Catch The Jew!

by Tenenbom, Tuvia

  When you walk here, a town within a city in the heart of Tel Aviv, you’re impressed. A huge place, fascinating structures, various types of buildings, roads that look normal though one cannot take a step on them without being given specific permission to do so.

  Again, the IDF Spokesperson’s office has arranged this visit for me, at my request. I’m allowed to go to only one building, no photos please, in a specific room where Colonel D. of the Military Advocate General is waiting for me. D. is a legal adviser within the Israeli military in the West Bank, and I’m here to learn about the legality of everything concerning the “occupation.”

  I get a short introduction: in 1967 Israel imposed “belligerent occupation,” legalese speaking. What does this mean? Well, it’s not so simple, but the short and the sweet of it is this: Israel claims that the Geneva Convention is not applicable to the areas it captured in 1967, yet it operates within the convention’s parameters as if it did accept their applicability.

  Why? This is a political issue, outside the boundaries of this officer’s responsibilities, he says.

  Colonel D. supplies this additional information: In the West Bank, which Israel claims that its status is in question and does not admit nor deny that it’s occupied, Israel applies the legal systems that existed there prior to 1967, going way back in the past. This means that the Ottomans’, the British Mandate’s, and the Jordanian legal systems are all part and parcel of the current legal system in the West Bank, while at the same time rules of International Law apply, as if this area were an occupied area. In the Golan Heights Israel annexed the territory, while within Jerusalem Israel imposed Israeli law, which legally is not the same as “annexation.”

  You must have an advanced law degree from Harvard Law School to understand this.

  I like it clear and I ask the man: Is occupation by itself not illegal?

  “It is legal, by international law. Otherwise there would be no laws regarding occupied lands.”

  This man acts as if he had been to Harvard.

  What’s the story with the settlements? Is it not illegal per Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention? (“Individual or mass forcible transfers . . . are prohibited. . . . The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”)

  “Firstly, Israel claims that it did not move its residents into the disputed area, since the people moved themselves into it, as opposed to forced settlements. Second: Israel claims that it never defined the area as occupied. Third: Israel claims that as long as it is negotiating the status of the land with the other side, no court should get involved.

  “In addition: Israel claims that the area in dispute, meaning the West Bank, never belonged to Jordan, Syria, or Egypt. There is a UN decision for dividing the land under British Mandate between Arabs and Jews, but this decision did not specify who the ‘Arabs’ are.”

  The above, I also learn, is being constantly challenged in Israeli courts, where most cases against the army are being filed by foreign-financed Israeli NGOs. But all in all, D. asserts, “Israel operates within the boundaries of International law.”

  What is international law?

  “This is the million dollar question.”

  We go on to discuss this issue in minute detail, engaging in hair splitting arguments as if we were two Talmudic scholars, and end up with the magic formula: “Nobody Knows.”

  I am left to think about all this on my own.

  Who decides what international law is? If you search deep and wide and walk where your eyes and your mind lead you, you will reach the seats in the UN Security Council in New York, on which four White people and one Chinese warm their asses. Sorry for being so graphic. Representing the victors of WWII, the folks who dropped bombs from fast-flying airplanes into the dark bedrooms of sleeping civilians, are the very same peoples who tell the rest of us what is and what is not legally permissible in conflict areas, and demand that we abide by their commands.

  Yes, I know. The enemy they were facing then wasn’t the sweetest of men. Would they act differently, though, today, when they are not facing a man like Wolfy, aka Adolf Hitler?

  Or are they?

  The figures for October 2013 in Iraq, the country which the law-abiding nations of the West have messed up big time, are just out: 979 dead in a mere thirty days. This figure does not include deaths from car accidents, diseases, or normal crime.

  I get ready to leave the base, and as I step on its grounds one last time one word comes to my mind: Sarona. I wish I could meet the people of Sarona, ask them what made them come here. Sadly I can’t, because the Brits expelled them long before I was born, but perhaps I could compensate for this impossibility by visiting Tabgha Monastery by the Sea of Galilee; there the Germans have outsmarted the Brits.

  Gate Forty-Seven

  Where Jesus Christ has fed the poor, a German monk is feeding visitors his deepest thoughts about the Jews.

  I AM IN THE TABGHA MONASTERY AND BROTHER JOSEF, A LIVELY BROTHER WITH two wild eyes who was born in 1971 in Düsseldorf, Germany, greets me with a handshake and a smile.

  Tabgha Monastery is owned by the Deutscher Verein vom Heiligen Land, which dates back to about 1890. German monks of a different order had been here even earlier but were put in jail by the Brits following the breakout of WWII. When they were in jail, the Verein, located in Köln, asked non-German monks to come over instead and look after the property. Father Jerome of Croatia, who was already here in 1933, took it upon himself to stay on and look after the property.

  That was a smart move. Once the war was over, this German Verein still had the property, unlike the German Templars of Sarona.

  Father Jerome, a really old man by now, is still around and when I ask him whether it would not have been better if he had stayed in Italy, where he was at the time, he doesn’t answer.

  I sit down with the younger monk, Brother Josef, whose real name is Tony, for a little heart-to-heart conversation.

  Brother Josef, tell me something. What is a German like you doing here with the Jews?

  It takes Brother Josef time to answer this question. In his youth, he tells me, he never thought of Israel. “I have to admit,” he says, “that it took me years to allow Jerusalem and Israel, and the reality of this land, to enter my heart and my mind.”

  What happened?

  He gives me a complex answer, which is more of a longwinded stream of consciousness than a reply, and then comes back and talks of the Israeli army’s siege of Bethlehem, “in the fall of the year 2000, which made me think.”

  I ask him to tell me what happened, and what he thought at the time.

  “A group of Palestinian militia stormed into the Nativity Church and took captive civilians who were inside and, in response, the IDF besieged the place.”

  So that’s when the “reality of this land” reached your heart, as you said. What do you mean by “reality”?

  “The reality of living under occupation.”

  Let me understand you, Brother: When the Muslims took your Christian brothers and sisters captive, endangering their lives in one of the holiest shrines of your faith, you changed your first allegiance, your allegiance to your Christian brothers, to those Muslims. Not just your allegiance, but you made an even greater decision in their favor by coming here. Does this make sense to you? To me, it’s mind-boggling. Don’t take this personally, but sometimes I think that whenever Germans talk about Jews, sense and logic mysteriously vanish. Am I wrong?

  Brother Josef stares at me, then stares at some invisible point past me and, after a few moments of total silence, he blurts out: “Yes, it is mind-boggling.”

  I think I better drop the Jewish and German subject and talk to him about Tony under the cowl of Brother Josef. Remembering the monk I met at the Holy Sepulcher and his hot kisses, I ask this monk an intimate question.

  Tell me, Brother, as a monk you have no intimate partner. What do you do when sexual desires come over you? How
do you deal with them?

  “Sometimes I cry.”

  Let me ask you this, and of course you don’t have to answer, do you masturbate?

  Brother Josef answers, in a low voice: “This is what monks do.”

  This ability of the German to give honest answers to even the most intimate questions, which I have witnessed many a time before, makes me love Germans. I might be very critical of them, but I also often admire them.

  Brother Josef now takes me to the church, a place where between four and five thousand people visit daily, except on Sundays. When we go in, thank God it’s Sunday. I notice a rock-like stone that seems totally out of place in this church. What is it? Well, you will never believe this! It is on this stone that Jesus Christ was sitting or standing when sharing five loaves of bread and two fish with five thousand starving people and all were fully satisfied.

  There is Jesus Christ, and there are the Christians. In Hebrew you don’t say Christians but Notzrim (Muslim Arabs say Nasraniyyin), meaning Nazarenes, and Jesus Christ is called Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus lived not far from here, in Nazareth, and as I leave this place of his miracle making I go to visit his city.

  Gate Forty-Eight

  Here Jesus the Nazarene lived, but no other Jew is allowed to live here.

  I GET A ROOM AT THE FAUZI AZAR INN, A FUNKY HOTEL WHICH IS A JEWEL IN the midst of Nazareth’s Old City. The guests are free-spirit kind of creatures and you can have drinks and cakes, as many as you desire, all free of charge. The receptionists are two young Christian girls, one Finnish and one American, and both love the Arabs more than they love the not-really-nice Jews. As one of them says to me: “God chose the Jews not because they are nice.”

  What a nice welcome. I guess I had better be a Christian here. No Abu Ali, and no Tuvia. Just Tobi, Tobi the German Christian.

  I go to take part in a Mass with the local people. Moments later, I find myself in a huge church with large pillars made of concrete. On the walls I see that the Arabs here refer to Jerusalem as Jerusalem and not as Al-Quds. Interesting. The service is done in Arabic, and only one Hebrew word is heard here: Hallelujah. (Hallelujah means “Praise the Lord” in Hebrew.)

  After prayer I go to meet the priest, to see what’s on his mind. “This is an occupied land. The Jews occupied it twice: in 1948 and in 1967.”

  Fine.

  I mingle with the local people, to see what’s on their mind, and I discover something quite interesting: No Jew lives in this city and no resident will sell his or her house to a Jew.

  This is Nazareth, within the Israel of pre-1967.

  I go back to the hotel and fall asleep, the only Jew in Jesus’ town.

  When morning comes, Lubna, whose main wish is to get married and very soon, inshallah, takes a group of us, Fauzi Azar guests, on a tour of Nazareth’s Old City. As we walk I see big posters in support of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood. During his short reign he was an unshakable supporter of Hamas, but now he is in jail. The people here, who are Israeli citizens, want him back in power. Hamas does not recognize Israel, wants nothing less than Israel’s annihilation, and these people support Hamas.

  Fine.

  We stop at an old house, where no one lives, and we look at its architecture. Lubna explains to us that “no one lives here because the owners were forced out by the Occupiers.” Lubna points at the ceiling, where we see burned beams of wood, and explains that “this is what people did centuries ago.”

  When was this house built?

  “This house is from the first century and it belonged to the original Palestinian residents who lived in this city under the Ottoman rulers.” The same Ottomans, I guess, who founded Alsra in the Negev, Halil’s village so well protected by Adalah.

  The Turks were here in the first century?

  “Yes. They were the first occupiers of Palestine. Then the British occupied Palestine, and now it is Israel.”

  This is a very enlightening narrative. No Romans or Crusaders have ever been here, according to this narrative. The Turks, who in reality first showed up here in 1517, have their presence moved back by a millennium and a half according to this narrative.

  I tell Lubna that no Ottoman even dreamt of being here in the first millennium, not to say century, since the Ottoman Empire started over twelve centuries later.

  Members of our group, educated Westerners who have come to the Holy Land to show their sympathies with the “poor Palestinians,” as one of them had told me before, wish that this strange German would stop talking. They ask no question of Lubna, and everything they hear they accept. They buy it all, wholesale, and they don’t need me to disturb their peaceful morning “research.”

  Who are these people, Western people in whose midst I have lived for the past three decades? I make an appointment to meet the head of the German KAS in Jerusalem, Michael Mertes. Maybe he can explain to me a thing or two. His office is minutes away from my Jerusalem home, where I go next.

  When my cats see me on the street outside, they run to the place where I usually leave the milk for them, looking at me with thankful eyes. Nadia, the famed singer, doesn’t thank her providers, but my cats do.

  Gate Forty-Nine

  Who am I? Am I an offensive right-winger or a leftist troublemaker?

  “WE SUPPORT THE STRENGTHENING OF DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW IN Israel,” KAS says in its literature. Personally I find it bizarre that a German foundation will come here to teach Jews what democracy is, but I don’t think these words are the making of Michael Mertes, head of the KAS branch in Jerusalem.

  I have met Michael before and he made me laugh. He told me a clever joke that I can’t forget:

  A man was sitting outside a Tel Aviv café writing when a passerby stopped by to ask him what he was writing about.

  Writer: I am an author and I am writing a book about Israel.

  Passerby: This is a huge job! How long are you planning to stay in the country?

  Writer: I landed yesterday and I’m flying back tomorrow.

  Passerby: You are going to write a book about a country after being in it for barely three days?

  Writer: Yes.

  Passerby: What is the title of your book, if I may ask?

  Writer: “Israel: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.”

  Before coming into Michael’s office to meet him, I’ve made up my mind to be as honest as Brother Josef was with me and will say to Michael what I think straight up. This is going to be a German-to-German conversation.

  I share with Michael what I saw and witnessed while taking part in various KAS programs. I found, I tell him, that the Jews KAS is working with are people who believe that Israel is on the wrong side of history and justice, and that the Palestinians whom KAS is working with happen to totally agree with them. What’s the point of KAS spending money on bringing these specific Arabs and Jews together?

  And as for the Arabs sponsored by KAS, I have another question: I have spoken with some of them and found them not only to be strongly anti-Israel, but also classic anti-Semites. Why is it that a German foundation, especially given the delicate history between Germans and Jews, finds it necessary to support such people?

  Michael doesn’t like my questions and he tells me that he feels offended by me, that he is disappointed with me, and that I talk like a right-winger.

  Incidentally, I am told by a confidential source that my request for an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman was rejected, as both their teams have concluded that I am a “leftist troublemaker.”

  Back at my Templar home with the cats I look up the dark sky and wonder: Why has this country, and especially this city, been such a magnet to so many people for so many years? Personally, I am conflicted about Israel. I grew up here, but I left. Naturally, as a country of my youth, especially this city of Jerusalem in which I spent many years, speaks to me. Strangely, it speaks to me more in the language of the Bible – though I’m not a religious person – than in the cur
rent sounds I hear in its streets.

  Here in Jerusalem I feel the city’s biblical characters walking, breathing, talking, dancing, and making love. Above the walls of this city and in the depth of its sands, I hear them and I see them. Yes, I do. I see its former kings and their courts, its scholars and its warriors, its tradesmen and its prophets; all of its people who once lived here but who to this very day stubbornly refuse to die.

  Nir Barkat, the feisty mayor of Jerusalem, tells me that I should go for a walk in Jerusalem’s City of David, take a Bible with me, and see for myself how point-by-point, page-by-page the two corroborate with one another. I like the idea of connecting with old Jerusalem and I go. I wish that Dr. Hanan Ashrawi would come along with me, but I have this strong feeling that she wouldn’t.

  Gate Fifty

  A date with history: kings, professors, and a toilet.

  I DON’T THINK THAT NIR BARKAT, WHO’S NOT RELIGIOUS, WALKS IN THE CITY of David with a Bible, but whatever he does, I choose to walk with a man named Assaf instead of a book named the Bible. I don’t like maps that were not printed by the Japanese government, like that map of Jericho. Period.

  He is Assaf Avraham of Israel Nature and Parks Authority, City of David, and he’s an archeologist presently doing his PhD in the field. He speaks quietly into my ears: “The name of Jerusalem is Urushalem, the city of Shalem, a Canaanite god of the Middle Bronze Age period, around 2000 BCE. Jerusalem is the invention of King David, built around 1000 BCE. Earlier in the biblical text every person was allowed to build a shrine to God wherever he felt like, but King David decreed that there was only one place to worship God in. This was a political decision.

  “In the year 722 BCE the Assyrians, the ancestors of today’s Iranians, conquered Israel and destroyed the Kingdom of Israel. We assume that between 722 and 701 Jerusalem grew tremendously in terms of residents due to the Israelite refugees who moved south, to the Kingdom of Judah from the Kingdom of Israel which had now been destroyed. This is the assumption by Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University.