Not Anonymous

Yesterday No. 10 Downing Street released a statement regarding the treatment of Alan Turning post-WWII.

It's quite amazing.

The UK campaign was made public only last month, the international one just a few weeks after that.

The power of community, historical perspective and guilt can sure work fast.

More on that subject later, for now this is a Public Service Announcement.

Whenever I talk about race and/or racism I do it from a default point of privilege. I've never, nor will I ever in my country, be discriminated against due to the colour of my skin, my surname, or where I was born and raised.

I was born and raised in what is probably considered one the "better" towns. We are not the most affluent town in the district, but status wise that hardly matters. We are upwardly mobile. Both my parents have University degrees and the expectation is/was that all their children get a degree in what interested them and self-actualise themselves.

Hence me studying a Literary Theory and Women & Gender Studies double major for my BA.

My point is that when it comes to race, in Israel, I've pretty much got it made.

Which makes being the daughter of immigrants very interesting indeed.

Last year, my main entry for ibarw was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the asymmetry of that conflict and the imbued racism of the Occupation - "What is this symmetry you speak of?".

Thinking about what to write this year and working closely with my dad in his Pharmacy for the past year or so, I came to the conclusion that my family's experience as immigrants falls into a very unique story. On the one hand, they've had to deal with the regular run-of-the-mill issues have to deal with; the language barrier, the culture shock, the separation from family and finding a community of other people with a background similar to their own.
One big difference though.
They left a country in which they were an ethnic and religious minority and came to a country in which they are an ethnic and religious majority(1).

My mother "jokes" that one of the reasons she wanted to move to Israel from South Africa was that she wouldn't have to "work so hard" to be Jewish.

Before people jump up and start saying that Antisemitism isn't the same as Racism and why am I writing about this for Intl. Blog Against Racism Week. Let me first state, that some Jews have white privilege, some Jews are people of colour. In the context of Israel, I am what would be considered the WASP, and even that is pushing it because people here insist on ethnicising (yeah I made up a word) practically everyone.
Obviously some ethnicities are better than others.
Regardless, Antisemitism exists in various forms and is espoused in various ways. Sometimes it intersects with Racism, sometimes it doesn't.

With that established, let's talk about the experience of a child who considers herself Israeli though and through who grew up with a name that was just that weird.

I remember as a child cringing when my parents spoke Hebrew to the friends I brought home, I remember cringing when my friends tried to speak English in order to accommodate my parents.
I remember hating my name, because it denoted me as non-"Israeli". I didn't even have the benefit of a Russian name, which while being an non-Hebrew name, there was no need to explain time and time again - where the family was from and why they had the name they had.

"Where are you from?"
"My home town"
"Where were you born?"
"In the hospital there"
"What? Really?!"
"Yeah, really"
"Then why do you have such a strange name?"

Suffice to say growing up, my name helped me weed out the idiots out of my life. It made for a slightly stand-offish existence and a pretty negative opinion on people in general.

Any way throughout my life my experience as a Jewish person was that of being default. I didn't understand where my parents persecution paranoia came from. For a long-long time I did not understand how the story of the Exodus, the Exile, the 1492 Expulsion from Spain, the Pogroms of Eastern Europe had anything to do with me.
I thought I understood the Holocaust, seeing as after WWII the state was founded.

The history of my people is that of persecution, seclusion and exclusion.

I understand that. But not really. I've never been different because I'm Jewish. I've never felt Foreign in my own country. I know quite a few people who do.
My perspective as an ethnically white Sabra (an Jewish person born in Israel) enabled me to be oblivious to most forms of discrimination and it took me a long time to break down and unpack that privilege.

What really helped was to actually listen to my parents, the way they spoke and the way they interacted with non-English speakers.
My mother is an English teacher, she has to speak to kids (some of whom can barely read and write Hebrew) and make them understand her in a way that I've never had to try.
My father is a pharmacist and the interaction between him and his clientèle can at times be non-verbal - they hand him a script, he fills it out, they pay, the end. At times it can lead to so much frustration on both parts I sometimes wonder how my dad retains loyal customers who are not the Addicts treated at the clinic situated above his pharmacy.

Being Jewish outside of Israel, wherever that is, is being different.
I've never had to take a special day off for any of the Jewish holidays. I've never had to think about keeping Kosher seeing as the default for goods in the supermarket is Kosher, the non-Kosher shops are the ones marked as different in these parts.

My parents tell me to this day, that anything non-Jewish is Antisemitic. To me that sounds like paranoia. And I'm pretty paranoid myself regarding my identity.

And sometimes I want to shake us, Isreali Jews in general, and tell ourselves "Get the fuck over it!", "Move on!", "It's 1492, 1883, 1939 any more!".
And Jews themselves are now oppressors in a land considered a Homeland to more than one people.
And yet it's because of that History that I can call this place my home.
I have no other place to call home.
My parents and siblings who were born a continent away do not consider any where else their home.
I have family in the Diaspora that will never consider Israel their home.

It is a confuzzeling existence.

I know of no other kind immigration pattern in which a minority becomes a majority. Like the rest of Jewish identity, it is no cohesive and it is a difficult task trying to explain what it has to do with blogging against racism.

I really hope I managed to put my point across.

Footnotes
(1) Israel is a very touchy subject, as almost everyone knows. I'm going to be talking about my experiences only and while I may touch on how that relates to how I think and feel about the Occupation and the conflict. The main subject of this post is not that. If you are interested in reading my thoughts about the Occupation and Israeli politics as they relate to it, you can press the tag the occupation.

A critical article regarding Waltz with Bashir called When Israel accepts the war waltz and when it doesn't which was brought to my attention by shelestel via esizzle.

As some of you know Waltz with Bashir won the foreign language Golden Globe which aired during the second week of operation "Cast Lead" a.k.a the Israeli War on Gaza.
To say it was apropos would be an understatement.

Reading this very interesting article, few things popped out and made me think of something I hadn't actually considered before.

"It is a completely apolitical film. It's a personal film. If it were a political film, we would have dealt with the other sides, meaning that we would have interviewed the Palestinian and Christian sides. And it does not. It's a very personal film," Folman told France 24.

But in being apolitical, Waltz With Bashir also fails to provide context.

The film's narrative begins as Folman, the main character, travels to Europe and around Israel speaking with fellow soldiers who fought in Lebanon. He eventually begins to piece together what happened during his time in Beirut, which he had erased from his memory.
[...]
Maybe it was too much to ask Folman to reinterpret the entire historical accounting of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in one film. But if the Israeli public is able to swallow the sensitive nature of Waltz With Bashir it is precisely because it stays away from treating the Israeli state as a long-time political actor in the systematic, ongoing violence in Lebanon.

Thus, there is no overt questioning of why Israel was in Lebanon in the first place. Israeli military actions are validated under the guise of "fighting terrorism," and this is poignant when considering how the current Gaza war will be viewed in hindsight.

Also, Waltz With Bashir fails to present Israeli soldiers as direct participants in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. Israeli soldiers were only following orders so any responsibility lay solely with the chain of command.

Emphasis mine.

I have to say... this wasn't something I had considered before. Quite simply, because I am ignorant of Israel's role as a political entity within Lebanon's inner politics.
I consider myself a pretty well-informed individual.
I knew of the massacre.
After the second Lebanon war I took the time to read about the first Lebanon war and "discovered" the massacre in which the IDF is complicit.
Before 2006 Sabra and Shatila was just something that happened to the Palestinians in Lebanon. I had no idea who or why or even what was committed.
For over 21 years a portion of history - mine and theirs - was unknown to me.
This is not something strange, I know a few others to whom this movie was the first time they were confronted with the fact that the we, Israel, helped commit a crime... no "war" prefix needed in my opinion.

This article is correct in stating (not directly) that Israelis in general do not ask "Why?", "For what reason?", "How does this serve us?".
We [the collective] take for granted, in this very militarist and nationalist inclined society that everything done, even if it's "bad" is for the good of Israel and Jewish people.
In Sabra and Shatila there was senseless murder.
Ari Folman shows that very well.
What isn't asked is "Why were we even there in the first place?", now I don't know what Ari Folman's thoughts or opinions on that are, but I do know that for the "average" Israeli the question doesn't even enter our minds.

We are not encouraged to ask these questions that may undermine the hegemony of citizen loyalry to the Zionist collective.
We are not encouraged to ask questions period, we are either stupid or provocative, and who wants to be regarded as either stupid or provocative.

Every war is a war for the continued existence.

Even though every war, since the 1982 Lebanon war, has brought about internal protest.

This war, on Gaza and against Hamas, has brought a wave of right wing nationalism and extremism. The political discourse may be saying "Left", but facts on the ground (a saying we love so much in this part of the world) is screaming "Right":
During "Cast Lead" over 700 Palestinian-Israelis (colloquially known as Israeli-Arabs) were arrested and brought in for questioning for demonstrating against the war.
The two Arab parties Balad and Ra'am-Ta'al were stricken from the ballot (the Supreme court will reinstate their place, no doubt).
The Israeli media did not do it's job by asking the tough questions that great Free Press Journalism makes, we can always blame the IDF censors, but I think a certain ideology runs through Israeli media.

The biggest questions the no one asked was "what good will this war bring? will it actually stop Hamas from firing rockets? and if this is for the people of Sderot and the rest of surrounding towns why was this not dealt with before 2005, before the IDF left the strip?".

Same with Lebanon 1982... no one asked why. Not the soldiers who were only following orders like all the soldiers in the world who do not want to consider what they do to be inhumane. Not the home front who wants to believe that what is happening is done for their own protection.

No one asks.
No one answers.

It's a point that is, I think, brought across quite poignantly in Waltz with Bashir.

Fuck.

Well, that's one way to start an entry about the War and the two years that followed it.

When I was called into to the HQ for war-time reserve I really didn't think I'd be stuck there for a month. I didn't think my life would ever include running on adrenaline, going to the bathroom twice in a twelve hour shift and seeing people blow up.

During that time I did my best to disassociate myself from what was going on (I wore a uniform so ripped and graffitied upon, I put on Pride buttons, I drew Venus symbols on the pants and at every opportunity I sat in half a uniform, just the pants and a tank-top - just so I wouldn't look like I was conforming, despite the fact that I was). I was competent and did my best to help the people I was with, but I never tried to improve my skill, I was there to support my fellow shift members - even doing four shifts in a row so that they could get a proper rest and not fall apart at the seams, somehow, I held myself together and didn't fall apart until six months later.

During the War itself I ignored this intuitive knowledge, just like everyone else. I remember saying things that annoyed the people around me because my belief in what I was doing was pretty non-existent, but I did it because I was told I was needed and I'm just that much of a sucker (though no, knowing what I know now I'd never agree to do this sort of thing again... being an agent of death once, was enough).

In the six months following the War I went through a lot of changes. Most of them can be read in this here LJ, if you're so inclined. Basically, the values I held in theory began to solidify and I really couldn't look back at that month of my life without feeling guilty and helpless - especially because at the time I knew that we had gone on the rampage for bravado and to scare The Enemy into submission and not to really go in and get the kidnapped soldiers (yes, the ones returned to us last week).

It was also during those months that my friends and family realised that something was Wrong. I felt Wrong, like I was outside myself, that I had no control over what was going on inside of me and outside of me. So after many attempts to just talk to my friends about the fact that I don't sleep, am constantly angry, am constantly crying and that I am in a constant state of hate, rage and profound distrust, I actually went and sought professional help.

It was also during this time that I drifted quite far away from the comfy Left-of-Centre politics I had lived the majority of my life - Feminist, racism is bad, the Settlements in the Occupied Territories are the root the Occupation and thus must be removed, etc. etc. etc. All this without any understanding of the machinations that created the circumstances in which carpet bombs were used without notifying anyone on the ground.

And so I drifted Left (I suppose I would be considered Loony or Radical, depending on your perspective) and I feel good being in this place of self-examination and activism, it is probably what has prevented me from stumbling into clinical depression.

Trauma never really goes away.
In Hebrew there is a slang word for someone being messed up over something and never being the same and that is שרוט/ה in English it is "scratched", like a vinyl on a record player, when it hits that scratch there is a warp in the sounds that the vinyl is supposed to emit, but it gets stuck on that warp and the cacophony can be deafening.
It can also carry long distances, two years in measured time.
Most likely for longer.

In the shadow of these events, Haggai Alon (חגי אלון), a political consultant and analyst gave an interview to Ha'aretz reporter Akiva Eldar (עקיבא אלדר) about the goings on behind closed doors in the early days of the War and in the latter days and how many, if not most or all of the terrible, ahem, oversights.
The interview in Hebrew - שבויים בקונספציה.
The interview in English - A painful return to fateful hours.

I didn't think I'd feel so sad about them being dead.

Coffins of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev delivered to Israel-Lebanon border.

When I have time to seek out more information, I'll update on this subject.

At least the families have some peace of mind now and can mourn properly. Maybe the country will be able to do the same and move on.

Traveling is hard!
But fun when you're being taken care of by dear Papa.

Arrived, finally, at half-past eight (local time) in Cape Town. My memories of the place are very vague and everyone seems so much shorter and older.
Seeing as the last time I was here I was nine, this makes sense.

I slept like a rock. I don't think I moved the whole night.

Nobody can believe how big I am and some of the people keep referring to me with my older sister's name, Leigh. I suppose their sharpest memories of Leigh are of her with short hair, like I now have.

Today we went to wine country near Cape Town called Franchhoek (pronounced Fraan-tzuk... don't ask me how, I do not know how Afrikaans is built) and went around the very sweet and picturesque town. It was founded by the Huguenots (French Protestants who escaped France in the 17th century after the Nantes edict proclaiming France a Catholic Kingdom) who built the whole wine industry in the valleys in the area of the Western Cape which include Franchhoek, Paarl, Stellenbosch and another one which I can't remember, because there weren't any road signs to that one.
We decided to go because of the weather. The fog and most is blinding, you can barely see 100 meters ahead of you. We're hoping it won't get worse, but you can never know. It is weird going from the beginning of summer into what amounts to the middle of winter for me, even if they only started with winter now.
I'm chilly.

Daddy and I called Mummy while we were there and it appears that two people she and Daddy knew from their History live there, we only found one and Daddy said it was amazing how much time passed.

We went wine tasting too, which was fun, it's something I'd been wanting to do since I saw the movie "Sideways" but it was more the idiosyncratic characters than the setting in Napa Valley California that made it such a great movie.

We have since returned to our home base and will soon be going to sup with my Granny (who I saw last night) and the uncles, aunts and cousins I hadn't seen in years.

Sometimes I think about the Holocaust, and especially today I do because it is Holocaust Remembrance Day; the public television networks are showing documentaries, the radio is playing dirges and at ten AM a siren, the siren used for air raids and times of emergency and war, was heard, stopping everything – traffic, exams, fights, classes, shopping – creating an ear piercing moment of silence that continued to ring in my ears for a few more moments.
It is surreal, to see the stillness while your brain is screaming that the noise is painful. It forces you to remember what today means and why we must never forget it.

In Israel, we use the word "Shoah" (שואה, eng. Holocaust) lightly, at least in my circle of cynical friends; "This exam is going to be a holocaust" – "המבחן הזה הולך להיות שואתי". We make jokes about German Sheppard's (Alsatian dogs, ya know) in Jewish ghettos and ask how many Jews you can get into one car – one in the boot, two in the front, three in the back and the rest in the ashtray.
Morbid, which is putting it lightly.
I don't know how other nations that have gone through genocide handle the memory.
Do they also make jokes?
Do they go on school trips to Poland to see where our families were murdered, where their hair was shorn and used to make water proof socks and their fat was used to make soap (everything you saw/read in "Fight Club" is true).

I don't think it's the magnitude of death that makes the Holocaust unique as genocides go.
I think it was the industrial-ness of it, the careful methodical planning of it all. The loss not only of life but of an entire culture that had been cultivated over centuries. The pornographically photographed naked women, children and men; dying, dead and piled up in heaps, each body indistinguishable from the next.
Nudity takes away individuality.
The numbering of the people, which took away a little bit more of their humanity in the eyes of the perpetrators; the lies that hid the material reality: "You'll be getting your luggage back soon" a smiling Nazi clerk would say and everything was catalogued in that meticulous bureaucracy the Germans would pride themselves in.

My own opinion on the genocide that massacred the branches of my family on both sides has changed over the years - Those that went on to create what is now my quite large family, who live around the world, left Latvia and Lithuania before Operation Barbarossa, indeed before WWII even began.

It's easy to succumb to the idea that Jews are eternal victims and that the Holocaust was the largest and latest of Pogroms. At the same time, there is the fact that from this incident of violence a new kind of Jew arose, one that is strong, stronger than ever before, with a country of his own and an army that is the strongest in the Middle East. It is with this new strength and army, the Jews will never fear for our existence again.

I'm pretty sure Israeli Jews are the only majority population in the world that fears for its continued existence, not "way of life", but actual life. It is for good reason; Jews are surrounded by nations who don't want us here (when are we ever "wanted" any where).
I always think it's ironic that we went from one ghetto to another, only this time we built the walls, the snipers are ours and we pushed those we didn't want out.
The Holocaust brought about the existence of Israel, it probably would have happened at some point, but the genocide of the Jews made the process that much more urgent, that much faster.

Israel was built to be a home for those who became homeless.
*sigh*

The conclusion Jews and Israelis in particular, must take from our tragedy, is that we must strive to be better than we were.
Than we are.
We must strive to create a country, a world, in which persecution, racism, antisemitism, orientalism, genocide, auto-genocide are History and not reality.

That's my conclusion as an Israeli Jewish girl and that's what I derive from the Holocaust and that's why I make sure to remember, remember and never ever forget.

.לזכור, לזכור ולא לשכוח לעולם

Remember - יזכור:
The Jews
The Palestinians
The Bosnians
The Darfurians
The Rwandans
The Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania
The Cambodians
The Tibetans
The Armenians
The West African Slaves
The Original/First/Native Nations of the Americas
The "Witches"
The Inquisition
There are more, many more, too many. Who else must we remember?

This year marks 60 years of Independence for the State of Israel and 60 years to the Palestinian Expulsion from what is now Israel proper, commonly known as al-Nakba (the Catastrophe).

I won't be here to do anything about those dates, as I am leaving for SA in early May and will likely be missing the brouhaha that will no doubt commence.

I've spoken about this organisation before, but I'll mention them again.

Just before Pesach Breaking the Silence published, online, IDF soldiers testimonies of serving in Hebron in the years 2005-2007.

I'm really not sure what to say other than to urge you all to read them. All of them. Take your time, but read them.
These brave boys (and that really is what they are at this age) are doing something which, if I'm not mistaken, no other country even acknowledges and that is talking about the fact that what goes on in the Occupied Territories is... Well... there ain't no place like Hebron.

The Testimonies - in Hebrew.
The Testimonies - in English.