israeli politics

i may buy a tent - may 5, 2024

I have heard so many opinions about the river and the sea in the past few days that I find the threads impossible to unravel.  

First, of course no one is happy about the war.  But some people really think it’s simple.  Shoot them all.  or Make a single state. or go back to Poland.  (That one really gets me.  My brother reminds me that our grandparents had a big house on the marketplace before they were killed and the place was bombed, destroyed – I should have kept the key) 

In any case, I’m lost as far as making a logical and satisfying organization to all the arguments – and certainly no solution.  

I look at the faces of the demonstrators and think how wonderful it would be to talk with them like human beings. not about politics – but mabe about shoes, cooking, horses, etc.  It’s not like there are good people against bad people and we have to get rid of the bad people.  They’re all good and they deserve attention.   how can they all be made to understand that simple fact?  everybody’s right.  now let’s see how we can all be satisfied. 

A peace tent.  yes. that will do it. sure.


i may buy a tent – may 5, 2024 Read Post »

israeli politics

Hard to get the news - 5.4.24

From here, in New Jersey, I find it hard to get the news about Israel and Gaza.  Whatever happens in graduation ceremonies here have nothing to do with what’s going on there.  So I’m stuck with reading the news in Hebrew papers. like the Times of Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/

It too doesn’t tell me much, but my internet connection is pretty bad, so I can’t even evaluate what I’m getting.  

And evaluation is what is desperately needed.  Especially poetic evaliation. As William Carlos Williams wrote “It is hard to get the news from poems/but men die miserably every day/for lack of what is found there. – 

And here, my internet connection seems to be fading – i’ll explain quickly.  With a situation so complex, no single perspective is sufficient, and sometimes only a very specific instance can provide a true taste of reality. 

As I walked into a kind of Mom and Pop pharmacy just now, a customer was talking to the druggist.  I only heard the last line “Jews don’t belong here,” before he went to sit down.  

I bought my cough medicine and left.  I’ll never know if he was talking about me,  himself, or the druggist, or if he was giving the punch line of a joke.

But I kind of feel that moment shows something of the uncertainty of the feeling of being a Jew in the US right now.

 

hard to get the news – 5.4.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

divestment: another look - 5.3.24

Watching the kids screaming divestment from Tel Aviv University makes me wonder if there is any awareness of the large percentage of Arab students who gain professions at this very university.  I don’t think the students who learned from me want that university to disappear.  

I may be wrong now…

I mean I went to visit some of my former students who were in mourning last week (stop me if you’ve heard this one – I loved that moment too much to forget it.  The first thing they asked me, after a quick glance at each other, was about something that really troubled them all the years.  “yes, I said, before the question got asked, “It was Coke.”  I get asked that a lot.  I used to come to class with a can of Coke every time, and from the way I behaved, it was clear to them that there was something else in that can…

I don’t think that’s a reason to divest from the university, though.

 

divestment Read Post »

israeli politics

Stats - 5.1.24

Walk down the aisle on the plane, I count what movies are being watched.  Do people tune in Israeli or American films?  Me – I only got up from my seat after watching “The Monkey Park” which reminds me of many of the forgotten Israeli novelists I knew in the sixties and seventies.  But when I got back from giving the stewardesses and stewards a good story when Ezi and me tried to get into the bathroom together, I could not bear the quaintness and escapism of the Hebrew films everyone had tuned into.  I can’t believe Israelis watch them.  I escape with the memories of American history.   

stats – 5.1.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

what's the difference? - 4.30.24

I keep thinking about the difference between the protests against segregation or later against the Viet Nam war and the protests now.  

They’re exactly the opposite.  We were demonstrating for equality and peace and the protests now are fighting for war and genocide.  They want to kill us.  Not just soldiers, not just Israelis, but Jews.  

Adam Rubin, the son of one of our leaders, Jerry Rubin, says it well:

“This is definitely not my dad’s antiwar protest”

In a way this is showing what Hamas really is, and it is on the way to destroying civilization.

 

what’s the difference? – 4.30.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

from the river - 4.29.24

from the river to the sea

we can live in harmony…

from the river to the sea

we can live in unity

 

 

I can write rhymes as well as the next person.  But I think it’s easier to write hate than love.  Especially love and liberty that disguises hate and destruction.  

why is everyone saying we have to use force to get the protesters to disperse?  Why not just turn on the sprinklers?  These are not violent protester who deserve to be banished from school.  they need to be educated by intelligent professors – not the strange unqualified teachers who seem to have taken over the system.

Sorry to be ranting…

 

 

from the river – 4.29.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

what if - 4.29.24

What if Hamas agrees, returns the hostages, we call a ceasefire, and we can begin to talk?  What if the residents of the kibbutzim down south are able to rebuild the ruins of their little Edens and are not terrified of living near the border?  What if Hizballah stops bombing us and our 100000 citizens can return to their homes in the north.

It seems like a dream, and all the remaining problems – enormous as they are – solvable.  We could even put Bibi into a bearable position without his cabinet.

But for me, I absolutely must have those women, those girl,  back first.  The fact that Hamas is suddenly showing videos of man in good shape makes me fear even more that the women are not in shape to be seen.

 

 

what if – 4.29.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

family history trip - 4.27.24

Ezi spent all day yesterday preparing a powerpoint with all the family history, childhood photographs, and dozens of pictures and diagrams of buildings and bridges his family built.  This morning our neice came with her daughter to preview the powerpoint before the trip around Tel Aviv to visit the sites themselves. 

Some of our grandkids have seen the watertowers, the breakwaters, the edifices Ezi’s father and gradfather built.  Some even know Ezi’s part in the story.  But I wish we could have filmed it all.  We wound up refreshing the tombstones of Ezi’s grandparents in Trumpeldor cemetery.   

This is definitely my favorite cemetery – not only because so many of Ezi’s relative are there. and all the ‘streets of Tel Aviv’ are there, but because it’s so informal.  You can see that a cemetery in Judaism is just a place to dump the body and not to take up space.  There are dozens of ‘anonymous’ graves too, that remind one that lots of people came here alone, usually because their families had been killed, and they never got the know anyone before the wars took them.  

i also love the fact that it’s in the middle, part of the city – and it’s hard to distinguish the famous poet’s grave from the apartment building around it.  This is Tschernichovsky’s grave

and if you know nothing else about him, remember these lines: 

“Laugh, laugh at my dreams

I laugh at them too

laugh that I believe in mankind

that I still believe in you.”

(Most people translate it a more formal tone like here: https://www.emjc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Tchernichovskythe-other-national-poet.pdf

And not far away is Arik Einstein, who turns my heart upside down every time a song of his is played on the radio:

https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/2013-12-25/ty-article/.premium/poem-of-the-week-our-sinatra-our-cleese-our-seeger-our-jew/0000017f-db06-df62-a9ff-dfd7a9d40000

 

Arik

 

The last time I saw him

he pushed back from the table

stood and pulled up his shirt

to show his stomach.

“This,” he said, “this is solid.”

And I agreed.

 

Last month I passed

the restaurant,

“Crown of the East,”

and thought –

it’s still there

 

Where I sat once with Eli

who’s long dead, and they’re even now

probably talking song and soccer,

and Arik still drops by.

 

But today comes with news

suddenly with his death

the spontaneity of a people’s love,

the same public fervor he would have said

distracts us from important issues…

 

And always always I hear him

on the radio, on my smartphone,

in my head,

wherever I am

and I think:

this, this is solid.

 

 

family history – Read Post »