What's New in Hebron

Thank you for continuing to check in with me. It's been several weeks since I last wrote and I apologize for disappearing. Sometimes I'm too busy to write, sometimes I'm away, sometimes I'm too tired and sometimes there's just nothing to write about. I am, however, committed to blogging so please don't give up on me, even if I'm on a short hiatus.

The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is always a quiet time for Israeli tourism and it's a good opportunity for us to recharge our batteries, rest and do things we normally don't have time to do. This week I went to the theater and took a field trip. Coincidentally, the subject of both activities was the city of Hebron, home of the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs and a veteran hotbed of Jewish-Arab tension. Forty families representing the most extreme kernel of right-wing religious Jewish settlers have made their homes in the heart of downtown Palestinian Hebron, instigating an extremely volatile situation rife with violence.

The Cave of the Machpela became the first Jewish real estate acquisition in the land of Israel when Abraham purchased it for the burial of his wife Sarah; thus, the Jewish connection to Hebron runs deep. In fact, the city retained a notable Jewish presence until 1929, when members of the community were massacred by Arab rioters and the remaining survivors fled for their lives. The current configuration pits a small group of blatantly racist Jewish religious fanatics against an entire municipal population of conservative, traditional Palestinians. Although the Jewish community of Hebron, including yeshiva students, numbers around four hundred souls, hundreds more Israeli soldiers are stationed in Hebron to protect the settlers, creating constant friction with the Palestinians.

The play, called "Hebron," attempted to depict the vicious cycle of violence between Arabs and Jews perpetuated by the nationalist struggles of both sides to stake their claim on the city. Beneath the story line ran a thread of irony suggesting that most of the people mired in the conflict are good, peace-loving souls. Without summarizing the plot I would describe this heavy production as theatre of the absurd, whereby the absurd they protrayed is actually the reality. It was the darkest, most depressing play I have ever seen.

Admittedly, the next day I was a bit apprehensive about visiting a place that crackles with so much danger, but very soon after arriving I understood that the separation between Jews and Palestinians there is so complete, including a physical concrete barrier running through the city and a massive military presence, that the city is eerily quiet.

Essentially, Hebron is the only Palestinian city in the West Bank with a Jewish settlement in its center and it is completely segregated. The Arabs are confined to the area of the city known as H1 and the Jews to H2, even though H2 was originally a Palestinian residential and commercial area. As a matter of fact, the main market street, Rehov HaShuahada, runs right through the Jewish section. Almost all the Palestinian families originally living and working there have been forced to abandon their homes and shops due to the relentless harassment from their Jewish neighbors. We saw the house of one of the two Arab families that has stubbornly insisted on remaining. Its entire exterior is covered with reinforced metal fencing to protect them from the stones their Jewish neighbors throw at them, effectively transforming their house into a giant cage.

Palestinians who need to access this area are forbidden to drive cars here and may only walk through. Since we arrived during a Moslem holiday when people typically spend the day visiting with family, we encountered hundreds of Palestinians making their way through the area on foot. Even more disturbing was the street where Palestinians are forbidden to walk at all - ostensibly to prevent friction, but an ugly mirror of Jewish humiliation in the not-so-distant past.

The facts are that Hebron is an important Jewish historic and religious site, and today a Palestinian city. Although most Israelis never visit Hebron it would be historically irresponsible to sever our connections to it. However, the Jewish ties to the city are currently defended by a gang of racist hooligans with dangerous messianic tendencies - the antithesis of the salt of the earth. They have destroyed any possiblity of compromise with the local Palestinian population and only fanned the flames of hatred. They are the worst possible emissaries and it is criminal to enable them to represent the state of Israel in Hebron. If we are truly interested in one day creating a teneble compromise in the city then every last member of the settler community must be forcibly removed from this absurd reality.

Then we drove home, and back in Israel Hebron slipped back into a forgotten reality.

Meanwhile, Back in the Middle East

Annapolis, Annapolis, that's all we've been hearing about for the past ten days. The media is obsessed: will they issue a joint statement, will the Arabs show, will they shake hands with us - endless conjecture that fills reams of newspapers and hours of airtime, day after day. The pundits' din is so loud that it's impossible to know what's really going to transpire there, although yesterday's cartoon in Haaretz said it all: Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen stand before the gate in an imposing wall around the Naval Academy, where the conference will take place. The balloon reads, "Let's ring the bell and run away!" Amos Biderman is a genius.



Amidst all the hype, here are a few things that happened here this week, most of which were not reported by the press:



-'Avodah Aravit,' (Arab Labor), a new tv show, premiered on prime time last Saturday night. Written by the Arab journalist Sayed Kashua (whose weekly column in Haaretz I have enjoyed for a long time and whose book I loved), it protrays an Israeli Arab who works as a reporter for Jewish newspaper and who is continually conflicted about his dual identity. Politically incorrect stereotypes abound on both sides and their portrayal seems to ironically serve the noble cause of political correctness. For example, the journalist's father berates him for being seen wearing a seatbelt in the village but when he is interviewed for a radio program on the subject of the unusually high rate of Arabs in traffic accidents he blames the state for neglecting the road infrastructure in Arab villages. It's clever and thought-provoking and just might have a chance at bringing us closer together by forcing us to laugh at ourselves.



-M., A close friend of mine from Jerusalem, flew out to Brazil recently to be with her sister, who was diagnosed with cancer. By the time she was able to book a flight her nerves were completely frazzled, so when she missed her connecting flight in Madrid by moments, she fell apart in the aiport. Weeping miserably in a chair at the locked gate, she was approached by a man who offered to help her. Despite her refusal of his assistance he accompanied her to the ticket counter, took care of her bags, arranged for a flight the next day and drove with her to the hotel. "He was like an angel who was sent to take care of me," M. explained breathlessly. When she finally calmed down enough to have a friendly conversation with him she asked where he was from.
"The West Bank," he said.
Tell that to the guys in Annapolis...



-A., a Palestinian Moslem, regaled me with the following story: at work he happened to walk by the secretary's desk when she was out and the phone was ringing. He answered it and attempted to help the young woman on the line. After discovering that the person she was seeking wasn't in, they kept talking.

"You have such a nice voice," she said to him. "Why don't you come and visit me at work?"

Never one to turn down an opportunity for a romantic adventure, A took directions and promised to come the next day.

"But don't be intimidated by my headcovering. I wear it, but I'm not committed to being a religious Moslem."

"That's okay," A. assured her. "I have a beard but I'm not committed either."

"Is it scratchy?" she inquired.

"No," said A. "I use conditioner."

For all those of you that thought the Hamas takeover was complete: Don't lose hope!

What's New in Gaza?

Yesterday the media reported undeniable signs of the breakdown of Hamas rule in Gaza. Deep fissures have appeared in the organization's hierarchy, with extremist elements shoving aside Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas International to dictate a hard line. This military wing of the organization is planning a Hamas takeover of the West Bank as well, while the 'moderates' evidently have concluded that the coup in Gaza was a huge mistake. Amidst all this intrigue Hamas fired directly into a crowd of 200,000 Fatah supporters who came out to commemorate the three-year anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death, killing at least seven people and wounding fifty-five.

Not a few in Israel are rubbing their hands maliciously over the disintigrating violence amongst the Palestinian factions, victorious in yet more resounding proof of the barbarity of our enemies. When Lebanese Christian Phalangists murdered Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila Menahem Begin famously quipped, "Goyim kill goyim and the Jews get blamed." Although violent infighting is a deeply ingrained aspect of Palestinian political culture, in this case we can conclude that "goyim kill goyim and the Jews pay the price." The chaos and violence in the Palestinian camp is not beneficial to Israel - on the contrary. The Palestinian leadership vacuum and the apparent inablity of our neighbors to put aside tribal, sectarian interests for far-reaching nationalist aspirations means we are further from an agreement than ever.

Some pundits in Israel are still awaiting the White Knight of Palestinian national redemption, a charismatic, powerful and pragmatic leader who will claw his way to the top of the Palestinian political heap and create order from the chaos and a political horizon from the bickering. Some say that if Israel would just release Marwan Barghouti from prison, he could do the job. When I read these desperate pleas I'm reminded of a conversation I had not long ago with a Palestinian associate of mine from work.
"Tell me," I entreated him, "Which Palestinian political figure do you most identify with?"
"Not a single one of them," he snarled. "They're all corrupt. The really honest ones are either forced out or killed."
When I asked him what the future held he just shrugged. If Palestinians cannot be idealistic about their own leadership then Israel is downright foolish to search for a light at the end of the tunnel. Leading the Palestinians is as simple as herding a collection of street-wise tomcats.

But what can the Israeli politicians say to the people who want a peace process, who are tired of living at war and willing to make considerable concessions? That there's no one to talk to? It makes us look bad, so we'll fly to Annapolis and and go through the motions of the political process, knowing all the while that what we pretend to accomplish there might end up causing more damage than the controlled inertia we have managed until now.

It's hard not to be cynical but I still retain a glimmer of optimism. Olmert's political butt is in a sling and he needs a significant achievement to erase the damage of the second Lebanon War. In addition, the American political window is narrowing. The Bush administration has been the warmest and most understanding of Israel in the history of the two countries' relations. Our prime minister views the waning days of this presidency as the last chance to achieve significant progress with American backing. Perhaps we will yet be surprised...

Sometimes the Light Flickers

It was hard to be a light unto the nations this week. Almost every day a new dilemma arises requiring difficult decisions to be made. A kassam rocket hit a main power line in Sderot and knocked out the town's electricity for several hours. How ironic that this accidental direct hit came in the midst of an ongoing discussion about retaliatory measures for the constant rocket fire coming from the Gaza Strip. The long-suffering residents of Sderot have advocated erasing the town of Bet Hanun from the map: if they're going to torture us, we'll make them even more miserable than we are. Base human instinct demands eye-for-an-eye justice but the rational, moral voice always takes the upper hand. It is at once laughable and commendable that while Hamas bombards us from schoolyards day after day our generals are knocking their heads against the wall trying to come up with another creative suggestion for punishing the Gazans because the lawyers have concluded that flipping the switch on Palestinian electricity doesn't comply with international law. Our uncompromising moral standards are a small comfort to a family whose house has absorbed a direct hit by a kassam rocket, but do we have a choice?

It's also the enemies from within that force us to agonize. Recently a court ruled that Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin twelve years ago, is entitled, like any other prisoner serving a life sentence, to hold the circumcision ceremony of his newborn son in jail. Appallingly, the ceremony took place on November 4th, the exact day that Amir murdered Rabin. On the news we saw the family arrive at the prison , the assassin's brother brandishing an arrogant smile and the 'v' for victory sign for the cameras. When Amir held that child in his arms, it was as if his deed had gone unpunished. The hunger for vengeance demands that the child should suffer, so his father will suffer in turn. The ultimate desire for true justice will never allow this to happen.

Everyone with an opinion is screaming at the top of his lungs to make his voice heard. The media are all over everything and the pundits always play the devil's advocate. What should we do? Which decision is the right one? What are the long-term implications?

Who in his right mind would ever choose to be prime minister of this country?

My Children's Journey

Sunday night at 1:30 am we delivered our two girls to the departure point for their class trip to Poland, an educational journey now de rigeur for Israeli high school students. I must admit I have mixed feelings about this trip, beginning with the cost. For many Israeli families $1100.00 is simply out of reach, and although scholarships are available this trip is clearly not an equal opportunity educational experience.


My kids were excited, but mostly about going abroad with their friends. I suppose it's a bit unrealistic to hope they'd be looking forward to the powerful emotional experience that awaits them and the deepening of their committment to the Jewish people that will surely follow. They're teenagers, after all. What most concerns them is how many outfits they can cram into the suitcase and still make the weight limit, or who gets to wear the penguin hat.


We were asked not to send the kids with more than $150 spending money each. Beats me why they need so much cash - what is there to buy in that gray, ecomically emerging country that we don't have here in Israel? And anyway, this is not a shopping trip. I can't stomach the idea of buying souvenirs from a place where memorials and death camps are the only mementos of Jewish existence.


The kids were well prepared by the educational team running the trip; they had seminars and special classes throughout the weeks preceding the departure. However, Benny and I decided to supplement their preparation with an assignment of our own. We asked our girls to interview their grandfather, who was born in Poland and lived through the Holocaust. We asked them to prepare a list of questions that would familiarize them with his personal story, since he has never actually spoken to them about his experiences. He shared happily and lovingly.

They learned he had six brothers and sisters and that he became an athiest at age twelve; that when the war broke out the extended family of twenty souls lived together in one apartment in the ghetto and most of them were rounded up and sent to the gas chambers at Treblinka. They learned that the Nazis killed his eleven-year-old brother before his eyes for stealing potatoes, and that he took his shoes before burying him, even thought they were too small. They learned that he managed to jump from a cattlecar with his one surviving brother to spend the rest of the war hiding in the forests.

Benny's persona has been deeply influenced by his father's experiences. He has little desire to seek out the landscapes of his father's childhood, but the approach of the girls' trip brought up a wellspring of emotions. He expressed his conflicted feelings beautifully in a letter the parents were asked to write, to be delivered to the kids midway through the trip.

"You are on your way to a journey that I, your father, have taken in a different form," he began. He spoke about growing up without any grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins from his father's side; about his parents' reluctance to allow him to serve in the army; about his father's experiences as the source of his Zionism.
"Your feet are treading on ground soaked with the blood of dozens of members of your family and three million of your people. It's hard to imagine the depth of evil that can turn people into monsters. It's difficult to find the strength and desire to live and love and build after you've been to hell. I hope this journey will help you understand from where you've come and to where you will return."

Teenagers are very emotional creatures. The magnitude of what they will encounter in Poland will surely affect them deeply. Hopefully they will return home with a new awareness of their identity as Jews, as Israelis and as human beings.

The Death of Optimism

Condoleeza Rice's upcoming peace conference in Annapolis was of far less interest to me this week than the fact that there was no room in the airport parking lot for my bus when I arrived to pick up my first group of the fall tourist season. After seven long, lean economic years it appears that the seven fat ones are on the doorstep. Of course, it could all go down the drain with one suicide bombing or military incursion but we've learned to live with that shadow of ephemerality hanging behind us.

I used to follow the reports on imminent summits and peace talks with great anticipation. Maybe this time there will be a breakthrough! Maybe this time the iceberg will shift! Maybe this time the leaders will make history! I remember well my disbelief and bitter disappointment after the Camp David talks between Barak and Arafat fell apart, and then the Taba talks after that, and then the outbreak of the Intifada, and then, and then, and then. I finally decided that it was too punishing to be an optimist and gave up hoping that the New Middle East was just on the horizon. Instead, I'm resigned. That's not the same as being a pessimist - rather, it's a worn out, threadbare version of optimism. It means I've accepted the fact that while the conflict is resolvable in theory, in practice both sides suffer from a dearth of quality leadership, at times in tandem and at times alternately. It means I've lowered my expectations from a possibility that everyone will rise to a historical occasion to the probability that only coercion and force will instigate change. I have no more patience for peace conferences. Call me if there's any good news. Meantime, I'll be busy working.

It's not just me. The seven lean years have affected us all. Today I met my friend Hussam, a Palestinian bus driver. He's got a brand new bus and a steady source of well-paid work from an Israeli guide who really likes him. "It's great," he told me. "The only problem with these groups is that they're all pro-Israel. I pick up an Indonesian group at the Egyptian border and they're already singing 'Heveinu Shalom Aleicheim' when they get on the bus." He smiled at me. "What am I gonna do? I just shut up and drive."

What would Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen say about this devil-may-care attitude, while they're busting their butts to save their political careers as they hurl us all through this last window of opportunity? If I could, I'd ask them to wait outside my bus in the morning, as the tourists are loading up in front of the hotel. There's an Arab kid there selling Jerusalem beaded bags and ten caps for ten dollars. He's blond and scruffy, with buck teeth, and he's ubiquitous - he pops up in parking lots all over the city, each time with different merchandise. He's probably about seventeen but he's been buzzing around for years now, hustling whatever he can sell from bus to bus, indefatiguable. I always assumed he was from a poor family, coming out to work at such a young age and looking a little neglected. But today I noticed something surprising about him - he had braces on his teeth! Whether he's an orphan who's been saving up diligently all these years for orthodontia or whether his parents finally decided to do something about his teeth, it wouldn't have been possible without the upsurge in tourism.

So for those headed to Annapolis, think well before you pull anything dramatic. We don't really expect you to change the Middle East, make peace or even demonstrate significant progress. Just steer the ship on an even keel. Keep it quiet enough around here so that a body can make a living. We've all got kids that need new computers, a school trip to concentration camps in Poland and straight teeth. Let us work quietly. It's the least you can do for us.

The Holidays Are Over

Finally! The questionably normal pace of life is back on track now that Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot are safely behind us. Although the holidays were intended as a source of joy the non-stop cooking, endless overeating, hoardes of Israelis crowding the tourist sites and the round robin of teenagers alternating between the couch facing the television and the computer can certainly test one's ability to celebrate.

Jerusalem was overrun, as usual. Benny and I took advantage of the single quiet day on Yom Kippur to go for a bike ride. Keep in mind that Yom Kippur is national bike riding day in Israel thanks to the complete absence of vehicles on the road during those hallowed twenty-five hours. As soon as the last crumbs have been wiped from the chins of those feasting on the final meal the streets fill up with kids on roller blades, skate boards, scooters, bicycles and anything else with wheels that parents forbid kids to ride in traffic. Since I rediscovered the bicycle this summer my husband was excited to introduce me to the daily ride he usually takes to work, along one of the few bike paths in Jerusalem. He warned me that the way there was mostly uphill but that we would coast back on the return trip. We set out in the appropriate gear and pumped along a decent incline until we reached the Monastery of the Cross.

After a brief respite via Sacher Park we mounted the last low hill through the backstreets of Nahlaot, cutting over Jaffa Road towards the tv building. Concentrating intently on managing my energy for those inclines, I didn't realize Benny was leading us straight into Dosland - one of the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods adjacent to his office. Breathing heavily, I suddenly found myself, in sleeveless black spandex, penetrating a gaggle of frum women and children congregated on the sidewalk. If the intrusion of two indecently dressed heathens wasn't insulting enough, my thoughtful husband rang his bell - after all, he didn't want anyone to get run over. I waited for the insults or the stones to come raining down on us but surprisingly, no one said a word. I suppose that on Yom Kippur, all is forgiven.

During Sukkot I escaped to other venues. A friend and I spent a day in Tel Aviv, wandering some of the original neighborhoods of the city, a subject which intrigues me more and more. We learned about the founders of Tel Aviv, mapped out a touring route, discovered some local artists and lunched on dim sum. The pulse of Tel Aviv is impossible to ignore, throbbing everywhere with people eating at outdoor food bars serving exotic fare, walking the boulevards and just keeping rhythm with the pace of the city. The average age of the people on the streets is more characteristic of a college campus than a large metropolis. It's a wonderfully exhuberant city but the humidity spoils it all. One is never without a sheen of sweat, twenty-four, non-stop hours a day. The one thing they can never take from us in Jerusalem is the weather. We returned home wistfully but resolutely.

Our other jaunt was a visit to a dear friend in Shoham, a small town started from scratch about fifteen years ago near the airport on obsolete agricultural fields . Conveniently situated in the suburban sprawl of Tel Aviv, the town has served as a magnet for up-and-coming middle class Israeli families and has grown rapidly to about 25,000 inhabitants. However, it still retains a small town atmosphere and our friends invited us to the annual Muses of Sukkot festival, held in the large public park. After waiting a quarter of an hour at the entrance to the city to go through security we made our way through the crowds towards a free performance by a well-known Israeli dance troupe. A relatively short distance, it took ages to reach our destination because our friend kept stopping to chat with people she knows along the way. The dancers were young and, well, not terribly inspiring. We moved on to a small tent to find places for the circus acts performance, which promised to be exciting. Twenty minutes early, we procured excellent spots on the ground right in front of the stage and proceeded to wait while the tent filled up with over-achieving, bourgeois Jewish parents determined to ensure an unobstructed view for their whining, bratty kids. The family next to us had a pizza delivered to the tent and we looked on enviously as they ate with gusto. Finally, the palm of a hand appeared from behind the curtain and a clown emerged to begin the show. The music was great but somehow, the only thing that got moving were the vertebrae in our spines as we contorted our bodies to relieve our aching backs. Benny threatened to walk out in the middle and my teenaged daughters, who didn't exactly come along willingly, informed us that we were done for the evening. I was the last person who would argue with them.

Our final outing was to the beach. We ended the holiday with our toes in the sand after bathing in warm, gentle waves and watched the sun go down over the Mediterranean. Life is back to normal, including my morning access to the computer that I missed so much. But alas, it may not be over yet. The teachers are threatening a three-month strike, starting tomorrow (they had to go back to school today - otherwise they wouldn't be paid for the vacation). I can't say I'm excited about having the kids back at home again. Where is the state responsible for educating my children? Visit me next week to find out what desperate measures hundreds of thousands of Jewish parents will take to keep their kids in school. Meantime, pray for us...

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Each summer I look forward to buckling the safety belt in my space ship and returning to my planet of origin, the state of New York. Accessible in under a mere twelve hours, this alternate universe is a source of great spiritual juvenation for my Israel-weary soul. Amongst my chief pleasures are the daily education of the morning New York Times, the no-questions-asked, full-refund return policy in all the stores at the mall and bike-riding along the Hudson River on a flat path beneath the gentle rays of the sun. (This year, honorable mention goes to the Orangetown Jewish Center for Adon Olam sung to the tune of "The Sloop John B.")
An environment as relaxing and as nurturing as this one often spurs a reconnection to my American Jewish roots which, although impossible to deny, are often eclipsed by the dominant Israeli reality in which I've chosen to make my home.
A book which brought me back deep into my native milieu this summer was "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," an enormously entertaining concoction by Michael Chabon who, although only in his mid-forties, retains a hard-core Jewish sensibility uncommon to our generation. His story tells of a classical noir detective in search of a murderer in a fictional Jewish colony established in Alaska after World War II. Chabon masterfully marries the Jewish and the American, infusing a well-worn literary genre with a zany but believable cast of Yiddish-speaking characters representing the best and the worst of the Chosen People. Only trueblood members of the American subset of the Mosaic tribe possess the keys to unlock the full meaning behind the cultural innuendos and sly one-liners that pad the story line. To read it is to feel part of an exclusive, clandestine club formerly persumed doomed to extinction but now revealed to be alive and well.

Another powerful reminder of my roots this summer came in the death notice of Carolyn Goodman, a lifelong activist who was arrested at a protest against the police killing of an unarmed immigrant in New York when she was eighty-three years old. Perhaps more notably, Carolyn was the mother of Andrew. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were two Jewish young men from New York who travelled to the southern United States in the summer of 1964 to help register black voters. Together with James Cheney, a black Mississipian, all three were abducted, murdered and buried in a dam by the Ku Klux Klan. Although the principal perpetrator was acquitted by an all-white jury in the '60s, the case sparked the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Despite its shocking and tragic end, I believe the journey of those two boys represents the quintessential expression of being Jewish in America: the privilege and the duty to ensure freedom and equality for all those as oppressed and unfortunate as the Jewish people once was before arriving in this great country. I find their story to be a source of continuous pride and an inspirational example of the fulfillment of the responsibility of being Jewish.

Where do we come from, and where do we go? My last story took place over a trip with my two oldest childhood friends. We drove way into upstate New York, to the Finger Lakes region, to spend a weekend hiking, boating and touring. One night we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast deep in the countryside near Ithaca. Hundreds of miles from New York City and set back from a lonely country road, the inn was as remote from my regular world as I thought possible. The house, decorated in classic Victorian style, was built on land that came into the owner's family at the time of the American Revolution. The proprietress, an elegant older woman, served a breakfast of apple pancakes, sausages and homemade blueberry bread by candlelight. We learned that she and her mother had both grown up in this home, but it turned out that she had a daughter living in Jerusalem, just a few blocks away from me! Here's her story:

The innkeeper, the mother of three boys and five girls, flew to Israel a number of years ago on business and took her youngest daughter with her, who was then nineteen. Attractive and outgoing, the daughter made friends quickly with Israelis her age she met in Jerusalem and was out with them each day, returning to the hotel around ten in the evenings. On their last day in Jerusalem she met a soldier on guard duty at Damascus Gate. When she finally arrived back at one am she informed her mother that she was in love and that she was staying in Israel. (And her mother let her!) The husband was Jewish, of middle-eastern background and early in the relationship they argued frequently about Yeshua (Jesus, in Hebrew). Then one day the husband had a religious experience, converted to Christianity and has since become a preacher in the church. All this, within minutes of my house on Gelber Street. Who knew?

There's no place like home...

Summer Recess

This will be my final posting before taking a hiatus for what promises to be an insanely busy summer. Israel will soon be overrun with tourists but their presence won't have any effect on upcoming political developments. Here are the hot issues of the summer that I will be monitoring (although chances are good that by the time I resume posting in late September, most of them will be old news):
The Labor Party Primaries - Monday's five-way contest left Ehud Barak and Ami Ayalon in the final run-off in two weeks' time. Both winning candidates were pictured on the front page of Haaretz with one of their their parents, 89 and 92 years of age, who dutifully deposited their respective votes in kibbutz ballot boxes. This was an interesting juxtaposition - what can we learn from it? That the kibbutz movement has produced many of the country's current leaders and thus continues to shape Israel's future even though the kibbutz itself is not long for this world? That both Ayalon and Barak have strong longevity genes and will remain on the political scene for many years to come, whether we like it or not? Or maybe that life expectancy on kibbutz is longer, as long as you stay out of politics? Or perhaps just that the parents of famous politicians are like all other Jewish mothers and fathers who like to brag about their children.
I can't say I feel strongly about either of them. Barak has a brilliant mind and has accumulated a decent amount of experience in politics but he's arrogant and not a team player. Ayalon seems promising, but how many times have we been disappointed in a new leader? His detractors say he's as left-wing as Yossi Beilin, as inexperienced as Amir Peretz and as nasty as Ehud Barak. Sounds like a winning combination, huh? Still, there's an impressive cleanliness about him - maybe that's because he looks like Mr. Clean (but without the earring).
Speaking of Amir Peretz, he made a very impressive showing in the primaries, considering all of the abuse he's been taking since the war last summer. As bad as things look for him as leader of the party it is clear he will remain a powerful presence in the Labor party because he has an extremely solid power base. Keep an eye on him...
The Gaza Strip - This cursed little pinpoint on the globe is the root of most of our problems at the moment. For starters, the captive soldier Gilad Shalit is still being held here for what is close to one year, and the longer he's there the more complicated his release grows.
Secondly, the rockets continue to rain down on Sderot and its environs and no one has a remedy for the matter. Clearly, the only sure way to put a stop to the launchings is to reoccupy Gaza, which means lots of casualties, a price no one is willing to pay as long as most of the rockets do not result in direct hits on civilians. Meanwhile, Sderot is one big bubbling cauldron of traumatic stress disorder and no one has offered a solution to protect them. This is a classic example of the futility of Israel's military advantage. Levi Eshkol called it "Samson the nebech."
Lastly, the chaos in Gaza and the internecine fighting between Fatah and Hamas have grown so out of hand that Israeli journalists report that many Gazans are praying for Israel to invade and restore the old order there. The Palestinian leadership is paralyzed for a variety of reasons, and while some enjoy gloating over their misfortune, ultimately the situation is bad for us, too. Who will save the Palestinians from themselves? Can't see a savior on the horizon.

The future here remains, as always, completely unpredictable. Who can say what the summer will bring - war, peace, the continued suspension between the two? If anything earth-shattering happens (i.e. an event that sends all the tourists home and puts me out of work) I will be back on the blog, reporting. If all stays quiet I will resume writing in late September after my vacation in New York. Wishing you all a quiet and uneventful summer!

Reflections on United Jerusalem

Last week we marked the fortieth anniversary of the reunification of east and west Jerusalem in the Six Day War, an occasion perhaps more worthy of contemplation than celebration. Interestingly, most of the festive ceremonies planned to commemorate the occasion were cancelled due to an enormous freak downpour that flooded the city's streets and sent everyone scurrying for high ground. It was hard not to wonder if this un-seasonal cloudburst was some sort of signal indicating our hubris level had spiked into a forbidden zone.

United Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people and, with a population of 732,000, it's the largest city in Israel. Yet, most Israelis do not want to live here (78%, according to a recent survey). Do they know something I, a longtime resident of this city, don't?

Perhaps it's the Arabs – all 200,000 of them, over there in the wild West Bank part of the city (funny, I didn’t notice any festivities taking place on their side of town last week). It's true that in the halcyon days of the first Intifada the east Jerusalem Palestinians led their nation in stone throwing, rioting and stabbings on a nationalistic basis. Our nostalgia for those days grew poignant during the second Intifada, when you couldn't walk down Jaffa Road without dodging a suicide bomber or shrapnel from an exploding bus. For years Jerusalem has been stigmatized as a dangerous locale even though similar horrors have taken place in numerous other cities in Israel.

What most people don’t know is that the Arabs of east Jerusalem have become extremely sophisticated. You live with the Jews long enough and you learn to play their games. Case in point A: Omar at the medical clinic, in front of me in line. He claims a woman called his home to confirm his appointment but the secretary has no record of it and tells him he'll have to reschedule. Omar ratchets up the volume a few decibels. "You people are all the same. You think you can lie to me because I'm an Arab. You just want to give my appointment to a Jew." A little Jewish guilt works like a charm. He got shown in straight to the doctor.

Case in point B: Zakaria, a taxi driver who drove me to Tel Aviv the other day. "My son was one of two Arabs in an Israeli-German delegation visiting the Western Wall. The security guard ordered them to stay out while everyone else went in because they were Arabs. Not only did the other members refuse to go in, but I called my friend, a well-known journalist, who published the story in the newspaper the next day. You should have seen the headline!"
Boy, he sure showed us. Any Arab who successfully manipulates the tools of democracy to advance his own interests is welcome in my city any day.

Personally, I think the real reason Israelis shudder at the thought of living in Jerusalem is the dossim, that wonderfully derogatory term for the ultra-orthodox. In bygone days when they represented a fairly negligible slice of the municipal population their communities were considered quaint and picturesque, but in recent years they have morphed into a demographic tidal wave that is threatening to take over the city. Regardless of secular Jerusalemites' intellectual and moral superiority over other Israelis, unavoidably the majority sets the tone and the ultras are rapidly becoming the majority in this city. Even as the temptations of modernity force them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, they still cling fiercely to the shtetl mentality. Their values, their aspirations, the way they educate their children and their (anti-)vision of the Jewish state are completely foreign to me. We share nothing in common and they cast an extremely threatening shadow over the future of Jerusalem as a modern, enlightened and efficient city.

Granted, in the eyes of many Jerusalem has always been problematic. Isolated by an unforgiving landscape of treacherous ravines, it always lay out of the limits of visitors and invaders entering from the coast. Pioneers of the early Zionist movement wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole for all that it represented, and even those who did choose to settle here seemed, well…different. In A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz says, "In Jerusalem people always walked rather like mourners at a funeral, or latecomers at a concert…But Tel Aviv – wow! The whole city was one big grasshopper. The people leaped by, so did the houses, the streets, the squares, the sea breeze, the sand, the avenues, and even the clouds in the sky."

Tel Aviv has undeniably grown on me recently. What for years seemed like a collection of shapeless buildings with crumbling plaster and stifling humidity lately has revealed its hidden charm to me and reinvented itself as a city of character, with unique architecture and new takes on Judaism. Yet, I still can't see myself living there, although I'm not sure why.

So I turned to some of my fellow secular Jerusalemites for inspiration, asking them to explain, in a few lines, why they still live here. Much to my surprise, only one hemmed and hawed; the others responded unequivocally about their passion for this city. Almost all remarked on its unique beauty; several mentioned the weather. The ethnic, cultural and religious diversity figured prominently: one person noted that Jerusalem offers the most alternatives for non-orthodox Jewish observance, and another remarked that crossing a street here can be like crossing a border between countries. But the strongest sentiment was the sense of connection one feels in Jerusalem between our history and the contemporary reality of life in Israel. Virtually every important issue is played out in some form in Jerusalem, and many of us thrive on that difficult energy. Our location at the pulsing epicenter of Israel heightens our awareness of the fascinating history that unfolds here every day; therefore we think we are smarter, more down-to-earth and more values-oriented than our compatriots from the sweaty, superficial coastal plain.

I can hear the guffaws rising over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and floating upwards on the Highway 1 current. Seventy eight percent still think we're crazy for staying in Jerusalem, and who knows? Maybe they're right. But then again, here's a typical Jerusalem weekday morning from this week:

In the car on the way to school my girls went over their notes for the final exam on Jewish Thought. They discussed different visions of the world and compared John Lennon's ideal from 'Imagine,' where there are no countries, borders or religions, to Yeshayahu Leibowitz's affirmation of the positive nature of the Tower of Babel story, noting he said it is preferable for everyone to think independently, even it means there will be bloodshed in the world. Listening to them I wished myself back into tenth grade at Tali Bet Hinuch high school, just so I could participate in the discussion.
Wistfully I continued to the gym at the YMCA. As I approached the building I heard a loud noise from the King David hotel across the street. A large crowd was gathered in the entrance and as I grew closer I could see several television cameras and large microphones dangling overhead. A few musicians dressed in classic middle eastern garb were playing darbuka drums and someone was blowing a shofar. Suddenly, a figure appeared from within the knot of people. It was a kid, about thirteen years old, in a fancy suit and a kippa. Noting it was Monday, I realized this cacophonous production was actually a bar mitzvah and they were probably on their way to the Western Wall. A well-to-do Jewish family had come all the way to Jerusalem with an enormous entourage to celebrate their son's first Torah reading at the fanciest hotel in town. A sublime co-mingling of ancient tradition, historical framing and twenty-first century hoo-hah.

Where else, but Jerusalem?

The Winograd Aftermath

The publication last week of the Winograd Committee's interim report on the second Lebanon war has sparked a raucous free-for-all of political punditry and prophecies of doom. The accusations and rebuttals have formed a cloud of verbiage so dense over the land that for seven days and seven nights the sun barely broke through. Although the democratic value inherent in this Monday morning quarterbacking exercise is of prime importance, it's hard to draw definitive conclusions from so much information. Here are a few of my muddled musings based on what I have seen, read and heard so far. All are subject to change.

1. Ehud Olmert is dead meat. I look at him and I see Houdini, straightjacketed in a sealed trunk weighted down by cannon balls, plumetting to the murky depths. It will take a miracle to see him finagle the keys and emerge on the surface alive, but stranger things have happened in the Middle East. It's interesting to remember the wall-to-wall consensus about going to war after the kidnapping of two soldiers and the imperative of regaining our deterrent capability, because the Winograd Committee seems to think this was an unnecessary war. Olmert inherited a problematic situation vis a vis Lebanon: a policy of restraint was in effect on our northern border since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 in order to avoid opening a second front. This enabled Hezbollah to camp out right under our noses. In addition, most of our military resources were invested in dealing with the urban warfare necessary to deal with terrorists. The army has not trained for the conventional warfare required last summer in quite some time, which put it a great disadvantage. Should he be blamed for that? Evidently, yes.

The committee also condemned Olmert for not thinking independently of the Chief of Staff of the army, who bullied him and everyone else into accepting his directives. Defense minister Amir Peretz, on the other hand, was criticized for not surrounding himself with sufficient army professionals to make up for his complete lack of experience. I'm no fan of Olmert but it appears the cross was cut the moment the first soldier died; all that remained after the war was over was the choice of nails. Israelis are very busy searching for a cure for cancer and floating start-ups; we don't want to go to war because life is too good even in this godforsaken neighborhood to send our sons to die. That is, of course, unless it's a deluxe war, id est a war where no one gets hurt - which is what they promised us in the beginning. Was the removal of Hezbollah from our northern border and the deployment of the Lebanese army in its place worth the deaths of 160 soldiers? Did we salvage our deterrent capability? Could it have successfully been done differently? Who the hell knows.

2.The removal of Ehud Olmert from the political leadership will not resolve anything because there is no one capable of filling the position of prime minister waiting in the wings. If Olmert goes, who will we get? All the opinion polls show that if elections were held tomorrow Bibi Netanyahu would win by a landslide, which makes me think that the people of Israel choose the leaders they deserve. The last thing we need right now is a shallow, pompous blowhard with a reactionary political agenda in the driver's seat. (If he gets in I'm relinquishing my Israeli passport and moving to an island in the Galapagos where there's no television reception. I'll write blog entries about giant turtles and survival of the fittest and pretend I can't hear Israel imploding.)
So, who are the other options? Every new leader from the Labor party since Rabin's assassination has been a colossal disappointment, including Amram Mitzna , Ehud Barak and Amir Peretz. Despite a wealth of talented individuals the party has been miserably unsuccessful in creating a leadership constellation that can effectively deal with its own back-biting politics and the major issues of the country. Tzipi Livni? Yet another well-meaning but inexperienced politician. Shimon Peres? He's eighty-five years old - forget it.
We need a giant and the horizon is empty of imposing shadows. Perhaps we can take consolation in the fact that both Tony Blair and George Bush are, to differing degrees, in the same boat as Olmert. All the western leaders up against those tricky Muslim fundamentalists are being criticized for involving their nations in losing battles. In truth, no one knows what the hell to do with them.

3. There's probably going to be another war. The Winograd report was so damning that the only way Israel can rectify all the failures of last summer is to go for another round. We won't stop until we wipe the smirk off Hassan Nasrallah's face and show those Arabs who's the boss. Hopefully, this time they'll wait until after the tourist season is over...

Our Old Fridge

After sixteen years our old Amana was noisy and hinting it was ready to retire. Not wanting to hustle for a new refrigerator while our dairy products curdled on the countertop, a few weeks ago we bought a sleek side-by-side number with the freezer on the bottom and a stainless steel finish. After we positioned it in the kitchen and admired it long enough, we wheeled the old one outside and deliberated what to do with it.

Benny wanted to sell it. "How much is it worth?" I queried. "A few hundred shekels? Let's give it away to someone who needs it." We agreed to put an ad in the paper; if no one bit we would find a worthy recipient. A few people called, one or two came by but in the end there were no takers. Meantime, we could barely squeeze past it to get in the front door and I was feeling like my space was infringed on. I pushed - it's a mitzva to give it to a needy family. Who should it be?

We both agreed that it won't be a charity organization. Although they all do important work, in Jerusalem most of the furniture and appliances donated to them wind up in the homes of ultra-orthodox families. With all due respect to their poverty, it is a lifestyle of choice for them. The ultra-orthodox opt to have extremely large families and to choose a lifetime of study over earning a living. The meager salaries that their overworked wives bring in can't possibly support families of this size adequately and they have developed into an extraordinary burden on the rest of us who work hard and pay taxes. And that's without mentioning that they're not even Zionists. They're definitely not getting my fridge.

"Let's call Haled," Benny suggested. Haled is a Palestinian of Bedouin origin who renovated our first apartment. A former policeman in the Bethlehem district, when the first intifada broke out in 1987 he quit his job for fear of being accused of collaborating with the Israelis and reinvented himself as a construction worker. A conscientious craftsman and a warm, genuine individual, we have remained in touch for many years even though Haled no longer has a permit to work in Israel and has fallen on hard times. We dialed his number the day after Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. The joy in his voice was palpable when he heard Benny.

"Happy Independence Day!" he called out.

Now friends, please understand that there are very few Palestinians who would use the words 'happy' and 'Israeli Independence Day' in the same sentence, let alone pronounce them with wishes of good tidings to their Jewish neighbors. For them, 'Israeli Independence Day' is synonymous with 'catastrophe.' It's something they say and then spit venomously.

So, how to explain Haled's heartfelt greeting? Nostalgia, I guess. A yearning for the days when there was no border between Israel and the West Bank, when everyone moved freely from one area to the other and a regular person could make a good, honest living to support his family. It is, of course, the nostalgia of a pragmatist - one who sees a certain futility in the years of struggle between the two sides, one who values economics over a complicated and problematic national liberation. One who views the birth of the Jewish state as the best thing to ever have happened around here. One in a million, maybe.

Now granted, Haled is a unique individual. He has great affinity for his Jewish neighbors, perhaps because he suspects his family has Jewish roots. During the worst years of the second Intifada he earned a few pennies by giving Hebrew lessons to people in Zaatra, his village. He's a good man. He loves us, and we love him. He was thrilled to receive the refrigerator and I was thrilled to be able to give it to him. (Hopefully it won't expire in the near future).

He couldn't come into Israel to pick it up so he sent some friends with entry permits.
"Haled sends his warmest regards," they said before they hoisted the fridge into the truck and drove away. Although the fridge appeared empty, it was really packed full with all of our best wishes, intentions and hopes.

Israel's 59th

Israeli Independence Day is my most favorite holiday on the Jewish calendar, so I'm always faced with a dilemma about working now. Invariably I find myself out on the road somewhere in Israel with a group, observing the rituals with host communities when I 'd really rather be at home in front of the television, steeping in the ceremonial services that so powerfully represent the reality of the modern Jewish state. This is particularly true for Memorial Day, which proceeds Independence Day. After the ceremony in the evening the tv channels are filled with stories about fallen combat soldiers and their families. While these programs are difficult to watch, they serve to directly connect those of us fortunate enough not to know bereavement with the haunting pain of those in Israel who have lost family members in war. These moments of visceral empathy deeply strengthen our connection to one another and perhaps are most palpable during the sounding of the memorial siren. As a native of a country 300 million strong, I am intrigued anew each year by the idea that an entire nation stops what it's doing to stand together for two minutes of silence in memory of fallen soldiers. Americans could never perform this feat - they're too disunited over too many issues. In fact, the same could be said about Israelis: is there any one thing we can all agree on? Standing in the middle of a busy street and watching everyone suddenly stand at attention when the siren begins to wail at eleven o'clock, I'm reminded that the acknowledgement of the terrible price we pay in order to be here is in fact the single idea that unites all Israelis.

I got a good dose of ceremoniality this year because I accompanied my group to the national service that marks the transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day. Broadcast live from Mount Herzl, only a few thousand guests can actually attend, so it's a treat to be there with the diplomatic invitees, the hot-shot Israeli politicians and all the other well-connected Israelis who wangle tickets. Last night as we were about to leave I discovered we had three extra tickets. I quickly called my husband and two daughters and told them to meet us at the entrance. I had to work hard to convince the girls, as they were still getting over their disappointment over missing a big concert near Tel Aviv . (The bus was meant to get back to Jerusalem at 4:30 am, which I was not happy about. My fellow Americans, Israeli teenagers keep obscenely late hours so we are constantly battling with them about what time to be home when they go. This time my husband convinced me we should give them a little slack and I reluctantly agreed. What a shame the tickets were all sold out!) I finally convinced them to come but they found seats a few rows away from us and pretended they were by themselves.

The ceremony follows the same formula every year and is an unusual bastion of formality in a culture that prides itself on informality. The army standards and the marching color guard, the speech by the speaker of the Knesset and the citizens chosen to light the torches are all beloved and respected symbols of Israel's sovereignty. Watching them each year reassures me that we are a member-in-good-standing of the club of normal, stately nations, although I'm always on the lookout for unique glimmers of Israeli-ness within the ceremoniality. This year I admired the female members of the Knesset Guard, who marched past us in above-the-knee skirts, strappy sandals and uzi submachine guns, and the Israeli war veterans dance troupe, who participated in the over-the-top, musical finale on their wheelchairs.

With all due respect to George Washington and the United State of America, the Fourth of July celebrations never moved me in the way that Israeli Independence Day does. The joy here is so real that I can reach out and touch it - and I do.

Lunch at Maxim's

Yesterday we took a drive up to Haifa with my mother to meet some friends of hers who live in the Galilee. After taking in the spectacular views from the top of Mount Carmel, all sixteen of us piled into our cars and reconvened for lunch at Maxim's restaurant at the bottom of the hill, overlooking the Mediterranean. Although this restaurant, a cooperative venture between Jews and Christian Arabs, is a popular eatery and the favorite hangout of the local soccer team, it is a household name in Israel thanks to a female Palestinian suicide bomber who detonated herself here on October 4, 2003, killing twenty-one people and wounding fifty-one.

It was impossible not to flashback to those dark, horrendous days as we ascended the steps into the restaurant. A security guard with an orange vest scanned each of us diligently with a detector wand, a procedure now waived by most of the complacent watchmen at the entrances to public places. "Keep up the good work," I nearly said, but then remembered that almost every customer that crosses the threshold here probably has a few words of advice and encouragement for the man responsible for our safety.

Throughout the meal I found myself imagining the scene moments before the explosion a few times, but mostly it was an ordinary gathering, with plates passed around, children tended to and snatches of conversation bouncing between the adults. A baby cried long enough for us to remark on the disturbance, and then was whisked out by his young mother. The younger children took turns on the empty seat at the adults' end of the table. The waiter brought a missing entree. All in all, an unremarkable experience.

Three and a half years after that infamous bombing and life has returned to normal. Israelis eat in restaurants, ride on public transportation and live lives that aspire to normalcy. Our experts have contained a grave threat to the personal safety of the citizens of the state impressively, and although our enemies never desist from their efforts to renew the violence, a certain kind of victory is evident here. The economy is flourishing, tourists are returning and the resilience gleams from every corner like specks of a broken vessel.

Yet, it's difficult to feel optimistic about the future. There are encouraging signals emanating from our neighbors but a realistic path toward resolution of the conflict is not yet in sight. Abba Even once said that even the absence of war here is an accomplishment, but somehow this tense quiet is not reassuring. With belligerent Hamas in control and an Israeli government wracked by scandals it's hard to imagine any serious progress on the road to where we all want to be.

But then again, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will peace be rushed. It will amble along when it's good and ready, perhaps taking us all by surpise. In fact, it could be any day now...

It's Passover Again

Living in Israel, it's impossible to ignore the crescendo of passover mania as the holiday grows closer. Each year I am astonished anew at the hysteria over food and cleaning. Two weeks before the holiday I was dismayed to discover that my favorite brand of brown rice was nowhere to be found in the supermarket. "It's because of pessach," the Arab stock boy explained to me, eyeing me incredulously, as if to ask, "what planet do you live on?"
"I guess I missed the boat, huh?"
He shrugged his shoulders and I kicked myself - who knew that brown rice was hametz? I would have stocked up ages ago.
I can live without brown rice for a few weeks but the problem was much more acute in the days when we had a cat. The first year Mashie came to live with us we ran out of Friskies during passover. I was stunned to discover that in the supermarket the cat food was taped up behind cardboard in the untouchable aisle. Who knew that even the cats in Israel keep kosher for passover? In a moment of criminal insanity I stuck my hand behind the barrier and sneaked a box out when no one was looking. Luckily the checkout girl didn't say anything, but it took me years to cleanse the guilt from my soul. (In fact, this is the first time I've confessed in public. Forgive me?)
(P.S. When Mashie scratched my infant daughter right beneath her eye we decided she had to go. She was adopted by Haled, the Palestinian contractor who was doing work on our house at the time. She went to live with his family in Zaatra, near Bethlehem, and never had to worry about keeping kosher again.)
The cleaning madness is a slightly more honorable phenomenon, if you don't mind waiting hours on line at the car wash. Pre-passover cleaning is actually a great time to hunt for abandoned treasures because the garbage dumpsters are full of salvagable junk people have tossed out. A dear friend of ours who shall remain nameless cleans her house once a year on passover - and that's it. The rest of the year her place is a pig sty. As for me, I'm not about to go searching the house for crumbs with a candle, but passover is a great excuse to get my two teenaged daughters off the couch and out of their television stupor. At this very moment they are cleaning the kitchen and internalizing the importance of family cooperation.
Chores and inconveniences notwithstanding, I love the practical applications of the passover story - all the ways we have to make the liberation and redemption of the Jewish people 3200 years ago a first-hand experience for all of us. I love the gathering of the whole family around the seder table and the centrality of the children in the re-telling of the story. I love the way we reconfigure the daily necessity of food to make it part of the experience of remembering. I love the ten drops of wine on the plate during the recounting of the ten plagues that remind us always to be compassionate toward our enemies. And I love the search for new relevance and meaning in this ritual every year. Once we were slaves and now we are free people, so it is our obligation to ensure freedom for all.
In addition to those who live within our midst without freedom, three Israeli families remain imprisoned in fear and anxiety while their sons continue to be held captive by merciless enemies. Indeed, we cannot truly savor our freedom as long as Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have not returned home. Hopefully this spring they will be freed and that beautiful passage from the Song of Songs will ring true: "...the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land."

What Holocaust?

According to a recent study conducted by Professor Sami Smooha, a well-known Israeli sociologist at Haifa University, "more than a quarter of Israel's Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened...28 percent of local Arabs did not believe the Holocaust happened, and among high school and college graduates the figure was even higher: 33 percent." (Haaretz, March 19, 2007)

Museums of tolerance can be erected around the world, books can be translated into Arabic and we can teach the Holocaust until the cows come home - in the eyes of many Arabs it's all propaganda, an international conspiracy to validate the the existance of Israel and justify the Palestinian Nakba (disaster of 1948). As long as our Arab neighbors are unwilling to learn and understand the implications of the Holocaust for the Jewish people they will remain incapable of comprehending the modern reality of the state of Israel. For those who wish to perpetuate the state of war in which we live it is preferable to treat the Holocaust as a cynical political tool brandished by the Jews at every opportunity. In this case Arab ignorance is bliss, because understanding the Jewish experience of the Holocaust makes the conflict much grayer. It's far easier to stick one's head into the sand and pretend it never happened.

Interestingly, teaching awareness of the Holocaust to Israel's Arabs has become the one-man crusade of Khaled Mahameed, a lawyer who lives in Nazareth. Educated at Hebrew University, he studied the Holocaust and later invested his own money to purchase a photographic exhibit from Yad Vashem and set up a museum on the first floor of his home. He has printed publications about the Holocaust in Arabic, offers stipends to Arab students who wish to study the subject and maintains a website in Arabic (www.alkaritha.org). This is what he said in an interview:

"Understanding this and the fact that personal security is perhaps the major concern of Jews in Israel and elsewhere, as a direct outcome of the Holocaust and the feelings of persecution, is extremely important.
"If we, as Arabs, can dissipate these concerns and show understanding over what happened it will help create the climate for real dialogue in which Israeli Jews and especially decision-makers will be able to have a greater understanding of the suffering of Arab citizens and the Palestinians.
"This, in turn, would hopefully lead towards a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an end to discriminatory policies towards Arab citizens and the acceptance that they deserve equal rights."

If I recognize and address your deepest fears, you will reciprocate - that's what he's saying, in a nutshell. Arab and Jewish acceptance of each other's narratives may very well be the key to resolving the conflict. I believe we are mature enough and wise enough to be truthful about the less honorable aspects of the birth of the State of Israel. But who should go first?

Each of us contributes what we can. My husband Benny works for Israel Television. When he read the article about Smooha's research he decided immediately to translate a program he has on the Nieremberg trials slated for broadcast into Arabic - not subtitles, but a voice-over.

My college roomate Lauren was here this week for a conference of the Reform Movement. As the executive director of the reform synagogue in Munich, Germany, she is helping to rebuild a strong Jewish community there.

The next meeting of our women guides' association will take place of the eve of Holocaust Memorial day and we will be sharing ideas about guiding at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. I'm going to share a story that I heard a few years ago from a Holocaust survivor. He said something like this:

"As a young boy of twelve or thirteen I found myself forced to board a very crowded train with my parents; people were packed in so tightly that we could barely breathe. Everyone was Jewish and although we had no idea where we were going, we knew it couldn't be good. There was a opening in the box car but it was too small for any of the adults to get through. I was the only one thin enough to climb out and my parents decided that I should jump from the train, come what may. When my father said goodbye to me he hugged me and kissed me, and the last thing he said to me was, "Son, be a mensch." I never saw my parents again."

The Jesus Tomb Brouhaha

For those of us in archaeology-related professions, the talk of the town this past week was the film 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus,' that aired with much ado on the Discovery Channel last Tuesday. The expose was underwritten by the guy who produced 'The Titanic' and presented by a Jewish journalist in a Druze kippa hot on the trail of a good story. They set out to authenticate a late second temple period burial tomb as the final resting place of Jesus and several of his family members, including his mother Mary, his brothers, Mary Magdalene and his son (gulp). In fact, the names in the tomb correspond seamlessly with the Da Vinci Code theory which purports that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a child.

The tomb was discovered accidentally during construction in one of Jerusalem's satellite neighborhoods in 1980. It contained ten ossuaries (bone boxes used for secondary burial), six of which were clearly inscribed with the aforementioned names. One of the stronger arguments against the film's premise is that people from the Judaea region usually inscribed tombs with their first name and their father's name, as in this tomb, whereas Galileans used the first name and the hometown. In addition, Jesus came from a family of modest means; in all likelihood they would not have been able to afford the excavation of a family burial tomb. Even if they had one, Nazareth would seem to be the natural location for it.

Amos Kloner, the head archaeologist of the Jerusalem district when the tomb was revealed, pooh-poohed the suggestion that this was the tomb of Jesus' family, claiming that the names inscribed on the ossuaries were extremely common during Jesus' time and could have been found in that combination in many families, especially in a burial cave where generations of relatives found their final resting place. He subsequently consigned the ossuaries to a shelf in an antiquities storeroom in the Jerusalem hinterlands, where they have been collecting dust until today. (Interestingly, one of the ossuaries was evidently 'lifted' and sold on the antiquites market, where it was purchased by a well-known Israeli collector named Oded Golan. A few years ago he publicized his ossuary as belonging to the brother of Jesus and was subsequently indicted for forgery. Hmmm...)

If you walked down the street in Jerusalem two thousand years ago and called out, "Hey, Jesus!" how many people would have answered? Statistical analysis of the chances of all those names appearing together was done by a Canadian professor, who based his calculations on a book called "The Lexicon of Jewish Names" by a scholar named Tal Ilan, who appeared in the movie. A world-renown expert on second temple period Jewish history who has taught at Harvard and who is a member of the faculty of a German university, I once knew her as Tali, back when she did the tour guides' course in the class parallel to mine in 1985. She was extremely self-confindent, both intellectually and physically; I have a clear memory of her taking her newborn infant along on hikes and nursing him while she walked precariously along the edge of a cliff. Oddly, they didn't mention that in the movie.

Another local celebrity who was interviewed for the film was the eleven year-old boy who actually discovered the tomb, now a 38 year-old Israeli living in Paris, who was flown back to Israel for twenty-four hours just to tell his story to the cameras. A few tidbits that probaby would up on the floor of the editing room made their way to an article on the NRG Maariv internet news site. The kid, Uriel Maoz, claims to have recognized the triangle and the circle over the entrance to the tomb immediately. "The moment I saw the sign I ran home to my mother and cried, "Mom, I found a burial cave from the second temple period!" Was this a sign of yet another great Jewish genius, or just a regular kid who picked up a little archaeology from helping his mother study for her exams to pass the tour guides' course?

Junior and his mother tried to contact an archaeologist, but being Friday afternoon no one answered the phone at the Antiquities Authority. Maoz says, "A few hours later, I saw kids on the lot opposite our house playing with some skulls and bones. I told my father that they had taken them from the cave. My father took a giant garbage bag and we went from house to house, door to door, and we collected everything they found. My Dad explained to them that this was a desecration of the sanctity of the dead and of graves. After we
collected the bones we put the bag in a storage shed under the steps in our garden....If the premise of the movie is correct - and this is really the tomb of Jesus - then Jesus' bones were in my backyard."

His mother is still evidently a bit possesive about the tomb, because Maoz related that one day recently, on her way to the supermarket, Mrs. Maoz walked by the concrete slab the contractors poured over the tomb way back when and noticed all manner of photographers and curious people peering into a hole dug into it. "That's my son's tomb!" she called out to them. "What are you talking about, lady?" they yelled back. "He found it over twenty years ago. What are you all doing here?" Uriel admitted that it would always be his cave, or as they call it in his family, "his grave."

What is the real reason this discovery never made the headlines until now? If you think it's because Christians are afraid of evidence that contradicts the New Testament, think again. In a discussion on the question held at the most recent meeting of my women guides' professional group our conclusion was unanimous: it was the contractors. When the ossuaries were dusted off and those famous names were revealed the builders no doubt began to sweat profusely. If Jesus' tomb was discovered here they could kiss their buildings and their profits goodbye. Jesus, shmesus - call in the concrete pumps and send this tomb back to kingdom come where it belongs, no matter who's buried there. Hey, what a great sales pitch: Hurry! One apartment left with garden over tomb of ancient rabbi - at a bargain price!

Buffoonery and Courage

This past week was dotted with news about women, covering the spectrum from inspiring to nauseating. The prize for providing the easiest material for purimspiel goes to Ms. Esterina Tartman, a fairly unknown Knesset member from the right-wing, often racist Yisrael Beiteinu party - until last week. In addition to sporting a name that begs spoofing, the now infamous Tartina (as she is affectionately known by her fellow members of Knesset) stood to be appointed Minister of Tourism after Yizhak Herzog, who previously held the post, was transferred (under duress) to the Ministry of Welfare. As a professional whose livelihood is often directly affected by the policy set by the Tourism Minister, I and many of my colleagues were extremely disappointed to see Herzog's tenure in the position cut short, as he is an energetic, creative and earnest politician who had already managed to initiate significant changes in the ministry. However, I am certain that the poor and downtrodden of Israel represented by the Welfare Ministry are in far more dire need of a good bulldozer, so must of us wish him well there.

Up next for the job, according to the coalition agreement, was a member of Yisrael Beitenu and Tartman was chosen by the head of the party. Esterina fits the mold of a certain kind of Israeli politician that rubs many of us the wrong way: she has a big mouth, generous amounts of self-confidence and she frequently makes provocative (in this case racist) statements in the media to call attention to herself. Often this prototype of public figure is endowed with sophisticated street smarts but is frequently uneducated. In this case Tartman claimed to have a BA from Bar Ilan University in finance and accounting and an MBA, but a check by an Israeli journalist revealed that she had neither. In addition, due to a car accident she suffered ten years ago she was granted disability on the basis of not being able to work more than four hours a day due to her inability to concentrate. Amidst the current witchhunt for corrupt politicians Esterina didn't stand a chance, but instead of disappearing from the scene as quietly as possible she launched a biting attack on the media, accusing them of persecuting her for her political opinions. The position was finally assigned to someone else but she went down kicking and screaming. How distasteful...

In great contrast, last week the papers published the story of the revolt of the Abu Ghanem women of Ramle. Tragically, the phenomenon of family honor killings is alive and well in the Arab community of Israel. This tribal doctrine calls for the murder of a woman who has ostensibly disgraced the good name of her family by her father or brother. (The book 'Forbidden Love' paints a horrific picture of this barbaric custom even though it was publicized as a true story and ultimately revealed to be fiction.) Unbelievably, there are still many Arabs who live alongside us, in a state of law and order in the 21st century, who consider a family's reputation to be more important than the lives of its daughters. Several times a year the news reports of yet another honor killing but these crimes are almost never prosecuted because of the conspiracy of silence in the Arab communities. Not only are Arab women party to the silence, but often they, themselves, see no moral problem in this custom.

Last week the silence was broken by the women of the Abu Ghanem clan, who have lost nine women in family honor killings in the past six years. Talking on the phone, laughing at a man and turning down a match were among the excuses given by their murderers, who are usually their own brothers. Often a woman knows she is to be murdered but no one will help her. Without the cooperation of members of the community the Israeli police are virtually helpless to act - they have no witnesses, no testimony and no suspects.

This time, however, a group of over twenty women turned to the police and offered their cooperation. Arab women in Israel suffer numerous dimensions of discrimination as Arabs, as women and as Arab women; the Israeli police are not necessarily the first body to which they turn when they need assistance. However, their terrible desperation at being trapped in a cycle of cruel violence forced them to make a very dangerous and dramatic move. We can assume that their personal safely will only deteriorate in light of their cooperation with the police; in fact, this is only the first step in a long, uphill battle to eradicate this primitive, misogynistic custom. Our support of these women is often seen as unwelcome interference but we are obligated to do whatever is in our power to come to their assistance.

The Lesser-Known Hazards of Living in Israel

So, the news item of the week was the resignation of the national chief of police in the wake of...yes, another corruption scandal. The stories of fallen heroes here are growing tedious, so I thought I would write about something else this week.

Judging from what you see in the media, we in Israel are preoccupied mostly by questions reagarding our personal safety and the future of the Jewish people - which is true. (Other acute local issuess that are, admittedly, less newsworthy concern the decision to eat a cheeseburger on a kosher-for-passover bun at the McDonalds in downtown Jerusalem, whether to upgrade to a cell phone with an MP3 instead of buying an iPod or who to root for in the finals of the reality program 'Born To Dance.')

What the rest of the world doesn't know is that many of us who live here suffer from grave conditions that run right below the surface of our daily existence but are often undiscernable to the average tourist. I myself am deeply afflicted with two syndromes I know many of my compatriots share.

The first is an obsession with the news. Just as substance abusers enjoy a wide array of alternatives from which to infuse, the news junkie can get it from the radio playing constantly in the background, from news services that provide continuous updates via text messages to cell phones or from the endless news and current events programs broadcast 24 hours a day on television. My personal medium of choice is the newspaper, which arrives faithfully on my doorstep before I awake and provides the powerful fix I need to start the day. No one talks to me at the breakfast table because I don't respond, at least until I've read the lead stories and checked the caricature on the op-ed page. At lunch I complete the editorials and beat articles. If I'm working and I don't have time for more than a glance at the headlines, I often feel like I'm about to slide over the brink of a great abyss because I'm not on top of things.

I can't help but wonder what fuels this obsession: is it a deep need to feel educated and informed? Is it the fear that someone will ask me a question about modern Israel that I can't answer (which is my worst professional fear, after oversleeping in the morning and boring people)? In truth, I believe my news jones is fed by an anxiety I developed in camp the summer before twelfth grade. As the oldest kids in camp, we had no curfew and went to sleep whenever we felt like it. Not being much of a night person, I invariably turned in before many of the others, only to awaken the next morning and hear about all the brilliant jokes, stories, songs and soul-to-soul conversations I missed. There is nothing worse than having history pass you by, especially when you live in the midst of the greatest work-in-progress of the Jewish people in the modern age. The thought that something of importance might happen in Israel without me knowing about it is, frankly, terrifying. I can't predict what that great moment is going to be, but I damn well want to be there when it happens.

My other obsession is the neighbors, probably because our conflict with the Palestinians is such a huge obstacle in the path to Israel's future that it's hard to see anywhere beyond the next few weeks. Everywhere I look, I see them - and not just in the newspaper (btw, did anyone catch that shot of Abu Mazen, Haled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh at Mecca in their pjs? Priceless!)

I project them onto whatever I'm reading, whether it's a passage about King Herod's begrudging acceptance of and cooperation with Rome or Toni Morrison's freed slaves' struggle to put their tragic past behind them.

I can't watch a movie without transposing the story into our key. A few weeks ago I saw 'Blood Diamond,' about the terrible violence in many African countries with a wealth of natural resources and weak governments. I was very moved by the story but as I walked out of the theatre I found myself projecting our reality onto the scenario. My first thought was that the West Bank and Gaza look like paradise compared to what was portrayed in Sierra Leone. My second thought was that the neighbors are not that far away from the utter chaos that brings with it the horrifying violence we saw in the movie.

Last week I spent several days at Hadassah hospital with fund raising professionals here to learn about all of the hospital's projects first-hand. We toured the center for emergency medicine, viewed the plans for the new building, heard from doctors about their medical research and spoke with patients whose lives had been saved by the hospital staff. Beyond the immense admiration for the organization behind the hospital, my head was buzzing with ideas for a Palestinian Hadassah. Why can't the Palestinian diaspora raise money to build a similar facility? God knows, they need it - when Arafat was deathly ill he had to go to France for medical care because there isn't a single high-quality hospital in Palestine. All they need is one Henrietta Szold to get the project up and running - just think of how it could help, where it could lead! We can assist with advice, and who knows what else - it could be a bridge to peace!

But then I deflate and return to reality. I, and many other Israelis, would love to fix the Palestinians' problems for them by transforming them into wise, peace-loving neighbors anxious to create a democracy based on western values just like ours. But the truth is that they are who they are and they'll have to solve their own problems without any meddling from me and my ilk. The solutions appear nowhere in sight, but who knows? The Middle East is full of surprises. I might wake up tomorrow and find headlines about a back-channel, secret peace agreement.

So I'll keep reading that newspaper...

The Hullalabaloo on the Temple Mount

So,what's with the Temple Mount?

Images for which we have no nostalgia have beeen splashed across screens and front pages all over the world depicting violent clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators in Jerusalem. And why? The Moslems are frenzied over what they claim is yet another Israeli conspiracy to undermine the foundations of the Temple Mount.

The hysteria is being generated by the northern branch of the Israeli Islamic organization led by one Raed Salah. In contrast to its relatively moderate southern branch, the northern group tilts very dangerously toward Islamic extremism and harbors little affection for the state whose citizenship its members hold. Raed Salah has made the liberation of El Aktsa (aka the Temple Mount) his flagship cause and consistently casts about for molehills to transform into mountains.

In this case, the excavation work on the bridge leading up to the Mugrabi Gate of the Temple Mount proved to be a choice opportunity to stir up the masses. Although the bridge runs perpendicular to the Temple Mount and is not a supporting structure, Salah wasted no time in declaring yet another Israeli scheme to cause its collapse, conveniently invoking the ire of the entire Moslem world.

In light of some possible confusion here are some facts worth reviewing:
-the Temple Mount is a large, flat platform surrounded by four retaining walls. It was built by King Herod about two thousand years ago.
-The original hilltop was occupied by several different buildings: King Solomon's Temple (approx. 960 BCE); the rebuilt second Temple (517 BCE); Herod's Temple (18 BCE); a pagan platofrm built by the Romans (135 CE) and finally the Dome of the Rock (691 CE) and the El Aktsa Mosque (720 CE), both Moslem buildings which were briefly transformed into churches during the Crusader reign of Jerusalem (1099-1187) and which remain on the platform until today.
-Modern Israel regained control of the Temple Mount during the Six Day War, exactly 1897 years after the Temple was destroyed for the second and final time. Although the Jewish return to the Temple Mount in 1967 was an important milestone in the rebuilding of Jewish spiritual independence, a decision was made immediately after the war to leave the jurisdiction of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Moslems. Practically the Israeli leadership at the time understood the far-reaching implications any changes in the area would have, but equally important in the formulation of Israeli policy was the rabbinic directive for a complete Jewish hands-off. Our tradition, which is not an unifluential element here and is always taken into deep consideration regarding issues of a spiritual nature, says that the Temple will be rebuilt only when the messiah comes. Until that momentous era arrives not so much as a single pebble may be removed from there in preparation. In light of these considerations the jurisdiction over the entire Temple Mount was left in the hands of the Waqf, the Moslem trust, where it remains until this day. The Temple Mount was in our hands, but we gave it back.

Israel has no interest in changing the status quo to the benefit or detriment of either party. Can any rational person suggest what Israel would gain by causing the collapse of the Temple Mount? In fact, I can't think of a bigger headache. We need a collapsed mosque like we need a hole in the head, not to mention World War III, which would no doubt be soon in coming.

What's interesting to note is that in the frenetic negotiations following the collapse of the Camp David Summit in August of 2000 a discussion was held over the division of Jerusalem. Israel was prepared to cede the Temple Mount to the Palestinians, with the Western Wall remaining in Jewish Jerusalem. We asked, however, for a symbolic presence on the Temple Mount to represent the site's sanctity to the Jewish faith, a request which was flatly rejected on the grounds of historical inaccuracy. Raed Salah and various other Islamic leaders have publically proclaimed on numerous occasions that the Dome of the Rock and the El Aktsa mosque predate Jesus, Herod and Solomon. In their revised version of history the Jewish people have been conviently written out of the story and hence have no claim to the hilltop. My inclination has always been to view this laughable attempt to rewrite history as an embarrasment to the Moslem religious establishment, but clearly our Arab neighbors don't share my sense of humor. Rather, they view anything understood by Israel as truth to be a conspiracy of lies, regardless of the science, scholarship and international consensus that stand behind it. This unqualified distrust of Israel by the Arab masses (perhaps understandable to a certain extent) is, however, a powerful tool in the hands of a charismatic leader like Raed Salah and is not to be underestimated. The Arab mob can be mobilized in a very short time simply by rumor and violence often ensues, even if the hoardes aren't exactly sure why they have been called out to the streets. Rarely do those leaders take responsibility for happens next.

So what do we do - stop the bulldozers? Absolutely not. An in-depth examination of the nearly forty years the Temple Mount has been under Israeli sovereignty will show that the sanctity of the Moslem holy sites and the Temple Mount has been consistently respected and preserved . Israel has the legitimate right to make physical changes in the area around the Temple Mount in order to facilitate better access for visitors to both the Mugrabi Gate and the Southern Wall excavations. To stop the digging in order to avoid Moslem violence would be to sell the Jewish hsitoric and religious significance of the Temple Mount very cheaply.

Political Death By French Kiss

Last week we witnessed the destruction of yet another talented and powerful Israeli male who could not keep his hands to himself. Haim Ramon, a brilliant politician and a man with a long, promising career ahead of him destroyed his reputation and his future in one impulsive moment. What was he thinking when he forced his tongue between the lips of a female soldier working in his office? Was he imagining Theodore Herzl standing on the balcony of the casino in Basel after creating the Jewish state? Was he visualizing the ingathering of the Jewish exiles in Israel? Could he see Ahmadinajad's visage grimacing toward the Holy Land? Evidently, at that same moment the Israeli Minister of Justice was preoccupied with copping a feel from a young woman who asked to be photographed with him. Is a modicum of restrain too much to ask from our leadership?

The courts thought not and convicted Ramon of an indecent sexual act, transmitting, once again, a very strong message to the citizens of Israel regarding the zero tolerance level that a self-respecting society should have towards sexual harrassment and, at the same time, sending Ramon out to pasture. Unlike Moshe Katzav, a serial sex offender and generally unimpressive individual , Ramon elicits far more sympathy from the public, probably because his indiscretion appears to be the result of an instant of extremely poor judgement rather than the symptom of a serious character defect. Most Israelis would agree that Haim Ramon is a good guy who should be reprimanded for his action, but not politically destroyed for it. The courts thought otherwise; he now bears the title of convicted sex offender. Go make a career in politics with a sign like that hanging over your chest.

The consensus amongst the pundits is that Ramon could have made this embarrassing misdeed go away simply by apologizing. If he would have approached the young woman and her lawyers and said, "I'm so sorry about what happened. It was wrong of me to kiss you like that I wish I hadn't behaved inappropriately towards you," chances were excellent that she would have accepted his apology and moved on, without filing a complaint, and that would have been the end of it. Instead, Ramon chose to fight by attempting to cast doubt on the complainant's integrity and by lying. By choosing to attack rather than admit he was at fault Ramon tied the knot of his own noose.

In the current climate of demand for culpability and responsibility following the war in Lebanon last summer, it's interesting to note that we have yet to witness one Israeli leader, political or military, admit publically that he made a mistake. Whether they believe their actions are blameless or their careers will not be served by telling the truth, the norm here is to never, no matter what, acknowledge that you erred. Even though most upstanding citizens would agree that it takes a person of virtue and character to confess a failure, the citizens of Israel expect their leaders to be paragons of perfection.

So where does that leave Haim Ramon - damned if he does, damned if he doesn't? Maybe not. He chose a ride down that old river in Egypt rather than the genuine introspection that would have lead to an apology. We're loathe to tolerate mistakes by our leaders, but if nobody died then forgiveness is always an option for the truly repentant. Consider the great King David, whose unrestrained lust for the beautiful Batsheva forced him to cynically manipulate the murder of her husband, one of his most loyal soldiers, after discovering she was pregnant with his child. Blinded by hubris, when David's despicable behavior was pointed out to him through a parable, the full weight of his ugly deed came crashing down on him. He couldn't deny it because he answered to a higher authority than the Israeli voting public; instead, he expressed his deep regret over what he had done and was ultimately forgiven.

What a shame Haim Ramon chose to be inspired not by the great leaders of Israel, but rather by his lawyers.

Denial Ain't A River in Egypt

All of the citizens of Israel were witness this week to a shameful and pathetic performance by the now outgoing president, Moshe Katzav. Katzav called a press conference to respond to the news that after many months of investigation, the attorney general has decided to indict him for rape. Before he goes before the AG for a final hearing, the president chose to address the nation in regard to all the accusations against him.

Katzav was not born great, nor was greatness thrust upon him. He was a bright, ambitious kid from a poor neighborhood whose rising star brought him into the innermost circles of Israeli politics. It's hard to point to any serious imprint left by Katzav on Israeli government, yet somehow this colorless, mediocre politician managed to reach the respectable offices of the president. In his hour-long tirade before the cameras and microphones he painted a picture of himself as a hunted, persecuted member of Israel's trodden mizrahi minority. He attacked the police, the attorney general and the press, blaming the very institutions that form the backbone of democracy, law and order in the state he represents for convicting him of heinous crimes without a trial.

Katzav's performance was extremely emotional but ridden with inaccuracies. Although he read from prepared notes he frequently trailed off without finishing sentences and appeared to be on the verge of breaking down numerous times. He spoke about his deep personal pain but the accusations of sexual harrassment and rape by ten different women who worked for him through the years cannot be ignored. Although he is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, the evidence against him is extremely damning. Despite his crass attempt to manipulate public sympathy in his favor, my impression of his speech was of a criminal offender who has utterly convinced himself that the acts in question never happened. His appeal was not the call of a jaded operator following the advice of his lawyers, but of a man who truly believes that he did nothing wrong by fondling and forcing himself sexually on the women whose livelihood depended on him. Since he cannot admit to the rest of us that he simply took that to which he was entitled, he has erased those squallid deeds from his own personal reality.

Almost as sad as watching Katzav lash out at the world was watching his family watch him. His wife and five children all sat, stiff-backed, in a row to his right, a pillar of support. But who knows what they were really thinking? Can a serial sex offender be a model husband and father? Gila no doubt has sufffered his philandering for the thirty-seven years of their marriage but Katzav made a point of mentioning their loving and idyllic relationship. Although stories and rumors abound about Gila's dealings with her husband's paramours, we will never be privy to the truth about this man's shortcomings as a parent. As much as he has embarrassed himself by his conduct, the forced complicity of the silence of his wife and children is an even greater humiliation.

Many people who worked with Katzav over the years remarked that everyone in his immediate surroundings knew he harrassed women but no one ever spoke up. Perhaps the silver lining of this lecherous cloud is the end of the conspiracy of silence. Hopefully, the trial of the president will broadcast a very clear message of zero tolerance for sexual harrassment in our society.

The Palestinian Altalena

It's hard to get excited about any of the headlines produced by the Palestinians these days. There seems to be little progress on any fronts - the return of captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the formation of a unity government and certainly not on negotiations with Israel. Everything is stuck and each day the factional strife in Gaza and the West Bank brings higher stacks of corpses and deeper sectarian animosity between Palestinians themselves, which is not good for anyone.

Although many prefer to blame Israel for whatever ails our unfortunate neighbors it is impossible to ignore the colossal Palestinian leadership vacuum. While there appears to be little nostalgia for Yasser Arafat on either side(although a visitor to Israel I recently guided claimed to have driven past him in Ramallah), what's painfully lacking is a strong, popular Palestinian leader that can unify the ranks and steer the people towards statehood with a firm hand and a vision. In short, they need a David Ben Gurion.

What are the options? Well, for starters, Abu Maazen has been big disappointment. Although he's relatively moderate, it's clear he lacks the backbone and charisma to unify everyone behind him, and the enormous pressure brought to bear on him by the US to hold elections only served to weaken him even further. Ismail Haniyeh, the current prime minister, is perceived as holding the interests of Hamas over those of the Palestinian people, even though the current Hamas-run government seems to be far less riddled with corruption than the previous ones run by Fatah. In addition, he is subordinate to international Hamas, represented by Haled Meshal in Syria - the biggest obstacle to progress on any front so far, and you can bet that Israeli intelligence is flagellating itself over their botched assassination attempt of Meshal in 1998; the embarrassment it caused Israel then is peanuts compared to the damage Meshal is causing today.

Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub are two names frequently mentioned as possible leadership material. Both were extremely powerful under Arafat but neither is in a position today to take over the show. Keep in mind that within Fatah there are numerous secondary rivalries such as West Bank versus Gaza and the Tunis exiles versus the younger, local leadership. It's hard to see a consensus developing around either one of them, especially since they each have their own loyal vanguards.

The only person who seems to be acceptable to the majority of Palestinians as a unifying force and a powerful leader is Marwan Barghouti. His main problem is that he is in jail in Israel, serving out a very long sentence for terrorist activities. His status as a local Palestinian hero has been bolstered tremendously by his sojourn behind Jewish bars; in addition, he was one of the more moderate members of the Palestinian peace camp and retains many close connections to Israeli politicians from the days before he took up arms. If Barghouti's release will significantly tip the balance towards a sustainable agreement between us and them you can bet he will be sprung, and not as the first Palestinian convict with blood on his hands to be released by Israel.
However, if the best case scenario gets Barghouti out of jail and into the Rais' office in Ramallah, the tough work for him (or anyone else, for that matter,) would just be beginning.

If he's going to be Ben Gurion then in addition to doing headstands on the beach, expecting a miracle once in a while and recognizing that the people don't always know what's best for them , he's going to have to unify the ranks under his leadership with some blood. It was, unfortunately, unavoidable for us and seems inevitable for the Palestinians. Identifying the parallels between the birth of Israel in 1948 and the birthpangs of the Palestinian state is a fascinating intellectual exercise. In this case, the event I'm referring to is known infamously as the Altalena Affair, the Altalena being a ship loaded with weapons and ammunition and destined to arrive on the shores of Israel in June, 1948, during a truce in the fighting of the War of Independence. The ship belonged to the Etzel, a right-wing Jewish military organization led by Menahem Begin, who demanded that a percentage of the ship's cargo be delivered directly to Etzel units, which did not consider themselves subordinate to the main Jewish military organization the Haganah, which at this point had become the fledgling Israel Defense Forces with the birth of the State a few weeks earlier. Ben Gurion understood that he could not allow neither the fractionalization of the army by politics, nor the authority of the government to be underminded by yielding to Begin's demands. With Tel Aviv about to be taken over by the Etzel, Ben Gurion ordered his troops to fire on the ship. The end result was eighty-three Jews killed, not to mention a large loss of precious cargo, the immediate cessation of further arms shipments and a bitter factional dispute that has lasted in Israeli government until this day. It was a heavy price to pay for unity and discipline at all levels of the Israeli military, but in retrospect it most agree it was the right decision.

The complicated Palestinian factionalization, often rooted in tribal loyalties, and the massive quantities of arms circulating in the West Bank and Gaza together create an almost impossible situation for a visionary Palestinian leader. If he chooses to lay down arms and sign an agreement which will inevitably require painful compromises with Israel, another monumental struggle awaits him at home. In truth, the price of continuing the armed struggle against Israel might be less costly in individual human lives than a final showdown between the multitude of armed gangs and a Palestinian leader seeking to centralize Palestinian military authority. It will be a bloody confrontation and it will most probably be unavoidable.

Who will be that Palestinian leader, and what will be the Palestinian Altalena? No one knows yet for sure. If only we could convince them to learn from our bitter experience and to take the road not travelled; to look towards the future and sacrifice ideals for the good of the entire nation. But even a realist like Ben Gurion would never imagine a miracle as great as that.