Every day reality seems to shift. Since these words were written, the story about who is going to write history - namely, what happened in Jenin - has dominated public attention. The fact that I live less than 150 kilometers from Jenin does not give me a better vantage point to assess what happened. Even if the »truth« is never captured, the simple facts are these: Amnesty International estimates that since the start of the Intifada in September 2000, at least 1,200 Palestinian adults, 260 Palestinian children, 260 Israeli civilian adults and 52 Israeli children have been killed. Most of the deadly violence against innocent civilians, therefore, has been committed by Israeli forces and has been directed at Palestinians. Everything starts from there. What I have written relates indirectly to these facts: my feeble attempt to make sense of life in Israel.

[b]Media space[/b]

During the month in which Adbusters has aired its »Turnoff TV« »uncommercial«¹, more and more Israelis have been turning off their TVs for other reasons: the one-sided reporting; the insatiable news addiction that needs more and more dead hours to feed itself; the fear of another news alert and the despair that follows.

Most often, Israeli correspondents do a better job at explaining the official line than the military spokespeople themselves: they accept, without batting an eyelid, the contradictory official counts of people killed: the army spokesman reported 200 killed in Jenin, only to be hushed the same day. These »impartial« journalists revel in demonizing Arafat; they speak of the callous Palestinian use of civilians as »human shields« to justify their killings; and so on and so forth. Mostly they focus on the »failure« of international diplomacy in explaining »our position,« never questioning the facts.

»Television isn't real but the addiction is,« says the Adbuster's campaign. Bombing coverage works to feed this addiction by giving people what they expect to get; by creating a boring monotony out of human suffering; keeping you glued to the screen hoping for some sort of emotional satisfaction; creating emotional reflexes that require you to dedicate hours to TV viewing.

One of the popular e-mails circulating in the past few days is a fictitious »fill-in-the-blanks« transcript of a TV account of a bombing: stunningly familiar to anyone who watches Israeli TV. The variations (left blank) are minimal: location, number of wounded, hospital to which they were transferred. All the rest, including responses from the chief of police and other officials, rumors of another accomplice that has escaped (to prolong the drama), etc., sound incredibly authentic: as if at a certain point all the actors on the screen grew tired of coming up with new things to say. Moreover, it seems as if repetition has become the vehicle for actually creating and heightening the sense of atrocity. Hyperbolic language has been overused, and can no longer function when the rate of events isn't monthly or weekly, but daily.

Hyperbolic language is still used for other contexts: to describe hatred against Israelis, be it European anti-Semitism (oh, the schadenfreude at hearing about Le Pen's success) or responses broadcast by Al-Jazeera . In such cases there is no language strong enough to maintain Israel's position as the victim facing primal, never-ending prosecution. Does the fact that Israeli soldiers have made civilians' life hell for over a year explain anything? Not at all, since primal hate is the motivating factor, and anything Israel does isn't to blame for that. The language of the primal hate is biblical. The language of the military is sterile and understated. The current vogue is sterility: so many new words have been appropriated for »killing,« depending on who did it and who was the target.

While Israeli TV and radio are occupied by patriotic-speak, new media have become a busy venue for information and opinions. Indymedia, which sprung up in the US during 1999 for the purpose of providing grassroots coverage of the WTO protests in Seattle, has two local sites: an Israeli and a Palestinian one.² While the Palestinian site has a more official and centralized tone, the Israeli site is one of the few places where things you have seen (especially if you care to look) get any mention (such as demonstrations and protests). It is also the only place where the Palestinian issue is tied to other activist issues. In general, political activism has skipped a few generations in Israel. My generation, which came of age during the Lebanese war, is busy worrying about its children and conjuring up refugee scenarios (»Would we find work in Barcelona? Do they have good schools in Cleveland?«). Gush Shalom (http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html), a longstanding peace organization, bears witness to this gap. Their activists are either elderly (mostly women) with a conviction and commitment you don't find every day, or very eager young adults who have read Culture Jam and are ready to translate anti-globalization into local terms. Few are willing to do that.

While the streets are mainly silent, e-mail is a fertile ground for self-expression: Interestingly, most pro-Israeli e-mails use video, sound, even multimedia slideshows with cheesy wipe transitions to »prove« Israel is still the prosecuted one while the Palestinians are the barbarians at the gate. Eyewitness accounts from the occupied territories, from doctors and reporters, usually come as a simple text e-mail, understated and harrowing.

[b]Public space[/b]

The Jewish high holidays are in September; the Jewish nationalist holidays are in April, between Passover and Independence Day. (This past Independence Day marked a shift in the collective memory. As every year, all regular broadcasts were suspended for 24 hours. This year there were hardly any battle stories. Most of the broadcasts screened home movies about soldiers who died. The heart-breaking stories of the mothers of previous years have been replaced by the story of the better-looking girlfriend. The 9-minute segments were mostly produced by the army itself as part of the very elaborate mourning industry that continues to churn out a never-ending succession of new faces and stories).

And another change this year - flag sales skyrocketed while big events got cancelled. The streets were filled with symbols but empty of people. People stayed at home, sick of looking over their shoulders, seeking the nearest security guard.

[b]»Celebrating Independence Day at IKEA«[/b]

The advent of security guards isn't new: it's a long-standing reflex to open your bag when you enter a film theater. We've grown blind to them. Now we need to shift our blindness levels again to block out the guy with the small Uzi sitting in front of our table at the corner cafe. Should you ask him for a light? Do you allow him to pet your dog? Do you trust him? What is the escape route? Is there anyone suspicious? If we have grown blind to the security guards, we are more aware of young men: they don't need to look Arab - if they're alone, that's enough to start suspecting something. And when it's raining, and you wear a big raincoat, you too, young lady, are eyed with suspicion.

Eye contact only means one thing: what are you carrying under your shirt, in your bag? (In your heart?) Everybody is looking at everybody, especially on public transport (which is something to avoid if you've got the money).

Security guards are the quick fix that does not achieves a thing except supply the fear quota this nationalistic government needs. They have become a fix for everything. Example? In a small public park in the center of Tel Aviv, renovations were difficult to implement because of the large number of dogs that frequented the park and didn't allow the new grass to set roots. Things got tense when the grand opening was getting near, and the mayor was to speak. What was the solution? Barricades surrounding the new fountain and two security guards in place to shoo the dogs off the grass.

Guards in our cafes might shock our sensibilities; armed guards outside kindergartens and schools are downright scary. Some parents will pick up their children at odd hours from school since they fear that the pickup hour at the end of school could be a prime target for violence. Inventing hypothetic bomb situations is a common pastime - it is politically neutral enough to allow for the sharing of a few jokes without having the discussion escalate into a heady argument.

And the city is empty: all the Serzone in all the pharmacies in the area cannot bring people to the streets again when store after store succumbs to the recession and closes down due to lack of customers; children act out suicides; TV programming is constantly interrupted and split screens pop up: the regular program on the left, the »event« on the right, a ticker text on the bottom.

Siren detection is another newly acquired awareness. If a second ambulance is heard after the first, you run to your medium of choice to see if anything has happened. Fear is mixed with excitement: suddenly your daily life is put on hold and you are attuned to a communality that belittles your daily cares. This communality removes some weight from your shoulders, alleviates the need to take account of your life. How else can one explain the large numbers of men who willingly leave their life for a month when they are recruited for what is by all accounts a hellish existence (in Tul Karem or Jenin or Nablus or Ramallah), to take part in a war they don't really believe in in the first place. I still keep in mind a soldier who told the TV camera: »We're the people you know, you work with, your neighbors and family; we don't turn into animals the moment we've been recruited.« Yet another reminder of how hard it is to admit we're the bad guys: that there is a choice and we've made it - the abused become abusers - our co-workers, neighbors, family.

Time is suspended until the war is also about time and patience. No patience. No hope. The present is being counted in days and sometimes - even hours, like high-resolution fragments of time. Three days of silence, seven days without attacks...

[b]Protest space[/b]

The most prominent public venue for self-expression in the past weeks has been the bumper of your car. Perhaps an admission of the traffic jam crises which create captive audiences against their will. Here is the place where people feel they need to say what they think (sponsored usually by cellular service providers); they won't go to protest, but they will fill the rear of their car with slogans. Affluent areas will have a higher dose of anti-war stickers. These have begun to resemble one another: all are in foreboding black and red. They cry out pragmatic slogans, such as: »End the occupation, return to ourselves.« A »feel-good« epitaph always accompanies the negative pragmatic call. Unfortunately, these tend to be lengthy and somewhat apologetic.

The nationalists' stickers are of a different ilk: they have all appropriated the Israeli flag and have come up with fuzzy, emotional, seemingly apolitical slogans such as: »Together all the way« (morbid minds will conjure up all kinds of »ways« in which to walk together); »The heart says thank you«; »Together we'll live the dream.« Notice the togetherness and the appeal to the emotions: before you decide if you are left or right, you need to beckon to the tribal code. This is another cheap message learned from the Americans (the first being »The war against terrorism«): before anything else you must love your heroes (your sons, brothers, co-workers, neighbors.).

Where is the opposition? Where did the left go? Obviously, many have returned to the sweet embrace of the consensus once the military incursion began (it's hard to be portrayed as a traitor of the tribe). This vast majority is at best a pragmatic left and an emotional right. It is disheartening to see the numbers at demonstrations. And even when large numbers arrive at the central square, the media pays no attention.

Several months ago there seemed to be renewed enthusiasm with the advent of the growing phenomenon of reserve officers refusing army assignments.³ The refusal has created a split between 1) the »moderate« left, which is trying not to upset anyone (without success - the left is hated by a large portion of Israelis and Palestinians alike), in the hope of gathering large numbers. Their demonstrations are organized, relatively large and boring (there always has to be at least one singer on stage, but why does he have to sing a translated Dylan song?!) and 2) an amalgam of Arab and Jewish peace groups, old-school leftists hand in hand with prop-heavy gay activists. These groups gather a smaller crowd, the demonstrations are quite chaotic, but the sentiment feels closer to a true response to an unjust war.

Of all the many groups that are currently active (and the many dozens of people who seem to now devote all their time to opposing the war) there is one group that stands out: Ta'ayush⁴: an Arab-Jewish partnership that mainly organizes solidarity convoys carrying food to villages, towns and refugee camps. Humanitarian acts as a means of protest is their approach. In the past months I've joined several of their convoys, seeing with my own eyes the Palestinian reality for the first time in years. Realizing that the waving children have never seen an Israeli that wasn't a settler or a soldier (that thought must be kept in mind to hush those other thoughts: »Aren't I just another patronizing westerner entering an underprivileged Third World village by car?«). The convoys have continued but the protests have grown larger (organized by a coalition of peace groups, many of them women's groups): marches outside Jenin and by the A-Ram checkpoint, the most violent protest to date.

The 3,000 protesters reached the A-Ram checkpoint outside of Ramallah on a rainy day, escorting donations of food and medicine to the besieged population. The crowd was mixed, the Palestinians angry, the army scared and vengeful. Some men were calling the women to lead the group and go and serve as a pacifying buffer. Other men just couldn't stay away from the action. I was just trying to get away from a group of women that was chanting »Give peace a chance« - this love and peace message (in English) felt extremely out of place. That is when tear gas and shock grenades were fired into the crowd, again and again and again. Since this was the second round of tear gas, we were already equipped with the protester's tear gas antidote: an onion (oh, the smell lingered for days).

Hovering over my small piece of onion as if my life depended on it, I could see grenade explosions all around, a stampede of people trying to run away and policemen hitting those who were trying to get away. Feet heavy and breathing hard, all I could think about was how quickly the veil of everyday life has been ripped to expose this ugly truth. But perhaps the uglier truth is how easy it is to restore it to its place.

 

 

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