Life is hard, he shares with me, but he gets by. Added to the pack of the difficult life of the illegals is another problem: “The Eritrean and the Sudanese don’t get along. We are Christian, they are Muslim.” Even here, at the bottom of the pit of life, people are strangers to one another and won’t mix.
I walk and walk and walk. On the outskirts of this neighborhood, two African kids walk by licking ice cream from cones. One is around five years of age, the other around six. They speak to each other in Hebrew. They walk by a photographer with a big camera and ask him if he can take a shot of them. As they talk, the younger kid makes a wrong move and his ice cream falls on the sidewalk. He is devastated. The photographer, a white man, gives him five shekels to buy a new one and the kid takes the money, but his older brother does not approve: “Why did you take the money from him? You have enough money and you don’t need anybody to hand you gifts. Give him back the money!”
The kid refuses. He got five shekels and he wants them.
“I know why you took the money from him. You want to have more money than me. But you don’t need it. If you want ice cream you can buy on your own.”
The kid still refuses.
“Here,” says the older brother, a kid himself, handing his own ice cream to the younger: “Take my ice cream and give the man back his money!”
I watch and listen to this and I think: I have never seen kids at this age of such ethics. Not to mention adults. General Jibril, MK Cohen: this is ethics. Remember this next time you use the word.
***
I resume my peace walk. Slowly I leave Africa, more impressed than I’ve ever imagined I would be, and I reach Arabia. Back at the adjacent neighborhood of poor Jews, most of whom came here from Arab countries, I see them holding a demonstration. They don’t want the Africans next to them. If the Supreme Court says the law requires Israel to have the Africans within Israel’s borders, let the esteemed judges find a place for the Africans. A man with a loudspeaker yells: “Don’t worry, friends. We’ll send them to the Ashkenazi neighborhoods!”
I talk to many of the demonstrators, and the repeating phrases are these:
The white liberal rich are ruthless hypocrites. If they really believe that the Africans should be welcomed in Israel, why don’t the liberals put the Africans in the rich sections of Tel Aviv? Who sent the Africans to us? Rich Ashkenazi, who are the politicians and the judges. Why here? We don’t have money to go on trips, not even for a day, and now we can’t even walk outside of our small neighborhood because in Africa people steal, rape and murder.
To the educated classes of the elite, the African refugees are like the Palestinians. They don’t see them, don’t know them, yet they fight for them. Like Jonathan and Yoav, and their European sponsors. No Bayerischer Rundfunk producer, enjoying life in the Englischer Garten, is paying the consequence of his love of either Arab or African.
The demonstrators here are not political activists and this demonstration is not political in nature but a collection of people who have gone to the street to vent their pain and their anger in public. Some cry, and others curse. They block traffic and scream at judges who are not anywhere in sight. Of course, as is normally the case in any social upheaval anywhere, there are politicians who show up in order to exploit peoples’ anger and translate it into votes.
One of them is former MK Michael Ben Ari of the far-right. Aided by a mobile loudspeaker, he ‘sings’ with much pleasure a poem he had just composed: “We want a Jewish state! We want a Jewish state! We want a Jewish state! We want a Jewish state! Sudanese, go to Sudan! Sudanese, go to Sudan! Sudanese, go to Sudan! Sudanese, go to Sudan!” A man in the crowd yells back: “Racist! Racist! Racist! I’m also against the government, I understand the people here, but what you are doing is racism. Racist! Racist!”
I take a few moments to talk with Michael. “I say: the court has just decided that this country is not a Jewish country but a multi-national country. The Infiltrators are border thieves. They are thieves and their place is in jail! The court, instead of sending them to jail is arranging for them a hotel here. I want to see the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court taking ten of the thieves to his home, I’m not even asking that he takes home the thousands of them that he had sent to live here. Ten!”
What do you say to the people who yell “racist” at you?
“It was just one person, the rest of the people here hug me and kiss me. We are not racists, we are Jews. In Europe, I was told, the refugees say to their hosts: ‘You are not racists but, by God, you are idiots! Real idiots!’ If the Europeans want to be idiots, let them be. Those idiots, the European idiots, will pay the price, for soon Europe will cease to exist. But this country is not Europe!”
I’m losing perspective here. The more I get to dislike the hypocritical leftists, the more I get to dislike the honest conservatives. The centrists, experts in adopting the worst of both their political rivals, are today quiet as fish.
***
I came to Tel Aviv to experience peace, but what I’m experiencing here is liberal hypocrisy and conservative hatred.
There are places in Tel Aviv, of course, where the rich and the poor meet: on the stage. Should I take a look? Why not!
Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater, located away from the people here, is playing Kazablan, a musical about the early days of the state and the tensions between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews at the time.
The plot of the musical unravels in a slum, and the first character we see is a Sephardi street cleaner. He says: “God loves the poor and helps the rich.” This almost sounds like Fiddler on the Roof, but in an Israeli version.
Love or help, both the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi poor in this musical live together in the same slum and occasionally curse each other, yet the Ashkenazi poor still feel they are the superior class. An Ashkenazi girl, now parading on stage, would not lower herself to say good morning to a Sephardi guy she passes by. His name is Kaza and he is hurt and he is upset. I’m good enough to serve in the army, he bellows, why shouldn’t I be good enough to be greeted? “I have honor!” he yells.
The street cleaner, the poorest of humanity that rich playwrights like to portray as the wisest of men, proclaims that Kaza’s love for this Ashkenazi girl will never work out. These young people are of very different cultures, he says, and east will never meet west. “Blue eyes say: Love me or I’ll die. Black eyes say: Love me or I’ll kill you,” is how he puts it.
When another character says, “We are a young country only, only ten years old. Give it thirty, forty years and it will change, and no discrimination will still be there,” the liberal audience, people who believe Israel to be a corrupted occupying state, is hugely entertained by this line and laughs mightily.
That the people in this audience, who encounter the “other” only on stage, view themselves as peace lovers and peacemakers is a comedy better than any actor would be capable of depicting on stage.
Gate Thirty-Two
Roadmap to peace 2: become a European diplomat and beat up Israeli soldiers.
JERICHO, AS I HAVE BEEN TOLD, IS THE “OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.” WOULD be interesting to see how ancient people lived together – and perhaps I’ll learn a chapter or two about living in peace and tranquility.
According to the biblical account, the Jews entered this land via Jericho (Arikha, in Arabic). It wasn’t easy to break through the walls of Jericho but a lovely prostitute by the name of Rahav made it possible for them. In other words, if not for a whore, the Jews wouldn’t be here but would have stayed in Egypt and the president of Egypt today would be Benjamin Netanyahu. Imagine that!
***
Jericho.
The first thing I notice when I enter Jericho (I walked here with Jibril, but that was at night) is that this “ten-thousand-year-old city” looks ancient even now, at least in terms of tall buildings, which almost don’t exist here. The second thing I notice: this is quite a small city. Third: Oh, God, this city is boiling hot, with no wind bl
owing anywhere. Fourth: there are two tourists here besides me. Two more than in Ashkelon’s National Park.
I walk to the tourist information office, which I find while sweating on the street, and ask them for some great suggestions on what to see. There’s no line of people waiting to be served and I get the best attention anyone could expect of any tourist office anywhere.
First off, I get a map. Nice map. Really. I look at it. “The map publication was funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency for Jericho Heritage Tourism Committee,” it says on its back. Yes. Japan printed this map, to help the Palestinian cause.
This stupendous love for the Palestinians from so many nations that I keep seeing in this region is quite interesting. Some years ago I was in a Palestinian refugee camp called al-Wahdat, in Jordan, where people live worse than the average cockroach. No foreign government was helping them in any way, no NGOs around, and the Jordanian government was doing its best to make the life of these people a bit less intolerable. It doesn’t take a genius to know why the world “loves” only certain Palestinians. I don’t want to think about it.
There is a Sycamore Tree, a lady at the Jericho tourist information tells me, that I should see. A Sycamore tree? I was dreaming of a tempting prostitute and they tell me to go see a tree. Well, this is a special sycamore tree, from the times of Jesus. I forgot that I’m a German Christian and should be excited by anything Jesus. I have to adjust, and that fast. Yes, Jesus Christ! I can’t stop showing some excitement.
And this is the story: When Jesus entered the city some two thousand years ago a short tax collector couldn’t see him because of the crowd and he climbed on this very tree to take a look at the Son of God. Yep, this very tree. Would I like to see it? Yes! There’s nothing else I’d like to see more, I tell the lady. Hopefully, I think in my heart but do not utter it, I will be able to steal a glimpse of Rahav of some one thousand years earlier than Jesus when I climb that tree.
I walk toward the tree. I walk and I walk and I walk, and now I am on Dmitry Medvedev Street. Wait a second: Am I reading this correctly? This is the name of the Russian prime minister. What is he doing here? Could it be that he got lost while following a Japanese map? I take a closer look at my surroundings, just to verify that I’m not suffering from hallucination, and see that right next to where I’m standing is the Russian Park, a gift from Russia.
I keep on walking, in the direction of either a tall tree or Vladimir Putin Road. And as I walk, an old man stops me. Did you see the ancient tree? He asks me. Where? He points to a small tree, and I have no idea what he wants from my life. So, I check my Japanese map. Yes, of course: this is the tree, with a fence around it. No point trying to climb this tree, I immediately conclude.
Where should I go next?
Well, there is a place in this city, the Japanese have pointed out, named Mount of Temptation; that’s where Satan tempted Jesus Christ. Only this would require a cable car, at the cost of fifty-five shekels. A bit expensive, but I need to be tempted by something or I’ll keep thinking of the Jordanian refugee camp al-Wahdat.
The cable car, for reasons that only the Son of Allah knows, stops midway, hanging between heaven and earth. Under me, as the car is shaking from the sudden stop, is the ancient city of Jericho. No sign whatsoever, sorry, of Rahav. She must have gone somewhere, maybe urinating with a Ramallah delegation at a KAS peace conference. I try to find some traces, a yellow sock or a blazing piece of red underwear, but then the cable car starts to move again. What bad timing.
But at least, and at long last, I reach the Mount of Temptation. And there, built into the mountain and looking every part of it, which is a magnificent sight to behold, is a monastery. Inside this monastery is the Stone of Temptation, exactly where Jesus was tempted by Satan. You should come and see it. This stone has the shape of the tip of an uncircumcised penis, and good monks pray by it. Plain gorgeous. Olga, who was kissed by a monk at the Holy Sepulcher and told him to kiss me, would have a blast if she saw this.
This is, more or less, Jericho. A small city with Japanese and Russians.
***
I hook up with Raed, a man born to drive a car, and he takes me to Bethlehem. Raed likes to talk, and talk he does: “Here it is hot, but in twenty minutes’ time, as we approach Bethlehem, it’s cold. Here hot, there cold. This country has many different climates. This country has everything.”
No other country on earth has such change of climates?
“No, here is special.”
How come?
“Because this is a holy land.”
Are you happy to be in this land?
“There is an occupation here.”
Where? Are there Jews around? Show me!
“I would like to live in my birth city.”
Isn’t it Jericho?
“No. I am a refugee here.”
Where are you from?
He points at mountains away, in Israel’s direction: “Over there.”
There? When were you there last?
“In 1948.”
You said “there” was your birth city. You look like a thirty-year-old. How long ago was 1948?
“My grandfather lived there!”
I see. And you feel under occupation because of that?
“I want to go to the sea, pick up fish from the waters, like the Germans do in their country, but I can’t do it because of the Israelis.”
Fish? Will you starve without fish? Let me tell you something: You, Palestinians, have better food here than we have in the whole of Germany! Show me in Germany olive oil like the Palestinian olive oil!
“That’s true. If you have a cold, you know what you do? You spread warm olive oil on your torso and on your neck and in two days you’ll be healthy. It’s in the Quran, and Prophet Mohammad said it.”
But you don’t have fish . . .
“I don’t!”
You have humus here that no German will ever have! And you have some other food too. You have –
“We have dates here. If you eat seven dates in the morning, no bad eye will hurt you. On the Internet, in ‘Genius,’ they checked it and found that the seven dates create x-rays around you to protect you.”
So, what’s your problem? Fish, that’s it? Why are you complaining?
“I’ll tell you the problem: We, Muslims, call our children after Christian and Jewish prophets. We have Musa, Isa, and I’m going to call my daughter, the next one I’ll have, I’ll call her Maryam. But Christians and Jews don’t call their children after Muslim prophets, like Muhammad, May Allah pray for him and offer him peace. Why? Show me a Christian or a Jew calling their sons ‘Muhammad’!”
I must agree with you. I don’t know even one Jew or Christian by the name of Muhammad. This is a real problem!
Raed drives and I consult my iPad.
Gideon Levy, who gave me his word to have me join him on his frequent forays into Palestine, is responding to a message I sent him some days ago: “Dear Tuvia, I was yesterday in the Jordan Valley and Jenin, but could not be joined. I don’t know what will be the next opportunity, but I will let you know. Not always it is possible. Gideon.” Funny.
The Israeli media reports that an Israeli man, driving with a Palestinian coworker to his town in Palestine, was murdered in cold blood and that his body was thrown into a pit. Not funny.
It’s an awful reminder of what can happen to Israeli-born people crossing into Palestine. How long will I be able to play this game of Tobi the German before somebody catches me?
I get off at Bethlehem and start walking. Hopefully I won’t end in a pit.
“This shop will be open during the Bet Lahem Live Festival, 13–16 June 2013,” a piece of paper on a locked shop door reads. (“Bet Lehem” means House of Bread in Hebrew, which conflicts with the Palestinian narrative of the ancient Palestinian state. Since Beth Lehem – or Bethlehem – plays a major role in the New Testament, its very name could prove that the Jews lived here and not the Palestinians in Christ’s tim
e. To solve this problem, a little correction was introduced, by changing a vowel. “Bet Lahem,” with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e,’ is giving a new meaning to the city’s name in Arabic: House of Meat.)
This shop, in a beautiful street with an endless rows of closed shops, is open four days a year only.
I walk and I think: How do the people here make a living? Doing what? Oh, here’s a beautiful house, must have cost a fortune. No, not really. It’s a gift from Italy. Italians love the ex-Jew, Itamar, and the Palestinians. Every second building on this street, if not every building, is funded by righteous Europeans. I’m also righteous, I fund my stray cats. I miss them and go back to Jerusalem to see them.
***
And there was night and there was day, as the Bible says, and I go to join an event organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ). No kidding, they exist. Perhaps, what do you know, they will bring peace to this land.
The ICEJ is an organization that advertises itself as Christian Zionist, and this evening it is celebrating the biblical Feast of Tabernacles at the Dead Sea. Don’t ask for more info, I don’t know. This organization, “the world’s largest Christian Zionist organization,” as its brochure says, “was founded in 1980 to represent Christians from all over the world who share a love and concern for Israel and the Jewish people.”
I love “love” and I’m here to see love and to feel love.
Many people are on the scene, five thousand of them as I’m told by the embassy spokesperson, or thirty-six hundred as I’m told by the bus operators who actually bring the people here.
And the loudspeakers proclaim, as loud as can be: “Jesus you are the light, Jesus you are the reason. There is no one like you, Jesus.”
Good, at least these people love one Jew.
The gathering is very American in style, with a black singer and a blond dancer amongst others, which by itself creates a happy shmappy feel. The crowd, made of people from Hong Kong and Switzerland, amongst many other nations, all go for it. There are other visual impressions in addition to the black singer and the blond dancer: there are brown mountains behind us, a bluish Dead Sea in front of us, plus big screens on the right and the left and quite a spacious stage to accommodate the big choir.
Catch The Jew! Page 25