Desolation in the Negev

"A desolation that not even imagination can grace with pomp of life and action." - Mark Twain, on the Negev Desert, 1867

After a few days, we drive south down to the Negev Desert to spend an evening in a Bedouin tent, our first (and only) official encounter with an Arab Israeli during the 10-day program. This is something of a sensitive topic: Arabs comprise 1.3 million (or 19%) of Israel's 6.6 million population, and that percentage is growing fast. (This does not include the 3.1 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza). In 2005, Benjamin Netanyahu called "Israeli Arabs who remain... Israeli citizens" a "demographic problem" - others have used the more incendiary term "demographic bomb" - and warned that if Arabs reached 35% "than the Jewish state will be annulled." For more on the status of non-Jewish Israelis, this is a decent place to start.

I'm excited for the trip. The scenery along the way is simply staggering - within 25 minutes you transition from the lush, rolling hills of "Israeli Tuscany" to complete, rocky desert desolation - and the rustic setting is a welcome alternative to the Jerusalem bar scene. It's late, dark, and bitter cold by the time we roll into the camp - which essentially consists of a small corral for camels and six massive rectangular tents - and we're quickly brought a delicious meal as we sit cross-legged on the ground. After dinner we settle into our tents (there are quite a few different Birthright trips there at the time, and each group of 45-50 kids piles into its respective tent), and soon shuffle off to the "hospitality tent" to be formally received.

Reclining on a mat, sipping tea and playing a wonderfully twangy stringed instrument, is an undeniable, honest-to-God Bedouin. I stress this because I'm pretty certain the raggedly-dressed kids that served us dinner were Bedouin, too, but nothing distinguished them as such (for example, this guy's impressive drum and red-and-white checkered keffiyeh), and it's clear that now is our appointed Bedouin-meeting time. He welcomes us with tea and coffee, introduces himself in heavily accented English as Saleem (after some words in Hebrew to our guide), and we all settle down onto the mats for our 20-minute cultural talk. The prefatory comments are promising, introducing the fact that many traditionally-nomadic Bedouins are beginning to settle down, and how contemporary Bedouin culture represents a mix of traditional and modern culture.

And then things begin to get horribly, bewilderingly weird. "We have four wives! Yes, wonderful! I only have two wives, though." There are some gasps, some nervous laughs. "One wife is skinny, one wife is not so skinny." And then he goes on about how having many wives can create problems because of the multiple tents they necessitate; and how big trouble if two wives in one tent; and how great it is to be with skinny wife on Monday, and not so skinny wife on Tuesday; and the number of camels in dowry it would cost him to procure another. The presentation briefly leaves the topic of multiple-marriage to include Saleem's recollections of riding his camel to school, but I'm not really focusing at this point. At the end, a young woman in our group volunteers to try playing the drum Saleem has brought, and he's delighted at her effort: "Very good! I make you wife number three... Five camel dowry!"

There's a brief discussion back in our tent. Some complain that the presentation we just witnessed was offensive to women, but our trip leader is quick to help them move past such a naive, knee-jerk reaction. "Look, that's just their culture, okay? You can't say 'right' or 'wrong'... It's inappropriate of us to tell the Bedouins what they should or shouldn't do, because that's the way their culture is." The discussion doesn't last long, though, because seven beautiful, young Israeli soldiers have been assigned to our trip for the next few days, and tonight is our night to meet them. We play get-to-know you games for an hour and a half. One of the girls is a calisthenics instructor in the Army; one of the boys is part of an elite commando squad that kills terrorists.

The next morning I spot Saleem at the other side of the breakfast tent sipping coffee. His accent is noticeably milder. Saleem's been doing this gig as seasonal work for about a decade, he tells me, and before that he was a truck driver. Like most Bedouin, he doesn't actually have multiple wives. The "camp" is owned by a Jewish businessman from Jerusalem. His boss. He says what he's supposed to.

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I want to make sure I'm as clear as possible on this. I, too, thought Saleem's presentation was offensive. Polygamy does still exists in a minority of Bedouin communities (Bedouins are a very tiny minority compared to the much larger Palestinian Arab population, it's probably worth mentioning), and there are many important Bedouin women's NGO's dealing specifically with this issue. (This might be a good place to start if you're interested in some of these groups , and if you're interested an overview of Bedouin culture that goes beyond polygamy - perhaps, for example, the Israeli government's systematic violation of Bedouins' human rights - this is a decent report).

But my anger at the presentation arises mainly for other reasons. Birthright trips are vetted incredibly closely - two independent evaluators shadowed us at different times during the program - and I simply can't believe it was an accident, an organizational oversight, that our sole official encounter with an Israeli Arab happened to be a complete minstrel show. One can argue over whether the Israeli formulation of "Jewish and democratic" is or is not an inherently racist precept, but Birthright's effective erasure of 20% of the citizenry (whose tax dollars, incidentally, funded 30% of my free trip to Israel) unquestionably crosses that threshold. It represents a form of what Amos Oz refers to as "moral autism," the willingness to assign to others a status that one would never accept for themselves. (Thanks for the book, Mom. Really good). Related to this is Judaism's encounter over the past few centuries with European humanism, particularly its liberal and socialist strains, and Oz goes on to write (critically) about the willingness of some in Israel to consign this rendezvous to the dustbins of history. In the long run, this latter tendency will do more harm to both Israel and Judaism than any suicide bomber.

Three Pictures of the Western Wall

A good friend, who for the sake of his blog's anonymity shall remain nameless, sent me an email asking about t-shirts in Israel. And, since the last post involved the Western Wall, I wanted to add this little coda.

For those not in the know, a brief history lesson. The Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall, or the Kotel, is most of what remains from the Second Temple (516 BCE - 70 CE). Probably the most sacred site in Judaism, the Western Wall has been a focus of longing and prayer since it was destroyed by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. I mentioned that we visited it our first and second day in Israel. Here's a picture, complete with the induction stand for the paratroopers on the plaza.

Now, this relates to t-shirts, postcards, and posters because of the image below. It's of a young Israeli paratrooper on Day 3 of the Six-Day War (1967), right after the liberation/occupation of Jerusalem, and it's one of the most iconic images in Israel today. If you're able to put aside politics for a moment, it's hard not to see it as incredibly stirring. The heroic angle and composition, the expression of complete awe and wonderment before God and State at these kids' accomplishment... It was the first time in 19 years that Jews had prayed at the Wall, and probably the first time in 2000 years that it was under Jewish control. The paratroopers became national heroes, and it's no accident that the swearing-in ceremonies for the paratroopers now happen on that plaza. Those that know me might find it hard to believe, but I really love this picture, and I seriously almost bought a postcard.

So when I went to visit my friend Jared in the West Bank, his roommate referenced what used to be on Western Wall plaza before it was a plaza. I didn't get a chance to look it up until I got to Moscow (spoiler alert: I survive Birthright), but it turns out there used to be a Morrocan Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, below. It was an 800 year old neighborhood, and it went all the way up to within 10 feet of the Western Wall. On June 10, 1967, three days after taking the Old City, Israeli soldiers began demolishing the "slum area" around the wall, giving the 650 inhabitants a few hours notice to leave.

With Apologies to Hunter S.

In the lead-up to the most recent Iraq War, President Bush announced a plan to use a program of "shock and awe” to cripple the Iraqi will to resist. The term comes from a military strategy paper published by the Command and Control Research Program (CCRP) in 1996. The point, the authors write, is to:

...so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels… To achieve this outcome, Rapid Dominance must control the operational environment and through that dominance, control what the adversary perceives, understands, and knows, as well as control or regulate what is not perceived, understood or known.

Naomi Klein also deals with the concept of "shock" in her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which traces the not-terribly-democratic, not-terribly-gradual ascent of neoliberal ideology over the past four decades. Here "shock" serves to rearrange both geopolitical and economic landscapes.

Which is all by way of introducing the fact that it’s 7AM Saturday morning, I’m lying in bed spent and fighting back the vomit, waiting for the shower to free up. Then I’m gasping as the cold water hits, trying unsuccessfully to put together the past 48 hours of guns, alcohol, religion, sex and graves since we landed in Tel Aviv, and, yeah, it all feels like a bit of a shock.

Our flight to Israel is delayed 12 hours (due, we are told, to President Bush’s need to clear the airspace for his own arrival), so our group of 36 starts bonding over mini-bottles of wine and overpriced airport Heineken. Thus, I find myself not entirely on my toes for the slightly terrifying security interrogation during check-in: You never learned Hebrew? What was the last Jewish holiday you celebrated with your family, ‘Thomas Ward Frampton’? Really? And what do you call the piece of matzoh that gets hidden? Apparently I did better than the poor girls that got taken into the side-room. (On the Israeli side, though, we go through customs like it’s nothing. I guess Birthright’s got what they call “suction” on The Wire).

On the plane I sit next to an ultraorthodox rabbi, David. Actually, I sit next to a very attractive young woman, but David compels her to switch seats with him because he can’t sit next to the woman he’s been seated with. There’s a brief moment when I think David and a posse of other ultraorthodox guys are about to blow up the plane when they simultaneously break for the cockpit, but someone explains to me that they’re just putting together a minyan for prayer. But we end up hitting it off pretty well, all things considered, and he invites me to his place for shabbat after the trip.

We arrive at the hotel in Jerusalem in the very early morning. It occurs to me that despite spending the past 18 months working every day in hotels with UNITE-HERE, this will be the first time I’ve stayed as a hotel guest since I started union organizing. I pick up a towel and drop in on the ground, just because I can. Odd that hanging out in a guest room without worrying a boss is going to swing by feels like just as much a culture shock as, you know, being in Israel. (The room attendants, bussers, and bartenders at our hotel, incidentally, are all Israeli Arabs. The room attendants work on piecemeal – about $2.50 for a checkout room, less for an occupied one – which doesn’t compare too favorably to the $107.20 per sixteen-room-day that union room attendants currently make in Chicago, particularly given that the cost of living isn’t too much lower in Israel).

After a few hours of napping we’re taken to an overlook of Jerusalem. The vista is really staggering: the walls of the Old City, the Dome of the Rock, the gravestones along the Mount of Olives. We drink wine, read from Genesis, and are welcomed home. “This is not a tour, it’s a pilgrimage... this is your birthright.” To the east there’s another wall in the distance cutting across the hilltops, one that kind of gives lie to the posters around town promoting “40 Years of a Reunited Jerusalem,” but we don’t really dwell on it.

Then to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City for a few hours of tour. Again, fantastic. It so happens, though, that they’re inducting a new crop of paratroopers into the army at the base of the Western Wall that evening, so there are hundreds upon hundreds of 18-year-olds running around with guns. During lunch we’re told not to allowed past the border to the Muslim Quarter, that it’s not safe. Of course, I wander off and try and check out the Muslim Quarter, but I end up somehow getting lost in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (which I gather is part of the Christian Quarter).

Back to the hotel where we have a professional lecturer come in to deliver a presentation on the contemporary political situation. I don’t know what to say. The guy who delivered the lecture was fucking charming (British accents, tons of jokes, owned the room), and he’s so likable you almost don’t realize that the chat he’s giving is peppered with video of incoming Katyusha rockets and anecdotes about murdered friends, with no reference to settlements, cluster bombs, or collective punishment. Even the typically aloof 18-year-old girls with the “Rich Bitch” t-shirts seem engaged. He’s really, really good.

After dinner we go out to an Israeli club (conspicuously lacking in Israelis), where there’s a disastrous amount of drinking. It’s like summer camp with an open bar. All sorts of decadence and depravity transpire that, for the sake of propriety, I’m going to have to leave inferred. I think I end up in a pitch-black room in the basement of the hotel, though that may have been another night. We’re up in a few hours to do it again.

The second day continues much like the first, with an already-depleted crew staggering around Mount Herzl (where early Zionists, most important Israeli politicians, and military casualties are buried). It’s really more of a park than a cemetery, and I really like the beautiful tree-lined winding through hilly gravesites. Way nicer than Arlington National Cemetery. “These are kids your age, just like you, who died for Israel. This one here, with the Phillies helmet at the foot, he’s an American who volunteered to fight in Lebanon, to stop the rockets. This is Yitzhak Rabin. This one is my friend Roei, another tour guide who died when his tank was hit. He could have been a medic when he was called back up, but he wanted to drive the tank. Sometimes we have to fight for peace.”

In the evening we get dressed up in our Friday best. We load into the bus back to the Jewish Quarter, and as the sun goes down we enter the completely packed plaza of the Western Wall. There are thousands of worshippers – mostly ultraorthodox in either wide-brimmed or tall, furry black hats– bowing, crying, chanting, singing, shouting. There are also a lot of 18-year-olds with guns, even if the paratroopers are gone. Unlike what you might get at synagogue on Friday night, there isn’t any one shabbat prayer service: everyone pretty much does there own thing, with different leaders setting up their own tables and others crowding around. It’s really one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. I wander around, overwhelmed by it all, trying to figure out if I find religious fervor more impressive or disquieting. I think about writing a prayer and sticking it in the cracks of the stone, but it doesn’t feel right at all.

Afterwards we walk back as a group to the hotel. Jerusalem largely shuts down once shabbat comes in, and driving is prohibited for the religious. Back at the hotel there’s more sex and alcohol, and even a couple hours sleep. This isn’t a tour, it’s a pilgrimage... this is our birthright.

A Brief Introduction...

It would be nice to have some unifying theme to this blog - a "project," right - but I'm afraid I just can't muster the forethought that would require. So it'll be a notebook, of travel, but not a friggin' travel blog/zine.

I'm hopping on the Chinatown bus in a couple hours for NYC, the first little leg of what should be a 25,000 mile trip. Something awesome (read: terrible) always happens on the Chinatown bus.