First Lady: “I have enough money.”
Second Lady: “If you want to study, believe me, the street is the best place to study. On the street you learn about life, about what really matters. Forget the prostitution element; leave it aside for a moment. If you want to learn about life, the best place to acquire knowledge is the street.”
First Lady is now showing me what she has learned on the street that no professor would predict. She says: “If you come here, to this street, in a year and a half from now, you’ll need a passport.”
Why?
“It will be a different country. Soon, the Sudanese will demand independence – ”
Second Lady: “Them, and with all that garbage they carry with them.”
First Lady: “It is their right, isn’t it? They live here and soon they will demand their human rights for self-recognition. Two or three years, tops, and these streets will be an independent state.”
I guess that they also like women, right?
“Yes.”
Do they have money to pay?
Second Lady: “The Sudanese have more money than the average Israeli.”
What?
First Lady: “Go down the street and you will see for yourself. First thing you will notice: they control the drug market.”
Second Lady: “Please write this down!”
What are your names?
Second lady: “Keren.”
First Lady: “Nadine.”
Across the street a Hasidic Jew is walking by, checking what’s cooking. Nadine points at him.
Nadine: “You see? We just talked about them! This guy, can I tell you? he gets an orgasmic climax in one second!”
These ladies of the night are full of life, funny, creative, and it’s a pleasure to talk with them. I don’t know how much of what they have told me about themselves is true, but I have enjoyed every second of our talk.
I take a few photos with them: I face the camera, they face the opposite side. I hug Keren, perhaps a bit too tight, and she quips: “I think I’m going to charge you!”
Would be nice to go to Meah Shearim after this, to personally feel the difference between kdesha and kdosha.
On the way from here to there the ICRC office in Jerusalem contacts me. We talk and reach an agreement: I am to join them in a future operation, from conception to completion, in Palestine. Details to follow.
***
This week is the holiday of Sukkot and the religious love to celebrate it. In the time of the Holy Temple, every child knows, the Children of Israel would come to Jerusalem to celebrate this holiday. And today, the streets of Meah Shearim are packed with revelers. There are so many of them that the traffic is at a virtual standstill. They are dressed in their finest clothes, and as you walk amongst them you think you are in Europe, centuries ago.
Well, not exactly. It’s more like Europe of old mixed with Afghanistan of today. There’s a fenced sidewalk, designated for women, and no woman is to choose another path. From the street and from the sidewalk on the opposite side, where men walk or stand, the women look as if they were animals in a zoo protected by a wire fence.
God knows why, but I decide to cross into the women’s area.
Let me tell you: one man surrounded by an untold number of women is a good feeling. Yes, I know, it’s not nice to say, but as Keren and Nadine would define it, I’m surrounded by “food.” On the wall of one of the houses I see this notice to women: “Women whose arms and legs were uncovered in this world, will be placed in a boiling pot of fire and burn [in the Hereafter]. They will cry in anguish and suffering. This is much worse than when a person is burnt while he is alive.”
In Toldos Aharon, the institution I visited twice before, thousands of people dance and sing: “My soul is thirsty for You, Lord, and my flesh is longing for You.”
I wonder if this is the same line they use when they visit the ladies of the night.
Gate Thirty-Four
Please help: European diplomats rush to help Bedouins who would like to have naked German women running between their goats.
I TAKE A TAXI TO JENIN, TO MEET ATEF OF B’TSELEM, AS PREVIOUSLY ARRANGED. The taxi driver takes me all over the West Bank – almost. He thinks he knows the way to Jenin, but the roads don’t always obey him. It doesn’t really matter, since this way I see more than I would otherwise see. And the West Bank, may I say it for the thousandth time, is splendidly gorgeous.
It is only with Allah’s help, that we actually reach Jenin.
Atef, who is also a journalist for the Palestinian paper Al-Hayat Al-Jedida in addition to his activism, welcomes me in his office with my favorite Arabic coffee, and we walk to his car. We cross Cinema Jenin, which I’ve heard of many times before. Being a master agent, I stop to check it out. On its front wall it says, in stone, that it is supported by the “German Federal Foreign Office,” the “Goethe Institut,” the “Palestinian National Authority,” and “Roger Waters.” (In the year 2013, Pink Floyd’s Roger affixed the Jewish Star of David on a floating pig during his summer concert.)
We walk a bit more until we reach Atef ’s car and I ask him where he’s going to take me. “Khirbet al-Makhul.” Yes, to the place where Marion the French made her great name as a savior of the people.
I thought we were going to see demolition of new houses, but I guess B’Tselem couldn’t locate any real house demolition, and so they are sending me to a Tent in the News. This is not what I had bargained for, but better. Now I will be able to see what’s on the mind of BBC et al, who are so busy with that Makhul. We drive for hours. The Jordan Valley has not only gorgeous mountains but it also has endless roads, and Atef talks unto me. The mountains, he says, used to be green.
Who turned them brown?
Well, the Israelis. There used to be waters under the mountains, he explains to me, but the Israelis stole them. It is possibly true, and it’s also possibly true that Mecca used to look like Hamburg but then some Jews stole all the trees. I say nothing of the kind to Atef. I am German and I am polite.
As of this minute, until I leave Atef, I speak no Arabic. Other Do-Gooder Europeans walk here with translators, and so should Tobi the German. Period.
***
On the way Atef tells me that before we go to Khirbet al-Makhul, we are to first meet a Palestinian official in charge of Israeli crimes in the West Bank. I can’t be any happier. He is the kind of guy, after all, I have always dreamt of dating.
We pass through an area called Tubas. I don’t know if you have ever been there; I haven’t. But now I am. There are buildings here so amazingly designed that you won’t see the like of them even in the richest corners of Connecticut. I take out my iPhone and try to snap some photos, but Atef says I shouldn’t, and he drives his car fast.
Yes, yes. I understand him. He is here to show me how miserable the Palestinians’ life is because of the Israelis and he doesn’t need any beautiful houses to cloud my vision. I feel for him. But the houses are too nice not to take a shot of them and I do. I guess I’m not the most polite German. Perhaps my great-grandparents were Austrians.
We reach a nice government building, officially known as State of Palestine, Governorate of Tubas and Northern Valleys. We get off the car and enter the building. I am to meet Moataz Bsharat, whose official title is Official of the Jordan Valley, Director of Security, and his job today, as I assume, is to tell me that the Israelis are forcing the Palestinians into destitution. It’s a tough call, given his marvelous office, but he is probably a strong man and he will know how to handle it.
I am introduced to him by Atef and Atef says to me: “Moataz Bsharat is the official responsible for all the violence by the Israelis in the Jordan Valley.” I’m not sure what Moataz’s responsibilities really are, but I think this man could provide a great opportunity for me to find out what has really happened in Khirbet al-Makhul. This guy should know it all.
Can you tell me what happened there?
Moataz goes in circles with me, an
d only at the end he admits that Marion, the French diplomat, punched the Israeli soldiers when she got back up from the ground after having fallen down, and that she did this because the soldiers had punched her and the other diplomats first. Moataz, pointing at his computer, also tells me that he can show me all this right now, since he has it all on video.
Moataz thinks that now I should be happy because he answered my question and because he even told me that he got it all on video. The British journalist I met at Majdal Shams, who on his own decided that the Druze didn’t get gas masks would, had he been here, be very happy to report that “it’s all on video” without asking for any evidence of such. But I’m not British and so I ask Moataz: Could you please play the video for me? I’d like to see it.
Well, what a pity. “We are out of time,” Moataz responds, and he must leave right now.
Moataz is seriously bewildered. He knows other Europeans, and they accept everything he tells them. What, in the name of Allah, is wrong with this Tobi the German?
***
Atef says that now we can go to Khirbet al-Makhul. As we get to the place I notice a van of the MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors without borders) organization. Two people of this organization sit next to a couple of Bedouins and collect testimonies, which they write down.
How did the MSF get in here and why? I see no injured person around, only healthy Arabs, and I wonder what these doctors are up to. They introduce themselves to me: Federico, of Italy, who helps Arab victims of violence in settlers’ areas and Eva, of the Czech Republic, a psychologist.
Both of these honorable doctors see the befuddled look on my face when seeing them and immediately make it clear to me that I had better not mention their presence. “We have to keep a low profile,” the male doctor tells me. I respond by saying that they should be proud of their work here which leads them to change their minds. When I even ask if I can also take a photo of their beautiful faces they agree.
The short and sweet of what these two are doing here is this: making up diseases so they can stick it to the Israelis.
Long live Europe.
When the MSF doctors are done with the evicted people I, the Master Agent, sit down with these Arabs to hear their story and measure their traumatic illnesses.
Mahmoud Bsharat, one of these and the main man of this place, tells me his life story. “Three years after the occupation,” meaning 1967, he moved to Israel to work there. He came back to the desert in 1987. He has nine children and seven of them have university degrees.
Was he born here?
No. But he grew up here, or around here. People living in the desert, he tells me, move from one place to the other, all depending on the weather, on where they find better access to water, or whatever. Taking his combined statements it seems that he did not come to this place, Khirbet al-Makhul, before 1987. The assertion by the BBC, and other European media, that these Bedouins “have grazed sheep for generations” at this location is, as it turns out, a romantic fiction.
Whoever represents Mahmoud and the other Bedouins here must be smart people well able to manipulate facts. I ask Mahmoud who is the lawyer representing him in the Supreme Court and how much he costs. Well, Mahmoud never hired any lawyer and never paid anything to any lawyer. Who paid? Another Mahmoud, the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestine is hiring a lawyer to fight Israel in Israel’s courts. Interesting.
Where is Mahmoud the Bedouin planning to sleep tonight, now that he has been evicted from here? He is going to sleep here, he tells me.
The Israeli army demolished something, only the word demolished is too strong a word for what seems to have happened here. Before Israel demolished this place, I can see, it consisted of no more than corrugated iron shacks, tents, and plain wood beams, as the encampment next to where I sit can testify, and it would take approximately two hours to set the encampment up again. No evidence of any real housing here.
I ask Mahmoud to describe Israelis to me, since he has lived with them for so many years. “They are racists,” he says. Why did he stay with them for twenty years? God knows.
He reminds me of the Ladies of the Night in Tel Aviv who are sure the Sudanese will soon demand a free country of their own inside Tel Aviv.
Other people around us, including Mahmoud’s brother, join the conversation and I find out more details of the French diplomat Marion’s story. She and other diplomats arranged for a truck, loaded with new tents and other goodies, and they came in with their own cars to help rebuild the encampment. After the soldiers had told everybody to leave the area, the truck driver left his truck and Marion charged onto the driver’s seat in order to prevent the soldiers from driving the truck away. The soldiers, after repeatedly failing to convince her not to interfere, finally pulled her out of the driver’s seat. During this process, Marion fell to the ground.
Again, the BBC is telling tales. Marion was not “dragged from her vehicle,” but from the truck with the tents.
Did you see the soldiers punch Marion? I ask the eyewitness here.
“No. They only pulled her out of the truck.”
What did the other diplomats do when this took place?
“They filmed.”
Interesting work of European diplomats. They brought in the tents, and then they were busy filming. They knew in advance that the army wouldn’t allow the encampment to be rebuilt, but they were in for a movie clip in order to shame Israel. I thought that a diplomat’s job was to represent his or her country in the host country. Well, not European diplomats in Israel. Another interesting question: Who edited the video to exclude what Marion had been doing? Only the EU, and other honest brokers of truth and journalism, will know.
I take my time to check this on my iPad and find an Iranian news site showing a video of the event. In it I see Marion in the driver’s seat, cut to Marion on the ground, and then cut to Marion punching a soldier. How Marion got to the ground is not shown, which suggests that she might have gotten there on her own for the sake of picture taking. In the image provided by the Iranian news site even the soldiers around her seem to be surprised to see her on the ground. Interestingly, in the BBC photo the faces of the soldiers were cut from the frame.
Great work of journalism.
***
Talking with the people around me, I learn even more: This encampment has been in and out of Israeli courts since 2008, and in all these years no demolition has taken place. Nobody has just come and brutally evicted people, tugging them out of their sleep. Khirbet al-Makhul, by the way, lies at the foot of a mountain where an army camp is based and it is likely that this is the reason why it was evacuated and not the others in the nearby mountains.
Mahmoud tells me another story: Israeli military aircraft used to fly above his goats and shoot at them, one after the other. I try to imagine MK Ayelet Shaked’s husband chasing goats with his F-16 plane, dropping huge missiles on running goats.
I ask the people how they make a living in this place and they tell me that they make goat cheeses. Could they spare a sample? Yes, they could and they do. I try their cheese. What can I say? It was worth it coming here just for this salty cheese! I also get a large piece of pita bread to go with it; the best pita ever baked by human hands. Trust me on this.
Of course, no favor goes unanswered, and when I ask my hosts how they make love in this place, just in case they are married, they ask me for a favor: Could I hand them over two German ladies? “Give me two German ladies!” one of them asks of me. The ladies would not have to do any cooking or such, just lie naked and be fucked. We stand next to three big water tanks and I promise them three naked German ladies by twelve noon of the following day, a naked blonde on top of each water tank. We laugh really hard about the sex with the naked German ladies on top of the water tanks, but then Atef realizes that this isn’t the right image of suffering Bedouins he is trying to convey, people laughing instead of suffering, and he asks me not to mention the part about the German la
dies’ nakedness. As for the Bedouins, they don’t care a bit.
I ask Atef to take me to another encampment, one that has not been demolished by the Israelis.
As we are about to leave this place, I hear the story of Khirbet al-Makhul as it is to develop further: A lawyer, paid by the State of Palestine, is going to go to the Israeli Supreme Court again, trying to reopen the case. The Bedouins themselves don’t really know what’s going on around here since their case is handled by NGOs and the State of Palestine. And another thing I learn before I leave: They have never really lived here. They have their goats here, but they have other places as well. Where? They point at mountains ahead. This would explain why all I can see here are shacks of corrugated iron, beams, and folded tents.
***
Atef takes me to another encampment, this one of a farmer “living like a Bedouin,” meaning a normal Palestinian.
Atef and the man who owns the place walk around with me to show me the property and, as we walk, I see the owner’s wife sitting on the ground and fixing some pieces of clothes.
Just a little tour here is not enough for me. I want more. How do I get them, our host and Atef, to reveal themselves to me, to open up and share with me what they normally don’t share with visitors like me? Well, this lady here can help me. I’ll ask her intimate questions and get her, her husband and Atef as well, to treat me not just as another foreign journalist.
I ask the lady to tell me about her husband.
“He is very nice, very kind,” she says.
Give me an example of his niceness and kindness.
“He is very good.”
Give me an example of the good things he does to you.
She can’t come up with any good things, except to mumble something about the Haj in Mecca.
Has he kissed you today? Has he given you, let’s say, an ice cream?
Atef grabs me away. This is not what he wants me to see or ask.
We sit down with the man of the house. And I have a very important question to ask him: Have you kissed your wife today?
Catch The Jew! Page 27