Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Guide books warn visitors to Jerusalem about an affliction well documented by medical practitioners. The Jerusalem Syndrome has many manifestations but basically the visitor, walking among the stones held holy by Judaism, Christianity and Islam in order of chronology, is liable to be conquered by delusion. That s/he has been chosen for a divine mission or that s/he is privy to the time and place of the Messiah8217;s arrival. Local hospitals are equipped to dispense psychiatric aid to sufferers and, once removed from the spiritual intensity of the Old City, they tend to shrink back into their old measure of mortal frailty. Estimates for annual cases of the syndrome vary between a few dozen and a couple of hundred.
So, I can8217;t say I was not warned. But within days of a week-long journey around Israel I found myself stricken by the Distance Syndrome, and it began in Jerusalem. Inasmuch as a person can be relied upon to rationally describe one8217;s own mental preoccupations, when I wheel back to the start of the visit, this is how I see the ailment. Each place I visit, on a trip organised in most part by Israel8217;s Foreign Ministry, I ask, how old is it? Each person I meet, in official engagements or in casual encounters, I ask, when did you or your family come to Israel? Each time I look up into the distance, I ask, how far8212;from, for instance, the Tower of David in Old Jerusalem to the Dome of the Rock, or from the Nebi Mori outpost in the desert to the security barrier isolating Gaza visible ahead?
I8217;d like to believe that in being made to ask those questions and in getting astonishingly forthcoming and argumentative answers, I gained impressions of the ideas of Israel that chronicle the past and are constantly throwing up different visions of the future.
DAY 1 Arriving in Jerusalem on a Saturday is disorienting. It8217;s Shabbat, and there is an eerie quietness around the city8217;s yellow-white Jerusalem stone buildings by decree all construction has to have this exterior, and exceptions are very rare. Our driver tries to take advantage of this traffic-less day, and whiz around the main sights. But up ahead, roads into Mea She8217;arim are blockaded8212;the neighbourhood houses the city8217;s Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and they maintain Shabbat8217;s ritual injunctions by, among other things, disallowing vehicles.
In the hotel, the only food on offer is cold, and to indulge cravings for felafel, by the postcards8217; reckoning, 8216;8216;Israel8217;s national food8217;8217;, we must catch a cab to the Old City8217;s Arab neighbourhoods. By glimpsing the areas open for business, a very rough idea can be had of the parts of the city that were under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, when the Israeli army fought their way to Temple Mount and razed inhabitation around its Western Wall8212;Judaism8217;s holiest place after the destruction, millennia ago, of the First and Second Temples8212;to create a piazza.
Stalls and restaurants around Damascus Gate, for centuries the main entrance to the city, still carry an air of Eid festivities. In the near distance glistens the golden Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount, under which Jews believe are buried remains of their Temples. Scriptures state that this is where the earth to mould Adam and Eve was found, and the rock is where Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son. The Dome, along with Al-Aqsa at the other end of the Mount, is Islam8217;s third holiest site and marks the spot from where, Muslims believe, Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.
At Damascus Gate, families are out for an early meal, and little girls carry shiny new Chinese-made Barbie lookalikes while the boys hold their toy machineguns with one hand and finish their food with the other. The attendants are too stretched to organise the cardamom/Turkish coffee that ends meals across communities and territories here. They point us to the souk, and wandering gingerly into the Old City, it comes as a surprise how close is the matted dome of the Church of Holy Sepulchre, where Christians mark the place where Jesus was crucified.
Night falls early in this part of the world, and by 6 pm it8217;s dark. Shabbat8217;s ended, and the drive goes past continuously busy shopfronts on roads that defined the Green Line that divided the city into East and West till 8217;67. The hotel has sprung to life, and the lady at the bookshop says she moved to Israel after finishing university in Pennsylvania. When did you decide to move, I ask? 8216;8216;Three thousand years ago, honey.8217;8217;
A pile of rifles outside highlights the large presence inside of men and women serving their compulsory stint with the Israeli Defence Forces. All soldiers are taken on a tour of Yad Vashem. Also, the genealogy through which the Nazis separated persons for exclusion and extermination is a reminder of the dilemma posed to Israel while operationalising the Law of Return, whereby citizenship is granted to Jews. Jewishness has traditionally passed along the maternal line, but Hitler8217;s oppression of anyone with 8216;8216;Jewish8217;8217; ancestry compelled the government to use that same criterion for giving citizenship.
Dinner gathers to us the debate of the moment: Yitzhak Rabin8217;s assassin, a religious settler called Yigal Amir, has petitioned the court to be allowed to attend a ritual ceremony for his still unborn child. Should he be?
We ask about another debate. How do Israelis read Jimmy Carter8217;s recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid? Let8217;s put it this way, they say, were the Israeli government to commemorate the peace deal with Anwar Sadat, Carter would not be invited to attend.
DAY 3 It8217;s just 50 miles to Tel Aviv, but it8217;s another world. First stop: the Airport City Technological Park, and meetings with CEOs recounting conversations with Indian professors, the start of an idea, the appearance of American investors who have still not been to either country but were sold on the idea, the setting up of operations in India, and8212;for our benefit8212;demonstrations of applications ready to be marketed.
At the end of one presentation, one of the hosts quietly says, so you are from India. The accent is familiar, and Eliot Abraham explains he emigrated from Bombay after high school, a connection that came back to him some years ago when on a visit to India his old classmate Aamir Khan offered him a walk-on part in Lagaan.
Then it8217;s a giddying helicopter tour tracing the snaking path of the separation/security barrier on the West Bank. A range of 8216;8216;non-government8217;8217; organisations and think tanks here do advocacy work for Israel. This air trip8212;two hours total flying time8212;is organised by the Israel Project. It shows how difficult the Green Line8212;and thereby the demanded borders of the future Palestinian state8212;makes the security of Israel. We see the barrier8212;fortified fence in portions, concrete wall elsewhere8212;partitioning parts of the West Bank. In fact, the Supreme Court has admitted appeals against some portions. When we cross over to the Gaza stretch and then fly over Ashkelon on the Mediterranean coast, our guide says, if Hamas hits this town, Israel will be forced to react militarily. The Israel Project docket measures the distance of key cities from the Green Line and other borders, and it brings to mind one of Thomas Friedman8217;s observations: these sort of maps always show rocket ranges inward, not outward.
Evening-time, and another way of imagining the foundations of the state of Israel. A walking tour through the heart of Tel Aviv traces the restoration of the city8217;s Bauhaus architecture, the internationalist style that early Zionists adopted when they first rolled up their sleeves and founded their 8216;8216;garden city8217;8217;. Today Tel Avivans work and party around the clock, their seaside cafes offer breakfast till 1 pm, and they exclaim, 8216;8216;Aren8217;t Jerusalem and Tel Aviv two different worlds!8217;8217;
DAY 4 We start out, bottles of water in hand, for a long walking tour of the Old City. We first gain a panoramic view from the Mount of Olives, the most expensive real estate for the dead. Jewish belief has it that those buried here would have the quickest access to redemption when the Messiah comes. There is a Muslim graveyard too nearby, and the immediate environs have representations of different Christian missions.
We make our way to the Tower of David, the part of the Old City historically most susceptible to invasion. Already, our guide8212;a working archaeologist whose family immigrated from Baghdad8212;has acquainted us with the Israeli 8216;8216;mania8217;8217; for digging. At the Tower of David can be found a magnificent model that is replicated across the land at sites of antiquity. The story of the interaction between Judaism, Christianity and Islam is first recounted in a short film, and then through exhibits in a museum housed in the historical site. Modern display and reclamation and cafes exist within old walls and courtyards. History is not apart from the lived life.
Then it8217;s a walk through the Armenian Quarter8212;Armenians, most of them Christian, are reported to have been in Jerusalem since the fifth century, and posters are up about the 1915 8216;8216;genocide8217;8217;. Later at the Jewish Quarter, the streets are more organised. Houses in this area are newer, since the older buildings had been destroyed in 1948 and were rebuilt after 1967.
So much else remains to be seen, but we are too late by the usual timetable to gain entry to the Temple Mount. But as we near the makeshift bridgeway to the Mount at Magharib Gate the only entrance for non-Muslims, security guards say we can go up. As we run along on the ramp, we take in the view to the left, the male and decidedly smaller female sections of the Western Wall, where believers write their prayers on pieces of paper and insert them into the crevices between the gigantic Herodian stones. Temple Mount came into the news in 2000 when Ariel Sharon paid a controversial visit, sparking what is called the Second Intifada. These days, newspaper reports are abuzz about repair work by the Waqf trust, which controls the Mount. It has, they report, excavated ceramic tableware from the First Temple period. The quietness of the plateau-like Mount takes a little getting used to after the bustle of the Old City.
Afternoon takes us to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Two colleagues are held up by security as they are in violation of a new rule disallowing jeans in the compound. It takes a few minutes for the rule to be waived, and passing a photograph of Golda Meir holding a lit cigarette reminds me of one of the many, possibly apocryphal, anecdotes about her. A visitor met her seated under a no-smoking sign but puffing away. A local explained, the choice during her premiership was to either disallow smoking and have only her violate the request, or to let everyone smoke. They took the first option. It is also an innocuous reminder of Robert Kaplan8217;s caution: 8216;8216;Self-interest at its healthiest implicitly recognises the self-interest of others, and therein lies the possibility of compromise8212;and realism. A moral position admits few compromises. That8217;s some of what I took away from Israel.8217;8217;
DAY 5 Our destination is a spa on the Dead Sea, and we drive through the West Bank, through checkposts and in view of the separation/security fence/wall nomenclature is politics! and leafy Israeli settlements. Passing by the approach road to Jericho, by local lore the oldest inhabited city on earth, we request a shopping break at a pottery display on the roadside8230; the site deserves a memento.
At Qumran we spot some of the caves in which a Bedouin shepherd boy spotted the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, said to be the most important discovery for 8216;8216;the Jewish people8217;8217;. It connects to the antiquity of the land their most important texts.
Farther along we are at the base of Masada. A cable car carries us up to the fort. Masada is a key imprint in the Israeli mindscape, and in different contexts Israelis will say, 8216;8216;Masada shall not fall again8217;8217;. The fort was Herod8217;s and decades after his death, the Jews revolted against the Romans and a group called the Zealots captured Masada. Upon being threatened thereafter by the Romans, the Zealots decided to kill themselves instead of being captured. Masada was thus the last Jewish refuge to fall, and is now part of the country8217;s historical memory, with politicians referring to it show the need for alertness and soldiers brought here as part of their orientation programme.
After a dip in the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth, we are on its shores at the Ein Gedi kibbutz. Simon Spanier, an Englishman who came to Israel in 1960 and still misses his cricket, is in charge of the kibbutz8217;s lush botanical gardens, testimony to the innovation and application that have greened Israel8217;s harsh desert-like terrain. Ein Gedi makes good profit, being the first on the market with mangoes and by running the most expansive spa on these shores of the Dead Sea.
Spanier explains the changes that in recent years have come to the kibbutz, communes that were once the defining motif of Israel8217;s pioneering spirit. When it is said, for instance, that the kibbutzim plural for kibbutz are being privatised, as at Ein Gedi, it means that members are no longer getting equal pay no matter what they do. Now they get paid according to their skills and labour. As we walk past the dining hall, Spanier says now it is only busy for Friday Shabbat dinners, alluding to the changed family lives on the kibbutz. 8216;8216;Earlier this was where everybody gathered,8217;8217; he remembers. Then, children did not stay with their parents. Now family life is more closely knit, and there is even a controversial proposal to allow people to pay and own the house they live in.
It is the passing of the founding socialist ethic of Israel8217;s early years, says a former kibbutz resident. He recalls how there was mourning on his kibbutz when Stalin died. In 1977, Labour lost for the first time to the more right-wing Likud, and following decades have seen a transition to moshavs, private farms.
And also of the pioneering spirit passing to the Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories. The night before, I had spoken on the phone to Irith Carmel, a teacher in Ein Hashoset, a kibbutz north of Haifa. She explained her membership of a group called People Listen. After a settler killed Rabin, there was, she says, great concern that people on the kibbutz were out of touch with the rest of the country. The group has been regularly gathering teachers from settlements and kibbutz so that they can articulate their points of view on a pre-selected theme. Difficult moments came when the Ariel Sharon government removed the last settlements from Gaza in 2005. 8216;8216;It was a very hard time for the group,8217;8217; said Irith. 8216;8216;We kibbutz members thought it disengagment should take place. In time they settlers understood that we couldn8217;t change our minds.8217;8217;
Last night too, a long-time correspondent with The Guardian asked me, try to find something nice to say about Israel. That8217;s easier done than finding a way to fit together neatly impressions of his country.
