Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Beauty and the Beast
The rains finally came--torrents, crashing thunder, our little Cello raging back at the house shaking bolts, and then taking final refuge under the covers; La Professora was his refuge as she is mine. New York appears to me now as almost weather less except if you are poor.
I was telling a friend today while we were eating breakfast at Brunetti's in Carlton, my friend Patty who helped me set up this journal, that I know perhaps readers expect me to write about sex or my life here--a sort of travelogue and I am pulled by the blue green of the seas, by the flat expanses of vast plains, gum trees so economically dotting the horizon, their layered blue green canopies letting the blazing blue light in or catching the red glazed sunsets in their wide spread arms or the forest gums, each a tapestry of browns and ochres, grays and yellows, barks hanging in strips, or rolling off the trunks in long white sheets--the paperbark trees that line our street--the thump of the Kangaroo's massive tail as the creature took fright at my passage through its territory and in long jumps made its way over the Nicholson River as Cello huddled between my feet. I have seen things here--the red monolith of Uluru, the totem of a people, rising from the desert lands outside of Alice Springs, a living mammoth form of red pitted rock, telling its people's creation stories; the tourists who insist on climbing on its flanks even as its Aboriginal custodians plead with them not to--this is the confusion of desires that we do so badly at. Yes, I want to tell you all of this but other things have happened this week as a result of our participation in the demonstration a few days ago. One I can share with you--there is a website called S.H.I.T.--Self-Hating and Israeli-Threatening Jews--its opening image is of a toilet bowl and superimposed over it are a few names of Jewish dissenters, those who have dared to write, to speak, to criticize, to question the wisdom of the Occupation and all it had engendered--the implication is we need to flush away these people--they are human waste. A friend had prepared me, you are on the list, she said. And with over 7,000 other Jewish thinkers and writers there I was. I ask you to visit this website--to decide for yourselves is this the discourse you want. There are no names taking responsibility for this list, no way to respond--I am honored to be on this list, in the company of so many who are struggling to break the prevailing national narratives of both Israel and the United States in the Middle East--a list of Jewish questioners, what a novel idea--the yellow D for dissent--we are the traitors who must be flushed away--yes, there are blue blue seas here, and blue-stone cobbled lane ways that in the closing years of the 19th century were used for night soil collectors.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Vigil at the Casino
I knew what I had found familiar about the motion of my hands as I looked down upon my early morning task—rolling up the long hand-made Women in Black banners with their white painted words protesting the Israeli occupation and asserting that we refused to be enemies was much like the opening of the Torah scrolls; these were my sacred Jewish words, and I had the responsibility of carrying them, not through the seated crowds of the synagogue, but onto the number 55 tram that rattled its way past the zoo, past Victoria’s Market and left me off in the heart of downtown Melbourne, right in the midst of the packed end-of-the-work day mobs pushing to make their trains out of Flinders Station. I was a 68 Jewish woman rushing to meet my comrades, Marg and Alex, for a peace vigil outside the Crown Casino, the Crown Casino, that most worldly of places which caters to high rollers and desperate housewives, was where the United Israel Appeal had chosen to have its “gala” dinner and the new Labour Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, was to honor the gathering with his presence and his words of support. We had decided that we too should be part of this event—standing along the driveway entrance to the massive hotel along with members of Palestinian advocacy groups.
Here I drop whatever bravado has been hiding in my words—our usual Women in Black vigils are done in a rather safe place—on a wide, bustling shopping street in downtown Melbourne. There in our hour, we come across a wide spectrum of citizens and they come across us. We do not stand in the heart of the Jewish community here, in Ackland Street with its Eastern European bakeries and cafes or on Balaclava Street with its wonderful kosher market places or in front of the Synagogue in Toorak. As an old New Yorker, I have to smile here—many Jews in Melbourne live in their own part of town, they are not “everywhere,” as in New York—that is why, several months ago, I was asked by two Gentile Melbourne women soon leaving on their first New York visit—“please tell us where the Jewish section is?”
But this vigil was going to be different and it was. All through the confrontations and the glares from the hundreds of cars that drove past us, I kept thinking of the courage of the women who stand in Hagar Square in Jerusalem, particularly after the killing of the Yeshiva students and the women and men in the occupied territories who dare to speak for non-violent protests after their streets have been littered with the bodies of children. I will not speak for Alex or Marg, but only for myself of what the confrontations meant to me—the image of car after car pulling into the hotel’s entrance, the looks of shock as the passengers first saw the gathered Palestinian protestors with their signs, Israel Equals Apartheid, and then as they turned their heads and saw our banners and our tee shirts that read in Hebrew and Arabic, end the occupation. We had already had our pictures and names taken by a short man in a white business suit who said he was part of the Crown Casino security force—reminding me of the FBI surveillance of the peace marches in the early sixties—but what struck me the most in the faces I saw through the car windows and on the people who walked by us on their way into the dinner, was the fear I saw—first fear, then rage when they realized we were also Jewish. “You should be ashamed of yourselves…Don’t you worry, Israel is STRONG! …Traitors…How can you do this?”Younger women put protective arms around yarmulked old men. We were tref personified. The enemy from within. I stood sometimes answering that the occupation was the greatest shanda (shame) of all using my Yiddish tongue, my beloved few words of Yiddish handed down to me by my mother and her New York garment industry world. Women’s faces turned to me in disgust and soon I just stood, looking very hard at what I was seeing and feeling all the losses that my positioning had engendered. I knew what I was seeing, the careful dressing for the public celebration of Israel, of being Jewish, the carefully coiffure hair, the well made dresses, the lame tops—this was an Affair. The Prime Minister was speaking to the cream of Melbourne’s Jewish community, this was an Affair. And there we were, so few in number, but enough to bring back the fear, the fear that allows the most brutal of repressions because you know under it all, they will hate us again. All around me on this “festive” night was despair—the anger and pain of the Palestinians with their flag, trying to break into this ever moving column of supporters of their suffering, not with their bodies, with their shouts and their signs and their words, perhaps sixty of them and three of us, rooted in our own knowledge that terrible things were happening in the name of Jewish safety, and that as Jews, we could not be silent partners in the disaster that is the occupation, and to the celebrants in their tightly closed cars, where even a few voices of dissent, brought it all back and in my so sad heart, I felt as Jewish as I have ever been—standing on the margins of history but so strangely, so Jewishly, right in the heart of it.
Here I drop whatever bravado has been hiding in my words—our usual Women in Black vigils are done in a rather safe place—on a wide, bustling shopping street in downtown Melbourne. There in our hour, we come across a wide spectrum of citizens and they come across us. We do not stand in the heart of the Jewish community here, in Ackland Street with its Eastern European bakeries and cafes or on Balaclava Street with its wonderful kosher market places or in front of the Synagogue in Toorak. As an old New Yorker, I have to smile here—many Jews in Melbourne live in their own part of town, they are not “everywhere,” as in New York—that is why, several months ago, I was asked by two Gentile Melbourne women soon leaving on their first New York visit—“please tell us where the Jewish section is?”
But this vigil was going to be different and it was. All through the confrontations and the glares from the hundreds of cars that drove past us, I kept thinking of the courage of the women who stand in Hagar Square in Jerusalem, particularly after the killing of the Yeshiva students and the women and men in the occupied territories who dare to speak for non-violent protests after their streets have been littered with the bodies of children. I will not speak for Alex or Marg, but only for myself of what the confrontations meant to me—the image of car after car pulling into the hotel’s entrance, the looks of shock as the passengers first saw the gathered Palestinian protestors with their signs, Israel Equals Apartheid, and then as they turned their heads and saw our banners and our tee shirts that read in Hebrew and Arabic, end the occupation. We had already had our pictures and names taken by a short man in a white business suit who said he was part of the Crown Casino security force—reminding me of the FBI surveillance of the peace marches in the early sixties—but what struck me the most in the faces I saw through the car windows and on the people who walked by us on their way into the dinner, was the fear I saw—first fear, then rage when they realized we were also Jewish. “You should be ashamed of yourselves…Don’t you worry, Israel is STRONG! …Traitors…How can you do this?”Younger women put protective arms around yarmulked old men. We were tref personified. The enemy from within. I stood sometimes answering that the occupation was the greatest shanda (shame) of all using my Yiddish tongue, my beloved few words of Yiddish handed down to me by my mother and her New York garment industry world. Women’s faces turned to me in disgust and soon I just stood, looking very hard at what I was seeing and feeling all the losses that my positioning had engendered. I knew what I was seeing, the careful dressing for the public celebration of Israel, of being Jewish, the carefully coiffure hair, the well made dresses, the lame tops—this was an Affair. The Prime Minister was speaking to the cream of Melbourne’s Jewish community, this was an Affair. And there we were, so few in number, but enough to bring back the fear, the fear that allows the most brutal of repressions because you know under it all, they will hate us again. All around me on this “festive” night was despair—the anger and pain of the Palestinians with their flag, trying to break into this ever moving column of supporters of their suffering, not with their bodies, with their shouts and their signs and their words, perhaps sixty of them and three of us, rooted in our own knowledge that terrible things were happening in the name of Jewish safety, and that as Jews, we could not be silent partners in the disaster that is the occupation, and to the celebrants in their tightly closed cars, where even a few voices of dissent, brought it all back and in my so sad heart, I felt as Jewish as I have ever been—standing on the margins of history but so strangely, so Jewishly, right in the heart of it.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Both Sides of the Green Line
Because public speaking about the injustices of the Israeli occupation are growing more and more taboo, in so called-democratic discourse, and because so many of us know so little about the complexities of life in the occupied territories as well as in Israel itself for its own Palestinian citizens, I share with you a letter, the classic form of reporting from between the cracks, below the gaze of controlled news accounts. A text of dreams, lost ways, crumbling streets and complex courage.
Dorothy Zellner reports from Israel/Palestine, March 12, 2008:
Hello, all--So far, I've been in the Ben Gurion airport (very gruelling security process), Ramallah, Budrus and Jenin on the West Bank, and so far in Israel, Haifa*, Arrabe* and Sakhnin* in Israel...The city names with the stars indicate Palestinian locals within Israel itself: I remind you that 20% of the Israeli citizenry is Palestinian.
Certain Outstanding Impressions
The checkpoint between Jenin,WB, and Afula, Isr (Jalma). Never have I seen such an edifice. Kafka himself would have been delighted. You get there and see no directions, just a full-height turnstile (like in the subways), a disembodied voice telling you to go ahead, but the turnstile is locked, so you have to shout, "Open the door!" Then you walk along a winding corridor, next turnstile-door, also locked, so you have to shout. This is repeated seven times. The corridors wind this way and that. (I think Dante referred to the seven gates of Hell.) Meanwhile you see nobody in authority, just a few Palestinians coming the other way, obviously the favored few who have obtained a permit to go back and forth from the West Bank to Israel and vice versa. We have permits obtained by the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Finally, the end of the corridor, only there are three doors, none of which are marked. Where to go? we shout. Disembodied voice issues some directions. Aha, people at last! A female guard in a windowed office by a turnstile, waist high, accepts our passports. We wait. We see above our heads a runway with an armed guard, automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, peering down on us. Two men appear to question us: where have you been? How did you get to Ramallah? F. answers tartly that we came through the checkpoints where a soldier was asleep. Who do you know? etc. Finally Y. alertly says that we have permits--oh, says he man, and in a few minutes we go through yet another subway-style turnstile and are---out in the free air, in Afula, in Israel. Last night I dreamed I was blind. I mean I didn't dream that I was blind in the intellectual sense: I mean, I opened my eyes in the dream and everything was orange: I couldn't see. A later dream (I haven't been sleeping well on this trip) is about a friend from college who no longer speaks to me because we disagree over Israel/Palestine. today I understand the first dream--it was about my being unable to find the way out of that building at Jalma....
By now, midway in our trip, we have been in three Palestinian cities/towns and there is simply no way to avoid the fact, even if one wanted to, that Palestinian citizens of Israel are disadvantaged, as the foundations like to say. Not only is there less expenditure for schools, health care facilities, etc., which you probably know all about, but I learned on this trip that public tax money exists in the form of matching funds to all Israeli towns. Needless to say, the Palestinian towns cannot put up enough funds to obtain significant to obtain significant matching funds, so garbage is obviously uncollected in various areas, the electricity suddenly goes out, etc. Also needless to say, there is less industry (not enough investment) and much fewer shops (same reason). There are also many unfinished floors in buildings with gaping windows. Unemployment is higher. The list goes on. The people we visited have organized women's groups, local health care initiatives and more, and we met today a representative of an Arabic theater, herself a Jewish Israeli. So there are many efforts being conducted on the ground.
Here's an interesting twist to the two -state solution issue: several Palestinian citizens fear a so-called state organized along the so-called road map because they are afraid of transfer,i.e. expulsion to the so-called new Palestinian state, which will be composed of several discontinuous fragments. This fear is not paranoia. Members of the Knesset, Lieberman and others, have withing the past three weeks openly called for transfer. Everyone who gave their opinion about this said they would refuse to go--they won't go anywhere--this is their country, too--they will resist.
Well, my traveling companions are waiting for this computer and I am hoping for a decent night's sleep, so I will end. This will at least give you an idea about my trip. I should add that everywhere we have gone in Israel proper and the West Bank we have met fascinating, courageous, intelligent people--I am not talking about supposed wild-eyed militants. I am talking about ordinary people who are in a terrible situation and doing what they can to make things better. They don't fall into any neat ideological categories--they are using what they have on hand on both sides of the Green Line to bring justice here, in many different ways.
I hope to continue when next I have a half hour, which I estimate will be in two or three days! We are busy every second with back-to-back meeting and getting lost in the car or at a checkpoint, and there's a whole lot more I could and will tell you.
Best to all,
DZ
Dorothy Zellner reports from Israel/Palestine, March 12, 2008:
Hello, all--So far, I've been in the Ben Gurion airport (very gruelling security process), Ramallah, Budrus and Jenin on the West Bank, and so far in Israel, Haifa*, Arrabe* and Sakhnin* in Israel...The city names with the stars indicate Palestinian locals within Israel itself: I remind you that 20% of the Israeli citizenry is Palestinian.
Certain Outstanding Impressions
The checkpoint between Jenin,WB, and Afula, Isr (Jalma). Never have I seen such an edifice. Kafka himself would have been delighted. You get there and see no directions, just a full-height turnstile (like in the subways), a disembodied voice telling you to go ahead, but the turnstile is locked, so you have to shout, "Open the door!" Then you walk along a winding corridor, next turnstile-door, also locked, so you have to shout. This is repeated seven times. The corridors wind this way and that. (I think Dante referred to the seven gates of Hell.) Meanwhile you see nobody in authority, just a few Palestinians coming the other way, obviously the favored few who have obtained a permit to go back and forth from the West Bank to Israel and vice versa. We have permits obtained by the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Finally, the end of the corridor, only there are three doors, none of which are marked. Where to go? we shout. Disembodied voice issues some directions. Aha, people at last! A female guard in a windowed office by a turnstile, waist high, accepts our passports. We wait. We see above our heads a runway with an armed guard, automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, peering down on us. Two men appear to question us: where have you been? How did you get to Ramallah? F. answers tartly that we came through the checkpoints where a soldier was asleep. Who do you know? etc. Finally Y. alertly says that we have permits--oh, says he man, and in a few minutes we go through yet another subway-style turnstile and are---out in the free air, in Afula, in Israel. Last night I dreamed I was blind. I mean I didn't dream that I was blind in the intellectual sense: I mean, I opened my eyes in the dream and everything was orange: I couldn't see. A later dream (I haven't been sleeping well on this trip) is about a friend from college who no longer speaks to me because we disagree over Israel/Palestine. today I understand the first dream--it was about my being unable to find the way out of that building at Jalma....
By now, midway in our trip, we have been in three Palestinian cities/towns and there is simply no way to avoid the fact, even if one wanted to, that Palestinian citizens of Israel are disadvantaged, as the foundations like to say. Not only is there less expenditure for schools, health care facilities, etc., which you probably know all about, but I learned on this trip that public tax money exists in the form of matching funds to all Israeli towns. Needless to say, the Palestinian towns cannot put up enough funds to obtain significant to obtain significant matching funds, so garbage is obviously uncollected in various areas, the electricity suddenly goes out, etc. Also needless to say, there is less industry (not enough investment) and much fewer shops (same reason). There are also many unfinished floors in buildings with gaping windows. Unemployment is higher. The list goes on. The people we visited have organized women's groups, local health care initiatives and more, and we met today a representative of an Arabic theater, herself a Jewish Israeli. So there are many efforts being conducted on the ground.
Here's an interesting twist to the two -state solution issue: several Palestinian citizens fear a so-called state organized along the so-called road map because they are afraid of transfer,i.e. expulsion to the so-called new Palestinian state, which will be composed of several discontinuous fragments. This fear is not paranoia. Members of the Knesset, Lieberman and others, have withing the past three weeks openly called for transfer. Everyone who gave their opinion about this said they would refuse to go--they won't go anywhere--this is their country, too--they will resist.
Well, my traveling companions are waiting for this computer and I am hoping for a decent night's sleep, so I will end. This will at least give you an idea about my trip. I should add that everywhere we have gone in Israel proper and the West Bank we have met fascinating, courageous, intelligent people--I am not talking about supposed wild-eyed militants. I am talking about ordinary people who are in a terrible situation and doing what they can to make things better. They don't fall into any neat ideological categories--they are using what they have on hand on both sides of the Green Line to bring justice here, in many different ways.
I hope to continue when next I have a half hour, which I estimate will be in two or three days! We are busy every second with back-to-back meeting and getting lost in the car or at a checkpoint, and there's a whole lot more I could and will tell you.
Best to all,
DZ
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