July 2, 2009 | 1:41 pm

Day One: Very Loud, Very Silent

Posted by David Suissa

Jewish Journal columnist David Suissa is in Israel for 10 days, studying at the esteemed Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. While there, he’s blogging about his trip and what he’s learning.

Israel hits me in so many ways. The first and obvious way is the noise.

After the “Screaming Babies” flight, it was the airport noise. I got my luggage and wanted to get to Jerusalem with the least amount of hassle. Passengers seemed to be going every which way. Before I could figure out where to go, I met a Syrian-Jewish-Israeli “cab” driver who I quickly figured out was roaming the exits hoping to find a sucker American tourist who wouldn’t mind paying a higher fare.

I decided to be that happy sucker. 

Ami, the driver, is a freelance operator who tries to make a buck with his own car, which, incidentally, was parked in the airport garage. But hey, I’m sure he fought in a couple of wars for the motherland, so I’ll give him some of my sucker money.

Plus, I knew that these kind of drivers love going the extra mile.

This came in handy about 30 minutes later, when we were negotiating the winding streets of the Rehavia neighborhood towards my hotel.

To our right, we saw an Asian-looking woman running on the sidewalk screaming hysterically.

Two other women, who looked Israeli, were tending to a frail-looking older woman who was crouching against a short wall. Traffic was slow, so Ami and I had a good view of the scene.

“I think she dead”, he said.

It was hot and muggy. My mind flashed back to those horrible news reports a few summers ago from France when so many old people perished in a heat wave.

Ami’s premonition didn’t stop him from driving his car right up on the sidewalk, grabbing a bottle of water from his trunk and running towards the old woman, with me running just behind him. 

He gave the bottle to one of the Israeli women, who raised the limp face of the old woman and tried to put water in her mouth. It didn’t help. Meanwhile, the Asian woman (she was a Phillipino caretaker—there are many of them in Israel) was in hysterics, screaming for the ambulance that hadn’t yet arrived and trying to revive the old woman whom she had obviously become very close to.

The way she was screaming, it could have been her mother. 

Ami, however, didn’t like the screaming. He kept telling the woman to calm down, but she would have none of it.

A few minutes later, we heard the siren of an ambulance. But strangely, even though the siren sound felt very close, I couldn’t see an ambulance.

The sound was coming from a little motorcycle!

Because the traffic in Jerusalem can get very dense, and many of the roads are ancient and narrow, I learned that emergency paramedics from Magen David Adom often fly by in motorcycles to get there quicker.

The paramedic stopped his bike and removed his helmet with the cool flair of James Bond and rushed with his equipment to the old woman. By now, a little circle of onlookers had gathered, with the Philipino caretaker still in hysterics, the Israeli women still trying to get the old woman to drink, Ami still trying to calm the caretaker down, and me, observing the whole scene, feeling guilty about thinking other thoughts than the welfare of the old woman (Should I take a picture of the scene with my i-phone? Should I interview the Philipino woman? Will I blog this?).

It must be that all the noise—the screaming siren, the wailing caretaker, the human commotion—plus the tight squeeze of the blood pressure belt administered by the paramedic, had an awakening effect on the old woman.

We all watched as her face slowly rose and her eyes opened.

As she started looking around at the commotion she caused, the main ambulance arrived, and a paramedic brought out a stretcher. The sight of the stretcher really excited the old woman.

“I want to go home!” she said in Hebrew.

I think Ami also wanted to go, because he started nudging me with a little “yala”, the Israeli way of saying “let’s get outta here.”

The old woman, stretcher or no stretcher, was now in good hands. The Philipino caretaker had calmed down, the Israeli women started to walk away (one of them with a limp), and Ami and I made our way to the Inbal hotel (which is close to the Hartman Institute, where I begin my studies on Thursday.)

But more noise awaited me. 

Late at night, as I tried to catch up on some sleep, I heard live music from my hotel window. A rasta singer with five musicians were belting out hip hop, rock and jazz fusion tunes (including a rock version of “These are a few of my favorite things” from “The Sound of Music”), in an outdoor theater with maybe a hundred or so people in the audience.

I was exhausted, but the music and the scene were too good to pass up, so I went out into the night, figuring that I could sleep when I get back to LA.

From the crazy flight to the clandestine driver to the sidewalk drama to the late night music, it’s been a noisy start to my trip.

But in the morning, as I walked towards the elevator with only the thought of Turkish coffee on my mind, another scene hit me. 

This scene made no noise whatsoever. 

It was the sight of mezuzahs, one after another, posted on every door.

In America, I always take special note of mezuzahs (“Hey, another Jew, cool!”).

Here in the Holy Land, mezuzahs are everywhere, and they scream Jewish and Israel—along with everybody else.

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June 30, 2009 | 11:15 am

Flight from Hell

Posted by David Suissa

Jewish Journal columnist David Suissa is in Israel for 10 days, studying at the esteemed Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. While there, he’s blogging about his trip and what he’s learning.

I’m off to Jerusalem for 10 days to study at the Hartman Institute, and I’ve been asked to “blog my trip.” So, in theory, if you check out this “Postcards from Jerusalem” blog every day for the next 10 days, you should be getting a continuous flow of interesting insights from my trip to the Holy Land. 

In theory.

The problem is that I’m not a blogger. This “continuous flow” thing is new to me. I’ve been writing a weekly column for almost three years, and I’m hooked on the “weekly clock”—a slow buildup of an idea culminating in a carefully crafted 900 words. Bloggers are the mad men of journalism. They don’t craft, they draft. Although I’m not a blogger, I love reading them. I love savoring their spontaneous servings of mental popcorn that keep popping out of their restless minds.

Well, now it’s my turn to blog, and as you can tell from this long-winded opening, I have a long way to go before I become Brad Greenberg (my favorite). So bear with me and let’s get through this together.

Would you believe it? I haven’t landed yet, and I’m itching to blog! Why is that? It’s because I’m stuck in the flight from hell and I need to unload.

Here’s the scene. Young couple—very young couple—with two screaming babies are sitting in the row just in front of me, about ten feet to my right. Sitting to my left is a tough-looking Sephardic Israeli guy who looks like he smokes non-filter Camels and owns a delivery truck in Ashdod.

Now here’s the main story line: Tough Sephardic guy would like to sleep. As tough Sephardic guy settles in with his two pillows (I gave him mine) and his blankie, the two screaming babies are showing no signs of wanting to experiment with another form of expression.

Meanwhile, the very young father and mother of the two screaming babies are showing no genetic connection whatsoever to their offspring. How do I know that? They’re calm. They’re spooky calm. They see passengers wanting to tear their hair out and all they can muster is an occasional baby-rocking gesture.

But back to the main story line—tough Sephardic guy trying to sleep. Have you ever heard those animal grunts on the Discovery channel? I don’t know if TSG was doing it on purpose, but every time Screaming Babies would hit some sort of screaming crescendo, TSG would belt out a Discovery Channel grunt. It was like a combination grunt and moan, similar perhaps to that of the Llama species.

TSG, in his clumsy way, was giving us all a heads-up: “Screaming babies better stop screaming.”

As the screaming continued, the tension increased. An enormous question hung in the air that unified all the passengers in the vicinity of Screaming Babies:

Will it ever stop?

By now, we were almost into a full “Law and Order” episode of screaming, and my concerns were shifting. TSG was starting to move his body when he groaned, and, worse, real words were coming out of his mouth, mostly simple phrases like “what is this?” and “hey”.

The reason my concerns were shifting should be obvious: I didn’t want TSG to sleepwalk towards Spooky Calm Father and re-enact a scene from “Scarface.”

Wild scenarios ran through my mind. TSG lunges towards perp while I heroically get in the way and save the life of self-absorbed young father who doesn’t deserve my heroism. But before I got too carried away, TSG decided to wake up.

And like all good Hollywood thrillers, this one had a surprise ending. 

TSG and I sparked up a conversation about…take a guess. We compared notes. How many kids do we have…what did we do when we travelled with them when they were babies… these young parents are real losers to let their kids scream like that… they should at least walk these rugrats up and down the aisle or cuddle with them or distract them or change their diapers or give them some ice cream or a pacifier… or anything!

Well, it turns out that during my commiserating with TSG, I heated up more than he did. It could be because I recalled the countless flights I took with my own kids and all the things I did to prevent these crying fits. Or it could be that while TSG was trying to sleep, I had a clear view of Spooky Calm Father actually doing crossword puzzles while his bambinos were in meltdown mode.

So guess what happened? The other TSG— that’s right, yours truly—decided to get up and confront Spooky Calm Father while he was concentrating on finding the right words for his puzzle.

I mumbled something like, “Hey man, we’re dying out here. Can’t you do something?”

Now try to visualize an earnest human rights lawyer with eyeglasses who knows the Geneva Convention by heart. That was Spooky Father. It was like he was expecting me. Before I could finish my sentence, he spoke about his rights, his kids’ rights, his wife’s rights, his family’s rights (OK, I’m exaggerating—you get the picture, this guy knew his rights).

I was about to counter with my own shtick on passengers’ rights, but then I saw a Do-You-Want-US Marshalls-At-The-Gate look on one of the flight attendants, and I swiftly returned to my seat to commiserate with TSG #1.

Apparently, my bold intervention impressed TSG #1. He got more talkative. We started sharing more personal stories, and then…just like that, when we least expected it… the Messiah showed up.

On this trip from hell, the Messiah was anyone who could stop these babies from screaming. And guess who revealed himself? None other than Spooky Calm Father himself, who decided to put his crossword puzzle down and take one of the screaming babies for a walk, which ended up killing two birds with one stone by calming down both babies.

The crying was over, but I wondered: Is all this drama an omen of my coming week at Hartman? We will see.

For now, shocked by the calm and still wound tight from the ordeal, I turned to TSG #1 and told him I had to work on my computer.

It was time for me to vent and blog—if you can call this blogging.

See you in Jerusalem.

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May 8, 2009 | 10:42 am

`Do as I say not as I—never mind’

Posted by Rob Eshman

Uri Dromi’s latest Miami Herald Column:

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, has raised some concerns because of his hawkish positions and blunt language. However, European foreign ministers who met him this week were happily surprised by his pragmatism. It seems like a rehearsal for his future meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Here is my guess of how that meeting might go.
HC: Mr. Lieberman, so good to see you at last.
AL: Indeed, madam secretary; you met every Arab [expletive] before you made time to see me.
HC: I love your directness. We need this kind of frank talk once in a while. Especially here in Washington.
AL: I know, you hypocrites are too used to double-talk and [expletive] to the Arabs.
HC: OK, big mouth. Tell me what is your prime minister’s peace plan.
AL: Bibi Netanyahu? I don’t know about him. I don’t think he knows himself. This is why he first sent President Shimon Peres to meet with you guys, to find out what you’re up to.
HC: That’s simple. We want you to freeze the settlements.
AL: The only thing I freeze, madam secretary, is my vodka. By the way, I happen to have here—
HC: No, put that bottle away, right now, Mr. Lieberman. Please, let’s get serious.
AL: But I am serious, this is the finest vodka you can get. you can call me Iwet.
HC: OK, Mr. Lieberman, Iwet, and you can call me Hillary. Now, what is your take on the recent U.N. report, about you Israelis using excessive force in Gaza?
AL: [Expletive!] This is the only way to deal with those SOBs, if you’ll excuse my French. See how we dealt with them in Chechnya.
HC: Chechnya? I thought the Russians did it.
AL: Of course, of course. I was just saying, you need to be tough with all those bandits.
HC: Still, I’m not sure this is the right way—
AL: Why not? For sure, it was always the American way. If force doesn’t work, use more force. Look at Fallujah, for example.
HC: That is different.
AL: Why? You leveled whole neighborhoods and killed civilians.
HC: Yes, but we are Americans. When we do it, we do it for noble causes.
AL: Like what?
HC: Like making the world a safer place.
AL: I see, and when Israel uses force, it’s not for noble causes?
HC: No, you’re too small to have noble causes. I mean, no, don’t get me wrong, Iwet, we have the highest admiration for you guys. Anyway, all this belongs in the past. We have since dropped the Bush policies toward the Muslim world, and now we are advancing the new Obama approach, that of Engagement.
AL: Exactly. I wanted to discuss this nonsense with you. How can you be so naive, and believe all those liars?
HC: Why not believe them? How can you tell when they are lying anyway?
AL: It’s simple. Whenever they move their lips they are lying.
HC: So when (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad says he wants to destroy Israel, he is actually lying?
AL: That’s a dirty trick, Hillary. Look, it’s simple. Muslims and Arabs are always lying, even when they are telling the truth. Israelis are always telling the truth. Period.
HC: In that case, when you cursed the Egyptian president and threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam, you really meant it?
AL: I was told you’re difficult. These were only words, Hillary. You know how it is. Remember, when you were campaigning against Barack Obama, and you said nasty things about him, and now you’re working for him.
HC: Well, this is different. You see—
AL: Or your husband. Remember what he said about that nice Jewish girl, ``I did not have—‘’
HC: Now, this is ridiculous—
AL: Why? I tell you, I loved his finger work, on television, ‘'I did not blah blah . . .‘’ So you see, Hillary, people say words and do the opposite.
HC: Does this mean that all your warmongering is only rhetoric, and when the time comes, you’ll be ready to make peace?
AL: Make peace with whom?
HC: With the Palestinians, of course.
AL: Oh, not so fast. First I want to make peace with the Dutch.
HC: The Dutch? But you don’t have a quarrel with the Dutch.
AL: Not yet, but give me a chance.
HC: I love that, Iwet. You’re impossible. By the way, about that vodka . . .

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April 17, 2009 | 9:44 am

Bibi’s new government must be an April fool

Posted by Uri Dromi

Mr Binyamin Netanyahu has just formed the largest government ever in the history of Israel: 30 ministers and seven deputy ministers. People have raised doubts about this government’s ability to function. A government spokesman agreed to address questions of the concerned public.

Q: Why so many ministers? Isn’t that just a pure waste?

A: On the contrary. This is a good use of taxpayer money. Had all these people not been ministers, they would be roaming around the Knesset, scheming against the government and trying to undermine it.

Q: But isn’t that the duty of the parliament — to limit the power of the government?

A: In normal democracies, yes — but not in Israel. In a country surrounded by so many enemies, the last thing you need is hassle from parliament.

Q: What will a government meeting look like? If every minister speaks for 10 minutes, it’s 300 minutes altogether, or five hours.

A: You really have to look at the bright side. When the first 15 ministers speak, for two and a half hours, the others can take a nap. Then they rotate.  Hard working ministers need a rest.

Q: How will this government deal with the economic crisis?

A: That’s simple. It will take from the poor and give to the rich.

Q: You mean, the other way around?

A: Yes, of course, I’m sorry. It will give to the rich and take from the poor.

Q: What about the peace process?

A: What peace process?

Q: Between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A: Oh, that peace process. This government will surely give it its fullest attention.

Q: But how? Half of the ministers are for a two-state solution, while the other half are totally against it.

A: Precisely. This government is fit to address the situation we are facing. Those favouring a peace move will deal with Fatah and Abu Mazen, while those opposing it will deal with Hamas.

Q: How the [expletive] is it going to work? This is nothing but a government of paralysis!

A: Calm down, sir. Sometimes, inaction is better than action. Look, for example, at the actions of the last government, in Lebanon and inGaza.

Q: What about Avigdor Lieberman?

A: What about him?

Q: Is he really the right person to represent Israel as Foreign Minister? Didn’t he threaten in the past to bomb the Aswan Dam? Didn’t he just declare the Annapolis agreement null and void? Isn’t he a bull in a china shop?

A: Don’t worry, we already took care of it. As we speak, the police are investigating him for money laundering.

Q: What’s the matter with you people? Every prime minister or minister you elect is eventually found to be a crook.

A: Not true. We know they are crooks before we elect them. This way we avoid the scandal later.

Q: Excuse me, but it just occurred to me, that the date this government was established…

A: Sorry, I really have to go…

Q: …No wait, wasn’t it April 1, All Fools’ Day?

A: Well, if you insist, yes, it was.

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April 7, 2009 | 1:18 pm

Reserve Hostile Judgments

Posted by Uri Dromi

Recently, stories reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz and covered extensively in The New York Times revealed the darker side of operation ‘'Cast Lead’‘ in Gaza. Soldiers who participated in the fighting spoke about being trigger-happy, about not sticking to the ethical code of the Israeli Army when it came to sorting the Hamas terrorists from the local, uninvolved Palestinian population.

Anyone who believes in the justice of Israel defending itself should nevertheless call for an independent and thorough investigation. If any of what was reported is true, those responsible should be severely reprimanded.

Critics of Israel, however, wasted no time and accused Israel of committing war crimes. However, we have been through this before. Israel has faced rushed accusations based on versions of the story told by Palestinians that turn out to be only partially true—and more often than not are exposed as lies and fabrications.

In the first Lebanon War of 1982, Palestinian propagandists floated the rumor that Israel had killed 10,000 people. The world media picked it up and without any serious checking, repeated the lie. It took weeks to refute it, and still, the libel stuck.

And remember the ‘'massacre’‘ in Jenin in 2002? After clashes between Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) forces and Palestinian terrorists, the secretary-general of the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, said that thousands of Palestinians had been killed and buried in mass graves, or lay under houses destroyed in Jenin and Nablus.

Human shields

However, according to Lorenzo Cremonesi, the correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in Jerusalem, who visited the camp on April 13, 2002, ‘'it was all talk and nothing could be verified.‘’ Cremonesi added: ‘'At the end of that day, I wrote that the death toll was not more than 50 and most of them were combatants.‘’ Two weeks later, Qadoura Mousa, director of Fatah for the northern West Bank, had to admit that the dead toll was 56.

Cremonesi, who is a personal friend of mine, has been a longtime critic of Israel’s conduct vis-a-vis the Palestinians. His report, therefore, guided by his sound journalistic professionalism, carries much weight.

And it was the same Cremonesi who in the wake of the recent clash in Gaza went there to get a first-hand impression. On Jan. 22 he reported that Hamas had vastly overstated the number of civilian deaths in Gaza. He went on to confirm Israel’s allegations that Hamas had used civilians as human shields and used ambulances and United Nations buildings in the fighting. Those who tried to drive the terrorists away in order to protect their families were beaten.

Israel, however, never gets a fair deal in such cases. I’m not even talking about the lack of context by which Israel is always portrayed as the aggressor, even if it is acting in justifiable self-defence. I’m talking about the ritual by which later retractions are barely noticed. Such was the case with the allegation that Israel had intentionally shelled a U.N.-run school in Gaza. Everybody memorized headlines such as the one in The Independent on Jan. 7 Massacre of innocent as UN school is shelled. How many remember, or even know, that Maxwell Gaylard, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem, later admitted that the IDF mortar shells fell in the street near the school, and not on the school itself?

Why am I telling you all this? Because whenever I see or hear allegations of Israeli war crimes, I have a sense of déjà vu. These kind of accusations need to be thoroughly investigated, and this is exactly what the IDF is doing right now. Furthermore, our vibrant press will not tolerate any whitewash. Yet this is a slow and complex process that takes time. Will Israel get that time or, as usual, will it be sentenced again by a field tribunal of impatient, hostile public opinion?

Dromi is a columnist based in Jerusalem. He can be reached at
.

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March 17, 2009 | 12:33 pm

Save us from this bull in a china shop

Posted by Uri Dromi

The concerns about Avigdor Lieberman becoming Israel’s next Foreign Minister remind me of a Jewish telegram: “Start worrying. Details to follow.”

Indeed, in an era when Israel’s image is not so shiny, the idea of someone who seems like a bully, who lives in a settlement and who uses strong language to express his radical views is not ideal.

But, looking carefully at his recent statements to the Washington Post and New York’s Jewish Weekly, Lieberman seems less scary on peace. Like other right-wingers before him — Sharon, Olmert and Livni, to name a few — he realises a Palestinian state is a fait accompli. He even hinted at giving up his home settlement for real peace.

It is his views about the Israeli Arabs, not his stand on the peace process, which should worry us. Six decades of conflict have put the Arab residents of Israel — 20 per cent of the state’s population — in a situation where, according to a painful saying, “my country is at war with my people”. If we were smart, we would have made them the happiest people in Israel, fully integrated and equal, thus turning them into our perfect ambassadors, conveying the message to other Arabs: “See what you get when you live in peace with the Jews”. Instead we have treated them unfairly and are surprised they are bitter.

Then along comes Lieberman with his past suggestions of a land swap and more recent calls for Israeli Arabs’ citizenship to be conditional on an oath of loyalty.

In such a complex situation, where national sentiments, cultural differences, social grievances, prejudice and fear create an explosive mix, the last thing we need is a bull in a china shop. And we Jews, of all people, with our history of being a persecuted minority, should be more sensitive than anybody else.

The good news is that he will not last long in his new job. Either police investigations about his money deals will force him to resign; or, most likely, a fight with Netanyahu. These two strange bedfellows can’t stand or trust each other. Until it happens, however, we’re in for some interesting times.

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February 1, 2009 | 5:42 pm

First Blog

Posted by Uri Dromi

Welcome to Jerusalem View.

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