the exile within

Friday. I land in Ben Gurion airport in the early morning. I hasten my step ahead of the other passengers, I want to get this over with. There are long corridors, glass walls, grey carpets. Marble. So much marble you would be excused for thinking you were entering a national museum, or some kind of 5-star Purgatory Hotel. The passenger conveyor belts hum into motion as I step on. The sun is rising over the huge Nokia logo, built in grass and bush just outside the terminal. I look up at a very tall wall at the entrance to passport control - there are seemingly random pieces of mosaics conveying a sense of antiquity and sacredness, of something old, preserved.

Dad is picking me up from the airport. I promised myself I would just close my eyes shut on the way to Herzelia. The sight of the Ayalon highway first thing in the morning always makes me sick. There’s something very forceful, very macho about it. Every year there are more tall corporate buildings lining the Tel Aviv exits. This should spell Progress and Prosperity, but basic insight into the state of Israeli society gives it away: after 40 years of war and Occupation, people are tired and disillusioned, and this grand entry of Killer Capitalism only makes it easier for the very few.

It’s not often that I get a chance for a candid conversation with my dad. Cars can do that to people. A tradition of togetherness can be warm and empowering, but also castrating for the quiet, measured exchange of ideas. In family dinners and outings, anything said has to become either very funny or very interesting before it has had a chance to mature in everybody’s minds. 1-on-1, you don’t need to do that. This time it doesn’t even take much to get him going. It’s been 5 months since we last met.

“It’s not easy for me, living here. There are things I just cannot get used to.” He says this as if he weren’t born here, as if he comes from a different place altogether. I think this is very curious. “Business is just dirty here, everything is. Everyone is trying to cheat everyone else. Everyone is trying to get something off you.” He goes on to give me detailed examples of various handymen who were supposed to finish work in his office and bailed out or took so long he’d had to hire someone else and pay twice. The possibility of leaving, of starting afresh in a new country, is not something that we talk about anymore in regards to my father. We both know that there is too much here to tie him down. We both know why he supported my trip to London 5 years ago, in search of an unknown future. At 25 with no marriage and no kids, I am enjoying freedoms that my father never had. Just like any children I may have will in all likelihood enjoy freedoms that I don’t have today, freedoms that I am not even aware of not having.

That same evening, we gather for a family dinner. Mom has cooked for a tribe, with only one meat dish (meatballs in couscous with date sauce). There’s lasagne, kiggel, noodles with tofu, beetroot salad, black lentils with parsley and plenty of wine. My dad usually opens two bottles with the full knowledge that no one except for me and him are big on drinking. We enjoy a few glasses, but with all this food it will take hours to depress. I’m seated next to my cousin, a pretty sanguine, straightforward guy who’s studying to become a vet.

“Yeah, well, these things are very, very complicated.”

He wanted me to tell him about the Olive Tree experience - I responded with a bit of a lecture about Zionism and trust within peacemaking circles.

“Well, not that complicated really if you think of the situation politically, in very simple terms. It’s not the first time in history a migrant people dominate an indigenous population.”

“Yes, but how can you tell? Those Jewish settlers say they have every right to be there just as well.”

“Which is why we have things like human rights and international law. These things didn’t exist before World War II, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking ourselves whether they make sense or not - whether we support them as a system of long-term human survival or not.”

“That’s my problem, you see, I know so very little about those political things…”

“But S, you don’t need to know - it’s about common sense. Do you really believe a Jewish family in Brooklyn who’s never had anything to do with the Middle East has more rights on this land than families who’ve lived here for 10 generations? You cannot believe that without making a religious argument.”

“That’s the problem, is what I think. Religion. We should leave religion out of all this, it just makes it difficult to find any solutions.”

“S, have you read the declaration of independence lately? They certainly haven’t left religion out… it’s really important to look -”

We are disrupted by family members anxious to start the meal. Zionism is not a popular subject around this table - nor in most Israeli homes.