commander of these soldiers.
I want to go up there, I say to him.
“To your country, Syria?”
I realize that my cap is not doing me much good and so this Syrian starts speaking in Hebrew: I’m not Syrian and, between you and me, I don’t even know where Syria is!
The tension drops way down, at the speed of an American missile, and he laughs healthily. He rushed here with his jeep thinking a Syrian soldier had penetrated the area, and all I really am is a Jew. We laugh about it more and more until by the end he lets me cross the barrier on my own and walk anywhere I want.
Ain’t that hard to sneak into closed military areas. All you need is a good joke.
And so I walk. Anywhere I feel like, dancing on all the mines. I see huge antennas on top and I go to see them up close. I take pictures of every IDF position and base on my way, and nobody stops me. I think of the many years of jail time I would get if I did the same near sensitive American bases.
From time to time I stop walking, taking a deep breath, and watch the winds. The view is so spectacular that at certain points I can’t even move, completely hijacked by beauty.
I think I have discovered the real meaning and essence of spirituality: beauty. I was looking for spirituality, and now I met it.
***
An hour or two later, I go back to the soldiers I encountered beforehand. They are still there.
They are Aviv and Bar. Aviv is Sephardi – his grandfather immigrated to this land from Syria – and Bar is Ashkenazi. Both are in their early twenties, both carry assault rifles, quite a cache of bullets, and a variety of other military items that are attached to various parts of their young bodies, making them look obese.
Knowing that I’m an important person (after all, I’ve been allowed to wander here according to my heart’s desire), they share with me everything they know regarding the Israeli army’s preparation for a possible war with Syria – in case America bombs Syria and Syria bombs Israel in return.
“The number of soldiers at various positions has been doubled. New rules prohibiting soldiers to wander out of their bases at night have been put in place. A tank unit was moved up [to the top of Mount Hermon] last week, and is still in its new position, due to the situation.”
Okay. Time to discuss the really important stuff: girls.
Which girls do you dream of?
Aviv: “Israeli girls.”
Of what background, Ashkenazi or Sephardi?
“Sephardi.”
How dark should her skin be, like yours or darker?
“I don’t know – ”
What kind of Sephardi girl you want, Yemenite?
“No; they are too dark.”
Moroccan?
“Yes.”
How about Tunisian?
“Yes, also good.”
How do you imagine her: tall or short, skinny or fat, small breasts or big?
“Not taller than me. Skinny, but not too skinny. One must: breasts.”
How big?
“Medium to large.”
Anything else?
“Hair color I don’t care, as long as it’s not red. And firm ass.”
Bar is less detailed. He is Ashkenazi, after all, more into brains than heart, more rational thinking than sexual imagination, and only after I push him over the psychological edge he shares one detail: his beloved had better be dark-skinned with black hair.
Tunisian . . . ?
Yep. And he starts laughing, feeling relieved and released.
These two soldiers are the eyes of Israel, stationed at its highest point of entry. The Nation of Israel, and all its Jews, are protected by two young men dreaming of a Tunisian girl.
Every night, they tell me, they see the fighting across the border: bombs, fire, smoke. It is the image of a Tunisian woman, with big breasts and firm ass, that helps them fight off their fear.
I get off Mount Hermon and drive on to Metula.
***
I like the sound of this town’s name: Metula. Try it yourself: say “Metula” ten times and you’ll fall in love with it. Of course, once I arrive in Metula I have no clue where exactly I am, beyond just the name Metula. I go to the first restaurant I spot, Louisa, to have dinner. When I hear my belly singing in thanks, I go for a walk. I move north on the road, and in a minute or so I spot an armored vehicle flying the Druze flag.
Druze?? Have I crossed a border into Druzeland? I move closer and I hear them speaking Hebrew. I ask them who they are. “We are Druze,” they say.
Like the ones in the Golan Heights?
“We are Israeli Druze, they are Syrians.”
Aren’t you brothers?
“Cousins.”
Like Jews and Arabs?
They laugh. “We are related, but not too related.”
What are they doing here? I ask. Well, they serve in the IDF and they are protecting the border.
Where’s the border?
“Right here.”
Right where we stand?
“No, no. You see the road over there? That’s the UN and after it is Lebanon. Hizballah is there, in the villages that you see. If you want to get closer, go down the road and you will be at the border.”
Is it a quiet border?
“Now it is. But this is the way it goes: it’s quiet, quiet, quiet, and then the explosions come. No end of them. Where are you from?
Germany.
“Welcome!”
So, let me get it: What’s the relationship between you and the Druze of the Golan?
“We are related, but some of them like us and some hate us.”
How does it work? Some of you serve in the Israeli army and none of them do?
“Not ‘some’ of us; all of us. Here we all serve in the IDF.”
How do you get along with the Jews?
“Blessed be the Lord. We get along with them. Excellent.”
These IDF soldiers, Druze sharing their fa
te with Jews, are eager to talk to strangers. They tell me some interesting stuff. For example: there are Druze all over, including in countries like Saudi Arabia, but those don’t tell their neighbors who they are because “they would be killed.”
Before I get back into the car, I ask the Druze for the exact location of the closest border point to Lebanon. They position their armored vehicle in front of my car and tell me to follow them.
It is strange to follow an armored vehicle flying the flag of a country that doesn’t exist but, hey, why not?
They stop just steps from Lebanon. “Do you see the flags?” one asks me, pointing to flags right close to us. “This one is the flag of Lebanon, and next to it, the yellow flag, that’s Hizballah.”
Hizballah’s flag is at the border, he’s right. I am in Druzeland, at the border to Hizballahland.
This is the Middle East. No foreigner will ever comprehend.
On the road between Druzeland and Hizballahland, I see white UN cars driving back and forth. But the eyes, at least in this part of the world, can mislead their owner. The cars might be UN, but they can also belong to somebody else.
I go back to my cats. They are real cats. What a comforting thought.
***
I am in Jerusalem and I jump into a cab. Avi, the cabbie, talks to me.
“I picked up a couple the other night, from Har Zion [Mount Zion] Hotel. Young, nice-looking, and they were going to the airport. They were talking nicely with each other, and then they asked me if I feel Chosen. I asked them who they were, because usually it’s me who initiates talks in my cab, not the passengers. They told me that they were lawyers who came to Israel to check how the Jews treat the Palestinians. I asked them why they were asking me whether I felt Chosen, and they said, ‘We think we understand why the Jews torture the Palestinians: they think they can do everything and get away with it because they are the Chosen People and are above the law.’
“The first thing that came to my mind when I heard them, do you know what it was? I wanted to get my car into an accident, but in a way that only the back part of my car would be smashed. But I didn’t do it, I just talked. I moved my front mirror so that I could see them better, and I said: ‘Yes, I am Chosen!’”
Catch The Jew! Page 23