“Sometimes we convince ourselves that the ‘unnoticed’ gestures of ‘insignificant’ people mean nothing. It’s not enough to recycle our soda cans; we must Stop Global Warming Now. Since we can’t Stop Global Warming Now, we may as well not recycle our soda cans. It’s not enough to be our best selves; we have to be Gandhi. And yet when we study the biographies of our heroes, we learn that they spent years in preparation doing tiny, decent things before one historical moment propelled them to center stage. Moments, if animate, use the prepared to tilt empires. Ironically, saints we worship today, heroes we admire, were often ridiculed, tortured, or, most punishingly, ignored in their own lifetimes. …Besides the pressure of virtue as an unattainable status reserved for the elect, there may be another reason why people don’t live their own ideals. It may be that many who do not live what they believe have been stunted. They’ve been told many times: ‘What you feel does not matter; what you believe is ridiculous; what you envision is worthless; just sit back and obey the priest, the preacher, the teacher, the cop, the mob, the man in charge, or your own fear.’ When the still, small voice whispers to them that they ought to visit an elderly neighbor, or write a letter to the editor, or pull a few strings and let the indigent patient in to see the doctor, even though the red tape says they cannot, they tell the still, small voice ‘Stifle yourself!’Such self-numbed people may see themselves as perpetual victims. ‘I have nothing!’ they insist. ‘I have no power! I can’t do anything! I have nothing to give! Everybody picks on me!’ These are the folks who begrudge so much as a smile to their neighbors. Even as they live in houses, drive cars, enjoy health, they see themselves as naked, starving, homeless, penniless wretches waiting to be rescued by whomever is in charge. Their sense of victimization does not allow them to see that they are in charge - of their own choices.”

I finish the beer and ask for the bill. I look around. I often entertain myself by trying to imagine what places like this would look and feel like in say, 50, 100, 200 years. What languages will people be speaking? What music will be playing then? Will there still be a security guard outside protecting this fragile bubble of normality, people drinking in a bar, from a neighbouring world of checkpoints, terrorism and occupation? What will people be drinking to when ethnic segregation is no longer a part of the political agendas of the Middle East? When religion and blood stop dictating citizenship, which will be equal to all, and equally enabling. It would be hopeful at this point to say people I know have stopped believing in this vision, as many of them never had in the first place. Growing up in the social and historical anomaly that is the state of Israel can put all kinds of ideas into your head. Like the idea that war, conflict and competition are more naturally human than charity, respect and interdependence. “You probably believe in all those nice slogans like ‘we’re all human’ and ‘we’re all equal’, but I think we are first and foremostly Jews, and this is our only country that we need to protect”, said a recent pang in my inbox. When has it become OK in this culture to mock universal values? And what, exactly, does this constant fear of extinction by non-Jews bring us, other than the worst state politics imaginable and a level of human distrust that means even direct eye contact is now a precious commodity on Israeli streets? 

“Be strong and courageous and leave the results to God”, says another page in the book. “Leo Tolstoy read Thoreau’s essay ‘Civil Disobedience’; Gandhi learned about it from Tolstoy; Martin Luther King, Jr., read Gandhi; and the civil rights movement made history. Don’t be afraid to be a voice in the wilderness … It’s the moral and sensible thing to do.” 

I leave a 50 shekel note on the table for the bill, asking the waitress to add the 2 shekel optional security charge to her tips instead. I get up, open the sliding glass door and step back on the street. Looking back over my shoulder, I smile at the security guard who sits outside, and she gives me a frozen, empty stare. 

“Man, you sure can talk to the ladies, eh? That girl, you looked like you could talk to her on the phone all night long! No stops, eh?”

“I don’t - I mean, that’s a close friend I was talking to.” I am amused but brief. 

“Yeah, close friend,  I bet. But listen to this - if she came up to you, took you out, showed you a good time, you know what I mean? If she wanted to take you to bed, you mean to tell me you wouldn’t do it, like, if she fell in love with you?” 

There’s my cue. I take the plunge, though with experience it has become more of a hop than a leap. For good or worse, I have never encountered any severe reactions to my sexuality apart from quiet disapproval and distrust. 

“Actually”, I look the driver in the eye through the rear view mirror, “I’m not really into girls that much.” 

A variation on a well-known theme ensues. 

“What, you mean to tell me you’re into guys?”

“Well, yeah, mostly.”

“What do you mean mostly, so you’ve slept with girls too?”

“Um, not so far. Only guys. But I guess it might still happen.” 

The driver squirms visibly. “Look, I don’t mean to be intrusive, I don’t want to embarrass you. Of course you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

“No! No, I’m very happy to, no problem. Don’t worry.”

“So, I mean… were you ever in a relationship with a man?”

“Yes, I was, for about a year. I was living abroad.”

“Because you see what I mean - like, maybe you fell in love with this guy, yeah? And you never slept with girls before, so you thought, because you loved this guy, that maybe you could only love men, you know? Maybe… you just got used to it?”

“Well, no, I don’t think so. Because I felt a desire towards men before I met this guy, you know?”

“But how would you know?”

“Well just like you might see an advertisement for women’s bras and get excited, I can get excited by images of men.”

“Walla.”

Walla indeed. When it comes to sex, I tend to see myself as a benevolent PR person. In many countries a window of opportunity has opened in recent years for many straight men to explore homosexuality as a concept without jeopardising their masculinity. Acceptance and full equality may be our goals as sexual minorities, but we must not neglect the buds of curiosity and learning as expressed by new generations of straights along the way. 

Once my driver establishes that I will not be taking offence at his ignorance, a candid discussion about anal sex begins to unfold. I explain my own dos and don’ts, but mainly work to dispel the all-pervasive notion, even among many of my friends, that gay sex requires one person to be “the man” and the other “the woman”. 

“It really is about chemistry and preference and the feelings involved in the particular moment. Some people will have a very clear idea about what kind of things they do in bed, but then you don’t need to be gay to be like that. I like variety, personally.”

“You know, sometimes I ask my wife and she just won’t do it with me. She says it’s too big…”

“Hmm… well It is a bit different for women.” 

“Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing all of this. I hope I haven’t offended you or anything. If you ask me, everyone should be respected for who they are.” 

“Hey, no problem. What’s your name, anyway?”

“I’m Herzl. Very nice to meet you.”

We shake hands warmly. “How post-Zionist”, I think. At the show, I relate the story to my audience. “And people in London often ask me: is it hard for you when you go home, you know, being gay and stuff? They obviously had never been to Tel Aviv…” 

I’m sitting with a new friend upstairs in a tiny candle-lit bar in Florentine that feels like the only warm place in Tel Aviv. It’s cold outside. Really cold. “Houses in this country are just not built for this kind of weather, of course. All stripped floors, no isolation. It’s really horrible, I’m so glad it’s so warm here.” Neil Young is crooning over the stereo and my friend is flicking her cigarettes at the makeshift beer mat ashtrays that replaced the proper ones when the ban on smoking in public rooms came into effect a few weeks back. Still smoking, but no ashtrays. A markedly Israeli implementation of the law. 

“I don’t know how she got the permit. No one gets it now. They even gave her an overnight stay in Jerusalem, which is really rare. I guess because she’s affiliated with a Human Rights organisation they don’t want to make a big fuss.” 

“Has she ever been to Jerusalem before?”

“Um, I don’t know. You know, it’s her only 2 days out of that fucking prison, I figured I’d let her choose what to do. So she said she wanted to go to Jerusalem, and then to Ramallah. I had to put my foot down - I mean, Ramallah? Do you realise how many hours we’d have to spend in checkpoints, in this fucking cold? Every time having to explain why she can travel out of Gaza in the first place? No. That is not going to happen. But we’ll spend a day in Tel Aviv too.”

H is a Human Rights activist about to receive special training from my friend in Jerusalem. She lives in Gaza. Because of the recent Israeli fuel cuts to the power station there, most Gazans now suffer 8-10 hour blackouts a day. There is also a tight curfew on all imports and exports, especially building materials and electronics, so many businesses have been out of pocket for months now. 

“I mean, she is one the lucky ones of course. She has a job and everything. There are worse things happening in the world - but this is just - the injustice is amazing. The punishment. That people don’t have electricity 10 hours a day - you can’t do anything! You just sit there at home, freezing your ass off, doing nothing. Just waiting. You would otherwise, I don’t know, go to the gym or something, coz there is one, but it’s no use because there’s no power so it’s closed, like everything else. You can’t work. You can’t go anywhere on vacation. You’re just caged in.”

Later, in the car on the way back to Jaffa, I hit the wheel in frustration. “Arrrrgh!”

“Hey, listen, just don’t let yourself stay in that situation too long. You will only come out heartbroken and wasted.”

“No, I’m not talking about the guy. It’s H. That they decide how many fucking hours she can spend inside Israel - that she has to get a taste of what life should look like then go back to absolute desperation - it just boils my blood. It’s so uncalled for, so unnatural.”

“I know. It’s a disgrace. It’s just a fucking disgrace.”

“Maybe you should just get well already. Either that or really be sick and get done with it.”  

“I know!” I scream into my mobile, then cough for a bit, “it’s just like everything else in my life right now isn’t it…” 

“Maybe there’s something in your life that you need to decide whether to give yourself over to or just drop completely. Which can be a scary thing.”

People you sleep with but still call “friends” can be annoyingly insightful sometimes. How dare he figure me out like that, then not even invite me over for the kind of indulgence that could easily distract me from trying to find my own answers this cold and dark evening… 

I go home instead to nurse my cough and my ego with some tea and honey. Can’t sleep again. It’s midnight, but it’s only 10pm in England. A window of opportunity. I dial a few digits, and, by some inexplicable technological miracle, a phone rings thousands of miles away, in London. 

“Shahaf! How ARE you?”

One of my favourite people in the world luckily picks up on the on the other side. Between sending her son off to sleep and getting bitten by her very cheeky cat, she has time for a chat with a friend. Remarkably, neither of us mentions the weather even once. I tell her about my music, my Arabic lessons, how it’s all going rather slow. We compare notes on studying Arabic, which she has been doing as a full-time course for a few months now. 

“It’s funny,” I say, “that you are a lot more likely than I am to get to practise your Arabic with native speakers you would just meet on the street or in shops. London is like that.”

“Yes, but then I’m learning the standard Arabic, not colloquial, which means that I end up speaking like a funny person to most people…” 

We talk about recent holidays. Jobs. Plans. Men. My recent and refreshing discovery of the self-pronounced Queer Scene of Tel Aviv. “So I see you’re in not much rush to come back here all of a sudden…”. We laugh. Wholeheartedly. 

Now in more grave tones, our conversation steers to events in Gaza. Events that have no direct bearing on our daily lives in London and Herzliya, but that have everything to do with me as an Israeli and with her as a British Palestinian. Gaza is only 70km away from where I live, but it could may as well be on another planet. Every day, Gaza sees kidnappings, assassinations, houses demolitions, water shortages, gas shortages, blackouts, curfews, missiles, no jobs, no incomes, no trade, no future; while Herzliya wakes up to another sunny, suburban morning. The contrast would be striking if we Israelis saw more of the other side, which we don’t. Things look pretty much alright from the vantage point of Google Earth. But for international travellers, volunteers and peace workers, going from the high-rises of Tel Aviv to the squalor and despair of Gaza is usually one of the most notable and shocking experiences in their visits. 

“It’s really, really bad right now,” my friend laments. “Everybody over here is talking like this. Some people have given up completely on the idea of a Palestinian state. They say that with the Jewish settlements and all the pressure it’s just too late - that Palestinians should lobby for some kind of future  Arab federation to merge with. I think it’s defeatist.”

“Well you know, I’m not a nationalist. I believe in the right of Return, but I don’t care under what system people live as long as their civil rights are respected, as long as they have sovereignty and self-determination.”

“Yes, it just so happens that normally this kind of self-determination is expressed as a nation-state. Even that is taken away.”

“Yes, and you know, eventually what they did, instead of the proposed electricity cuts, what they did apparently was to further reduce the gas supply to the Gaza power station, so now everyone in Gaza are having 8-10 hour blackouts a day.” The Israeli part of me still tries to justify itself occasionally by displaying its political awareness. Like an occupying force does. “And I don’t know, I keep going back to this one thing, to this question - and I don’t think I have enough insight into what’s happening in Palestinian society, both here and in Europe - but I keep thinking - where is the new Palestinian leadership? Who is it going to be? Someone has to keep the hope alive, to nurture some kind of vision.”

“Well, at the moment that is exactly what’s missing.” 

I am introduced to S in a bohemian street pub. She was born in New York to a Jewish family and has lived in various US cities. Cynical and charming in equal measures, she is sharing a plate of deep-fried haloumi cheese with me and talking about how she got here.

“I don’t know, back home it’s like, I never really felt like I belonged. Like it was my place, you know? I don’t know what it is, but funny enough the three closest people to me in the US are also Jewish. It’s not like I grew up in a Jewish environment, it just happened that way. It’s really hard to develop meaningful relationships with people, everyone is really only concerned with themselves.”

And so she came to Israel, and decided to stay. As a new Jewish immigrant, or “ascender”, S gets, asides from instant citizenship, quite a few spanking benefits that most indigenous Israelis would surely envy: a 1000 shekel monthly allowance; 90% percent discount on her property tax; complete medical insurance for 30 shekels a month; free Hebrew classes; and tax returns on all purchases for the first year or so. 

“How do you, um,” I choose my words carefully, “feel about this… pretty, I guess, unique…. mode of privilege?” 

“Let’s put it this way, what would you prefer? Going over to the ministry like every three months to renew your visa, or going twice, fill out a couple of forms, and get your permanent citizenship?”.

“Well, I hear you on that,” I say. “Like, if tomorrow they said that all gay people can come and live for free in say, Belgium, I don’t know, I would have to think twice. Then again I would not want to live in a society that was purely gay. Or purely anything for that matter.” 

S is referring to Israel’s Law of Return, its main legislative feature as a Jewish state. Enshrined in 1950, the law grants automatic citizenship to any Jewish immigrant - meaning anyone born to a Jewish mother or whose conversion to Judaism has been recognised by the Orthodox authorities. A reform of the law in 1970 meant that many economic migrants (especially from the former Soviet Union) gained citizenship by proving family or community links to Jewish lineage. This is how Israel is supposed to retain a Jewish demographic majority. The idea that “every country has its owners ” is a poor justification for this as it relies on an increasingly irrelevant blood nationalism. That Britain can be considered a Christian country is down to the fact most of its citizens today are Christians, and not because this majority is positively discriminated in the law. Without meaning to ignore or belittle European racism, Britain is not Christian, it is British. Israel, however, is a different story. 

In the first History lesson in my 7th grade, our teacher, who was also the school’s principle, said this: “democracy is not about two people deciding the third one should die.” It was, in my mind, one of the only valuable educational moments in my entire schooling. Not that he cared to demonstrate much, but a mischievous grin on his face meant that many of us were intrigued enough to try and think it through. Democracy does not only promote the will of the majority, it also protects the rights of all people as equals. You may argue, as a prominent British academic recently related to me, that the majority of people in Israel legitimately choose to design its immigration policy along religious and ethnic lines. That this will not produce systems of racial discrimination was supposed to be Zionism’s saving grace, but in reality equality between Jews and non-Jews remains a distant fantasy. Inevitably, the Law of Return not only produces intricate satellite projects, but reinforces racist social relations, creates unequal municipality funding, restrains freedom of speech (members of the Knesset may be impeached for expressing themselves against the “Jewish character” of the state) and means non-seperation of state from Church (or in this case, Synagogue), as expressed perhaps most notably in marital law. You need only stroll down King George Street in Jerusalem to marvel at the physical incarnation of this system: the fortresses that serve as homes for the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organisation represent Israel’s top priorities. Bringing as many Jews as you can to live in your country is an expensive business and an elaborate public relations project that includes, for example, regular and subsidised luxury holiday trips for the Jewish youth of America. Is it any wonder then that Palestinian citizens of Israel are never equal, but at best tolerated? How equal can you get as a minority group considered by so many members of the Knesset a “demographic time-bomb”? 

It was one thing to support and nurture Jewish existence in Palestine, and quite another to decide to fortify a whole state as reserved space for Jews. In today’s Israel, people who have never had anything to do with the Middle East have more rights than those who have lived there for many generations, and at their expense. Indeed, the latter are often forbidden from even entering what used to be, until recently, home. 

I think back to when I was 18. It felt like the very first conscious, deliberate choice I had made in my entire life. I sat my parents down and said: “I’ve decided to not join the army. I don’t know how things will turn out, but this is how it’s going to be.” And that was it. Army officials showed more resistance, but even they decided, some months later, that I would only become a waste of time and money if they forced me to serve. Three years of military service were removed from my agenda with a stroke of a signature on a measly A5 piece of paper which I would then carry with me for several years when flying abroad, to dispel any doubts about my freedom to travel. I was declared mentally unfit to serve. 

According to the IDF, 27.7% of people due to be enlisted in 2007 (excluding, of course, Israeli Arabs) have “dodged the draft”. This figure includes 11.2% orthodox Jews, who under Israeli law are exempted from service as long as they dedicate their time to religious studies (35% of all Jewish women are exempted in this way). 4.2% move abroad while the rest are exempted on medical, mental or criminal grounds. 

Then there are several hundred young people a year who declare a conscientious objection to serve in the military. Based on a Supreme Court ruling, the state has  ten years ago appointed a special army committee made up of reserve psychiatrists and psychologists  whose job it is to determine the legal and moral validity of any conscientious objection to serve. “Selective objection” to serve in the occupied territories is more readily punishable by imprisonment than a general pacifist objection, though the absolute majority of male pacifists or political objectors will have spent at least 3 months in jail and a considerable amount of money in legal fees before being released on the grounds of “incompatibility”. Very few are officially released on conscientious grounds, for fear of seeing the trend increase. A good resource on these matters is www.newprofile.org.

Now there are those who will say: “but you are turning your back on the state! This country has given you so much and you don’t even give anything back! Why should others do the dirty work for you? We need defending!”.

The sentimental and pseudo-heroic connection to the state as the exclusive facilitator of healthy social relations is perhaps not surprising, but certainly perverse. States, if anything, are a whole lot better at robbing people of their freedoms rather than facilitating them. In other words, the state does not enable my freedom of speech - that is my job - but it may well disable it in various means. So the idea that I have a debt to society that can only be redeemed through military service (and not through social activism, critical journalism and civil networking) is suspect, to say the least. As for the dirty work being done for me - let me be quite clear. I did not and do not ask the government to spend billions of dollars from the state budget on an intricate and devilish system of control and oppression that has been in place in the West Bank and Gaza since the 1990s. “Peace Summits” come and go, but for people living under the ongoing Occupation, they mean very little. By gradually making it more difficult for Palestinians to travel, trade and live, especially for those Palestinians living in the now hermetically-sealed Gaza strip, the Israeli state is undermining Palestinian sovereignty to the point where it will soon be easier to replace the two-state solution with a special arrangement between Israel, Jordan and Egypt that will keep Palestinians out and fortify Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Israel knows that healthy relations with a neighbouring Palestinian state will naturally spell an opening up of the borders, both physical, economical and demographic - after all, around 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab Palestinians themselves. But as long as a minimum level of conflict and tension is maintained, the justification and consensus for aberrations such as the Separation Wall still persist. Given this state of affairs, I am left with the conviction that the IDF’s main purpose is not, in fact, to defend the lives of all Israelis, but rather to support an exclusive mode of social engineering that will always produce resistance from both within and without. If the Israeli and US governments are so anxious to prove me wrong, let them start by ending the Occupation and the siege on Gaza completely and unconditionally. 

When Israel refuses to even discuss a ceasefire with Hamas, presumably because its generals are too busy planning for the next war, is it really surprising that “youth motivation” is on the decrease? How much longer will generations of young people be willing to fight and die in recurrent wars for a cause that, increasingly, eludes rational description? For surely, if it is survival that is our business, then better, much less violent paths to achieve this are readily available. This will mean our society, that was built on the premise of social domination, will have to change. But if survival only do as an unchanging, uncompromising force that is the trampling foot of Israeli politics today, then it will never work. Like many before us, we will only be learning in the slow, hard way. 

“Ever had elephants in your barrel? Then you are a Real Israeli!”

‘Elephants in the barrel’ is IDF slang for dirt inside a soldier’s gun, as routinely checked for by superior officers. I stare in shock and stop chewing on my apple. Then the lights change and the bus moves on. I was aware of this joint venture from Israel’s leading advertising offices, launched to assuage fears that “youth army motivation” is on the serious decline, but it was one thing reading about it in the paper and quite another being on the receiving end of such a vehement message in public. They are turning the wheel back: the very notion of citizenship is again centred around militancy. Taken to its logical conclusion, this campaign is trying to draw a very clear line in the sand: if you have not been in the army then your Israeliness is either questionable or completely false. The ad using the Hebrew masculine for “Real Israeli” only reinforces the implicit here: men who shoot guns in the army are the purest manifestation of all that is good about being Israeli. They are the rock of our being as a society. 

I change buses and reach Jaffa, one of the only truly multicultural towns in Israel. Those publicists are evidently rich enough to make sure all eyes, at one point or another, set on their propaganda, regardless of whether their owners are on or off the bus. Passing through Yefet street, the side of another bus taunts insistently: 

“A real Israeli doesn’t dodge the draft.”

The irony is in such extreme proportions that nobody seems to notice it anymore. If you are Arab in Israel you are automatically exempted from serving in the army. Think of it as a trust issue. A Jewish administration does not want Muslim Arabs hitchhiking along the country with M16s, civil equality or no civil equality. You never know when they might pick up the plot and join the Palestinian national struggle. The ad on the bus, then, is not only a crude reminder of the 2nd rate status of Arab citizenship in Israel, it is in fact hinting at the eventual and complete revocation of such citizenship in the first place: if the state is Jewish then Arabs cannot join the army, and cannot shoot guns, therefore they can never be or become “real Israelis”. 

“Why do I need my son to be different than everybody else?”

One may as well take to dyeing red hair black for its unpopularity. Comparing penises is not something I remember doing much throughout my childhood, and even if some children do, the idea that they would be so unforgiving of an extra piece of skin as to effect serious psychological damage is, from my experience, quite detracting. 

“He would join the army and stand out in the showers, he doesn’t need that.”

I say that will be the least of his worries at that point. In fact the highest rate of army suicides seems to be among circumcised males. 

Like many religious practises designed to protect the community and its individuals from both physical and spiritual harm, circumcision has largely lost its practical benefits with the advance of good hygiene and sexual contraceptives. For those not affiliated with the concept of a spiritual covenant with a male God authority, circumcision remains a habit fuelled by either medical myth or aesthetic preference. 

I attended a “Brit” (Covenant) - a circumcision celebration - last week. It was hosted by a friend of the family; a single mother who has bravely adopted two children from a wrecked family ridden by drugs and violence. To complete the adoption procedures, she has had to contend that the children become Jewish - their real mother is not. Since the boy had not been circumcised at the customary age of 8 days, he had to undergo the operation now, at the age of 4. This was performed in a hospital under anaesthesia. 

It was one of those happenings that do not seem certain of their own purpose and thus gain a special air of festivity. We have punch and we are here to celebrate. It is not so important what. Some strange conflation between the Covenant and Hanukkah was attempted by a skullcap-wearing member of the otherwise secular suburban community, but this too was quickly washed away by the synthesised sounds of karaoke. 

Outside, I take to the swings in the playground. A little sand gets in my shoes but it’s worth it. 

“Check it out! Look at it fly!”, my 7-year old cousin prides himself on the successful release of a helium-filled balloon. “Shahaf, if you are in London and you find that balloon, remember it was from me.”

“OK, I’ll remember.” 

Friday is the cosiest day at home. Being that my parents and sisters are away this week, I go through the routine on my own, savouring every moment: switching on the radio, making coffee, lounging on the sofa… The eight days of Hanukkah have just come to a close. It has always been my favourite holiday in the Jewish calendar, signifying the light and hope carried within us all. But this year our traditional family celebration was tarred by my late grandmother’s absence. She would have all the children (anyone single or unmarried is considered a child…) sit on the carpet underneath a big and colourful cardboard dreidle hanging on a string from the ceiling. We would then sing Hanukkah songs and clap to the rhythm as loud as we could. When she was satisfied she would gradually let the dreidle down, revealing the goodies inside for everyone to share… we still follow this ritual, though it will always remain somehow hollow without her. Even the candles don’t shine as bright anymore, it seems. 

Jerusalem didn’t offer much consolation this week. Once again getting completely lost driving (no pedestrians I ask can ever give me instructions in Jerusalem - it was as if they all lived on nameless streets, only following specific, predetermined routes from home to work and back), I at least get to see things that I wouldn’t under normal conditions. Orthodox Jews scuttling around the streets of Me’aa Shearim, all dressed in black, young and old. A procession of Chabad cars, the renowned missionary Jewish organisation, carrying electric Hanukkah lamps on their roofs. Arab guys in beaten up Subaro cars, giving me the finger as they drive by in Abu Tor. Manic drivers honking behind me, anxious, perhaps, to make their family dinners on time. The holiday is definitely felt, but it’s as if Jerusalem is choosing to mourn it rather than celebrate. 

This is not my world, I tell myself. Why do I even bother? On some days, you just want to shut the doors and keep the world out. It deserves itself just the way it is. 

But today, I did open my door, if only a slit, just to let the paper in. I come across Doron Rozenblum’s column which puts the smile back on my face without a hint of escapism. Reminding me with a wink that yes, I have everything to do with this, as do us all. Maybe it all begins with what we choose to believe. 

*

I heard that “Jerusalem fears“ again. 

What else is new? Jerusalem is always “fearing“. Just like it has hummus Taami and a shop called “Fountain of Goodness“, it is also “fearing“. There is more fearing in “Jerusalem“ than there are cash-points. 

But this time, I fear, it is a serious fear: the relief of the fear from the Iranian nuclear threat. 

Do not fear. We will never remain without our fears. It is a bottomless well. Many have feared, for example, that after taking down Saddam Hussein and “destroying the Eastern front“, we would remain fearless. They had it wrong big time, of course, as our friend Ahmadinejad will attest, as well as his numerous sons, Hamlanitzki and co.

As we say, “in every generation they rise up to destroy us“…

“Every generation“? Maybe in the distant past the existential fear was at a once-every-generation dose. But since establishing the state we have come very far: the frequency of fears, threats and concerns has reached an annual scare, an existential threat every 6 months, a fear once a week, and daily concern. So fear not: next year we will sit again on the porch and enumerate migrating fears. 

Fear of the Saudi plan? The Syrian peace initiative? The ceasefire offered by Hamas? 

And what about Pakistan? And the big earthquake expected any minute? But luckily, “fearing“ is only one of 15 permanent and exchangeable states that political “Jerusalem“ staggers through. 

Could you list them? 

Alphabetically: Amazement in Jerusalem, Concern in Jerusalem, Confusion in Jerusalem, Disparagement, Doubt, Euphoria, Fear, Haze in Jerusalem, Indignation in Jerusalem, Rage in Jerusalem, Resentment in Jerusalem, Respite in Jerusalem, Scuttling in Jerusalem, Shock in Jerusalem, Uncertainty in Jerusalem. But “fear“ - more than the others - is the default - it is “Jerusalem’s“ constant cruising speed.  

As in “he who always fears“? 

No. As in “where would we be without it?“ … The fear is our drug, our fuel, our joint, our fag, as well as the livelihood of our lobbyists: without our daily fix we just start climbing the walls. Without an external threat - what shall become of the IDF, the IDF Radio, the Security budget, soldiers’ charities, the coalition, the government? Without a clear and immediate danger - all falls to pieces, as did our Minister for Strategic Threats, Avigdor Liberman, on television this week: yada yada, “the Iranian threat remains“, “there is still an Iranian threat“ … “and the Philadelphi Route“ … “Annapolis is not leading anywhere, so I am calm, more than calm“…

In short - what the Americans did to us last week was to close the harvest season. Someone shut the power in the mains. 

It can be termed “The Atonement Day for Fear“. 16 American Intelligence units have crossed the trench of paranoia and caught us unawares. The strongholds of fear collapsed one after another. There are no words to describe the astonishment in Jerusalem. It was so bad, that some began to fear the fate of the third Temple again!

Fearing a nuclear bomb falling here?

No, fearing that there is no such bomb on the horizon - and then, what shall become of us? How did the grave-faced military commentators put it? “The American Intelligence Report reduces American action against Iran, but worse still - Israel will be under great strain performing similar attacks.“

Hold on, but if Iran doesn’t have the bomb - there is no reason to attack the plants anyway, right?

Don’t be a child. And what of the conventional missiles that Iran would launch in response to our own attack? In any case: since when do concrete findings relate to our fears - excuse me - our Intelligence Evaluations? Remember the likes of Amos Gilad who promised to find Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? Well, you just wait - the search is still on. And even if the Iranians don’t actually have a bomb - the intent is still there. You have any idea how many Palestinians have been arrested or assassinated just because they had an intent? This is the shaping of consciousness through prevention. Fact is, it works: why do you think the Iranians don’t have the bomb? 

Like in that joke about the man who stood and waved his arms, explaining that he was keeping elephants away. When they told him there were no elephants, he said: “see how it’s working?“.

Why a joke? It is the essence of Israel’s determent policy: excessive fear of excessive complacence, which demands excessive retaliations. Only our conduct as a crazed state may soothe the crazed states around us, as Khomeini told Saddam. And why? Because of the fear, that’s why. 

How is Israel going to respond to the American report? We’ve already wasted the air sorties over Bashar’s palace… 

Like in any situation of sudden loss, Jerusalem was forced to go through all the familiar stages in a short period of time: first the shock and amazement, then rage, and finally, melancholy acceptance. In this regard, the American Chief of Staff’s visit to Israel was paying condolences. He wished to strengthen and came out strengthened, as consoling generals do. But what of us? To leave us like this, in the cold, without an existential threat to keep us warm? The TV reporter almost cried when he said: “The Chief of Staff has departed, leaving much worry in his wake.“ 

Worry that there may not be a war? 

How did Graucho Marx put it? “I cannot cancel the war now. I’ve paid rent on the battlefield a month upfront.“ And really, what do you suggest we do with dozens of long range plane bombers? With the Minister for Strategic Threats? With the 50 milliard shekels that are our security budget, plus the 18 shekels from the Shirutrom? What would Netanyahu do without “the Iranian issue“? What would Foreign Affairs do? The Intelligence Unit? 

Intelligence have actually recovered rather quickly from the attack of the American report and moved on to a new offence: they reported this week of a fear that 250,000 Israelis will be inside the range of foreign missiles in the coming, happy new year. Congratulations! 

You see, and you were getting all worried. Fear, my friend, is the rock of our being; it is the conceptual canvas on which this state was designed: fear of anti-Semitism, replaced by the security fear. That is the whole story. Maybe we’ll go out the occupied territories, maybe we’ll release prisoners. But we will not let them take our fear away. Without it - we have no security policy, foreign policy, public relations. Without it we have nothing. 

And I thought the state was based on hope…

Hope? Us? Come on! I’m afraid it is time to bring the national anthem up to date - especially the title: what’s wrong with “The Fear“? “The Fear of two thousand years“? “a Jewish soul is yearning“ I would actually leave there. 

This time it is the Tel Aviv Main Library, Beit Ariela, that will be challenging my hypoglycaemic tendencies. I fuel on a tall espresso, and pass security. This place has gained a prominent place in my childhood memories: my father would bring me and my older sister here to the children’s library. We would sit in a heap on the carpet for story time, or wrap bulky, black headphones around our heads with much relish to listen to music while our little fingers played with the spiral bendy cords. Libraries, as opposed to the playgrounds and schools, were very safe places to be in. You would hardly ever get bullied by anyone. 

The Community Notebooks are stored in the Ahad Ha’am library upstairs. As I browse the shelves to see what’s there, a woman with a heavy Russian accent greets me: “you cannot walk around here. Tell me what you’re looking for and I will help.” I tell her of my little quest, and she disappears into an adjacent room. Opposite the information counter, I see a glass casing labelled “Haifa, 1985″. Inside is a book entitled “Pessach Haggadah in Memory of the Holocaust”. There are two pages on display: on the left, a picture of a striped black and white concentration camp uniform arranged in a cross with a yellow Star of David is adorning the following Hebrew quote from the Haggadah (literally, “the telling”, a Talmudic account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as read on Passover each year around the dinner table): “In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he had come out of Egypt, as it is said: ‘You shall tell your child on that day, it is because of this that the Lord did for me when I left Egypt.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed not only our fathers from Egypt, but He redeemed also us with them, as it is said: ‘It was us that He brought out from there, so that He might bring us to give us the land that He swore to our fathers.’”

It is perhaps less obvious for some that the road from biblical Egypt to modern-day Israel goes through the Nazi Holocaust in Europe. But politically speaking, there never was a stronger link. Suffering and its assumed derivatives, righteousness and entitlement, have become the pillars of Zionist identity. Interesting that this particular juxtaposition should be displayed in a room named after Ahad Ha’am, whose Zionist sentiments ruled out exclusive nationalism as a recipe for disaster and a corruption of the Jewish spirit. The Zionist leadership did not need the Holocaust to promote its goals, the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in 1904 and in Palestine in the late 30’s were reason enough for those keen on developing militant Jewish nationalism. But for an entire nation to brace itself through decades of war and struggle without public critique of its foundations - that takes serious ideology. As does lobbying the UN to support a partition plan that offered 56% of the land to 33% of its inhabitants (Palestinian and European Jews). This ideology is counter-racist in its core, and, in the 20th century, is finally forged by the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust: the Jews, just like the average anti-Semite suggests, are special. They are not like any other people. They have always been, and always will be, persecuted. The Enlightenment and emancipation of the Jews in Europe, in fact, were seen by Theodor Herzl as adverse affects that only made the Jew stand out as primitive and backwards, a supposedly unshakeable and unchanging image (the same image that would later be attached by secular Jewish migrants to the indigenous Arab population in Palestine). At the same time as Herzl lobbied for a national home for Jews in Palestine, he would also entertain notions of mass conversion of all Jews to solve a supposedly inevitable situation: the clash between the inherently anti-Semitic gentile and the ever wandering, destabilising Jew. The historical narrative of Mizrachi Jews originating in today’s Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Morocco, has been either excluded or adjusted to fit European Zionism. Mizrachi migrants to Palestine were either banned or discouraged from speaking Arabic and wearing traditional dress. In Egypt during the 1950s, the Israeli secret service has famously had to plant bombs in Jewish synagogues in Cairo to “encourage” Jewish migration to Israel. What emerges is a frightening vision of a club anxious to summon its arbitrary membership before shutting the doors forever. Like every other club that has attempted to do the same throughout history, Israel, as a Jewish national home, remains anything but safe, for Jews and non-Jews alike. 

Browse as I might, I cannot find my family’s names in any of the records for Warsaw. When my paternal great-grandparents migrated from Poland and Russia, they quickly lost all connection with their families there. All that remains are a few faded monochrome pictures. I will have to find another way.