“I forget what I did.”
When is the last time you kissed her?
Atef says I can’t ask this question because, “There are kids here!”
I ignore Atef and ask our host again: When is the last time you kissed your wife?
He doesn’t know what to say; he forgot the last kiss altogether. Atef comes to his help, telling the man: “You will not answer this.”
In minutes’ time, after more people from the area have assembled around us, the man declares me a Jew. Yep, just like that.
I tell him: You have to be careful; you don’t say such a thing to a German!
And then I drop the big question to my host: Why do you think that I am Jewish?
Atef explains to me the obvious: “You want to know every detail. You try to create problems between the couple.”
I protest. I tried to improve their marital relationship, I say.
Atef: “You tried to encourage the wife against him.”
The host’s daughter comes by. She tells me that she would like to study law abroad. I tell her that I wouldn’t mind to make her dream come true, but that we must get married first.
Sadly, the marriage proposal of this non-Muslim is not accepted.
Maybe I have to come back later with a little Mercedes as my humble dowry.
But before I can plot my way to a shiny new Mercedes, my host drops a bomb. I, Tobi the German, “pay money to the Jews!” he accuses me, his future son-in-law.
When did I pay money to any Jew? Well, not me personally but my people, the Germans. And as this assembly views it, this is very wrong. I love to learn new things and this is what I learn today: We, Germans, allow the Jews to claim that we, Germans, killed them in Europe and that we even paid them compensations for something that has never happened.
Do these people believe that the Jews were not killed in WWII? Atef, the man of B’Tselem, supplies the clearest answer: “This is a lie. I don’t believe it.” In short: the Holocaust is an invention of the Jews.
When we drive back to Jenin, Atef tells me that on occasion he works with Gideon Levy of Haaretz. He has been taking him around for about five times, serving as Gideon’s guide and translator.
Good to discover Gideon Levy’s guide and translator, good ole Atef, who is one of the leading B’Tselem’s field researchers. And it’s good to finally find out that the Holocaust has never really happened. Yep. There are just racist Jews all over, and B’Tselem will catch them all.
What transpires today is not so much about Arabs as it is about Jews and Europeans. Haaretz and B’Tselem are made of Jews who dedicate their lives to help those who hate them. As for the Europeans: Their diplomats behave in a manner that is the opposite of anything that diplomacy should be doing, with their journalists composing articles that are the opposite of what journalism should actually be doing. And to add insult to injury the Europeans generously fund Jews who don’t like Jews.
***
I have Atef drop me off in central Jenin and I go to see a movie at Cinema Jenin. Today, I’m told by the man at the ticket office, they play a 3D movie that is very popular with the Jenin audiences. I pay for my ticket and I get those 3D goggles. Here in Cinema Jenin, they have the nicest 3D goggles I have ever seen. New York cinemas should learn from Cinema Jenin a little lesson. Well, the truth is: Cinema Jenin is generously funded by good-hearted people while New York cinemas are not.
I walk in.
Three people are inside. I am one of them. And this is a movie, lest we forget, that’s “very popular with the Jenin audiences.” At an earlier point Atef told me that usually about ten people attend shows here. He got the number wrong.
When I see how the Germans have thrown away their money on this cinema, I suddenly start believing the Palestinian narrative of Atef, and if I were a Palestinian living in Jenin I’d probably think the same. I would look at this “Cinema Jenin,” an institution that the Germans have poured millions into, but in reality is a place where occasionally two people walk in, and ask myself why did they do it. The only logical explanation is this: Germans have nothing better to do with their money except to throw it on a deserted building that they call “Cinema.” Why would they do such a thing? I have no clue. These are the Germans, they like to pour money on things that don’t exist; they make up a story and then write the checks.
It is for this exact reason that they spend millions and billions on the “Holocaust” story. The Germans, for whatever reason, look for any excuse to download their money on people: A Cinema here, a Holocaust there. There was a Holocaust like there is a Cinema. Two people in each, and the Germans pay.
So simple.
The next day, B’Tselem issues the following statement: “The residents of Khallet Makhul petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice, represented by their lawyer, Adv. Tawfiq Jabareen, requesting an interim injunction which will prevent their removal from the area. On the same day the High court issued the requested injunction, prohibiting the Civil Administration and the army from expelling the residents from their village and demolishing rebuilt homes.”
I notice that B’Tselem has changed “Khirbet Makhul” to “Khallet Makhul.” And this is really smart. “Khirbet” means ruins, or a “hole,” which suggests a location that very few people, perhaps a man and his goat, live in. Not good for the cause. And so they came up with Khallet Makhul, which means Hill of Makhul. Brilliant.
How far a Jew will go – and how far European diplomats will go – to find fault with Jews is really remarkable.
Gate Thirty-Five
Peace and rape.
I’M BACK IN JERUSALEM WITH MY CATS. I FEED THEM MILK AND I GO FOR A walk.
I meet a very nice couple, both widely known, highly educated, highly intellectual, exemplary self-haters, optimal Arab lovers, and they touch me deeply. They are Israeli Jews and I won’t identify them, what they do, or in what part of the town they reside.
They tell me three interesting stories. (1) They live in a beautiful home, which was renovated for them by an Arab contractor whom they knew and blindly trusted. When the contractor was about done with his work, for which he was handsomely paid, he presented them with a wonderful gift, for which he did not want to get paid: a big olive tree that he planted in their garden. They were very touched by his gesture and thanked him profusely. He listened to their thanks, looked them straight in the eye and said: “You don’t have to thank me. I didn’t do it for you, I did it for myself and my family.” They did not understand what he was saying, and he explained: “Soon you will move out of this house.” How so? “Because soon this land will be free of Jews.” They were devastated. How could he say such a thing to them? (2) Years ago, many years ago, the lady was gang-raped by a bunch of Arab youth. (3) Years later, their granddaughter was sexually abused by an old Arab friend.
These three stories are the total sum of their personal experience with Palestinians, yet they won’t allow themselves to be affected by any of these incidents.
The man explains to me: “I believe in humanism, I believe that the Palestinians are good people and that they want to live with us in peace. I believe that we have done them wrong and I believe that they have not done us wrong. It doesn’t matter to me if what I believe in is factually right. I know it’s not, but I don’t care about facts! I want to believe, even if everything I believe in is false. Please don’t make me see reality. I have fought it all my life. Please!”
At least he is honest.
His wife looks at me, but keeps quiet. I ask her what she feels, not her political views, but she just looks at me. Gently I push her to please share, and she gives me an intense look, yet keeps quiet. I ask her again to share her feelings; she moves her face away and up, looking for some magical intervention from somewhere above to help her. Finally, she opens up. She and her husband are fools, she tells me. She has come to this realization some time ago, but her husband cannot do the same. His worldview, the essence of his life, would collapse – and with i
t everything he has fought for in his life – if he allowed himself to see reality.
Before we separate, the husband tells me that I should read Gideon Levy’s articles, so that I can see how unfair the Jews are to the Arabs. I tell him that Gideon’s facts are questionable and that I can prove it to him. He tells me to please shut up. Reading Gideon’s articles makes him feel good and he doesn’t want me to disturb this strange happiness. Period.
As I walk away from this couple I think of the two peoples, the leftist Jew and the believing Muslim, both of whom you have to meet in person in order to recognize their unique characteristics. The leftist Jew, and forget now politics, is the most narcissistic of people that I’ve ever met. There’s not a single moment, day or night, that he’s not fully busy with himself or with other Jews. There’s nothing on his agenda except his obsession to find fault with himself and his tribe. He just can’t stop. No wonder Palestinians such as Professor Asma of Al-Quds University don’t trust him, even though he is their intellectual mate and he spends his life defending them.
And then there’s this religious Muslim who will fight to the death to preserve his al-Buraq Wall invention, a person who is extremely touchy about Muhammad and always feels the need to protect his prophet, as though Muhammad were made of thin glass. If you make a joke about Muhammad, you touch the most sensitive part in this believer’s body, yes, and you had better run as fast as you can before he hurts you physically. Eye for an eye; your tooth for the Prophet’s tooth. Strange.
The Sabbath is coming, Jerusalem is to close for business, and I take a bus out.
***
Rothschild Blvd., Tel Aviv. It is Friday night and the young secular people of Tel Aviv are out on the boulevard to show all passersby their young flesh. Rothschild Blvd. is the official name of this street but its real name is Legs, Ass, Breasts, and Muscles Galore Blvd. Here you have ice cream shops that sell yogurt with no sugar for three times the price of normal yogurt with sugar. Here you find bars that have more people in each of them than exist in the whole of China. Here the young, sipping imported water, discuss issues in lively Hebrew that no translator could ever properly repeat.
“Look, my brother,” a young guy tells me, “you have to understand something here: 90 percent, you hear me, my brother, 90 percent of the Palestinians want peace. This is a fact, my brother.”
How do you know this?
“Trust me, my brother, I know!”
But how do you know?
“I see, my brother! With my eyes, my brother! Bear with me, my brother, one minute. Do you know Palestinian literature, my brother?”
Here and there.
“I know it, my brother, and it is my favorite literature, my brother! It is a literature that preaches for peace. That’s why I love it, my brother.”
Do you read Arabic?
“Me? No, my brother.”
Do you speak Arabic?
“No, my brother. Where are you from, my brother?”
Germany.
“Beautiful country. The best.”
Have you been there?
“Not yet.”
Quite a number of Israelis speak the “my brother” lingo. I try to avoid them as much as I can.
I sit down to sip something and read Gideon Levy’s latest article, about his visit to Khirbet al-Makhul. He describes the place as if it were a death camp: A lonely starving kitten, the last to survive of all the cats. Emaciated, injured, thirsty, and hungry dogs living on pita crumbs that they get once every two or three days.
Gideon then goes on to describe the people, the saddest picture of misery you would be likely to encounter in any literature, and all I can think of is: at exactly what point in history were journalists given the permission to file thousand-word articles without a single word of truth?
Gate Thirty-Six
“We are very lucky that Hitler did not recruit German Jews to the SS.” – Yehudah, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz
IT IS TIME THAT I, OBSERVER OF WEAK PEOPLE, FACE MY OWN WEAK SPOTS. I have been in Israel for a few months already and yet I have not set foot into the city of my childhood. It is time I do.
Bnei Brak, the most Haredi of cities in Israel, is a minutes-ride from Tel Aviv but worlds apart.
“No entry into Bnei Brak on Sabbath and Jewish Holidays,” reads the official street sign at the entrance of my former hometown.
Uri, a cabbie from Lod having worked in Bnei Brak for two decades, shares with me his views of the town:
“Twenty years, and I had no problem with them. No drunks here. There are strange situations. When a couple comes together and they sit in the back. She asks for a phone but he doesn’t give it to her directly, only puts it on the empty space between their seats and she picks it up from there. At certain periods they are not allowed to touch each other.” He means when the woman is menstruating. “I think they shouldn’t behave like this in front of strangers; that’s the only criticism I have.”
How’s Lod?
“Lod is a mixed Arab-Jewish town.”
How do you get along there?
“For twenty years I have spent the day time in Bnei Brak. That’s my answer.”
I get off two blocks from my childhood home. I expect to see the orange grove, the one that as a kid I would pass by every day. But there are no trees here anymore, no orange grove and no oranges. The only thing growing here now are big buildings and many people, all of them Haredi.
On another street corner, there used to be a newsstand; but no more. Papers are forbidden, and the newsstand is now a store selling wigs for married Haredi women.
I walk over to the house where I grew up.
Across the street from my house I see people standing in a line that hardly moves, at the entrance to my old neighbor’s house, Haim Kanyevski’s. I remember him, a man of no special attributes and little wisdom. Why are people standing in a line to see him?
“To get his blessing,” tells me a woman watching what I watch.
She would like to get his blessing too, but Haim blesses only men.
With the years, it seems, Haim has gained admirers, people who are sure that if he prays for them they will be cured of their diseases, and that if he looks at them they will gain wisdom.
In the old days such an act would be considered idol worship, but not today. With the years, it seems, God has changed The Plan.
It is sad for me to witness how my childhood Judaism, a Judaism that worshipped scholarship, has now turned into a worship of a frail man. I watch in disbelief, regretting that I came here, and step back fast. The people here have changed, I have changed, and God seems to have changed too.
Next to my house a German Jew used to live, and he had chickens in the front yard. No chickens are there anymore, and he is gone too.
I take a taxi to Ramat Gan, the neighboring town, to see how other people view their childhood.
***
I enter a nursing home for the aged, mostly from Germany; a Yekkes’ Old Home.
I meet Gertrud. Gertrud is of the family that owned the famed Kaufhaus Schocken in pre-War Germany. Her comfortable life ended when the Nazis came to power and the family started moving from one place to the other, ever running away from Hitler’s messengers. She was born in Regensburg, then at the age of three her family moved to Nuremberg. In 1933 they moved to Hamburg, and then to another city yet again inside Germany and later to Amsterdam. In 1937 her family moved to what is now Israel. Her relative, Amos Schocken, is the owner of Haaretz.
Do you get a free subscription?
“No.”
During WWII she was ordered into the British Army. The Brits promised her that she would stay in The Land [Israel] and put her and others on a train. “We drove and drove and drove until we woke up in the morning and we found ourselves in a desert. We were in Egypt. I looked around and I saw the desert, I saw tents, and I saw a cemetery. Among others, we buried there a friend, originally from Lübeck. She was alone in the world, no one of her fami
ly with her. She got a virus in her throat and they operated on her, but something went wrong and she died.”
What did you do in Egypt?
“Hard work. I had to take parts of trucks apart, clean them in oil, then reconnect them. I became a sergeant.”
Tell me: Did you know during those years what was happening in Europe?
“Don’t you know? We got letters from Auschwitz, not written but printed. ‘We are well, but we won’t be able to write again.’”
When did you, Gertrud, first learn of the gas chambers?
“Hard for me to say. Hard for me to say.”
Are you proud of being German, of your German culture?
“I hardly read Hebrew. I read only in German and in English.”
So, you are proud of it?
“Proud? Listen: This is a culture!”
Gertrud has children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. They are doctors, lawyers, musicians, and some other highly respected professionals.
“I never again went to Hamburg. In fact, I never again visited any of the cities in Germany that I stayed in.” Some survivors, she tells me, go to visit the houses that belonged to their families before the war, but “I’ll never do it.”
Why not?
“What, to shame the people for what their parents did?”
What a Yekke potz.
Another lady, Riva, comes to talk with me.
Riva left Germany in 1938 with her physician father. When they came here, the Brits wouldn’t let her father work as a doctor and so he opened a café. “It was called ‘Doctor’s Café.’”
Like Gertrud, she served in the British army in Egypt. Did she know the full extent of what was happening to Jews in Germany? No, she says.
What do you think of today’s Germany?
“Merkel keeps them with a strong hand, but there are some Nazis who are still operating. Right?”
Not all in this nursing home are German. Yehudah, born in Krakow, is an example.
Catch The Jew! Page 28