Catch The Jew!

by Tenenbom, Tuvia

  And then I ask him the most important question one could ask this man: How many Arab refugees were there in 1948? In other words: How many “original” refugees – from which the UNRWA folks get the figure of five or eleven million today – actually existed at the time? Well, not that easy for UNRWA to answer. I’m immediately asked that our conversation be off the record, meaning that I can’t name the official I’m interviewing and that I can’t quote him directly.

  And so, without directly quoting, here’s the answer: UNRWA did not exist in 1948 and therefore UNRWA does not have the figures. Yep. Just like that. Very interesting, and very illuminating. The fact that one can ascertain that there are five (or eleven) million great-grandchildren without having the faintest idea how to prove it – in addition to this being a mathematical impossibility since original numbers are unknown – shows that UNRWA employs mathematical geniuses far smarter than Albert Einstein. Of course, if UNRWA keeps granting refugee status to every grandchild of every Palestinian it assumes to have lived – and all indications show that UNRWA folks will – we will soon have more Palestinian refugees in the world than Americans and Europeans combined.

  But enough about UNRWA, at least for the moment.

  An ICRC man approaches me to tell me that later on there will be a group session and that the ICRC people expect me to join the session. I say that I’d gladly do that.

  Before the group session is to start, I meet a bunch of people, all locals. All, it soon becomes clear, have been to or have a family member living in one certain country: Germany. Yeah. In fact, there’s even a neighborhood in east Jenin called “Germany,” a proud Haifa Refugee tells me. One of the ladies here excitedly also tells me that “there is a monument, in central Jenin, for a fallen German plane from the World War. You should go and see it!”

  Over and again, as in so many other instances in Palestine, these Haifa Refugees tell me how much they like Germany, the only country that knew how to deal with its Jews. Here in Jenin, in case I didn’t know, refugee males share with me that they like German women very much.

  A bunch of teenagers play soccer, wearing sports gear given them by the ICRC, and once the game is over, in just minutes, the ICRC people say that they would like me to talk with these teenagers. Why such a short soccer game? Well, it was just a show, for me to see and enjoy.

  Do you have a girlfriend? I ask one of the teenagers.

  “No,” he says.

  Would you like to have one?

  “Yes.”

  Would you like your girlfriend to be from Jenin?

  “No. I’d like to have a girl from Germany.”

  As I sit with the teenagers, ICRC folks come in to see and hear what I do with their kids. I just keep on. I ask the rest of the teenagers: Would you also like to have German girlfriends? Anybody who does, raise your hands!

  They all do.

  “German women went through two world wars but still took good care of their children,” an older man sitting nearby tells me.

  And I, Abu Ali, have nothing left to say except: Yes, we Germans are the best.

  ***

  As this goes on, some ICRC folks talk to each other on the side, I don’t know what about, and then one of them comes to me and says: “The group session has been postponed to next month. Sorry.” One of them, I can tell, has smartened up and has told the others that they were making fools of themselves. Haifa. Germany. Nazis. Is this what the ICRC would like to be made public? It would be better for them, much better, if they stop this show at once.

  The UNRWA is in charge of education here. The ICRC is in charge of telling the UNRWA-educated kids of their rights. Soon these kids, and their families, will live in Haifa and in Jaffa, in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv.

  Fourth Geneva Convention.

  International Law.

  I take my time, sitting alone with my iPad, to learn more about the ICRC, but it’s not that easy. The way the ICRC operates is more in line with the way you’d expect dark regimes to operate than an organization claiming to be a champion of human rights and democracy. Going over the materials they provide on their website, I realize that this organization, aided by top lawyers and sophisticated linguists on its payroll, uses language designed to hide rather than reveal. Yet, miraculously, the ICRC is held in highest esteem and its decisions are blindly accepted.

  Examples:

  In 1990, the UN General Assembly awarded the ICRC an “observer status” in the UN.

  Security Council Resolution 446 states in part: “Affirming once more the Fourth Geneva Convention . . . is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem.” This interpretation of the convention can come from only one source: the ICRC, the people who created the convention ages ago and the ones who keep interpreting its various articles as time moves along and as they see fit.

  Powerful Cross.

  These guys are major players, not just drivers of cute vans, and they flex their muscles. If I’m not mistaken the ICRC, which defines itself (Article 2 on legal status) as a “legal personality,” was the first to define the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem as “Occupied Territories.”

  I write a note to myself to ask for clarification about this issue in my e-mail tomorrow.

  As I’m driven back to Jerusalem in the same Red Cross van that brought me here, I feel the muscles it flexes on the road: Every Jew is afraid of us. Every Arab honors us. God is dead, ICRC is alive.

  I shouldn’t be proud of it but I, too, start getting into this power thing. When you drive a Red Cross car in Israel, you feel powerful. Nobody stops a Red Cross car. This is no ambulance, dear; this is a Swiss machine that turns you into a King Herod. When you are inside a Red Cross car, you look at Israeli soldiers with spite, like one would look at a slave. You’re the ruler here, not them.

  What can I tell you? If you happen to be an egotistical maniac or a ruthless operator, and you want to see your dream of countries with no Jews come alive, come here to Israel and join the Red Cross. If for some reason you don’t like little red crosses but still have a yearning for power, you can fulfill all your most sadistic heart’s desires by becoming an EAPPI human rights activist with a clicker. Whichever of them you end up joining, Red Cross or EAPPI, you will be viewed by all nations and by all nationals as the kindest, loveliest, and most humane of all living people.

  ***

  Following my excursion with the ICRC, I sit down to chat with Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Zev Elkin. During our conversation he tells me that the Red Star of David, which is a private organization, is a full member of the ICRC, following an agreement the MDA reached with the PRC (Palestine Red Crescent Society) years ago not to operate in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem.

  Zev tells me that many east Jerusalem Arabs are very upset about this, since PRC ambulances transfer patients only to Arab hospitals and not to Jewish ones, which are known to be far superior. Zev also tells me, by the way, that the American Secretary of State John Kerry, who keeps popping into Israel every few days, is a man influenced by European thinking and that this is why he is bent on solving the Arab-Israeli conflict by hook or by crook. Interesting.

  ***

  From my abode in Jerusalem with the cats I submit questions to the ICRC in writing, as I said I would. Initially they try to avoid responding in detail, but following an intense face-to-face conversation with the ICRC’s Head of Delegation in “Israel and the Occupied Territories,” Juan Pedro Schaerer, and with the ICRC’s head of Legal Department, Anton Camen, I’m promised that the ICRC will be specific and direct and that they will answer all my questions. Not surprisingly, their promise is only partially honored. Following are excerpts from my correspondence with the ICRC:

  Can non-Swiss be on the board of ICRC?

  “No.”

  According to ICRC, are Cyprus or Tibet, to cite two examples, occupied territory?

  “In principle the ICRC will first and foremost share its legal reading bilateral
ly and confidentially with the parties in a conflict. . . . The ICRC could later communicate its classification publicly.”

  Would it be correct to say that the ICRC publicly declared the 1967 areas captured by Israel as “occupied” while it did not do the same with Cyprus and Tibet?

  “I do not have anything to add.”

  Was the ICRC the first to determine that territories captured by Israel in 1967 are “occupied territories”?

  “No. The first to consider these territories occupied territories was probably the IDF.”

  In conversations with the Israeli army, the IDF has disputed this assertion. Yet, leaving this aside for the moment, was the ICRC second in declaring the areas in question as “occupied”?

  “Unfortunately for your continuing requests, I have to put main priority on other issues now.”

  Not including emergency expenditures (such as floods, earthquakes etc), could you please supply a list of the top-ten countries where ICRC is operating for the past ten years, in terms of moneys spent?

  In response, I’m advised to find out on my own.

  In one of the e-mails from the ICRC I’m also told that the ICRC shares its analysis “with state parties to the Geneva Convention and they follow our reading of the law, with the exception of Israel.”

  You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand what this means. China and the ICRC see eye to eye on Tibet. Russia and the ICRC see eye to eye on the war in Chechnya. The ICRC and all the nations, in fact, see eye to eye no matter what the issue, “with the exception of Israel.”

  Damn Jews.

  I don’t know why a bunch of Swiss-only nationals, individuals who were never elected in any democratic process and whose meetings are secretive, have so much power. This is so absurd that it’s not funny anymore. The fact that anything a country has signed with the ICRC should not be treated in the same manner as when a country signs a document with Google or Apple, and that an agreement signed with the ICRC should be subjected to various UN resolutions or actions is, I think, absurd.

  Yet, no matter what I say, the ICRC has unparalleled power. And what does the ICRC do with its power? The ICRC invests great sums of money and effort in finding fault with the Israelis, the Jews. Its agents traverse and scour the width and the breadth of this land in endless search of stories that would paint Israel as a warmonger and war criminal, its “ambulances” roam the mountains and the hills of this land in protection of Haifa Refugees lusting after young German women, and its scholars warm their office seats dreaming of Judenfrei lands and composing sophisticated tales masked as reports that brilliantly hide their hatred.

  By itself, the story of ICRC is not extremely important. After all, why should we waste time on a few Swiss chocolate bankers? But nothing is more symbolic of our Zeitgeist than our culture’s image of both the ICRC and Israel. It is in this Internet age, when people believe that all information is accessible to them, that they choose to see the Red Cross as a society of human angels and Israel as a bunch animalistic devils.

  We, the human race, have a perfect record of lying to ourselves, with the Internet as without it.

  The ICRC, of course, is not alone.

  UNRWA and the various European NGOs operating here are their natural allies. The age-old story of Europe’s hatred of the Jew is continuing to this very day with just one minor adjustment: In the days of old, Europeans didn’t have to get on a plane to fight Jews, who were then living as guests in their countries and at their mercy, but today they must travel the extra mile to satisfy their thirst to hurt the Jews. One would hope that in our “enlightened” era Europeans would no longer have so much hatred and that Germany, with its history as a leader of Jewish annihilation, would not be heading this European herd of Jew haters – but the inexplicable hatred of the Jew refuses to die.

  Add to this pot of senseless hatred the self-hating Jews in this land and you’ll know why Michel, the Catholic architect married to a Jewish Israeli lady, wants a plane ticket out. My only question of him, in case he plans to take his Jewish wife along for the ride, is this: Where are you planning to hide her?

  Israelis rarely admit that they have fears, especially a fear for their very existence. To know what they really feel deep inside their hearts, at their subconscious level, you will have to catch them in their nakedness. Ran Rahav, the PR guru of the rich, provides for just such an opportunity days before I leave Israel. Kindly, he secures a seat for me to a sold-out concert by Israeli superstar Eyal Golan at Israel’s prime concert hall, the Palace of Culture in central Tel Aviv.

  Eyal has recently been entangled in various police investigations, but the well-to-do Israelis, those who can afford the astronomically high ticket prices of his concerts, have a need to be with him, no matter what. This is clearly evident during one of his songs, his last for the evening, when the thousands rise to stand as one person, joining him to sing with him these words: “The most important thing is to not be afraid . . . The King of the Universe will guard us from all others . . . The nation of Israel will never give up; we will stay on the map. Always!”

  What is going on with these people? I ask myself. This year marks sixty-six years from the establishment of the State of Israel, why is it that they find the need to jointly declare that they will “stay on the map”? It is in this moment, the moment when the richer of society practically vow not to be erased from the map, that the Israeli’s subconscious fear is being exposed in all its nakedness. Concertgoers in New York and Berlin, Moscow and Tokyo don’t vow that they won’t be erased from the map; the Jews in Tel Aviv do.

  Epilogue

  LEDERHOSEN BACK IN THE SUITCASE – THEY WEREN’T MUCH HELP – I’M READY to leave. I started my journey in the most gorgeous of architectures in Jerusalem, and I end it in the most ravished of places, in Jenin. I started with Kings, David and Herod, and I end with Haifa Refugees. When I started the journey I was awed, when I end it I’m dismayed; when I started my journey laughter was my companion, when I end it a tear joins me; when I started this journey hope was my neighbor, when I end it despair stares me in the face.

  Witnessing the tremendous investments and endless attempts of the Europeans, not to mention the Germans, all geared to undermine the Jews in this land, in Israel, was an extremely unsettling experience. Being showered with love by the Arabs, just because they thought I was an Aryan, a German, was very discomforting. Watching the Jews and seeing how powerless they are, even now that they have their own state, was distressing.

  If logic is any guide, Israel will not survive. Besieged by hate from without and from within, no land can survive for very long.

  Miraculously, the Jews have built one of the most sophisticated, intense, beautiful countries of our time, but what are they doing to keep it? They hate themselves, they belie themselves, they are full of fears and many of them rush to get another passport; they want to go back to Poland, to Austria, to Germany – lands where their forefathers were hunted down and killed.

  And what am I doing? Just the same: I am going back to Germany.

  Am I a Jew just like them? Am I not Tobi the German? Am I not Abu Ali? My name is, sorry, Tuvia. Goodness of God. What a joke. A joke, I fear, only the Chosen People will truly comprehend.

  Adios, my sweet cats. You, of all creatures of this land, have a clear and sensible direction: milk and tuna. I am thankful that we met, for you have provided me with companionship in a land I felt so alone in. I am leaving this land, and I am leaving you. You will fare better here. You are Jewish cats, stay with your kind. Enjoy this land, my stray cats, as long as it lasts. I’ll miss you terribly. Shalom.

  Tuvia Tenenbom

  Israel, 2014

  Author’s Note

  THIS BOOK IS NOT A WORK OF FICTION; THE PEOPLE MENTIONED HERE AND THE stories told herein are real. Unless otherwise stated, all names of people and locations are real.

  The various stories mentioned on these pages, historical or otherwise, are as told to me by the people I met and do no
t always reflect my opinion. But the findings in this book, such as the likelihood of Israel’s eventual demise or the various NGOs’ brutal campaigns against Israel inside the country’s borders, are mine. The main findings in this book, none of which I even thought of before starting my journey, are based on countless encounters in every possible location, at times taken at serious risk to my life.

  I am well aware that these findings differ greatly from many other findings, done by other people, on this very subject matter – and rightly so. The findings in these pages, let me remind you, are not based on abstract theories and fancy stories concocted in the comfort of remote labs or refreshments-heavy lecture halls.

  The journey recorded here took many months to complete, starting in 2013 and ending in 2014.

  My deep thanks to all interviewees, those who tried to help me and those who tried to manipulate me, those who were honest with me and those who lied to me, those who knew me by my real name and those who knew me by my other names: “Tobi the German” and “Abu Ali.”

  Tuvia Tenenbom