And then it’s all gone. A village destroyed.
No human with a beating heart watching this clip can stay unmoved.
It is here that Aziz and Salim get me, and I move to their side. I totally identify with them.
Aziz raises his voice. He is angry. He says over and again that Israel, a racist entity, is out to destroy him because he’s an Arab. I don’t particularly like his broad accusation, but after having watched this clip I understand his pain.
Aziz recognizes that now I’m on his side and offers to show me to his home in the mosque. You can’t tell that this is a mosque, but perhaps it used to be. And maybe it still is.
His wife is there, and he shows me to their bedroom. I like this Aziz and his culture. Can you imagine a New Yorker showing you to his bedroom on the first time you meet him? Nope. I love it!
Is this the place where you make love? I ask him. He laughs loudly. One time, he tells me, he did it very good.
How good? Did you make love ten times the same night, over and over again?
“We did it outside,” he tells me. On the sand, by the hills and under the sky. It was wonderful!
Two horses are outside. Do you ride them? Yes, he does. He mounts a horse and he is happy, my Aziz. I’ll die here, he tells me. “They [Israel] killed me fifty-eight times, but I’m still alive. I know one day I’ll die, but I’ll die with a smile.”
He rides his horse, I walk by foot, and we meet by a well not far from either of us. Here he sings a song for me:
We shall not be moved. No, no, no.
No, no. We shall not be moved.
You can destroy my house, we shall not be moved.
You can uproot my trees, we shall not be moved.
No, no, we shall not be moved.
You can destroy our school, we shall not be moved.
You can uproot me from my place, but I shall not be moved.
This is Bedouin land, this is Bedouin land.
I sing with him: “No, no, we shall not be moved. No, no, we shall not be moved . . .”
And suddenly it hits me, like lightning: This song is not a Bedouin lyric, nor is the music. It is in English, not Arabic. The history of this place, Master Agent says to himself, is not written by Bedouins but by foreigners. No way in heaven could this man come up with this song in English on his own, as his English is not really good.
Who taught you this song?
“The Europeans!”
Salim: “Many foreigners come here to help us. Most and best are the Germans.”
My identification with Aziz and Salim gets a blow. Yes, the clip that I saw was not nice, but I know already from my experience in Khirbet al-Makhul that NGOs know how to surgically edit a movie, and that what I see on a screen is a reflection of the image in the minds of those who make the movie rather than the reality on the ground. Who built the nice house before the bulldozers came? I ask myself. Fifty-eight times destroyed and fifty-nine rebuilt. Who was behind it? Did anybody really live in that house, or was it just a set? I’m in theater and I know how much it costs and how long it takes to build a set. A good set designer, well paid, can get it done in a day.
“You can uproot my trees”? What trees is he talking about? The only trees here in the last five thousand years are trees planted by Israelis after they had invented their special irrigation system.
I look at Ari and at Amichai, asking for their explanations. If I want, they tell me, they will give me pictures that they took. The people walking here, sometimes more than the ones I now see, don’t really live here. They live in “recognized” towns such as Lakia, and come here to al-Araqeeb for a photo shoot with naïve foreigners or smart journalists. Regavim has some pictures of these Bedouins parking their Mercedes outside before they come by here.
The Master Agent that I am, I don’t like to be handed photos that somebody else took. And so, I decide to judge for myself, and based on what I see. What do I see? Well, there’s no infrastructure in this al-Araqeeb, and the beautiful home I saw in the movie doesn’t really fit with this area. The water for the coffee would have had to have been taken from the well, like in the days of the biblical Abraham, but it was served in a living room that resembled a nice Texas villa. If that had indeed been a real house in al-Araqeeb, somebody with spare money would have had to build it first. Who could that be? Perhaps one of “the most and the best” who arrived here with Lufthansa or AirBerlin.
Let’s stick it to the Jews. Why not?
***
As time passes I make it my duty to visit in a Bedouin school and speak with its most outstanding children in a recognized town. I want to see where a “Bedouin” starts. The brilliant students I meet are Israeli citizens, but they tell me that they are Palestinians, and they think the worst about Israel. The school is funded by Israel and by the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, my host for the trip to Jordan, among others. Then I try to get KAS to explain to me their side. The head of KAS just happens to be in Israel these days and I would love to meet him.
His office replies: “Due to Mr. Pöttering’s very tight schedule he won’t have enough time to give interviews during his visit in Israel.”
If German men don’t want to meet me, so be it. Maybe German ladies will. I try.
Kerstin Müller, a Green Party deputy, is about to assume the leadership role of her party’s Heinrich Böll Foundation branch in Tel Aviv. Here’s the lady’s office response: “Unfortunately, her time schedule is very narrow in the coming weeks, therefore she won’t be able to give an interview.”
I put in a request to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His press person, Mark Regev, tells me he’ll be looking into it.
***
I drive around and around in the Negev desert, looking for Israel’s rumored nuclear reactor in Dimona. I bump into some Black Hebrews, who live in a place called Village of Peace, and chat with youngsters who look very much like Barack Obama’s children, but they know nothing about atoms. I keep on. On some roads I spot signs notifying drivers that these are military zones and that taking pictures, or merely stopping the car, is prohibited. At some point, on a road that I’m obviously not supposed to be on, I see a building that claims to be a place for atomic energy. There is a gate at the entrance but no human beings, neither black nor white.
The nuclear facility is not the Negev’s only secret. Here you have what in English are called craters and in Hebrew makhteshim. Whatever their name, they are huge holes in the middle of the desert. There are a few craters here, and more than one explanation of how they have come into being. They are fascinating, they are frightening, they are enlightening, they are awesome, they are awe-inspiring, they are bewitching, they are gorgeous, and once you have seen them you can’t forget them.
The roads in the Negev go on and on and on, apparently to infinity. Everywhere you look, every landscape, is a feast to the eye and soul. Look here: the colors of the sands change every few feet. Really.
And here, look, the Mizpe Ramon crater. What a beauty! You stand at the edge of a cliff, you take a look down under and around, and you realize how cruel and how inspiring nature can be. You must get out of your car to see and feel this huge hole in the earth. The formation on the edges, as well as their rough shapes, testify to something extraordinary that took shape here thousands of years ago. In one place I see a ‘cut’ in a mountain going down as deep as the Devil can reach. I put one foot on one part and another foot on the other part, and look down for Mr. Devil. It’s a great moment.
I raise my head from the bottomless pit and stare at the ibexes walking leisurely by me. They won’t run away when they see me, a human, for the desert is their place, their home, their kingdom and no human can hurt them.
In this miracle of nature called Negev, with its endless turns, roads, paths, and sands, almost no foreigner can be spotted. I am in the car for hours, driving endlessly, and for almost all the time, my car is the only car around. Over miles and miles and miles, I see no car behind, ahead, or t
o the side of me, only some army bases and Bedouin encampments.
“Israel will be tested in the Negev,” David Ben-Gurion said many years ago, and today his words hang at the entrance to one of those IDF camps.
But I, Master Agent, will have to be tested in more places than this, and I leave this inspiring Negev and go to Jerusalem.
When you see stray cats drinking kosher milk it is also inspiring. In a closed session with my cats, now about six of them, we all agree that I have to dedicate a considerable amount of time to tying up some loose ends.
Who should be my first victim? The French, naturally.
Gate Thirty-Eight
Doctors without Borders and a dead rabbi with no trains.
MSF (MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES), WHICH IS BASED IN SWITZERLAND, HAS AN office in Jerusalem, and I go to visit them. I would like to know what it is they are doing in places such as Khirbet al-Makhul and why it is that they are there.
Their office is in Beit Hanina, an all-Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem, and I excitedly wait to listen to the romantic sound of the French language. I meet some interesting people. Italians.
I join Christina, head of mission for the Spanish branch, and Tommaso, head of mission for the French branch. Both are Italian citizens. They have two offices and both their offices are in this same neighborhood. MSF needs two offices here because, I hear, they are very busy.
I ask Christina to tell me what they are doing.
First, she points at a map. There’s a map on the wall of the MSF office and it has many “pockets,” different sections in different places and different colors: here are Jews, there are Arabs. “It is a crazy situation,” she says, and “if you look at the map it makes you sick.” The main problem, I can see, is simple: too many Jews on the map. If you look at the map, seriously now, you’ll get sick too. Christina, I think, is a cover name. The truth, I think, is this: she is Mother Theresa reincarnated. There’s no other way of explaining why this sexy lady left healthy Italy and moved to sickening Israel.
Christina Theresa cares about the “situation,” she tells me.
You are an Italian, why do you care about this place? What’s the emotional gravity that makes you come here, that you wish so much to be here?
She wants to fix the problems here, she answers.
What are the problems?
“Lack of rights.”
Whose side are you on?
“There are people here who suffer more.”
What kind of suffering?
“There are people here who are not free to decide where they want to live.”
Who are those people?
The Palestinians, of course.
This lady Saint knows her ways around Master Agents, extremely talented in appearing like a pure lamb. I want to take a photo of her and send it to Minister Rula in Bethlehem, with my warm suggestion to appoint her the second Lady of Palestine.
Are the Jews free to live where they want?
“Yes. If they want to live in the West Bank they can.”
Can Jews live, let’s say, in Ramallah?
“Mmm. There are a few. There are journalists from Haaretz who live in Ramallah.”
She is referring to Amira Hass, the feminine side of Gideon Levy.
Are other Jews living in Ramallah?
“As far as I know, that’s all. Just Amira.”
Saints often have a problem distinguishing between plural and singular, and I noticed it with other holy people in Rome. But what’s interesting here is that our Lady of Palestine makes an issue of people’s free choice to live in a place of their choosing, when her own office is in a neighborhood that accepts no Jews, a fact she readily admits to when questioned on this issue.
MSF is not a political organization, it is a medical organization; this, at least, is what they claim to be. “Doctors” is their name, and I’d like to know what, really, they are doing here. I ask my Saint this question. And then I ask another question, Question B: Does the MSF, a health organization, also treat sick Jews?
My questions are just too much for Tommaso. He and I know that no Jew is being treated by the MSF, but he can’t admit to it for obvious reasons. I can see him getting really upset, making all kinds of faces in my direction. I ask him to be honest with me and tell me which side he is on. On the “weaker” side, he says, the Palestinians. I ask him what would happen – let’s just imagine it – if this country united into one, in which case the Jews would be the minority. Does he think everything would be fine and dandy for the Jews, or does he think that the Jews would suffer?
“This is a possibility,” he admits, that the Jews would become the weaker side and that the Palestinians would then take revenge.
Why, then, do you dedicate your time to help one weak people succeed in making the other people weak? What’s the rationale for all of this?
He has no answer.
Beit Hanina, the all-Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem where this MSF office is located, has been cited to me by Palestinians as an example of an Arab neighborhood that is being neglected by the Israeli authorities due to their racist ideology. When I lived in Jerusalem years and years ago, I never visited this neighborhood, but now that I’m here I take my time to walk its streets. What can I say? If this is an example of a neighborhood being neglected, its residents should do their utmost to keep it neglected for eternity.
I wish I could stay longer in Beit Hanina but I have to go. I am to meet the editor in chief of Haaretz at his office in Tel Aviv and the clock refuses to stop.
***
Walking out of Beit Hanina I learn that sometimes the clock does stop. A loudspeaker outside the train station is being heard: No public transportation today due to the funeral procession of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
The Sephardi spiritual leader passed away earlier in the day and the authorities are estimating that many thousands will come to attend his funeral. How the thousands will come to Jerusalem if there is no public transportation is a logic I don’t get.
In one of his books Ovadia Yosef, called Maran (something like “our teacher”) by his admiring followers, suggested that thousands of Israeli soldiers died in the Yom Kippur war because they stared “at girls dressed in short skirts that show their thighs.” Ovadia, born Abdallah, also accused Israeli Supreme Court judges for “having sex with menstruating women.” And it is to this holy man’s funeral that 200,000 people are scheduled to come, the Israeli media predict.
This Master Agent, as should be expected, is one of the early comers. I reach the epicenter of the funeral procession, standing across the place where his lifeless body lies. Within minutes, I feel like a sardine. People stream in my direction in the hundreds of thousands. Who said that only 200,000 people would come? This looks like a million or more. It’s the same media, I remind myself, that reported that very few Israelis travel to Turkey these days.
Within a short time, the Israeli media change their earlier estimate, now reporting that 850,000 people are participating in the funeral, the highest number of funeral participants in the history of the Jewish state. This is over ten percent of Israel’s Jewish population, and I feel the physical pressure of the people around me. People push, more and more, some standing on fences adjacent to nearby buildings, others standing on roofs of cars or on whatever object that would tolerate the weight of a human being. It is fascinating to watch, and disturbing at the same time. How come so many people have followed that man?
Next to where I am standing there is an advertisement by the Shas party, the party Ovadia helped to found and has controlled ever since. It says: “Follow the order of Maran and you’ll be blessed with a good year.” Too bad Maran couldn’t bless himself. Another ad reads: “We love you, Maran.”
A thought. If you take the followers of Maran, add the multiple thousands who follow the “Messiah,” the late Lubavitch rabbi, plus the Nanakhs who go Na Nakh all day long, you will end up with about half of the Jewish population of Israel. Add to this mix all those peop
le who believe in the heavenly animal, al-Buraq, you’ll have more or less the total number of people who reside in this land. You can look at it differently: If you deduct from the total population of Israel those who believe in dead men or in flying horses or camels, the people you’ll have left are the NGO activists and the editor in chief of Haaretz.
Ovadia Yosef had a long life. He was ninety-three when he died, but people want him alive forever. I watch a young lady in a women’s section on the street crying uncontrollably, as if her beloved had just passed away.
I leave the scene and go to my cats. I think they have enough milk in their system and so I’ll give them something else this evening, maybe tuna. Tuna with olive oil.
Gate Thirty-Nine
Why do Europeans spend lavish sums of money to watch a Jewish soldier pee?
A RABBI OF ANOTHER KIND, RABBI ARIK OF RABBIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, IS ALIVE and waiting for me at dawn the next day. Rabbi Arik gets enormous funding from various organizations and he must deliver. Today he does. Wearing a T-shirt that reads, “We are all al-Araqeeb,” he stands by a van he has arranged to take me to an olive grove of a West Bank village called Burin, near Nablus. There I will join Palestinians who are scheduled to harvest their olives later today.
He is not joining me, as he was in Burin the day before, but he is paying for the van and a driver so that I can participate in his organization’s holy mission to “serve and protect” Arab olive harvesters. Dan, an Israeli activist working for Arik, is coming along. Maurice, who is from Kenya and is another of Arik’s activists, is also joining.
Maurice is studying International Peace and Conflict Resolution and is happy to take part in this trip, where Rabbis for Human Rights is protecting Arabs from Israeli soldiers and settlers out to hurt them.
Catch The Jew! Page 31