Efrat’s about 20 minutes from Jerusalem, no further than Brighton is from Lewes. In the real world where politics collides with culture and history, it’s a lot further than that.
But first… I’ve got a podcast to do. Antony works for The Israel Project, an organisation dedicated to putting out good news stories about Israel, putting the other side of the story to the one you usually hear. Their main focus is on the American market, but things that are happening in Israel and things that are affecting Israel anywhere in the world are under the gaze – and right now they are, like everyone else, intrigued/interested/concerned about the rise in antisemitism in the UK and the whole Jeremy Corbyn business.
Anyway, for good or for ill, I’ve been quite vocal on social media about my feelings and fears about Corbyn and Labour and when I told him I was coming over to visit, Antony asked if I fancied doing a podcast for TIP and… yeah, why not? As long as it’s clear I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone, that I’m just a concerned Jew of the Left, why not?
“Sure. Love to”.
It’s not like it’s a subject I haven’t thought about and it’s not like the arguments aren’t ones I’ve had a thousand times, so I was kinda relaxed about the whole thing. I still haven’t listened to it back, but here it is anyway.
https://soundcloud.com/user-579725143/tipping-point-jed-novick
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Like the old saying has it, you can’t make new old friends.
Seeing Antony was very lovely. There’s something interesting about the bonds you put down at an early age. They set deep and they stay there and it doesn’t matter how long it is since you last saw each other, there’s something that binds you. It was there as soon as I saw Lovely Ruth and it was there as soon as I saw Antony. It helped that he hadn’t changed an inch.
Driving out of Jerusalem to Efrat – past the checkpoints, past the walls, past the fences, past the wires – takes about 20 minutes but it’s a lot further than that. You’re not only driving past fences, you’re driving past history and past agreements.
As we approached we went round a roundabout.
“You don’t go down that one” said Antony as we went past one of the exits. That way’s the Badlands”. He took another exit.
“This road is where three teenage Israelis were kidnapped and killed. You remember that story?”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/30/bodies-missing-israeli-teenagers-found-west-bank
“Stop trying to make me feel relaxed” I said, thinking it was bad form to smoke and drink in someone else’s car.
Efrat is a long way from that cartoon idea of a settlement. Think maybe a small English new town, a smaller Milton Keynes with streets, school, a shopping mall… a proper town with families living lives.
Sitting outside the house – a normal house with normal house stuff – having a glass and a smoke, a helicopter choppered overhead.
I remember when I was living in Tokyo and started working in a high-rise newspaper office. One day the building started shaking. An earthquake. Mild, but still an earthquake. I dived under the desk, but everyone else carried on working as if nothing had happened. A few weeks later and I was sitting next to someone who’d just started working. The building started to shake. He dived under the desk, while I just carried on working as normal.
This was me, Antony and his wife when the helicopter flew over. I was like “Fuck, we’re on a settlement and there’s a helicopter flying overhead”.
Antony’s wife smiled. “It’s when they come over in twos or threes that you start to worry”.
We had a few glasses through the night, but there was never more than one helicopter at a time. And if they weren’t worried… fine by me.
While I was there, we had a drive around Efrat and, in truth, it looks a nice place to live. Take away the fences, the wires, the checkpoint on the way in, the helicopters and the paranoia of your namby-pamby guests, and it’s a nice place to live. It’s easy to see why people go there. A two-bedroom flat in Jerusalem – and not in the Hampstead or Kensington bit of Jerusalem – costs about $900,000. And you can’t park. And you spend your life in traffic – all that usual city stuff.
But it’s still on the darkside and sometimes to feel the paranoia isn’t so paranoid.
On Friday morning we went to the mall – just off the roundabout where one road goes to the badlands and one road is where the three lads were murdered – and it’s just like a shopping mall anywhere. Car park, shops, soft kids play area, supermarket. Most of the faces are white, most of the accents American, but there are also local arabs – Palestinians – who come to do their shopping. Everybody rubs along.
We had a coffee in the cafe, did the shop, took the trolley to the car park, unloaded… the usual. But on Sunday morning, in that very car park, a local bloke – Ari Fuld, 45 – who was doing exactly that was stabbed – murdered – by a 17-year-old Palestinian. In the car park me and Antony unloaded our trolley.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-critically-wounded-in-stabbing-at-west-bank-junction/
In the car park me and Antony unloaded our trolley.
Comments
4 responses to “Day 12 (part 2)”
Jed, I’m writing generally as, like you, I am really concerned about what’s happening around the labour party, but I’m probably on the opposite side. But also like you, I’m trying to question my certainties. Something that interests me in this whole thing is why different Jews respond in different ways. You experience the anti -zionism as anti semitism, and yet I don’t. Obviously there are Jews who are fervent anti zionists – are they too anti semites? What I’m beginning to see is that these differences come down to strong emotional attachments on both sides. There are Jews whose emotional response to the aftermath of the Holocaust is to develop strong values around the right to a safe homeland – ( ie. Israel). This is a deeply understandable feeling. I guess it explains why as you say, you are deeply suspicious of anyone who criticises Israel. There are other Jews (I count myself as one of these) who develop a strong value around not causing harm to others. When I think about my dad, what his experience of the Holocaust, and the kinder transport imbued in me was a deep pain around loss of family, migration rights, refugee status, etc. So I am deeply emotionally attached to not causing pain to any group of people. That makes me tend to be critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Dad was an assimilator, so I never inherited much interest in a safe homeland. He found his peace in coming here. What I’m beginning to see is it’s the powerful emotions that make us very stuck in our thinking, and which make it difficult for us to hear each other’s view. These polarities are there amongst Jews, which is why I think it is probably misguided to name the problem as anti semitism. I’m sure anti semitism plays a part for some people, and like you, I believe the horror of fascism, in all it’s forms, can always resurface, and looks more likely now than when we were younger. Does the answer to all this lie in trying to understand the strength of both these sets of values and seeing if there are answers that can satisfy both?
Hi lovely Rachel It’s the first time I’ve done this (written a comment) so I’ve no idea whether this will get to , but…First, thanks for your comment. It’s really interesting and I too am interested in why different people have different responses. One thing I don’t understand – especially so since going there. You say “There are Jews whose emotional response to the aftermath of the Holocaust is to develop strong values around the right to a safe homeland – ( ie. Israel). There are other Jews (I count myself as one of these) who develop a strong value around not causing harm to others”. Are you saying that these are two separate positions, that on the one hand you can support Israel, on the other hand you can wish not to harm others? The extension of that is that if you support Israel you don’t care about harming others.This is a position I just cannot understand because what it does is completely and totally conflate the actions of a particular government (Netanyahu’s) with the whole of Israel. I wonder how you would feel if i did that in the UK? If I said that you were the same as May’s Tory party?For the record, I didn’t meet any Israelis – Left or Right – who supported Netanyahu. The Palestinians are in the unfortunate position of being used by everyone for their own ends. Talk to actual Palestinians and they’re most angry with the PA. After that, they’re angry with “the international community”. The people who are most angry with Israel seem to be here. All of which isn’t to say I agree with the current Israel govt or its policies. But then again, I’m struggling to think of a country whose government I do like.The reason why I think most people who say they’re anti-Zionist are actually antisemitic is simply because I never hear them talking about anywhere else. The Labour Party seems to have a curious obsession with Israel. Similarly (it seems) the TUC. And much of that branch of the Left. The BDS folk. I never hear them talk about anywhere else. For example, internment camps have been set up in Chechnya for gays. Can you imagine? But no one talks about that. It’s only ever Israel. Of all the places in the world, why is the Left so concerned about Israel? You talk abut seeing both sides, both sets of values. That’s what we teach our children, isn’t it? That’s why I went Israel. To do that. To see both sides. To speak to people and see what they think. Seems to me though that in my country, the people who aren’t seeing both sides are predominantly the Left – and that makes me very sad.
HI Jed, yes you successfully commented! I don’t have much time now, but agree with you the different emotional responses should not be mutually exclusive – absolutely – and yet I’m trying to make sense of the polarity that Jews seem to experience – protective of zionism, or protective of Palestinian rights. I totally understand what you say about many Israelis not necessarily agreeing with the actions of their government, as we don’t agree with ours. I would say part of the reason why the left might focus it’s criticism on Israel is similar to why they might focus on the US. There’s a tendency to focus on ourselves, rather than the ‘other’. And a lot of left wing Jews I guess identify with Israel as their own, and feel responsible for highlighting it’s hypocrisies. That’s always the way I’ve understood it. But I accept you might be right, there might be some anti semitism in there too – I’ve just never personally jumped to that conclusion. I have so many Jewish friends who are fervently anti Zionist! What I begin to see is that anti zionists are not sensitive to what zionism means to many Jews, which is the right of Jews to a homeland. Many people on the left are now conflating the word ‘zionism’ with some of the worst policies of the current regime. And I can see that is a mistake. I think that’s what Corbyn was referring to when he acknowledged he had to re think his use of that word. I have to leave this there Jed. I’m glad to be engaging with you as this is important stuff. A friend of mine is putting on a film about the Bereaved Families Forum. Do you know about them? Should be good. I’ll keep you posted. xxx
Hi lovely – I guess we could play table tennis with this all day. Being parochial, I’m much more interested in what’s going on here than in what’s going on there. We could discuss Israel all day. but I guess, in short, I’m alarmed by a couple of things: 1) That, in 2018, there could be a debate in Parliament about antisemitism2) That Labour is so (my word) obsessed with Israel that in a summer when it should have been dealing with Brexit and giving the Tories a kicking, it spent every waking hour discussing antisemitism, trying to come up with a new “definition” that allowed them to be antisemitic without being accused of being antisemitic.3) My friends on the Left seem so focussed on”getting the Tories out” that when I say I’m concerned, many of them either dismiss it or simply don’t care. Going out there was fantastically interesting. And it’s a curious thing, but many of the Palestinians I spoke to didn’t view things as, it seems, Labour does. Anyway, stay cool and stay Rachel. XXX