2 February 2006
Millburn, New Jersey
For our last few days in Israel we crammed in several good, expensive meals that my cardiologists would definitely not approve of (and then probably go eat there themselves hoping no patients walked in the door). We started with a train ride to Jerusalem, twisting through narrow valleys of farms and olive groves that can’t be seen from the highways, to spend the day at the Israel Museum. We went for the art (Chagalls and Magrittes that you don’t see in New York or Paris) and not the archeology, though a walk through the Shrine of the Book is mandatory. The real reason for another swing through Jerusalem is Liz can’t go home without having the sweetbreads at Hess, the Sausage King of Germany, Switzerland and, now, Israel. We gorged ourselves on veal (sausage and chops), goose breast and the sweetbreads. Mr. Hess took the good wine glasses out of the cupboard (the restaurant is decorated to give the atmosphere of a farm house/wine cellar for our Tishbi Cabernet (try the 2002 or the 200 if you can get it – Metrowest suspects can get Tishbi at Wine Library but you’ll have to wait for next week’s shipment as I got the last two bottles of the Cab).
Friday night we had the DiCastros over for Shabbos dinner. Keren’s quiet younger brother Daniel joined us. He’s the sort of teenager who doesn’t seem to speak or eat. It turns out he does both (if you only count appetizers and dessert) and his English is much better than he lets on. One thing I notice about the meal is that we are managing to have a long dinner conversation without having Keren constantly translating. Liz’ Hebrew has reached the point where she can communicate pretty well, especially if we are talking about cooking. At the same time Nurit, the biological mother of Keren, is more willing to use her English than she was when we first met last March. I even manage to get in 6 or 8 words, which is about the extent of my usable vocabulary. Give us a few more months of going to Ulpan and dealing with taxi drivers and we may be functional in a second language.
On Monday, 30 January, we go on our “farewell tour.” Remember the band, Cream? Their farewell tour lasted about 3 or 4 years and would still be going on but for the fact that the drummer overdosed on amphetamines. Well, our last full day in Tel Aviv was something like that, only without the amphetamines. We managed lunch with Marcia and David (dropping off a few items for them to hold onto for Becky – including the laptop which will live out the rest of its binomial life in Israel) and then headed out for Beit Noar Kadima.
Beit Noar’s staff and students put together a good-bye party for us. We were thanked by a number of children who had made thank you cards. Now I have to keep studying Hebrew just so I can read them. Those who wanted to got up and read them to the entire group. It was a bit like having the Lollipop Guild from Munchkin Land honor us for killing the wicked witch. We are definitely going back next year. It didn’t take much for Yael, the center’s director, to get me to do a couple of songs with the kids, including a reprise by my talent show group (next time, Jeff, my Gibson gets to go to Israel). You don’t get this kind of satisfaction, or learn as much, on the packaged tours.
Then its one last Ulpan class with good wishes coming in 12 or so languages. After class we go have what may be the ultimate in comfort food, Hungarian blintzes. The restaurant is small and half the place is taken up by a post-wedding party gathered to sing and recite the Sheva Brachot. The blintzes were the size of large manicottis and stuffed with potatoes, cabbage, cheeses, onions, mushrooms and lots of paprika (so you’ll know its Hungarian). Dessert includes a blintz stuffed with chocolate mousse and drowning in whipped cream (I told you my cardiologists would not be happy but I’m going with a smile). More wine and we stumble back to the apartment to start packing.
Leaving the country began as a depressing affair. Yossi, our Persian cab driver, got us to the airport without incident. We got past the first security officer, the pleasant young woman who engages you in a pleasant conversation. She finds out about your trip and whom you know (I give up my cousins in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Yagur) and where you stayed and probably has a decent-sized dossier in the making before she decides you are harmless and lets you through. As this is my third (Liz’ fourth) trip to Israel, and this was the longest by far, the conversation with the nice security woman went on far longer than previous encounters of this kind. But finally she concludes that I really am a harmless, middle-aged tourist from New Jersey (who has packed his own bags and not taken anything from anyone) and we get to the x-ray machine. And then it happens.
I have a history of almost getting arrested. Its not that I live such a moral life, it's just that I’m not very good at criminal enterprise (I once failed to get arrested at a demonstration where the whole idea was to get arrested). From time to time, however, my wife or one of my friends will manage to put me right in the path of law enforcement. Like the time Liz got me stopped at the Canadian border for having peaches and then made me eat a dozen peaches while sitting at the US customs station at the border between Montana and Canada. Or the time Burt Solomon, the most honest, law-abiding, stickler for following the rules no matter the consequences, an attorney of the highest integrity and a pillar of our community, came within a hair’s breadth of getting us both arrested for grand theft auto. This time I get stopped by Israeli airport security for carrying – strawberry jam.
Liz had two jars of the stuff in one of her bags. They will either be a present or, more likely, get spread on the muffins when Mark Chodrow comes over to shmooze or push wood around a chessboard. But in Ben Gurion Airport two jars of strawberry jam must look mighty suspicious on an x-ray. The third security person of the evening is still polite but not quite as laid back as the first two. He brings up the x-ray picture on his monitor and tells Liz to open the bag. He carefully pokes around and finds, the package. He asks Liz to open the package. This takes longer than you would like because the jars have been wrapped in lots of paper in the hope that the baggage handlers won’t spread the jam before its time.
Apparently two jars of jam look sinister on an x-ray and lead to the following conversation:
Security: What are these?
Liz: Strawberry jam.
Security: How did you get these?
Liz: I bought them.
Security: Where did you buy them?
Liz: At Supersol
Security: Where?
Liz: In Tel Aviv?
Security: What was the purpose of the purchase?
Liz: To have something to go with the muffins when my husband tries to play chess.
Security: OK, you may go.
I may have embellished the last couple of quotes but you get the idea. Not long after, I tell more security people that I can’t go through the metal detector because of my pace maker/defibrillator. They tell me to stand aside and ask for my card (us wired up folks carry cards that describe what we are wired with and when we got so lucky). A large gentleman walks over, looks at the card and, as I brace to be frisked which is what always happens at US airports (air travel since 9/11 has, for me, become a more intimate experience), he hands me my card and says, “Have a nice trip.” They spent far more time on Liz and the jam. Yes, the Israeli security apparatus has decided that I am completely harmless. The former SDS member/union organizer part of me is actually disappointed. The rest of me just wants to have a nap and eat the jam.
Read more!
Monday, February 6, 2006
Disengagement - Part 2 - Amona and the Altalena
2 February 2006
Millburn, New Jersey
Part 1 would have been the end of the blogs for this year but I can’t resist one last political ramble. Part of our last full day in Tel Aviv was spent at the Etzel Museum. This museum serves to educate and be a memorial to members of the right-wing underground. The main organizations so memorialized are the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin among others, and the Stern Gang. Whoops, sorry, my mistake, at the Etzel Museum Mr. Stern and his followers had a minor ideological difference with Irgun, Lehi and just about everyone else on the planet and so formed a splinter organization known, in this museum as the “Stern Group.” Nice ring to it. Sound like a bunch of financial advisors or accountants. What all these groups did was engage in a national liberation struggle to convince the British to leave and the Arabs to stop shooting at Jews. Fortunately for them their side won the war and, eventually, became part of the government. So they get to be heroes of the struggle for independence and not terrorists who indiscriminately killed civilians along with military and political targets. In the Etzel Museum, the Haganah and the leaders of the Yishuv (the governing body for Jewish affairs in Palestine) play minor roles at best or are stumbling blocks at worst, in the struggle for a Jewish State. This would come as a surprise to David Ben Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and any of your children who learned Zionist history at school or summer camp (unless, of course, you send them to a Betar summer camp)
So, it's 1948 and Ben Gurion has announced the formation of the State of Israel and now he has a critical task to perform. What distinguishes a State from “a bunch of folks” is the ability to define its own borders and to have a monopoly on the use of violence within those borders. Whenever a national liberation movement manages to gain the upper hand, its leadership has a short-lived window of opportunity in which to get all the factions into one unified government. Oh, there can be political differences of opinion but, as the Palestinians now like to chant, there can only be one people and one gun. If the liberation movement fails to get this level of control, someone else will soon be running the show. For example, Sun Yat Sen in China and Kerensky in Russia failed to get everyone under one command. But Lenin and Stalin and Mao did manage to gain such control. This can be done by merging groups or by winning the Civil War (you can be nostalgic for Jeff Davis and Mars Robert but Abe Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant were the big winners).
So, shortly after the State was declared, Ben Gurion and Begin, et al, cut a deal under which Irgun fighters would form two distinct brigades within the Haganah. The combined organizations will eventually become the Israel Defense Force (Tseva HaHaganah Le Yisrael). For a few months during 1948 Haganah and Irgun were ostensibly under a single command. But not really. Etzel’s international wing had continued its fund raising and arms buying activities outside of Israel and, in the early fall of 1948, sent the Altalena sailing toward Tel Aviv. The ship was loaded with arms, ammunition and about 900 volunteers ready to fight the Arabs. Well, the government didn’t mind receiving guns and conscripts to fire them. What the government objected to was Irgun’s contention that its brigades should get a substantial portion of the weapons first and then Haganah could have the rest. Ben Gurion rejected this and, taking a page from the British playbook, sent troops to prevent the Altalena from unloading its cargo. Things got out of hand and the new government of Israel wound up firing upon a ship of Jews, blowing up munitions and killing a dozen or so people. Etzel relives this tragedy much like the south likes to refight the Civil War. But the government of Israel had to do what it did or risk falling apart before it could really dig in.
As noted in another blog, Menachem Begin goes on to help form a political party that eventually becomes part of Likud, becomes Prime Minister after the Labor Party has failed to deliver security and jobs and has suffered a series of corruption scandals and, within a few years, the man who once espoused and would never give up a dream of Israel within Mosaic, if not Solomonic or Hasmonean borders, became the first Prime Minister to dismantle a settlement. Netanyahu would interject that Begin got something in return for the disengagement from Sinai but no one on the right has ever described the pull out from Sinai as anything other than a tragedy. Nevertheless, Begin had to decide what the borders would be and he had to be ready to use force if necessary to defend those borders from without and from within...just like Ben Gurion had to sink the Altalena or watch his government fall.
Which brings us to Amona. Unlike the Gaza disengagement, the settlers’ groups decided to use violence against the police and army rather than give up nine illegally constructed houses. No one is talking about the fact that the rest of the Amona settlement is still alive and well. This time the settlers decided that it would be OK to throw rocks at and otherwise try to injure representatives of the government rather than give up an inch of what they claim as Israel. Problem is that the government, including a couple of panels of the Israel Supreme Court, has determined it to be an illegal settlement (one established without government permission). Well, where I come from, if you throw a rock into a policeman’s face your head, arm or some other body part that you have become attached to is going to be broken and you are going to be arrested and charged with assault and resisting arrest (police just love charging people who are lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with resisting arrest). Lots of people are shocked and outraged that (pick your side) would do this to (pick your side). I’ll spare you my rant about how the settlements were a bad idea in 1972 and have gotten only worse since then. Let’s just state the obvious: If you’re the government and want to remain the government, then, when faced with uncompromising opposition to your rules, you have to sink the Altalena.
Read more!
Millburn, New Jersey
Part 1 would have been the end of the blogs for this year but I can’t resist one last political ramble. Part of our last full day in Tel Aviv was spent at the Etzel Museum. This museum serves to educate and be a memorial to members of the right-wing underground. The main organizations so memorialized are the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin among others, and the Stern Gang. Whoops, sorry, my mistake, at the Etzel Museum Mr. Stern and his followers had a minor ideological difference with Irgun, Lehi and just about everyone else on the planet and so formed a splinter organization known, in this museum as the “Stern Group.” Nice ring to it. Sound like a bunch of financial advisors or accountants. What all these groups did was engage in a national liberation struggle to convince the British to leave and the Arabs to stop shooting at Jews. Fortunately for them their side won the war and, eventually, became part of the government. So they get to be heroes of the struggle for independence and not terrorists who indiscriminately killed civilians along with military and political targets. In the Etzel Museum, the Haganah and the leaders of the Yishuv (the governing body for Jewish affairs in Palestine) play minor roles at best or are stumbling blocks at worst, in the struggle for a Jewish State. This would come as a surprise to David Ben Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and any of your children who learned Zionist history at school or summer camp (unless, of course, you send them to a Betar summer camp)
So, it's 1948 and Ben Gurion has announced the formation of the State of Israel and now he has a critical task to perform. What distinguishes a State from “a bunch of folks” is the ability to define its own borders and to have a monopoly on the use of violence within those borders. Whenever a national liberation movement manages to gain the upper hand, its leadership has a short-lived window of opportunity in which to get all the factions into one unified government. Oh, there can be political differences of opinion but, as the Palestinians now like to chant, there can only be one people and one gun. If the liberation movement fails to get this level of control, someone else will soon be running the show. For example, Sun Yat Sen in China and Kerensky in Russia failed to get everyone under one command. But Lenin and Stalin and Mao did manage to gain such control. This can be done by merging groups or by winning the Civil War (you can be nostalgic for Jeff Davis and Mars Robert but Abe Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant were the big winners).
So, shortly after the State was declared, Ben Gurion and Begin, et al, cut a deal under which Irgun fighters would form two distinct brigades within the Haganah. The combined organizations will eventually become the Israel Defense Force (Tseva HaHaganah Le Yisrael). For a few months during 1948 Haganah and Irgun were ostensibly under a single command. But not really. Etzel’s international wing had continued its fund raising and arms buying activities outside of Israel and, in the early fall of 1948, sent the Altalena sailing toward Tel Aviv. The ship was loaded with arms, ammunition and about 900 volunteers ready to fight the Arabs. Well, the government didn’t mind receiving guns and conscripts to fire them. What the government objected to was Irgun’s contention that its brigades should get a substantial portion of the weapons first and then Haganah could have the rest. Ben Gurion rejected this and, taking a page from the British playbook, sent troops to prevent the Altalena from unloading its cargo. Things got out of hand and the new government of Israel wound up firing upon a ship of Jews, blowing up munitions and killing a dozen or so people. Etzel relives this tragedy much like the south likes to refight the Civil War. But the government of Israel had to do what it did or risk falling apart before it could really dig in.
As noted in another blog, Menachem Begin goes on to help form a political party that eventually becomes part of Likud, becomes Prime Minister after the Labor Party has failed to deliver security and jobs and has suffered a series of corruption scandals and, within a few years, the man who once espoused and would never give up a dream of Israel within Mosaic, if not Solomonic or Hasmonean borders, became the first Prime Minister to dismantle a settlement. Netanyahu would interject that Begin got something in return for the disengagement from Sinai but no one on the right has ever described the pull out from Sinai as anything other than a tragedy. Nevertheless, Begin had to decide what the borders would be and he had to be ready to use force if necessary to defend those borders from without and from within...just like Ben Gurion had to sink the Altalena or watch his government fall.
Which brings us to Amona. Unlike the Gaza disengagement, the settlers’ groups decided to use violence against the police and army rather than give up nine illegally constructed houses. No one is talking about the fact that the rest of the Amona settlement is still alive and well. This time the settlers decided that it would be OK to throw rocks at and otherwise try to injure representatives of the government rather than give up an inch of what they claim as Israel. Problem is that the government, including a couple of panels of the Israel Supreme Court, has determined it to be an illegal settlement (one established without government permission). Well, where I come from, if you throw a rock into a policeman’s face your head, arm or some other body part that you have become attached to is going to be broken and you are going to be arrested and charged with assault and resisting arrest (police just love charging people who are lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with resisting arrest). Lots of people are shocked and outraged that (pick your side) would do this to (pick your side). I’ll spare you my rant about how the settlements were a bad idea in 1972 and have gotten only worse since then. Let’s just state the obvious: If you’re the government and want to remain the government, then, when faced with uncompromising opposition to your rules, you have to sink the Altalena.
Read more!
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