Tel Aviv Diary - July 11, 2012 Karen Alkalay-Gut
July 11,2012 One should not read the news here before going to a mall. Everything in all the news seems to be reflected in the people milling about. For example I couldn't help thinking about whether or not these people had earned the government they deserved. They all looked overfed, undereducated, and uninterested in anything but consumerism. I had been reading a speculation fromStrenger about what would have happened to this country if Olmert had remained in office. I kept thinking about what Oren said when I complained that he shouldn't vote for Olmert in the elections. "He's a CROOK!" I exclaimed. "Yes, but he's OUR crook!" he answered. I think Olmert is the government we deserved. The government we have because we stopped caring about anything but sales. (This is true for Arabs as well as Jews here, by the way. I was trying on clothes at Dorin Frankfurt with all these Arab ladies who were just as into the way their behind looked in the long pink jacket as I was.)
July 12, 2012 It is not an impossible heat. We have been here before. But it is an unbearable one. Who can think about important issues like life and death or the definition of innocence when you're passing out from the humidity?
July 13, 2012 I'm extremely excited about the tablet I received today. Will it make correspondence simpler in this journal? Perhaps - if I can get myself out of the house. At the moment I can't try it out outside because I am too beset with aches and pains, and I'm too weary to figure out how to download programs, but tomorrow may be a better day. In any case, I've never gone along with the theory that Friday the 13th is a good day for the Jews. One of our best boys was crucified that day = why should it be good?
July 14, 2012 When Ezi was just recovering from his first bout with lymphoma, he decided that he doesn't deserve to get into a boiling automobile, and consulted a maker of car ports. Our parking lot has a few raggedy plastic shade constructions for shading vehicles and we thought the entire row of 4 cars could benefit from a plastic shade. So we had one built together. Soon after some anonymous neighbor took us to court. That was...what...two years ago. The case has been going on ever since. We don't want to remove the sunshade that sweetens our lives and bothers no one, but there are rules. Sunday is the next court hearing so Ezi will spend the morning taking pictures of the innumerable car-shades that dot the back years (and sometimes front yards) of our neighborhood. Me I am still home-bound and prefer to preserve my energy for meeting Ezi's doctor tomorrow to finalize his program for preventative treatment and accompany my neighbors (all over 70) to the court.
It's one year since the protests began here - and even my 2 year old grandson chants the slogan by heart - translated as "the people want social justice" or more accurately - "it's the occupation, stupid." We don't say that anymore because we're simply tired of saying it, but it is underlying every sentence about social justice here. Every plea for justice is connected, and everyone knows it. Not just ideologically - that any injustice is all injustice, but economically as well - that if you build a university in Ariel there is less money to support the real researchers in Tel Aviv. Or less selfishly, if you build houses there, you can't build houses here. July 15, 2012
Sometimes I'm left without words, without thoughts, with only sadness. The self-immolation of Moshe Silman is beyond description. But the situation of the individual in relation to the system is the general problem that incorporates this terrible tragedy. For any person to get to a position in which he thinks that he is nothing, mere trash to be burned, demands an unresponsive society.