I tell Zakaria that I’ve just decided where to go next: Rawabi.
Rawabi? Why Rawabi? That’s seventy kilometers from here, and seventy kilometers back. No way!
I insist. I must see Palestine.
Zakaria tries his best to dissuade me, but he fails. You don’t argue logic with crazy Germans, I tell him. Period.
***
Rawabi. Have you ever been to Rawabi (“hills” in Arabic)? Rawabi is being built as we speak. Over one billion dollars have been spent on this city already. More to come, inshallah.
Rawabi. Have you ever seen Rawabi? When you enter Rawabi, you know that you have entered Paradise.
It stands on top of a mountain with a view that makes you feel as if you are on top of the world. And while Rawabi is still in the midst of construction, its first residents are to take possession of their units next year.
At Rawabi’s entrance you will see the biggest flag your eyes have ever seen, a real giant, and it’s overwhelming. Yes, it’s just a flag, but what a flag! A flag surrounded by grass, ever more flags, statues, and music is playing to it from every corner of the earth.
I chat with one of the people around and ask him why such a big flag? He winks at me and says: To stick it to the Israelis. We laugh about it.
I walk a few steps away from the flag and enter Rawabi’s sales office. What an office! This office is a top-of-the-line exhibition hall that shows the soon-to-be-completed city in miniature, including the buildings, the various city centers, the planned roads and anything you would want a city to have.
And much, much more.
Rawabi’s architectural design is just outstanding: incorporating art, top technology, convenience, riches and beauty. When you see this, you will be hard pressed to match this city with any existing one, even in the richest of countries. Rawabi is shining in its awesomeness, it is spirited, it is captivating, it is magnificent.
Ramie, a well-dressed young man, shows me around. Using a laser pointer on the miniature model of Rawabi in front of us he explains to me some of the structures and contents of Rawabi: Convention center with an indoor theater, exhibition hall, a science museum, a cinema, retail stores, cafes, boutiques, a hyper market, a soccer stadium, a fivestar hotel, an amphitheater, a mosque, a church, the municipality.
I stop this man who’s talking too fast for my taste. I see no church and I ask him to repeat his last few words, as I have lost track, and he gladly obliges. His red ray laser pointer points to areas as he speaks: “Here’s the mosque, here’s the church, here’s the municipality.”
He points at the mosque when he says “mosque” and he points at the mosque again when he says “church.”
I see no church. Where’s the church?
Oh, he tells me, yes, they don’t have the church in this model, but soon they’ll update it.
Church or no church, I have spent enough of Rabbi Arik’s resources by now and I tell Zakaria that I’m ready to go back.
As we drive back, Rabbi Arik calls. Zakaria is on another line and has no time for the Jew. He yells at him, as one would yell at a mad dog: “Get off the phone!”
Rabbi Arik, the ever-obeying Jew, does.
A beaten Jew, a disrespected Jew, a small Jew.
It is at this point that I feel really bad for Arik. He works so hard to please the Palestinians, at the expense of his own people and country, and in return he gets abused. I say nothing, as I’m not supposed to understand what was said in Hebrew.
Before my brain goes totally numb, perhaps it would be good if I talked to someone else, no Arab and no Jew. A European would be good. How about His Highness Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU ambassador to Israel?
Gate Forty
The EU ambassador would like to explain everything to you.
“THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT, EXCITING TIME IN EU-ISRAEL RELATIONS,” IS THE first thing His Highness, Head of the EU Delegation to Israel, says to me. Listening to these wise words, I know I have just met the smartest man in the region.
“What do you want to talk about?”
Why is the EU so interested in a regional conflict going on across the ocean between two peoples of totally different cultures from that of the EU, a conflict that is not about the day-to-day living of the average European? Why is the EU involved in this conflict, and why were you sent here to deal with it?
“I want to say that Israel is a very important partner for the EU. Israel plays a very important role in the region, a role that we of course want to have an influence on. The issue of the Israeli-Arab war, of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is a very central one in Europe. It is not a surprise. It receives a lot of media coverage. And if one spends just a couple of weeks in this country, one realizes the centrality of this issue.”
I have no idea what this esteemed man is talking about. I’ve been here for months by now and the “centrality” that I see is that too many Europeans are taking center stage in it with cameras. But I choose not to confront him and instead ask His Highness the one-word question that Jews have asked for generations: Why?
“Because, I think, many Europeans realize that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a key fault line in the region, and intersects and interplays with all the other conflicts that are taking place and therefore solving this conflict is absolutely essential in trying to achieve overall stability in the region, because as long as you have the Israeli-Palestinian conflict you would have a central rallying point for the Arab states and also for Iran against Israel. Once you break that logic you’d be able to see new kinds of alliances developing in this region.”
Take Syria, the neighbor of Israel. More people have died in the last few months in Syria than have died in the Arab-Israeli conflict in the last sixty-five years, or even one hundred years. The conflicts here, we see, are not just the little dot-on-the map called Israel but all over the area. The conflicts in Libya have nothing to do with Israel. The conflicts in Egypt have nothing to do with Israel. And the rallying cry in Syria, or Libya, is not Israel. And there are other conflicts in the world. Why do you think that the Arab-Israeli conflict is so important?
“Because we are also trying to work on the other conflicts. As you know, we are playing a role vis-à-vis Syria, we are also playing a role vis-à-vis Lebanon. . . . The reason why we are particularly keyed to trying to assist in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that, one of the reasons is, this is one of the conflicts that will lend itself to diplomatic solution, one where there’s a fairly clear framework for negotiations and where the parties are not at war-footing with one another.”
Did you invest as much money, resources, time, diplomatic efforts in solving the ages-old conflicts, for example, between Sunnis and Shiites, which is one of the main conflicts – unless you disagree with me – in the area, in the Middle East?
“The Sunni-Shi’a conflict has existed for centuries. The conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis started, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, around 1921, with the expelling of Jews from Jaffa.”
***
Expelling of Jews from Jaffa. What is this man talking about? Is he now buying everything Netanyahu is saying?
“And I think that our ambition is more realistic in terms of solving conflicts which have only raged for a more limited time than that of the Sunni-Shi’a conflict.”
Are you saying to me that you are buying Benjamin Netanyahu’s version of political realities, that the conflict started with the expelling of Jews from Jaffa? I have never heard of it, but I trust your –
“He said it at the Bar-Ilan [University] speech that he gave last Sunday. My point is that this is a conflict that has been going for a . . . maybe the last eighty, ninety years. The other conflict has raged for centuries. I mean, there is a fundamental – ”
Do you think that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will also help to solve the Sunni-Shi’a conflict, and all the other conflicts in the region?
“It will eliminate one of a number of conflicts in the reg
ion. It will not solve the other problems overnight.”
But it will help?
“It will make it [the Sunni-Shi’a conflict] less complicated – ”
To eventually solve –
“Yes. It will remove one stone in the shoe in trying to solve the others.”
So, it will help to solve the other issues?
“Yes.”
If I get this right, he’s saying that the reasons why Europe is involved so deeply in this conflict are two: (1) The desire to erase the “central rallying point for the Arab states and also for Iran against Israel.” (2) The desire to eventually solve the Sunni-Shi’a conflict.
Let me ask you another question. Some people say that the interest the EU takes in the regional conflict here, as opposed to other conflicts, is the age-old history between Christianity and Judaism that is spilling over even in the atheist philosophies of the Europeans, that the kind of animosity that had been going on for two thousand years is at least part of the reason for the EU and the European media’s obsession, so to speak, in this conflict. Do you think this has anything to do with it?
“Not really. I think that if it has anything to do with history it is more a conflict that might remind Europeans of their own colonial past, because of certain traits, maybe, in the scenario, the situation, that could be likened to that.”
Meaning that Israel is colonializing Palestinian lands, which reminds them of their history, but not the old Christian-Jewish history – is that what you mean?
“Yes. You have an Israeli administration of a . . . at least disputed . . . territory like you had during the colonial period of the European powers in countries outside the European continent.”
So, do you say that from the European point of view the colonialist –
“I’m saying that this has more to do with it than with any kind of anti-Semitism.”
If I get this right, there is a third reason why Europe is involved here: (3) Europe is trying to atone for its colonial past by issuing dictates to a non-European country.
That the same mouth utters these three reasons while not wearing a burka is a testimony to the genius of European diplomacy.
I go back home and tell the cats about the three reasons why the EU is sponsoring the ex-Jew Itamar. They are stray cats and they have seen the worst, but when they hear what I’ve just told them they meow so loud that I immediately conclude they would never be diplomats.
Maybe after I give them some kosher milk I should go to meet the EU’s greatest evil: settlers.
Gate Forty-One
If you see your neighbor’s olive fields, do you leave them alone or do you set them on fire?
SETTLERS ARE VERY MUCH LIKE BEDOUINS: THEY LOVE MOUNTAINS, HILLS AND fresh air, but there’s one difference: their males can’t have more than one wife.
Life sucks.
Some assume that most people who live in the area captured by Israel in the 1967 War, are “settlers” who have moved there because it is much easier to afford a house in that area than in Israel proper. But there is a core of settlers who didn’t move behind the 1967 line due to financial considerations but because they believe that Jews should settle in all the land of biblical Israel, especially the West Bank and Jerusalem, where most of the Bible was composed and where most of its more important stories took place.
Out of the seven billion people now living on the earth, there are about fifty thousands souls who agree with these settlers. Practically everybody else is certain that they are the greatest obstacle to peace. Personally, I have never understood why. Let’s say that the land is divided between Arabs and Jews, and let’s say that the Arabs get the whole of the West Bank. Why, I want to know, can’t the Jews still live there? There are millions of Arabs living in proper Israel, why can’t a few Jews with skullcaps live with the Arabs? In what book of law is it decreed that a land must be free of Jews?
Anyway, I go to meet the settlers, the real McCoy, the believers. Within this group there are sub-groups. There are believers who live in recognized settlements, and then there are the others, the Jewish Azizes and Salims who do not live in settlements but in “outposts,” totally “unrecognized.”
***
It is evening and I’m driven to the outpost of my desire, quite distant from a cluster of normal outposts, a one-family outpost alone in the wilderness, where the owner has asked for the assurance that I’m Jewish before he allowed me to visit his kingdom. “He doesn’t want non-Jews in his property,” my contact has told me. This means, sadly, that today I can’t be Tobi or Abu Ali, instead I must be Rabbi Tuvia.
Getting to this man and his family is not easy, even if you’re the most kosher of Jews. Where he lives is far away from everywhere and anywhere. There’s no address and no mailbox, it’s not registered with anybody and no journalists can go there because Goyim and reporters are outlawed.
We drive on a path that would be fit for a tank. We have no tank, only a van, and we proceed cautiously. On the way to this Nowhere we are greeted by all sorts of animals, some that even zoologists have probably never heard of. One such animal, which is possibly owned by the American NSA, is running ahead of us as if to show us the way to our destination. It is a great help and a wonderful experience; I love to be guided by animals.
Once we get there, I see a couple of dogs, really big ones, then a couple of horses, then hundreds of sheep, and finally a couple and their children. They live in tents and in wooden structures, get electricity from generators, and their water supply comes from a source that only flying angels can identify.
I have just entered the property of Patriarch Abraham and Matriarch Sarah, I believe. The Arabs and the Jews might fight to the death for control of the holy tombs in Hebron, but the reality is that Abraham and family are alive and well and they’re living here. Yes, there are computers around and cellphones as well, a testimony to a world in the future, but it’s hard to spot them because they are overshadowed by rifles and pistols, without which this holy family would now reside in holy tombs.
They are Jewish shepherds, Jewish farmers, and Jewish warriors. The man of this house grows long hair, his kids as well, and his wife looks like a seductive nineteenth-century Mormon lady from Utah, centuries into the future.
The man, whom I’ll call Moses, relates to me as if I were lower in rank than any of his animals and ignores my existence. His wife, on the other hand, warmly greets me with a boiling black coffee. With time, and once he has recognized that I’m a very charming man, Moses warms up to me and we chat.
Unlike most other settlements and outposts, there’s no fence around Moses’ huge property, no gate and no guards. Some of his neighbors on the other mountains and hills of this land are Jews, others are Arabs. The Arabs and he are bitter enemies and, if history is any proof, the Arabs will soon come to steal his sheep, shoot his hairy face, bury his little children, and inherit his lovely Mormon. On these mountains, you can safely assume, flying bullets are as much a part of nature as the flying angels and camels.
Are you not afraid to live here?
“God will protect me.”
This is a dangerous place.
“Yes, it is dangerous to live here, but where is it not?”
His answer reminds me of a similar answer. “How about crossing the street, any street. Is that not frightening?” the Tel Aviv prostitute said to me. Yep: whores and patriarchs do think alike.
Why are you here?
“Why? It’s mine!”
Since when?
“God has given this land to the Jews. Every centimeter of this land is holy and it is the will of God that Jews live here, and as long as the Jews keep God’s will they will be protected.”
There is not a minute, be it day or night, that various volunteers who are determined to protect this holy family do not guard this place. Of course, it is God who provides the volunteers, putting the will into their hearts to come here and stay up all night to watch the herd and the sleeping couple.
The landscape, sparkling stars over barren mountains and hundreds of animals, is supremely spectacular. The air is clear, and the winds play as do the finest instruments. Had Wagner or Mozart come here and listened to the music played so majestically by these winds, they would bury their faces in shame for their utter incapacity to write music that even remotely matches the pure sound of these winds and the low whisper of the goats. No wonder there’s no TV in the tents or the wooden structure here, as the real-life images are a hundred-fold more captivating.
The bathroom is quite far, and the path to it uneven, but this outpost is not Beverly Hills. The furnishings are mostly made of wood, though there is a modern refrigerator in the kitchen, which is also a living room, study room, an office, and a prayer room. The rest of the house is the bare sands and the sky above. This is a Bedouin abode minus its sumptuous interior.
***
As night becomes ever more dark, the “Hummer” comes. This is an IDF armored vehicle, and four soldiers dismount from it. The soldiers are visiting to verify that the holy family is still alive.
They come from time to time, I’m told, show presence, and then leave. I look at them now. Mormon Sarah greets them with black coffee and cookies, and these Jewish soldiers sit with her for the drink. This is also the soldiers’ time to play with their smartphones, which each of them does.
Once the soldiers are gone, the Holy Family leaves and I’m left to the mercy of fate.
And I think: These Jews are here not because Auschwitz forced them to be here. No. They are here because this earth is the expression of their souls. They and the mountains are one. The Christians believe in a Trinity, and these people too, only their Trinity is different: God, Earth, and Jews. This land for them is the breast of the Lord, from which they suck their milk. In Hebrew they frame it thusly: Torat Israel, Am Israel, and Eretz Israel, the Torah of Israel, the Nation of Israel, and the Land of Israel, are one.
When morning comes I see a little child milking the goats. The boy, with long sidelocks and a big skullcap, is a tough farmer. He is patient while milking one goat but jumps up and down before milking the next goat in an impressive sports showmanship.
Catch The Jew! Page 33