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Mondoweiss, December 31, 2009

This is the final installment of a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details.

Gilad Zwick, 25, is on his way to mandatory reserve duty. For two weeks, he will cease to be a journalist and student, donning instead an olive green uniform and keeping watch over a settlement.

While Zwick has no qualms about his service—which, in the past, included night raids in the West Bank—he can understand Mehager’s position. “I don’t disagree with the essence of what he’s saying,” Zwick remarks. “But the problem is that if everyone chooses their own missions we won’t have any army.”

And to Zwick, whose maternal grandfather survived Mauthausen and went on to fight in the Arab-Israeli War, the army is an essential part of Zionism, “Zionism means go to the army, do your reserve duty, be a normal citizen… The purpose of living in Israel is not peace. The purpose is to live in a country with a Jewish majority that Jews from all over the world can come to.”As such, Zwick stands by a two-state solution that would include a demilitarized and weakened Palestine—free of aircrafts and closed to trade.

Initially Zwick, who voted for Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, seems to offer hard-line, straight-edged ideology. But the fabric is, perhaps, less tightly-woven than it appears.

Not all settlements are helping Israel, Zwick says. Those that are floating alone in Palestinian territory are useless. “The goal is to have a country,” he says, “If it means you can’t live in all of the land of Israel, OK.”

And though the separation wall is necessary for security, according to Zwick, he doesn’t feel that it will help the peace process.

Rather than isolationism, Zwick advocates a humanistic approach. “Everybody should learn Arabic,” he says. “The peace process needs to be holistic. You can’t just negotiate. You need to understand [the Palestinians’] ethos…”

But that doesn’t mean that Israelis ought to ape the Palestinians. “It’s arrogant and patronizing for left-wing Israelis to talk about the ‘nakba,’” Zwick comments. On May 15th, Arabs commemorate the nakba, catastrophe—the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, referred to by Israelis as the War of Independence. The Yisrael Beitenu party, led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, recently proposed a ban on observing the nakba, a move Zwick disagreed with.

Corruption allegations, which Lieberman is currently facing and like those that culminated in former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s resignation, are also troublesome to Zwick. “The politicians don’t see themselves as being sent by the people,” he comments.

This individualistic attitude permeates Israeli society, Zwick argues. It is revealed in ways large and small, such as refusal to serve in the army and a lack of concern about needy populations, including those that live on the country’s periphery, like Mizrachim and Ethiopians. “Fixing our internal problems is a part of Zionism,” he says.

This series was printed in its entirety in the Fall 2009 print edition of Zeek, Israelology, which was distributed to J-Street conference attendees.

Mondoweiss, January 3, 2010

This is the sixth installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details.

When Tania Hary was 15, she found her father’s birth certificate. It read Palestine. “It was a shock,” Hary, now 29, recalls. “I couldn’t assess the full ramifications.”

Though Israeli-born Hary was raised in Los Angeles, she knew about the conflict. When Iraq launched scuds at Israel in 1991, Hary’s grandmother sent the family a picture of herself in a gas mask. During one of the annual family trips to Haifa, the port city Hary left when she was an infant, Palestinians threw rocks at her family’s car. “And I was always aware of soldiers and guns,” Hary recalls.

But summer vacations spent in the north of Israel left Hary with more than violent images—they also gave her a visceral connection to the land. The smell of orange blossoms, she says, is particularly evocative, tugging her back to her childhood.

As an adult, Hary returned to her home country, settling in Tel Aviv to work for a prominent NGO that advocates for Palestinians. Although Hary is also exploring her connection to Israel, “the jury is still out,” she says of Zionism.

Hary feels that, yes, the Jews deserve a homeland, as does any group that wants to band together in a country—including the Palestinians.

“I think the biggest political statement that could be made would be if the Palestinians converted en masse to Judaism,” Hary continues. “They would become Zionists. It would stick Zionism in people’s faces and ask them ‘What is this really about?’”

Hary feels that the meaning of Zionism has been warped over time. “The mainstream needs to revise its definition,” she remarks. “The founding fathers were more left-wing than most people are today.” She points to Theodor Herzl’s comments about land acquisition and remarks of Meir Dizengoff, Tel Aviv’s first mayor, regarding non-violence and negotiation.

As for the country today, Hary offers a surprising sentiment—let some of the settlers stay in the West Bank.

She explains that she is against solutions to the conflict put forth by politicians like Lieberman, who, in the past, has proposed that Palestine take the Arab-heavy north of Israel in exchange for the areas of the West Bank populated by settlers. She thinks both sides should stay put.

“We will have two bi-national states,” she says. “There are progressive Palestinians who are behind this solution.” Hary is referring to, amongst others, Ahmed Qureia, the former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. In a recent interview with Haaretz, Qureia stated that, in the event of a two-state agreement, residents of the West Bank settlements Ariel and Ma’aleh Adumim would be welcome to stay in an independent Palestine.

Hary comments, “They would become Jewish Palestinians.” Like her father once was.

This series was printed in its entirety in the Fall 2009 print edition of Zeek, Israelology, which was distributed to J-Street conference attendees.

Mondoweiss, January 2, 2010

This is the fifth installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details.

Judith, a character in Dvir Tzur’s novel Inverted Letters, lives alone on a cliff high above the sea. Judith was a settler, but her children live in the Diaspora. Gazing towards unseen lands beyond the water, Judith is no longer sure why she’s here.

Tzur, 31, whose work echoes Yosef Haim Brenner’s, explains that Judith is similar to many Israelis. She has stopped believing in her country. And she fails to see the big picture.

“Zionism has two layers. There’s the geographical layer,” he says, “and there’s the cultural layer. People are stuck in the geographical layer and don’t see the other layer. But both are equally important.”

And both are plagued by the same problem, “We [Israelis] don’t know who we are. We want to be European, but we’re not. We’re Asian,” Tzur, whose family roots lay in Kurdistan and Iraq, says.

Though Israel’s identity crisis seems to be a social issue, Tzur explains that it affects the nation’s security, as well. “If you know it’s wrong for Palestinians to shoot rockets at Sderot then you don’t wait eight years to retaliate.” The subtext to Israel’s inaction, he says, is similar to Judith’s, “We don’t know what we want, we’re not sure we’re going to be here in a generation, we’re not sure we have a right to be here.”

That is why the United States, which Tzur refers to as “the second center of the Jewish nation,” is crucial.

Tzur isn’t talking about American money or political support. He’s talking discourse, “It’s important to hear the voices coming from the States, even if we don’t agree with them. America offers alternative ways of thinking about Judaism and that can help Israelis see, personally and collectively, who we are.”

Turning back to our traditions is another step towards resolving our identity crisis, says Tzur, who dons a kippah. “I’m not religious,” he emphasizes. “I’m a traditionalist. If there’s one thing that has kept Jews a people, it’s the traditions.”

But Tzur’s call for Israel to find itself doesn’t translate to a call for an exclusively Jewish state. Tzur, once a supporter of Hadash, a political party popular with left-wing Israelis and Arab-Israelis, hopes to see a confident and open Israel. “I don’t want to live in a ghetto,” he remarks. “And I don’t want to be like Judith. I want to know my kids will be here.”

This series was printed in its entirety in the Fall 2009 print edition of Zeek, Israelology, which was distributed to J-Street conference attendees.

Mondoweiss, January 1, 2010

This is the fourth installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details.

As an attorney for a NGO that advocates for workers’ rights, Hanny Ben Israel, 29, sees the many faces of Israel’s problems on a daily basis. Though some of the complainants she sees are Israeli and Palestinian, most are migrant workers hailing from places like India, Thailand, Nepal, and the Philippines. The immigration policies these foreigners are subjected to—in particular, the policies that penalize migrant women for pregnancy and childbirth by revoking their legal status or those that prohibit marriage between migrant workers—are, Ben Israel says, psychotic.

“Right now the immigration policy basically says ‘you’re good enough to be a worker but not to be a full person,’” Ben Israel observes.

Ben Israel’s statement illuminates one side of the recent debate regarding the status of migrant workers and their children.

In July, the Oz taskforce, an arm of the Interior Ministry’s Migrant and Population Authority, began cracking down on illegal residents. The Oz unit also began enforcing the hitherto ignored Gedera-Hadera policy, which states that asylum seeks—which, in Israel, means African refugees—must reside outside of the Israel’s center, bound by Gedera and Hadera. The Oz unit was also poised to begin deporting families of illegal workers, including their Israeli-born-and-raised children, as of August 1.

Thanks to public outcry, however, the Gedera-Hadera policy was revoked and the deportation of children has been delayed as the government formulates a policy regarding the minors of illegal residents.

To Ben Israel, whose grandparents immigrated to Israel from Russia and Poland in the 1930s, the solution is fairly simple—let them stay. “If we are going to sustain an economy on migrant workers we should give them citizenship or at least permanent residence,” she says. “We can’t build a society on exclusive and excluding terms.”

The country’s current attitudes and laws stem from “an obsession with demographics,” she says. “If you’re not Jewish, you’re indefinitely barred from joining the collective.”

To Ben Israel, who is secular, being Israeli means participating in a shared culture and language, “Filipinos can join in; Thais can join in.”

Still, she feels that history has proven a need for the Jewish people to be “authors of their own fate.”

“But the moral argument for Zionism, as rooted in the rights of people to self-determination, is gone when you deny the same right to others,” Ben Israel remarks. “The distance that I see between what used to be the promise of Israel and the current state is painful for me.”

This series was printed in its entirety in the Fall 2009 print edition of Zeek, Israelology, which was distributed to J-Street conference attendees.

Mondoweiss, December 31, 2009

This is the third installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details.

“It used to be that service wasn’t a question,” Tom Mehager, 32, says, explaining that he grew up in Gilo, a settlement just east of Jerusalem. “But then there was the moment.”

It was a split-second decision in 2003. Mehager was on reserve duty, deep in the West Bank. “I was at a roadblock east of Ramallah, near to Jericho,” he recalls. “The road connected one Palestinian village to another. It didn’t even lead to Israel.”

When Mehager, a staff sergeant at the time, asked his commander why they were erecting the roadblock, his commander replied that it was collective punishment. Mehager’s choice was “crystal clear,” he says. “I refused. And I spent four weeks in a military jail.”

Mehager joined an organization comprised of other soldiers that had objected to service. From there, he branched out into working with human rights NGOs. And he began to question the Zionist narrative.

“My father was born in Iraq. All my family names are Arabic. I’m Arab,” Mehager says. “From the Zionist point of view, I’m supposed to be the same as a Jew from Holland. But I really feel connected to Israeli Arabs. [We] speak the same language.”

Zionism creates another paradox, according to Mehager. “The guy from Holland has rights in both Europe and Israel. The Palestinian who is born here has no rights here or anywhere else.”

Though Mehager feels that Israel’s contemporary problems stem from the country’s Zionist roots, he points to the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, a cultural Zionist and an advocate of a binational Jewish-Arab state, as an early visionary who foresaw a solution. Mehager also admires left-wing politician and activist Shulamit Aloni, who famously supported and echoed former President Jimmy Carter’s statement that Israel is an apartheid state. Like Aloni, Mehager disputes Israel’s claim to being a moral army, “The ‘moral army’ is a lie.”

“But I’m not a pacifist,” Mehager adds. “I would join the army again if we weren’t occupiers anymore.”

Mehager maintains that his criticisms are a form of patriotism. “If we recognize the full rights of the Palestinians,” he remarks, “I could be a Zionist.”

This series was printed in its entirety in the Fall 2009 print edition of Zeek, Israelology, which was distributed to J-Street conference attendees.

Mondoweiss, December 29, 2009

This is the second installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details.

Urban planner and activist Jesse Fox is less encouraged by some of the changes he sees in Israel’s cities. He points to the growing rifts in Jerusalem as a dark harbinger for the country’s future, “The Arabs are excluded. The Orthodox and the secular wrestle each other for control… I’m concerned Israel will devolve into tribal warfare, like Lebanon.”

Fox also sees trouble in less obvious places, like the gated communities in Herzliya Petuach. “It’s a trend towards creating bubbles,” he remarks.

Though it seems like Israelis who depart the so-called bubble of Tel Aviv for nearby Yafo are moving towards integration, Fox, 27, resident of Yafo and student of Arabic, says, “The rich people who come shut themselves in. They are aliens to both the Arabs and the poor Jews that live in Yafo. Gentrification isn’t coexistence… it’s a continuation of a war for territory.”

But there is a bright spot in Tel Aviv-Yafo. “Look at Ir LeKulanu,” Fox says, referring to the local political party City for All. “A year ago, they were agitating against developers. Now they’re on the city council.”

Fox calls Ir LeKulanu a “red-green movement.” While Ir LeKulanu bills itself as an “urban non-party group,” not as a communist party, it does seek to move the city out of developers’ hands and deliver it back to the people.

And in tackling issues related to development—such as sprawl, increasing dependence on cars, and the resulting pollution—Ir LeKulanu naturally addresses environmental concerns. This focus, Fox says, is the way to achieve “sustainability in a Zionist context.”

And this new vision is slowly catching on, according to Fox, “The planning institutions in Israel are trying to move away from building the American/Israeli dream – single family, suburban homes with lawns and driveways – and toward denser, more compact cities, and that’s positive.”

Fox, who immigrated to Israel from the United States nearly a decade ago, explains that his vision of Zionism is an Israel that is deeply integrated into the Middle East—via culture and resources. “The way forward for the whole region is through joint environmental action,” he comments. “We need to think about resources or in ten years we won’t have anything… We need to share water with the Palestinians and our other neighbors.”

Friends of the Earth Middle East, an organization comprised of Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian environmental activists is, Fox says, a spearhead for sustaining the region’s environment and fostering peace. FoEME’s cross border projects help both sides to “see that the people on the other side of the border exist… What this organization is doing is profound.”

This series was printed in its entirety in the Fall 2009 print edition of Zeek, Israelology, which was distributed to J-Street conference attendees.