You see, Kurt, if only you hadn't turned down that ticket to hollywood in 1933 because it wasn't first class....Tel Aviv Diary - March 23, 2003 Karen Alkalay-Gut
March 23, 2003
There are really 2 hours left before the 23 - you may have noticed how prompt i am even to the point of being early.
i have discovered that the method i have been following of tuning in to the war only intermittently is one advised by the local psychologists. but i did catch the army spokesman warning us to keep our gas masks near. and that undid all the good the war-avoidance might have done. i thought that tonight i would not have to sleep in my sweatsuit. oh well.
it is a small inconvenience when i think of how my counterpart in Baghdad is spending this night.
The problem of reality and judgement is still with me - both on a personal and a political level. How can we judge anyone -
over and over i think of Rachel Corrie and the bulldozer. My first thought that was that the criminals are the people who put both of them in this situation,that it is quite possible that the soldier did not see the girl, as Ezi who has driven bulldozers, claims can easily happen, that it is possible that he did see her and went crazy for a minute - and that it is possible that he deliberately ran her over. but i don't know - and will we ever - and does it matter. She is dead and it shouldn't have happened.
And all reality is this way to me now. Take Belgium's accusation of Arik Sharon. Now you know how i feel about Sharon. But i thought he was acquitted of direct responsibility and the phallangists were condemned. And how do those wonderful folks who brought you the millions of atrocities in the Belgian Congo get to judge Sharon? (and what about the 20 odd thousand belgian jews who were killed with the help of the belgians by the nazis?) So how can i in any way believe in the abilities of the belgians to judge war crimes of others?
By the same token how can i believe in my own ability as an israeli to judge what should be done in the middle east?
This is not a personal view alone. On the news this morning - israeli channel 10 - they discussed the way Fox news likes to preinterpret - to build a case for support for each potentially controversial item they are about to present - and then inquired into their own reactions. For example the soldier who rolled 3 grenades into the tent of the officers and injured so many of them was reported initially here to be of Arab nationality. After a few minutes they took back that statement saying it had not been proved. Nevertheless, it was an assumption that indicates a prejudice. Iraqi tv on the other hand, was showing equipment they had found from the Israel Army, and asserted that Israel was participating in the attacks against them. Since this is pretty standard stuff that Israel sells to the US and whoever will buy, the assumption had no basis, but there was no retraction.
Of course, they are more pressed and stressed than we are at the moment.
Think too of our old friend Kurt Gerron. Here are some photographs he took of Thereisenstat. I think they are from the film. He needed to make it look good so they wouldn't kill him and/or the others. so he did. they killed em all anyway.But a lot of people use these photographs to say the Holocaust never happened. The camps were fine.
But all this philosophy and theory gets us no where. I just sent money for a sack of flour for the people of Hawara and Inabus, towns south of Nablus, who need food.
You interested? Write on the check - for sacks of flour and send 75shekel or multiples of it (in $ it is $20 to cover foreign check cashing), to Gush Shalom, POB 3322, TA 61033. Or:
אל: גוש שלום/ /ת. ד. 3322 תל אביב /61033/
They seem to be in a big rush - need it soon and need to know how much will be coming in so let them know you're sending the money.
Flour at least is a sure thing.
Here is the site you've been waiting for - Salaam the iraqi counterpart. John Williams sent it to me as if he thought i knew it together with another diarist from Tel Aviv. Not a Fish. It seems everyone's sitting in front of the computer like me and taking notes about being scared. But Salam has info you wouldn't believe - like about the brain surgeon who got called away the other night for an unknown patient...
what potential for a global village! if only it weren't under such circumstances!
Alan Mumford just wrote me that the Salam address i gave is wrong. it works for me but he offered this one. Raed in Baghdad has not written for 2 days and we're all praying for him. What an amazing person!
Apparently he's a big star in the Tel Aviv internet.
And I'd never heard of him before
March 24, 2003
What should i wear to work today? Should i wear my gas mask as commanded? and look like a wussy? or should i go without and be a true israeli? Even last week most of us disguised or hid the gas masks we did carry with us. I decorated mine with dick tracy stickers. yesterday i just forgot about it - i figured if there was a gas attack in the middle of a dental procedure or getting my toenail removed i probably wouldn't make it anyway.
It really feels like that is all that interests us around here sometimes. whether or not we're going to get bombed with chemicals. It was a Jerusalem Post guy who opened up the story of the chemical plant discovery in iraq yesterday - and they still haven't confirmed it. we have a thing about cyclon b from wwii. one of my grandmothers died that way. the 30 odd others, you will remember, got shot in the marketplace in lida. so i am rightfully more fearful of invading armies than gas.
Because of the uncertainty of the war, the sadness of the suffering of others,a week of a twisted knee and general malaise, I didn;t think i'd celebrate my birthday this weekend - But then I figured - hell - it might be my last. so come around friday night - all i want for a present is cakes and quiches.
Gerron didn't get the oscar.
You see, Kurt, if only you hadn't turned down that ticket to hollywood in 1933 because it wasn't first class....
"Sure," he says to me, "YOU can laugh about it. NOW. But let's see if YOU make all the right decisions in the months to come."
I'm so glad we're friends.
Notice how you can't even get into Al Jezira? Too busy.
I got a real kick out of an op ed piece a few days ago by ari shavit in ha'aretz - forgot to post it but it remains incredibly relevant - he says that the opponents of the war are right - it's a colonialist war and a lot of people are going to be hurt. and the supporters of the war are right too - he's dangerous and it's necessary.
But these are all moot points at the moment - now we'd better all hope that the U.S. and the Brits pull up their socks and get to work. I am very disturbed by the little fuck-ups - the apache helicopter that should have been bombed when it fell into captivity, the gentle tactics with Iraqi captured that led to a massacre of U.S. soldiers when the Iraqis who pretended to surrender mowed them down, the vehicle that got lost and got 5 U.S. soldiers captured... etc. The means to me that the U.S. is not in control of itself at all.
And it means to me that we in Tel Aviv can anticipate a chemical visit from Saddam in the near future. Now the local philosophy is a kind of superior fatalism - so it's a little embarassing to be carrying around your gas mask or keeping your little stores of water and nuts. But i'd rather be chicken-shit scared than sorry. I do not easily forget great moments of panic in the past when i was sure everyone i love and me would be dead in a few minutes. also a present from saddam.
Raed is back, and i am told they are writing about him in the papers the guardian no less. (yes - they wrote about me a few weeks ago - but about a silly poem called lunch and not about my - what is now being called 'blog')
I wonder what will happen to the anti war movement when it begins to appear that the U.S. is in big trouble. If they try just to pull out because they aren't winning it will be such a blow to their authority and security in the world it will be absolutely dangerous to the whole world. And the antiwar movement could not survive without the democracy that the u.s. created and shelters.
But let's hope it doesn't get any where near that stage. Let them keep protesting - it means they still can.
MArch 25, 2003
Speaking of still protesting, the Rachel Corrie image remains in my mind. Robert just sent me an article about how the photographs that were put up on Reuters were taken down when it was suggested that they were not taken at the moments before and after the accident. David Bedein. This is from the Jewish World Review March 24, 2003/ 21 Adar II, 5763 so it has its own interest, but just the fact that an eye witness counters the camera image that took the picture a few hours before is significant. Apparently Rachel mistakenly was sitting down and tried to lean forward into the bulldozer and esd out of the vision of the driver.
I'm not happy about the photo they do show of " The "peace activist," shown above burning a mock U.S. flag during a rally in the southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 15, 2003." Her viciousness in other events has nothing {or at best little} to do with her death here.
Complaints have been pouring that i didn't make my case about the U.S. victory clear. Since i don't go back and change all i can do is try to remember what i said and add. here goes. of course i want the u.s. to win. if they don't win there will never be the freedom for anti-war people to protest! whether i believed or not that they should have done what they did when they did it, now i believe they have to make sure they coordinate their forces and push in for a victory.
I close my eyes and see the page in Salam Pax's diary where he says he sees a building he loves being blown up... i cannot close my eyes to the description of the unequipped hospital where people lie on the floor untreated. But i believe that if bombs can be so precise so can airlifts of equipment to hospitals.
March 25, 2003
Fifty eight years ago in London the buzz bombs were still falling. You would hear a buzz then silence and then a minute later an explosion - hopefully far away. My parents were still taking my brother and sleeping in HOlbourne Station at night, and in the day trying to live, and avoid being blown up. It was just before Passover, and my mother was probably buying eggs on the black market because the rationing was enough for regular days but not for a holiday when you can't eat bread. The last buzz bomb on the night of the second seder, March 29. That's when i decided to be born.
When I saw some of the scenes of Baghdad I had to go back to read H.D., who was also wandering around London at that time. She talks about how the familiar suddenly becomes strange - how a house loses a wall and suddenly becomes a museum
shivering overtakes us,
as of old, Samuel:
trembling at a known street-corner,
we know not nor are known;
the Pythian pronounces -- we pass on
to another cellar, to another sliced wall
where poor utensils show
like rare objects in a museum;
I saw a row of clothes hanging in the ruins of a house in Baghdad. "poor utensils show like rare objects in a museum."
The combination of up-to-the-minute news and poetry of WWII - as if news is not new but eternal.
Saddam's speech today pointed out a strange polarization in the Arab world. He complained about the Arab nations and once again identified with the Palestinians. The Saudis are with the U.S. and Brits, the Jordanians, Egyptians, etc. are quiet even as the protests are heard in the streets. The Palestians are rejoicing with each Iraqi victory. I'm sure that some of the Iraqi successes are due to lessons they learned from the Palestinians - using ambulances and white flags as cover, for example. But I'm also sure that if i were a Palestinian I'd see Saddam as a hero. Or a sort of a hero - not absolutely good but salvation anyway.
Because no matter how many thousands - of Arabs and Kurds he has killed, he defies the west. The U.S. talks about democracy, but he talks about national identity. And the latter is much stronger than the former.
I don't think the West understands how flimsy the concept of identity is outside the U.S. - I mean Israel keeps calling itself a democracy but until it has a constitution that ensures equal rights for all it doesn't have a total right to that.
And me, I liked Israel much better in the old days when it looked like it was becoming a socialist state. Even if i believed in Israel's democracy - look at us - we have a million former communists here who have little understanding of the structure and responsibilities of democracy. I mean I still remember my lessons in Citizenship in public school in Rochester. Very very impressive. Maybe because it was in the fifties (when "Under God" was introduced into the "Pledge" and McCarthy ruled) and we were indoctrinated with a good measure of fear of the other as well as pride of and information about our government and our role in its functioning. I don't think we get any where near that extent of "citizenship" training. One tiny example. Once I elect my little party to the government i can write letters complaining that they are not fulfilling their campaign promises until the cows come homw. I won't get an answer. I've done it.
And yet Israel is the only 'democracy' around here. And there is a wierd, inconsistent but relatively great amount of freedom.
What does this tell us about comparative forms of governmen?
And now, let us discuss supply lines for a moment. I really am uncomfortable with the length of those supply lines in the desert. Remember Napoleon in Russia? Those supply lines get cut and we're up shit creek.
What I said before about the old wars being new.
Listen, maybe I'm just tired - i know i'm not all that orderly and when I'm tired the dyslexia comes out.
March 26, 2003
How do I sum up all the different opinions I've expressed on the war? I'm okay, you're okay, and they're dead.
Ooops.
This is not just self irony (something I pride myself on) but a dilemma I struggle with daily. If you go back over these pages (and I do not - but I do have something of a memory left) you find it in every issue. The terrorism that we have been living with not only for two years but for two generations, for example. While there is no doubt that the injustice that initiates terrorism has to be acknowledged and dealt with, there is also no doubt that it is impossible to be dealt with at the moment one is confronted with it. At that moment one (okay I) just want to get out of there and kill the person who is trying to kill me.
And the next time it happens I try to get them at an earlier stage - before my heart attack.
And the next time I try to prevent its possibility before it even gets to me.
And the next time I'm already thinking 'better them than me' and forgetting that maybe I have responsibility in the causes of their terrorism.
And I think that trying to stay alive is a value too.
I leave my neighbor who is packing suitcases for the family in case there's a chemical attack tonight and meet some friends on Shenkin Street for a birthday lunch (Rachel's birthday). As I pass the shops I see a girl evaluating a wedding dress in a shop, a woman with newborn twins begging her mother to take these kids off her hands so she can buy them some clothes, an old religious man who looks like he's in the middle of a scholarly debate (but no is listening to him), some students stocking on up videos (in case of a war), a neighbor out with another woman (his wife has grey hair - she has red)... I could go on and on. It is Shenkin Street after all. Oh, yes. There was one thing I didn't see. Gas masks.
And then I come home and a friend calls - can she come and stay with us because we have a chemical shelter and she just can't bring herself to wear the mask...
And while all this goes on, people in Baghdad are getting bombed in the market place.
Who do I blame? Saddam. Hasn't he ever seen "The Mouse That Roared"? That Peter Sellers film about a country that wages war on the U.S. so it can lose and get reparations? (Bobo - you're leading again) All they need to do is PRETEND to give up and they'll be the richest country in the Middle East (Did you HEAR that war budget Bush asked for? for aid to the iraqis, i mean). In fact I don't know why WE aren't doing that - declare war on the U.S. and then give up.
Yes I do know. It is a pretty amazing phenomenon, democracy. And the U.S. has been mopping up the messes of Europe for some time now. I would never declare war on the U.S. even in jest, even for a scam.
Even after I heard the speech of GWB today - the divine mission speech i mean.
March 27, 2003
Guess who is on the front page of the Haaretz weekly magazine? But Salam hasn't been around for 2 days. After a log about having lost internet access and then a description of Baghdad now, on the 24th, he disappeared. I'd like to think that his log gives him safety somehow. That at least was the spirit in which i start this log a year ago. (My next book in hebrew is called "Poetry Saves from Death" - a play on a hebrew expression "charity saves from death" with a long story behind it. I was thinking of the way i write obsessively sometimes to make sure we (me and the people i describe) stay safe. Right now I want to write about Salam. His social analyses, by the way, are straight on - the way he associates the return to fundamentalism in Iraq with the Gulf War, for example. So on April 2 it will be exactly a year since I began this journal. How should it be celebrated? I wish I could have a party for all my readers in Mishmish, the new place Oren is opening. I wish I could invite Salam (who isn't one of my readers as far as I know) and all the people who kind of stun me with letters that suddenly make me realize i am not totally alone here for a moment. How does one have a virtual party? And what can happen between now and then to cancel all possibilties for parties? So maybe we can use that day to pray for Salaam and all the people of peace and wisdom in this threatened part of the world. We don't have to be together to do it. We don't have to believe in the same God. Hell, I have never figured out if I believe in God at all. But i Do believe in getting together to pray. If you tried to writer Salaam Pax at either of his two addresses, they are overloaded. i imagine he's off line and hope he comes back soon. does anyone know if there is a way to create another account for him so that when he gets back onine he'll know how people love him? Or maybe people can save their old letters. When one of my kids or husband is supposed to be somewhere and they aren't i get this terrible dread - you can see it in these pages after each terrorist attack - and i feel that way about him now. He's the age of my youngest son. This business of a human, individual contact in this impersonal vast world of disinformation is mind boggling to me. Want to know what the war looks like from the view of an American Soldier? Read Sergeant Stryker. There are lots more - but i'm struck by the absolute intimacy of the individual sitting alone with a computer - and sharing that intimacy with the entire world. Me? I feel like i have no right to say ANYTHING after I read people like Salaam and Sergeant Stryker. What can i talk about? whether i'm going to keep sleeping in my clothes so i can make it to shelter? Whether the flour I contribute to Gush Shalom is going to help someone? Whether there is a way to avoid terrorism? Big Deal. What i can contribute to this mess is the little experience of an observer - the fact that the Baghdadi citizens do not think the Americans are coming to liberate but to kill them to me is very scary. it means the battle of Baghdad is going to be very very bloody. They're going to be fighting for their homes on home territory - and i don't think the end to a battle like that will be clear or soon. unless they can take over the tv and radio stations and explain things. unless they can get massive aid to people in there. And what can I contribute to the mess at home? We have a government which is using the war in Iraq as an excuse to pass all kinds of crazy variations of Milton Friedman (without even consulting with any of the institutions or people who will be seriously hurt by their measures). We have a government which is using the war in Iraq as an excuse to bulldoze Palestinian houses, to target terrorists, and who knows what else. And even though i did every thing i could to prevent this government from getting elected, i'm responsible for it. So how can i give advice to others? Nevertheless there are two point i do want to make - Even though I am still ambivalent about the justification for this war in Iraq i want to reiterate my absolute belief in the need to support the United States and Britain. Over and over again. How can the Europeans - who have gained so much from U.S. support - how can they now mock their liberators instead of supporting them? Pure perversion. Every time i see one of the French politicians talking about the war I think of the guys on the ballustrades from Monty Python's Holy Grail - those guys on the tower who respond to King Arthur's innocent questions with the shout "fetchez la vache" and throw a cow at him. Of course with the French its also a question of all that money they are losing in their Iraqi deals. But the Germans don't even have an economic reason for their holier than thou attitude. But of course the Germans don't get many opportunities to play holier-than-thou, do they? i was just about to go to sleep tonight when yaffa called me in a rage. Why do you think we have this stupid government? Because YOU didn't do enough? NO, you stupid bleeding heart! Because of the intifada! Because Arrafat suddenly backed out of the peace negotiations and told his people to start fighting. (She reminded me of my late father-in-law Bandi who used to say to me - Don't make yourself so small - You're not that big. It was good medicine for that inflated sense of self we 'modest' people really have.) Anyway it was good to know i have a local friend who reads these pages. Most of what i have to say is too boring for people who know me i think - too banal, too common. Anyway, Yaffa is right too. I kvetch and feel guilty - but there are far more guilty people here than me. As if that helps. Where is Raed? The enormous explosions on TV go right through me - as i am sure they go through everyone who see this terrible sight. Last year i gave a paper on the poetry that was written in response to the September 11 attacks. i still have to revise it for publication but i'm too wound up for that right now. Anyhow, one of the ideas - i've just copyrighted it, remember - is that most people watched the terrible sight over and over again and had almost as much legitimacy to be affected by this disaster as someone who was nearby. Unlike - say - major events such as the holocaust which are not universally and repeatedly televised - where survivors have much greater legitimacy than - say - researchers or novelists - an enormous number of people who witnessed the tragedy on tv were equally and seriously traumatized. it was as if the disaster had entered their homes. It is even more with this war - it has entered all of our lives in every way. Yet we cannot begin to comprehend the terror of the Baghdadis.
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