Coexistence Exists
It’s no surprise that main stream news is focusing on the current situation in Gaza and southern Israel. Watching CNN’s coverage Israel looks like a battlefield right out of any epic war movie. The images are constantly played over and over again—which means I get worried phone calls from America, over and over again.
But there is more to life than the images on the news. In Jerusalem, all is pretty much quiet. Yes, tensions are high and I feel the added stress, but life is still not the media’s picture of Israel. In fact there is more coexistence happening on a daily basis than most people are aware of.
Here is Jerusalem Jews and Arabs work together building fancy new high rises or the new light rail train across the city. Today I spoke with an Arab-Israeli who was taking a five-minute-break from his moving job. He sat drinking coffee with his co-workers, both Arabs and Jews, and spoke about the weather (the very cold Jerusalem winter) and my dog’s funny looking sweater (I though he might be cold, but the dog clothing thing is just not for me). The point is that small talk still exists—talking still exists and not all forms of communication are from one rocket to another.
On a larger scale, I think back to the recent coexistence projects I filmed in the Israeli mixed cities of Acre and Lod. Again, the news’s projection is all about violence and crime in these areas, rather than focusing on the positive stories taking place.
Most people now think of Acre as that city that had riots this past Yom Kippur. But Acre quickly recovered from the fighting and both sides remain relatively calm during the current military operations. When I was there in November, I didn’t feel tensions, but rather found the coexistence projects’ efforts really taking effect. The Israel21c video below shows some of the projects, sponsored by the Jewish Agency, that are taking place in Acre.
Last month, I filmed a story about a new coexistence project in Lod. Aviv Wasserman, a native Israeli, founded The Lod Community Foundation about six months ago with the goal of getting this poverty-stricken city back on its feet. Aviv is hardcore, and now lives in Lod where he has set up shop in his apartment. From his office-apartment to monthly meetings, he has built a network of concerned citizens that want to rebuild the city together. Lod is a very diverse city (Jews, Arabs, Russians, Ethiopians, Bedouins, Christians, etc.), but Aviv has managed to have representatives from each community take part in the committees and meetings. Again, you can watch the video below to learn more about his incredible project.
So, there you have it, the other side of conflict. It does exist, even if it doesn’t make the news.
Shvitzing together
As I drove up the road toward Ramat Rachel the other afternoon, I thought about the fact that I was looking forward to a long-awaited Swedish massage — to offset the very physical aspects of new motherhood — while people living in the south were huddling in bomb shelters and sealed rooms, dealing with a very different set of expectations for the day.
But as usual, albeit unexpectedly, I found myself in a fairly altered reality sitting in the Jacuzzi before my massage. I had stepped in, gingerly, as one does, and relishing my first dip following the long months of pregnancy. As I slid down, savoring the hot bubbling water, I realized that the men around me — the Jacuzzi always seems to be filled with men with pot bellies — were all speaking Arabic. For better or for worse, that’s fairly unusual in the surroundings of the Ramat Rachel complex, which is a popular swimming pool and gym owned by the kibbutz and frequented by local, mostly Jewish, Jerusalemites. And it felt even more unusual, given the fact that Israeli Arabs haven’t been too pleased with Israel’s Gaza offensive and now the ground offensive.
I went on with my afternoon of relaxation, and soon realized that there must be some kind of company outing, because the entire complex was filled with Arab men; in the lockers near the massage rooms, in the sauna, in the steam room, and again, in the Jacuzzi. They didn’t seem bothered by my presence in the Jacuzzi, during the three minutes that I grabbed before my massage. I couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about, and whether they were contemplating how unusual it was to be in fairly Jewish surroundings during this particular week. Moreover, the Ramat Rachel Jacuzzi looks out onto the towns of Gilo and Bethlehem; good choices for controversial views.
But as usual, people are people, talking about the most banal of subjects and issues, which was confirmed when the man to my left turned and asked me if it paid to go into the sauna and steamroom. I laughed at myself, and told him that it was all part of the ’shvitz’ experience, and one that shouldn’t be missed.
When we bumped into each other in the sauna later on, he thanked me for the recommendation, and told his buddies — in perfect Hebrew, better than mine — that I was the one to be thanked for their relaxing round. We smiled at each other, and maybe, I think, thought to ourselves that it should always be like this. I know I did. I hope he did as well.
Kids’ play
An IDF soldier preparing to enter Gaza on Saturday night. (Photo Courtesy Jerusalem Post)
It’s inevitable that everyone in Israel knows somebody who’s involved in some aspect of the wars we’re forced to fight. And in previous mobilizations since I’ve been living here, it’s always been myself and my peers who were called up to perform the required tasks.
But now, I’m at the age where alot of my friends’ children are now serving in the IDF. I’m aware of at least two young soldiers who are among the infantry troops who went into Gaza Saturday night and are now engaged in combat with Hamas forces.
And they’re so young! I remember their brit milas, their bar mitzvahs and their temper tantrums - wondering how they would ever make there way in the world with their wild behavior. Now, they’re the ones being called upon to engage this most evil of enemies and attempt to restore a new order in Gaza that will see a quiet border and no more rocket attacks on our southern communities.
So while it may have been chilling for anyone watching the troops march into Gaza with their night vision, huge backpacks and weapons like the brave soldiers they are, what I saw was the little guys who used to play in the sand box in my yard, throw food on my walls, and trash the house during birthday parties.
And I also saw their parents watching the same TV images, worried to their bones and praying that their sons will return home safely.
A ‘tail’ of two cities
It's the dog days for Jewish and Arab neighbors near Jerusalem.
There are many residents of Azariya however, like laborers, construction workers, remodeling experts, who work in Ma’aleh Adumim with the proper Israeli identity card - either a work permit or a Jerusalem residency card.
However, it’s not too difficult to cross the road and climb the hill separating the two communities. And that’s what one 13-year-old Azariya youth did a couple weeks ago. My eight-year-old son’s friend Ephraim was out walking his dog near his home, when the teen grabbed his leash and ran off with the mutt.
Ephraim ran home to tell his father, who called the police. They arrived pretty quickly, heard the story, and said they would look around for the pooch. Ephraim, of course, had no idea that the thief was from Azariya, but the police warned his dad that there wasn’t much they could do if he was not from Ma’aleh Adumim.
The family put up signs and scoured the neighborhood over the next few days, to no avail. Then by chance, when Ephraim was walking home from school, he spotted the 13-year-old crook. He ran home again, his mother called the police and they picked up the youth for questioning. Aside from discovering he was indeed from Azariya, they weren’t able to get any useful information from him about the dog, and they released him.
Ephraim’s father had a lead though. The next day, he went to a construction site and asked around if any of the workers were from Azariya, and a couple of them said yes. He explained the situation to them, and they said they would try to find the kid and his family and help locate the dog.
That night, Ephraim’s dad got a call from one of the builders who told them, “We found the family and the kid, but there’s no dog here. They said he ran away.”
But, they added, don’t despair, we’re going to search around and look for the dog. Ephraim’s dad got another call a while later from the builder turned detective saying, “We found someone who said they saw the dog, so we’re getting a search party together in that area.”
The next morning, the builder called Ephraim’s dad and said, “We found him, and we’re sending him back in a taxi - he should be there in a half hour.”
Sure enough, Ephraim’s dog showed up chauffered at his home and eight days after he was abducted, had a joyful reunion with his family. Later that morning, Ephraim’s dad went to the construction site and gave the worker a cash reward for taking matters into his own hands, and helping to forge a ‘good neighbor’ policy between Ma’aleh Adumim and Azariya. It should be a lesson for all of us.
Foto Friday - Local Testimony
One of the troubling things about photography, especially at times like these, is that a picture is worth a thousand words - and not always the right ones. Israel’s military operation against Gaza is only entering its seventh day, and already, hundreds of thousands of images have flooded the web, the papers, the airwaves. Some are powerful, others are weak. Some are informative, others deceptive. Some are strong enough to make a statement on their own, others serve to illustrate text. And so many seem besides the point right now — but it may be too early to tell.
Sometimes, even in a networked world of instant communications and citizen journalists, a bit of time is needed before passing judgment on what makes a good news photo. And so, each year, concurrent with the international World Press Photo exhibition, Israel hosts its own photojournalism competition, called Local Testimony. The pictures chosen capture moments with both a media value and a human significance, and is also a retrospective on the events of the past year as reflected in its main categories: news, culture and art, nature and environment, portraits, daily life and sports.
The winning photo is by AP photographer Muhammed Muheisen was taken at the village of Bil’in in June 2008. It shows a Palestinian youth running to avoid tear gas grenades that were fired to disperse a demonstration against the separation barrier.
The winning photo series, Homeless, is by independent photographer Felix Lupa, who documented the lives of two homeless people living in an abandoned car in Tel-Aviv: blind foreign worker Boris, aged 54, and his self-appointed caretaker Genady, aged 70.
The winning photo in the sports category was taken by Dudi Vaaknin, a staff photographer at Ynet and Israel Hayom. It’s a picture of Beitar Jerusalem soccer player Yoav Ziv, and is pretty self-explanatory.
Up until last week, going by the topics covered in the exhibit, Israel was preoccupied with domestic politics, a stalemated security situation, social welfare issues and a hefty amount of navel-gazing. Now, it’s the war. There’s no telling what images will come to represent this new year when it ends. What’s for certain is that Israel is a fantastic canvas for photojournalists and that Local Testimony 2009 will continue to present the best of the best.
Local Testimony is on at the Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv until January 11, after which it moves up to the Open Museum at Tel Hai until mid-February. The full exhibition can be viewed here as well.
Another Front
Besides the action in the air and on the ground, Hamas and its supporters are fighting Israel on another front – in cyberspace. And that’s a war Israel’s enemies are doing very well in. Hundreds of Israeli websites have been compromised in the past week, with groups of Arab and Muslim hackers leaving “calling cards” on sites they manage to infiltrate with bad code. The mechanics of defacing a website are not too complicated – there are many well-known flaws in web servers, and if a programmer isn’t careful (as many seem not to be), a hacker can easily subvert web pages, replacing the main index page with one of their own.
According to a professional spoke to this week (he’s a former “black hat” - i.e. bad guy – hacker, who saw the light and now uses his powers for good), today’s hackers are well-organized, and are highly skilled. Unlike the “script kiddies” of just a few years ago, who were more interested in showing off their skills, the 2008 brand of hacker is often politically motivated – hence the attraction of defacing Israeli web sites.
The hackers work in teams, with names like Moroccan Hackers, Islamic Crew, and Iran Black Hats, and many of them leave political messages – condemning Israeli raids in Gaza, or promising revenge. One team even uses Hebrew in its messages, describing in Hebrew how “when it’s our turn, we’ll be more humanitarian than you are.” They hack not only Israeli sites (that end in co.il or org.il), but apparently .com and .net sites that have Jewish or Israeli content, based on their names (www.kaitana.info, http://www.benhur-ltd.com) You can see examples of these hackers’ work at http://www.arabic-m.com/. There are solutions (an upcoming 21C article will highlight some), but often website owners don’t realize their sites are weak until it’s too late – and the anti-Israel hackers get to chalk up another “victory.”
Human nature
An SPNI hike - great even if you're not a VIP
Our American friend, let’s call her Lauren, was planning her son’s bar mitzvah celebration in Israel. In addition to the bar mitzvah itself, she was also organizing other activities that her family as well as parents, cousins, etc would enjoy during the week.
She emailed the Society for Protection of Nature in Israel and inquired as to whether there were any organized trips/hikes during the 10 days they were going to be here at the end of December. She was told no, but if you hire a van, we’ll provide you with a guide to take you around.
“I wrote back, thanks, but we’re trying to keep our budget down and we can’t really afford to hire a van,” said Lauren. Next thing she knew, the SPNI contact had written back and said, the van is on us, and one of our director will be taking you around.
Flabbergasted, Lauren didn’t quite know how to respond. “We’re not even members of SPNI,” she responded. “But we certainly wouldn’t mind joining.”
On the predetermined day, her family gathered at the agreed upon spot, and sure enough, a van showed up wth one of SPNI’s head honchos, and they spent 10 hours hiking in the Judean hills, through Sataf, and having a splendid time. The SPNI suit was atttentive, informative and treated the family like VIPs.
At the end of the day, he said to Lauren, “You have to meet Naomi Tsur. I’ll make an appointment for you.”
Uh, ok, who is Naomi Tsur, Lauren responded, and she was told that Tsur was one of Jerusalem’s new deputy mayors on Nir Barkat’s list, and as a former head of SPNI, was going to spearhead efforts to ‘greenify’ Jerusalem.
The next day, Lauren, her husband, and three of their four kids were escorted into Tsur’s office in Safra Square.
“So, tell me, why exactly are you here?” Tsur asked the family of American tourists.
“We have no idea, we thought you wanted to see us.” answered Lauren.
“Right then, we could have admitted that this must be a big mistake and we were obviously thought to be somebody that we weren’t. Or we could have carried on this charade and continued this painfully awkward dialogue,” chimed in Mr. Lauren. “We chose the latter.”
45 minutes later, they were ushered out of Tsur’s office, still having no idea why they had been singled out for special treatment by the SPNI.
“It was as if the United States took each family of tourists that entered the country, and gave them a van for the day, a guide, and a personal meeting with President Obama,” said Mr. Lauren.
Somewhere, I’m sure, there’s a big SPNI benefactor who’s wondering why the van and VIP day has been cancelled.
The filmmakers’ visit
There’s plenty of buzz surrounding the possibility that Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir may end up nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar. The official Academy Award nominations won’t be announced until January 22, leaving us plenty of time to focus instead on how the movie has already helped a great deal with putting Israeli film on the international award map, and how the global movie industry and Israel have been going had-in-hand more and more.
Israeli lawmakers took major steps towards enabling Hollywood “runaway production” here this past summer.
More recently, studio mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg organized for Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith to attend the Netanya premiere for Madagascar 2, whipping local fans and less local media outlets into a celeb-feeding storm.
And last month, William Morris Agency senior Motion Picture Department executive David Lonner teamed up with the Los Angeles Jewish Federation to bring several top movie execs to Israel to check out the scene here. Lonner organized a similar trip two years ago, but this time, he managed to bring big names like director Peter Sollett (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and producers Nathan Kahane (Juno), Darren Star (Sex and the City) and Roger Birnbaum (The Sixth Sense, pictured). The Jerusalem Post recounts the experience in detail, with coverage including these moguls’ advice for how ambitious Israeli filmmakers can make it big overseas:
“They’ve got to cross the bridge,” says Kahane. “Make films inside the system, like some directors from Mexico have recently - Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro. They came and conquered Hollywood, then they can go back and work at home again. But they’ve branded themselves in the international community. It creates the opportunity to grow and play in the A-game. And it broadens the conversation on cultural identity outside the film industry as well.”
Birnbaum agrees, saying, “If they want to be competitive in the world marketplace, they need to tell stories that are more universal and make movies that work all over the world.”
Moreover, the trip included visits to tourist hotspots, a Q/A session at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and a meet-and-greet dinner with local industry luminaries like actress Ronit Elkabetz, the Oscar-nominated writer-director Joseph Cedar and writer Etgar Keret. “They were very eager, very knowledgeable, a talented and diverse group of people,” Kahane says of the group.
A new year
I was sitting this morning, checking out the status reports of my friends on Facebook, and thinking about the New Year, and the situation in the South.
The American friends were mostly writing about going to dinners, New Years resolutions, travelling, being cold, or referring to some other aspect of New Years and winter revelry. The Israeli friends were mostly alluding to the war in some fashion.
But that’s not to say that people here are fixated on Operation Cast Lead. My daughter reports that downtown Jerusalem was packed last night for ‘Sylvester’ celebrations, the endearingly nerdy way Israelis refer to New Years Eve, while thinking they’re being cool.
So we have a situation that, like the rest of the world, Israelis are out partying despite what’s going on in the south of the country. And when you stop to think about it, what’s going on in the south of the country is just mind-boggling. According to news reports last night, 600,000 Israeli citizens are within range of Hamas rockets and Kassams.
A Home Front commander was on TV advising residents of Beersheva, Sderot, Ashkelon and other southern communities not to gather for New Years Eve parties last night out of fear that a well placed rocket could cause major casualties. A couple that was getting married on New Years Ever in Beersheva changed the venue at the last minute for that very reason to the safer confines of Rehovot.
How long can we - meaning the people of the South and the country at large - endure this kind of situation? Well, for quite a while actually, as the Second Lebanon War in 2006 displayed. Israelis are quite resilient, and we realize that the pre-war situation, when it was just Hamas attacking us, is unacceptable.
But it would be nice if someone was telling us what’s going on, and providing the residents of the South with some encouragement and guidance during this unfathomable situation.
Why haven’t Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, or Ehud Barak or Tzipi Livni, given a ‘State of the Union’ address, particularly the residents of the South, and told them ‘listen, this is going to get bad, you’re going to get bombed and it’s going to be unpleasant and dangerous. But we’re doing this to disable Hamas from being able to fire rockets at you ever again.”
But no, nothing. It’s all implied that we - the government and the army - are going to do what’s neccessary, and you - the people - will only have to be told things on a need to know basis. We may be great fighters - although between the Lebanon War and our current inability to stop Hamas, that assumption is being challenged - but we’re terrible communicators.
Imagine the United States attacking Mexico in order to prevent a constant barrage of missiles from Tiajuana onto San Diego, and nobody from the government from the President on down addressing the people of San Diego and warning them that it’s going to be getting a little rough, but we have your backs covered.
Anyway, that’s what I get for checking status reports on Facebook. I guess if I was going to write a New Year’s wish for 2009 on my own status report, it would be that, instead of rockets, peace and quiet begin raining down on the South of Israel.
Israeli wine demarginalizes settlers
The Israeli settler movement is often cited as a thorn in the side of peace, a rag-tag band of Wild West-inspired radicals who are keeping Israel of reaching her goals of progress. This over-generalized perception might or might not be accurate, although the headlines last month out of Hebron don’t necessarily make them look so good.
The settler movement holds a tricky place in the culture, no matter how you slice it. And even if many sectors of Israeli society make sure that the government’s attitude towards settlers remain as ambiguous as possible, the fact is that the state depends on these people to garner us international diplomatic leverage by creating “facts on the ground” rather than theoretical claims to territory, and their lifestyles - no matter how ideological or pragmatic - are therefore highly subsidized by the national budget.
For the fall holidays, the settler movement, embodied by the Yesha Council (a consciously anachronistic acronym for “Judea Samaria and Gaza”), launched a major tourism promotion campaign which packaged the territories as a kitschy roots discovery destination for mainstream Israelis (a harsh but poignant analysis of the marketing message appears here).
Now Yesha is further trying to endear itself to the center of the country by piggybacking on the oeno-tourism trend, a trend that has people around the world and around the nation visiting remote locations of Israel to check out various vineyards and barrel caves. Many of Israel’s up-and-coming wineries are kosher, but the trend is not only for the God-fearing - especially when it comes to the increasingly developed pallets of local connoisseurs.
In addition, institutions of higher learning, bed and breakfasts and olive oil presses have been employed as “facts on the ground” that have the potential to rally support from the settler-skeptical. Haaretz recently got some interesting comments on the matter from a Yesha leader:
Bentzi Lieberman, a former chairman of the Yesha Council, acknowledged shortly before leaving his post that “the settlers are living on borrowed time: if we don’t create something else for the public, something dynamic, relevant and up-to-date, if we don’t use a different, Israeli, language, that will connect the public to us, the danger of us becoming irrelevant will increase.”
Lieberman at the time cited Ariel College and the Barkan Industrial Zone as examples of successful marketing, “that blur boundaries, roadblocks and the Green Line, projects that cross borders and span across opinions, that are beyond all the little fears and connect the broad Israeli public to here.”
“If we are not able to create these kinds of projects, in terms of language, content and essence and also in the economic sense,” Lieberman warned then, “if we don’t speak a language that Israelis understand, we won’t be here.” Today, Lieberman’s vision is taking shape and increasing numbers of Israelis are visiting Judea and Samaria for reasons that are not political. Instead they are going for the experience and the fun.
Photo from flickr user ePublicist under a creative commons license.
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