“Same as other nations, where people get killed for a parking space, only we have a small country, where the population is very condensed, geographically and socially, and everybody knows everybody. This, I think, is actually what makes us different, unique. Israel is not America, where a child in Atlanta shoots his classmates and we don’t know who he is. Here in Israel it is everybody’s business what you ate for breakfast.
“There’s another thing here that makes us unique: We don’t mefarganim. Now, this is a word so unique to us that you can’t even translate it. [It’s rooted in the Yiddish farginen, which in turn comes from the German.] If one of us succeeds in anything we immediately say bad words about him. Our thinking goes like this: If you’re doing well, we’re sure that you have done something horrible.”
Why are you like this?
“I don’t know. It’s in our DNA.”
Really. Explain to me why the Israelis are like this –
“I have to think about this. I really don’t know. But the fact is, we love only the underdogs. If you fail, we think that you’re a wonderful person.”
Why?
“This is who we are. Another thing that’s ‘Israeli’ is this: Whatever I do is everybody’s business. You walk on the street and people say to you things like: Your hair doesn’t look good. Your eyes look like this, your ass looks like that. Here people get inside your veins, as if that were their natural place to be. Israelis have this sense and feeling of togetherness; we are of one nation, one family, and it is my business if you date somebody. There is no distance here.”
***
Being in Tel Aviv I take the opportunity of checking out an item I have on my list: finding out who is funding Israeli nonfiction films.
The New Fund for Cinema and TV (NFCT), a fund that caters to documentary filmmakers, is having an event in the city today, and I go to meet them. The NFCT folks are the people who funded, together with EU friends, 5 Broken Cameras, which depicts a violent IDF in Bil’in, a film that went on to win an Oscar Nomination.
And this is what the person in charge tells me: “My estimation: 80 percent of Israeli-made documentary films that are political are coproduced with Europeans, and when I say ‘European’ I mean mainly the Germans, who on average fund 40 percent of the cost per film.”
Germans again.
They just can’t stop recruiting Jews who speak badly of themselves. If German TV or film producers put on such films on their own there would be a huge outcry against them, blaming them – rightly – for anti-Semitism. To bypass this hurdle, German producers smartly finance Jews to do their dirty work. Sad.
Gate Fifty-Four
Show time: journalists join human rights activists in a staged demonstration involving firebombs and repeated calls to kill the Jews.
OUT OF THE BLUE SKY I GET AN E-MAIL FROM LINA, JIBRIL RAJOUB’S FAITHFUL assistant. She writes to me that Jibril would like me to join him the coming Friday, to celebrate with him the Palestinian Independence Day. It sounds strange to me that the Palestinians would invite foreigners to celebrate a Day of Independence with them, since they keep telling every foreigner that they have no state even if between themselves they say they have a state, but if Jibril invites me I go.
People who know me tell me I shouldn’t go. Jibril must know by now who you are, they argue, and his invitation to celebrate with him is a trap.
Logically they make sense, and so I decide not to follow their advice.
Come Friday, I go. I don’t know what is the schedule of the festivities that are to take place soon, and neither does Lina. All I do know is this: Lina will pick me up at the Qalandiya checkpoint and from there we’ll go to the Mövenpick Hotel in Ramallah.
When I arrive at Qalandiya checkpoint I see two young people, white people, who look like the classic European human rights types. Sorry to be saying this, which is so racist, but human rights folks have this shine in their eyes that makes them look like brilliant idiots. No, really.
Anyway. Whatever. I approach them. I love young, white people.
They are Hannah and Andy of Norway and England, respectively, and they are standing at this checkpoint to make sure the Arabs are not being treated badly by the Jews. They are members of the church-related EAPPI, they tell me, and they stand there four days a week, hours and hours per day. They have little mechanical counters, called clickers, and they click every time a person enters. Why do they have to know how many Arabs enter Israel is something the Virgin Mother may know, but not me.
How many people are actually crossing?
“The average number of people entering Israel today is two-hundred per hour,” they say.
They stand straight, like rulers, and they behave like lords of the manor. They make sure the Jews behave like humans, or else they will take action. Who anointed these kids to be guardians of justice is beyond me, but nobody is allowed to question Europeans, of whatever age, because they are the Lords.
It just occurs to me, don’t laugh, that human rights activists are the biggest racists there are. Really, I’m not kidding. The normal racist fights within his own territory, wishing that his land be cleansed of those he hates. He is misguided, and his thoughts and deeds are deplorable, but at least he has a selfish motive: he wants his land to be only his land. No KKK member, for example, is dedicating his life to clearing Turkey of Turks.
The European NGO folks are different. The Jew they are fighting does not reside in their territory, for he lives thousands of miles away, and yet, these Europeans travel thousands of miles to get the Jew – wherever they find him. I try to dig a bit deeper into these loveable kids.
What made you come to the Holy Land to start with? Was it some kind of a religious calling, a revelation?
The answer is, well, yes and no. Andy is a churchgoer and this is part of his religious service, he says with a sacred smile. Israel treats Bedouins badly and he is here to help them.
I don’t see any Bedouin here, but why bother looking? We are all Bedouin.
This kid doesn’t even know that he has mixed up the Bedouin issue with the Palestinian issue. As far as he is concerned, there is a Jew out there and he wants to catch him.
Fishermen love fish, Europeans love Jews, and both would like the object of their love well fried.
Hannah is an agnostic, she says, but she joined the church’s human rights activities and that’s how she got involved with EAPPI. She tells me that she used to have a Jewish boyfriend, but they broke up, and now she helps the Arabs.
It will be interesting to find out what happens with European girls who break up with their Palestinian boyfriends. Will they become Hasidic Jews?
To an extent, she reminds me of the German girl I met in Al-Quds University. That girl was helping the Palestinians because “I fell in love with the Jewish people.”
In any case, four days a week in the life of our cute whites don’t add up to seven days a week. Are they doing some other things with their precious time besides clicking their clickers?
Yes, they are. When they don’t stand guard here, they go to Arab villages, distribute business cards, and tell the Arabs thusly: If you have any problem with the Israelis, please call us.
Wow.
I’d have spent the whole day with these kids, but Lina the “Bedouin” arrives and I have to bid them goodbye.
The Bedouin and the German drive to the Mövenpick.
We get there in time for breakfast. I’m not hungry but I treat myself to cake and coffee. The coffee is delicious. I can’t wait for the festivities to start!
***
My good friend Jibril Rajoub is here. We hug. I really like this guy. I tell him again what I have told him before: You should be the Palestinian president!
“Had I wanted,” he tells me, “I would have been. But I don’t want. I chose Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] to be the president. For me it’s enough to be the King Maker.”
This Jibril is an interesting guy, and it is slowly dawning on me that he may
be almost as good an agent as I am. Looking around me I notice that the guests at this Mövenpick, at least today, are not your average hotel guests. I look for the people with suitcases and maps, the usual marks of tourists, but I can’t spot any. This Mövenpick, it strangely registers in my head, could be the place where Jibril has his headquarters. Everybody moving about here, how funny, is connected in one way or another to “Abu Rami,” the other name of Jibril Rajoub.
I go to get myself a Diet Coke. The man behind the bar asks me for my room number, and I answer: Jibril Rajoub. The man runs to give me my Coke, as if “Jibril Rajoub” were the number of a suite.
I want to check this HQ of a hotel further, but Lina says we must leave the hotel now because we are going to Jericho. Jericho? Well, why not? Maybe I’ll finally get to see Rahav. A whore is better than a hundred Cokes.
About one full minute later Lina is told that we are going to Ni’lin, not Jericho. God knows where that is, but I hope they have a Mövenpick there as well, or a whore.
We leave the Mövenpick and Lina says that the buses are waiting for us.
Buses? I can fit in a car, why do I need buses?
Well, there is no time for questions. In the hotel’s parking area I see a few buses, each packed with people. I start talking with some of them. Jibril, it turns out, has invited foreign nationals in the name of his Olympic sports office to spend some great time in Palestine’s posh hotels. He’s got the budget.
Who are these people? With whom am I going to celebrate Palestinian Independence Day? Well, here is a German-educated African from Tanzania, who speaks good German. Is he a footballer? Not really. He works for the Foreign Ministry of Tanzania. And here’s another guy from South Africa. What kind of sports is he into? Well, his father is a diplomat. Next to them is this lady from Mexico; her sport specialty is being a member of a leftist party in her homeland. And then there are others, the usual suspects: Europeans. None of the people here is an athlete, but so what?
Lina and I mount one of the buses and start moving, bus after bus.
“Abu Ali,” Lina says about ten minutes into the ride, “we are not going to Ni’lin, we’re going to Bil’in.”
Bil’in. Is it the same Bil’in as in Yoav’s movie, with that man Jonathan Shapira and the tear gas? The place that is featured in the film 5 Broken Cameras? The place Uri Avnery had a picture of on the big screen at his birthday party?
Yes, it is.
I wanted to see the “Bil’in Protests,” the weekly demonstrations against the separation wall in Bil’in, after having watched Yoav’s movie. I checked for information about them and ways of how to get there, and then I found this article in the New York Times, dated June 2011, stating that the IDF had moved the wall away from its original location and that the weekly demonstrations had ceased.
What is in Bil’in? I ask Lina.
“Protest.”
Protest? Aren’t we all supposed to go to an Independence Day party?
It takes me seconds to understand. This is the party.
The New York Times may have decided well over two years ago that the demonstrations in Bil’in were over, only the demonstrators here obviously don’t read the New York Times.
The mood in my bus is indeed celebratory. A Palestinian partygoer who has joined us asks me where I am from. I, Abu Ali, am from Germany, I tell him. And, as usual, he immediately loves me. “Hitler should have taught us what to do with the Jews, how to be thorough,” he tells me passionately. I am used to Hitler references almost every time I tell a Palestinian that I’m German, but this is a new way of connecting the Hitler and Germany dots.
The landscapes revealing themselves to us as we are driving on are breathtaking: hills and roads intermingling, gorgeous white stone houses surrounded by greenish-brownish olive trees and impressively imaginative architecture. What richness of land, what beauty of hills, what gorgeousness of sands. I wish this ride would never end, but when each of us is given a Palestinian flag to carry, I know that soon it will. Why the flags? Well, we are to walk with a flag of Palestine on the barren hills of Bil’in for all to see.
I have never carried a flag, of any country, but it’s good to start somewhere.
***
Our buses come to a stop and we dismount; more cars and more vans arrive in Bil’in and their passengers get off as well. I see many whites among them: “War Veterans” from the US of A, and French, Irish and, of course, Norwegian and German NGO angels. God bless the West. Some of these whites are wearing Hermes clothes mixed with Palestinian clothes, such as Keffiyehs, which they wear with extra love.
Will I ever live to see European human rights activists wearing Hasidic clothes, and be proud as hell for doing so? Would be real cool to see a Norwegian activist with a shtreimel and tsitsis and a German activist with the special Meah Shearim uniform of the Golden Chosen. Chances are, I believe, that I’ll get to ride al-Buraq before my eyes see European activists with shtreimels.
Slowly but surely a show gets into shape here, and the various actors take up their positions. First are the news people, journalists of European and Arab media. Carrying big cameras and small, microphones and other equipment, they move into their position on the “stage.” One of the news media I recognize easily is the British Sky News. I used to think that news follows events, but I guess it’s the other way around. As I can see here, journalists are actually the main players, and only after they have taken their position the rest of the people do as well. Funnily, “Made for TV” gets a fresh new meaning here.
Right next to me I see kids selling some interesting goods: nose covers.
What?
Yeah. The nose covers, one of the kids who is trying to convince me to get rid of my shekels in his behalf, explains to me will protect me from the gas canisters that the Jews will soon throw in our direction.
“Protest,” I learn, is a business here. Around me I see various goods being sold by Bil’in villagers: Nose covers, keffiyehs, more flags, onions against tear gas, and other goodies.
Each person here, it slowly transpires, has a unique role to play in the show. In other words: everybody here is an actor. And everything works in stages: Journalists take positions, kids sell goods, and the choir – praying elders – is now moving into place. This last group is taking their position on prayer mats, which were laid under a tree in the hill before we arrived.
The acting stage is the bare ground, a huge stage.
Quite interesting.
And these are the locations: Journalists are positioned in front with big “Press” costumes on their bodies, next to them are the ‘shabab,’ Arab youth, and behind them are the tourists and the choir. The praying choir, all Arab, are under the tree, tourists are to their right.
The Prologue of this play starts right now. Tourists taking photos of themselves and of each other, complete with flags and keffiyehs, as the Arabs are listening to a Friday sermon by an imam. The imam holds a microphone, which is connected to huge loudspeakers mounted on a nearby van, and he shouts: “This is our land, a holy land that belongs only to Arab Muslims. No others are to be here. This is Arab land. This is Muslim land. This is the land of the Prophet!”
It is good to have this sound effect, because a show should have good sound instruments.
Lefty whites on the right hold big banners against Jewish racism, at the same exact moment the imam shouts juicy racist treasures in Arabic. The two groups, praying Arabs and keffiyeh-dressed foreigners, make for a very interesting combo.
Prologue continues. The Arab prayer-choir men stay in place while the foreigners start moving. Most of the foreigners are young, but some are quite old and they can hardly walk on the uneven paths of the hills. One of them, in a wheelchair, is maneuvering his way between stones in a heart-rending show of defiance against the horrible Jews down one of the hills nearby.
Yes, there are Jews there. Soldiers. About ten altogether.
Journalists do the last sound and light check, and will soon be
ready for Curtain.
***
Time to start scene one.
Carrying a Palestinian flag, I walk closer to the soldiers, to get a good view of the situation.
Curtain.
The youngsters, Shabab, start their sling shot show, throwing as many stones as they can at the soldiers.
Nothing happens.
Heavier stones are then hurled at the soldiers, this time in the oldest and simplest way of throwing stones: the Shabab pick stones from the ground, as heavy as they can, and throw them.
No response yet from the Jews
Act 1, scene 2:
The Shabab throw firebombs at the soldiers.
A soldier responds with a tear gas canister into the air. I guess this is a warning shot.
Scene 2 is over; scene 3 is about to start.
TV cameras shoot pictures. Shabab continue with more shots and IDF soldiers respond with a barrage of tear gas canisters.
Stupid me, how didn’t I think of it, I get the first portion. I move away fast, but I’m in the midst of the barrage. I breathe harder and harder and my eyes get quite tearful. I never thought of it, stupid me, but there’s a reason why this is called tear gas.
Right ahead of me is a Palestinian ambulance, donated to Palestine by the Swiss people, the famous neutral people of the planet. I get myself inside it, and I feel like vomiting. I spit all over the Swiss ambulance. Thank God this is not Al-Quds here, or the Waqf would have shot me for blasphemy.
I think of the ambulance I saw in Zfat, donated by American Jews, which aids in saving wounded Syrians, as compared with this ambulance, gift of the Swiss, which aids in shooting Israelis.
In any case, I get a little piece of cloth that was before soaked in alcohol and am told to put it close to my nose. What a miraclemaker this alcohol is! In seconds the effects of the gas are gone. The team of this ambulance is very dedicated to European naïve idiots like me and I’m sincerely thankful to the paramedics for helping me out and I soon get off the ambulance.
Catch The Jew! Page 39