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Overview
Israel's founders sought to create a nation of new Jews who would never again go meekly to the death camps. Yet Israel's strength has become synonymous with an oppression of the Palestinians that provokes anger throughout the Muslim world and beyond.
Arthur Neslen explores the dynamics, distortions and incredible diversity of Israeli society. From the mouths of soldiers, settlers, sex workers and the victims of suicide attacks, Occupied Minds is the story of a national psyche that has become scarred by mental security barriers, emotional checkpoints and displaced outposts of of victimhood and aggression.
It charts the evolution of a communal self-image based on cultural and religious values towards one formed around a single militaristic imperative: national security.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783719297 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 03/20/2006 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Arthur Neslen was until recently the London correspondent for Aljazeera.net and the website's only Jewish journalist. He is author of Occupied Minds: A Journey Through the Israeli Psyche (Pluto, 2006). He writes for publications including the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the New Statesman and Private Eye.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Into the Kur Hitukh
In 1948, the founders of Israel began the process of state-building with what they called a Kur Hitukh. The term literally meant a 'melting reactor' for newly arrived Diaspora Jews, but came to denote the more US-friendly 'melting pot', a place where old Jewish identities would be dissolved and fused into a nation rising from the ashes of the Holocaust. With the birth of Israel, Adele Grubart explained, 'A new Jew was born, a Jew no longer forced to grovel as he had been for over two millennia, one who valiantly defended his homeland, his family and his people [and] though the cost was incalculable, was to walk with dignity, and build a country that would re-emerge as a light unto the nations.' From the beginning, the project aimed at transcending rather than augmenting existing Jewish identities.
The qualifications for citizenship were straightforward. A person with a Jewish grandparent had only to make aliyah to the Holy Land to be offered generous financial, language and housing aid packages. The Law of Return, which governs the process, is enshrined as an inherent right of any Jew dating back to antiquity and is thus not governed by the state. 'Equal opportunities', in the western sense of the phrase, are arbitrarily applied to non-Jews, whatever their familial, legal or historic ties to the land. To remain a 'Jewish state', given the region's 'demographic' trends, Israel needs more Jewish immigrants – or fewer non-Jewish Israelis.
Since 1948, there have been successive waves of Jewish immigration; from Europe after World War II; the Middle East in the late 1940s and early 1950s; South America in the 1950s; North America after 1967; Ethiopia since the 1980s and most significantly, the former Soviet bloc in the early 1990s. All of these groups have faced absorption difficulties related to issues as various as language, climate, housing and jobs. But inter-generational problems have largely been the reserve of Mizrahi Jews, who make up around half of Israel's population and suffer structural and systemic discrimination. Unlike other immigrant groups, third-generation Mizrahim still look like locals.
Visitors to Israel often note an ersatz and improvised feel to the society or complain of an inauthentic cultural Americanism. Outside East Jerusalem, much of pre-1948 Palestine has been gentrified or concreted over. Beneath the beaches lie the cobbled stones. Naturally, the bulk of the funding and support for Israel's development has come from a United States sensitive to Israel's strategic benefits, but the two nations anyway share deep similarities. Israel also came into being by a force of will rather than organic development. It too was built on a promise to welcome immigrants in flight, and it has waged war on an armed indigenous people who were determined to defend their land from incursions by new émigrés. But America fought its war against the Indians centuries ago and was never as outnumbered or dependent on outside help as Israel.
Notwithstanding the Holocaust and other particular characteristics of Jewish history, a permanent atmosphere of 'precarity' permeates Israeli society. Like émigrés anywhere, Israel's olim hadashim find themselves constantly reinventing their life narratives but on shifting and crisis-ridden desert sands. Many have suffered anti-Semitism, others are refugees. Some have sought a better life, or even a sense of being Jewish. All are experiencing degrees of loss, uncertainty and disquiet in a Kur Hitukh unable to examine that which it melts.
EZRA LEVY
No particular place to go
Before the creation of the state of Israel, more than 80,000 Jews lived in Iraq. Hailed by some as the original Mesopotamians because of an unbroken lineage in the area stretching back to Babylonian times, they were one of the most successful Diaspora communities. Yet by the time of the second Gulf War, fewer than 100 Iraqi Jews remained. 'Ezra' Levy was the rabbi of Baghdad's last synagogue, the Mer Taweig, and one of the community's most influential figures. In 2003, he turned down an offer to sit on the American-led coalition's Iraqi Governing Council. Instead, he made aliyah to Israel and now lives in an old people's home in Ramat Efal.
I was born in central Baghdad in November 1922, the son of a Hebrew teacher. I had four brothers and two sisters. All of them came to Israel in 1951. Only one brother and two sisters are still alive.
In Iraq we spoke Arabic because we couldn't speak Hebrew. We are Jews of the world and wherever we are, we speak the language of the people we live with. If we spoke another language, trouble. If we spoke Arabic, we were the same as them.
As a young boy, I went to an Arab school and people there knew I was Jewish but I never had any problems. Arabs were always my friends. In 1941, I was working as chief engineer in the railways office on the day [that Rashid Ali began a revolt].
The night before, a Muslim friend in the police had warned me to stay at home that day. But I'd gone to my office anyway until the trouble started. Then, like everyone, I hid in my house. From this place, you can't imagine how it was then. The sun does not always rise.
I was an Iraqi Jew, not a Jewish Iraqi. I lived quite separately from other Jews. I ate and slept in my family's house but that was it. I saw other Jews only in synagogue. I went every Saturday but there was never a minion. We didn't have ten people. Sometimes we didn't have three. For the last five years I was the rabbi at the Mer Taweig synagogue, we could pray but every time without a minion, what could we do?
The Muslims were more than a family to me. I don't know why I left them to come here. It's better to have good friends than Jewish friends. I like Jews, but there is a difference between the mind of a Jew and a non-Jew. We prefer to stay amongst our own.
When Israel was created, people became concerned solely for themselves. They thought that coming to Israel would be a pleasure. But I heard the news from Israel all the time. People told me that my friends who had made aliyah were living in the rain, in broken tents. When my family left for Israel, the only words I said to them were 'bye bye'.
My life was with the Muslims. Sometimes I'd go to Hilla or Samarrah for three or four days, sometimes I'd ride a horse from the Palace of King Faisal. I could go anywhere because I was free. Saddam Hussein was not always friendly to the Jews. At the beginning, they hung some people in Iraq. We were small people. We didn't even have electric lights. But I was happy in Baghdad, until my wife died.
When she died on 1 April 1991, the day after our 30th wedding anniversary, I died with her. It was after the war and her blood sugar level had become too high. There were no doctors, no hospitals, nothing, and so she had had to have her legs cut off. I don't know what happened to the world in 1991. I only hoped that my life would soon end. It's true that the Americans offered me a job on the Iraqi governing council in 2003 but I told them I couldn't do it. My life is passing quickly to the end now.
After the war, reporters came knocking on my door. One day, a big man came from Israel with an American captain and two soldiers protecting him. I told them 'Welcome!' but they just sat in the hall. The Israeli asked me, 'Why you don't come to Israel?' I said 'Please, this is a question only for me.'
A friend in a shop in Marat said, 'Why don't you go? Your son is in Amsterdam. Why stay here? Go! Wali! Go!' He wanted a better life for me but now that I am here, life is very hard. Nobody comes to see me. I don't know any place to go if people won't take me. I have many friends in Israel who came in '71 and '75 but I don't know where they live. My son asked me if I would like him to buy me a car. I said no because I don't have any place to go to. Mostly, I just sit and watch television.
When I arrived, many people came to speak with me, even the Israeli president, Moshe Katsav. He asked he me if I was happy being here and I replied, 'Why not?' But after that, nobody came. No telephone calls even. I feel sad now, living in this castle. The people here make like they like me. They say 'hello, Adon Levy!' because they saw me on the television. I don't know them. They are good people but only to say 'good morning' and 'good evening' to.
In Iraq, they would have thought I was a Muslim. My name there was Ezat. People would always shout 'Hello Ezat!' But in the hotel when I came to Israel, they were going, 'Ezra! Ezra!' I asked my sister, 'Who's Ezra?' She said, 'Brother they are calling you!' I didn't know. I still think of myself as Ezat not Ezra.
Now, my son who stayed in Iraq is the rabbi there. I don't know if he will come to Israel. In the synagogue here, they are all Ashkenazi and we are Sephardit. If I read the Hagada (prayer book) with an 'aiyin', they ask 'What are you reading?' I know only my God. I must go to other people's synagogues to pray.
How do you feel about the conflict with the Palestinians?
I don't like it. It is not for me. There are many people who this land belongs to. But what can I do? If I say something, what will happen? Nothing, because who am I? I am a Jewish man who dreamt all his life of coming to Israel, and now I am here. I am here but I am alone.
RAFAEL KATZ
A greater sense of security
Argentina is home to the biggest concentration of Jews in Latin America but it is not necessarily a place that most of them would call home. Long before a bomb in a Buenos Aries cultural centre killed upwards of 85 people in 1994, Argentina's Jews identified themselves in national terms, partly because of the militaristic and uncertain climate in which they lived. During the repressive and anti-Semitic military junta of the 1970s, up to 10 per cent of the 30,000 'desaparecidos' (disappeared ones) are thought to have been Jewish, despite Jews making up just 1 per cent of the population. There was substantial criticism of Israel's friendly relations with the Argentine regime in this period, but it did not stop a steady migration. Between 1948 and 1995, more than 43,000 Argentinean Jews made aliyah. However, the differences between their largely secular aspirations and the religious qualities of the state they were moving to were not always easy to bridge. Rafael Katz, a gay scientist, was one Buenos Airian who found sexual liberation in Tel Aviv.
As Jews, what we did in Argentina didn't amount to much. We used to go to a Jewish sports club at the weekends but that was our major contact with Jewish people. At school, in a class of maybe 30 people, there'd be around five Jews. I always knew that I was somehow different from the others. There was something about me that was not Argentinean.
I never felt anti-Semitism during my childhood. It was the 1970s and we were growing up in a bubble. We didn't know much about politics and what was going on then. Later, when you realise that all the democratic values weren't there, it's shocking because you say, 'What was I doing all that time?'
Everything was very unstable and uncertain. You couldn't make plans. I wasn't even aware that I wasn't living in a democracy. The generals were against Communism and rebellious or 'uprooting' ideas, not against the Jews. They tried to restrain society by killing people. It was terrible.
Even my family in 1973, were planning to make aliyah because the situation had become so difficult. But then the war broke here and they decided not to come. They still supported my decision to emigrate in 1988. As a Jew, I felt that I didn't belong in Argentina and I couldn't be out because I was living with my parents.
I really think that coming here was one of the better things I did. I only came for a year originally. I was 21 and I bought a one-way ticket to give it a try. Outside Israel, I'd always had to worry about being a Jew or doing things to feel Jewish. Here I didn't, and it made me realise how that might – or might not – be important for me.
I liked it a lot when the Ulpan teacher said 'Shabbat Shalom' the weekend I arrived. That was strange. We used to say that in Jewish centres in Argentina and it made me feel like I was at home in some ways. Now, though, I feel a lot of pressure from the orthodox Jews.
They think they know better what it is to be a Jew, and you are not – secular people are not. In a way it's started to make me feel a bit against Judaism. I don't want to be a Jew if it means being orthodox and narrow-minded. I don't feel it's a part of me that will be difficult to give up.
It's also what these fanatics who live in the territories and don't go to the army are doing to the country. They're so irrational and different things move them, like faith. They pay less taxes, and get money because they have like a thousand kids and who pays for all this? People like me. More than a third of my salary goes on taxes.
Yet they despise gay people. Homosexuality is against what is written. I think they feel the same way about people who eat shellfish. But gay people threaten and disturb them more because we don't build families in the usual frameworks.
Making aliyah helped me to come out. I was alone here, with no family around so I went about my business. I never went to Jerusalem because the tension and religion made me so moody. But Tel Aviv is a very gay-friendly city.
There was an Israeli gay centre in Tel Aviv where I started to meet people. The first was a guy from a gay beach. I remember one time he gave me a kiss in the street and I went mad because I was afraid – I wasn't completely accepting my homosexuality – but in time I got over that.
The situation for the Palestinian gay community is the worst because they could be killed if they're found out. In that way, Israel is more western than the Palestinian community. There were Israeli Arabs at the Gay Pride parade. I know someone in a relationship with a friend who was there. But I don't have any contacts with Palestinians. When I was living in university dorms, the Palestinians and olim hadashim would sometimes stay at the weekends because they had nowhere to go. But I wasn't close to them.
I didn't serve in the army when I became a citizen because I was already too old to be drafted. Now, I don't know if I would serve. No-one can deny how important the army is to Israel. It's a pity it should be like that. But the army also does things that I don't believe in. I wouldn't fight for these orthodox people in the territories. I will refuse.
It's different to Argentina though because here, everyone is in the army. In the beginning, it's shocking to see so many soldiers but then after a while you don't see them any more. They're like regular people. It's part of the country. In Argentina, the army is your enemy. They are the ones taking power, making all this uprootedness, and destroying democracy.
I feel a greater sense of security here. I feel safe even though I travel by bus all the time. Once, in 2002, I ran for the bus and if I hadn't caught it, I would have been on the one after, which exploded. When that happened, I had goosebumps. But now when I catch a bus, I just do it. You have to. Of course it means you end up living in a bubble.
I work as a senior scientist in a biotech company and I take four buses every day to work. But I sit in the back because statistically, they say that explosions usually happen in the front of buses. You know, I had a brother who died in an accident and there was no bus involved. Sometimes, things just happen because they happen or they have to happen. The world is very screwed up but if you want to live in Israel, you can't think about that.
I like my life here. Argentineans are not very nationalistic. They're not taught to love their country. But Israelis think they live in a great place, even though their buses might be bombed. They see it as the price of living here. I'm not for it. I would like the Israeli army to withdraw from all the territories. But that's the way it is. You have to take it as an option. That might happen.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Occupied Minds"
by .
Copyright © 2006 Arthur Neslen.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction1. Into The Kur Hitukh
2. Soldiers And Sabras
3. Strangers In The Land Of Their Fathers
4. Strange Orthodoxies And Quantum Secularities
5. Believers And Apostates
6. The Home Front
7. The Forgiven And The Forgotten
8. Business As Usual
9. Across The Green Line
10. Away From Zion
Glossary
Index