At the Gateway to Paradise

Tuvia Tenenbom, playwright of MOUNTAIN JEWS, goes to Hebron -- which is either in Israel or in Palestine, depending on your point of view -- to see what the Jewish Settlers have on their mind these days. (This article was published in the prestigious German weekly Die Zeit. To view the German version please click HERE.)

by Tuvia Tenenbom

Israel. Everybody goes there these days, trying to nudge some peace process forward. Bush, Blair. Everybody who's anybody. So, I figure, somebody's got to check how effective these folks are. Why not me? I land at Ben Gurion Airport and take the train to its last stop, Nahariyah. Why not? I get off the train and hail a cab. Just so. Cabbies are good.

The cabbie stopping next to me is Musa, an Arab. And Musa, same age as this country, 60, is pissed off. He doesn't get it why Western leaders who show up here, go to places like the King David Hotel instead of coming to see him. Their loss. Somebody forgot to tell them that old Musa knows more about the Middle East Conflict than the young waitresses smiling at them from every corner of maximum-star hotels. Musa, you see, lives the Conflict day in and day out. During the day Musa drives his taxi here, a mostly Jewish city; the nights he spends in his village, a place of no Jews. "Do you know why the Arabs don't sign a peace treaty with Israel?" No, I don't. Does he? Of course! "How many Jews are here? Five million. How many Muslims in the world? 1.2 billion. Now think of it: if there's peace with Israel, every Muslim will come here for vacation. Why not? The Jews built the nicest state in the Mideast. But when they all come here, the Saudis with their multiple wives and children together with the Iranians and the Kuwaitis and everybody else, you'll need a magnifying glass to see a Jew in a sea of Arabs. One day after peace, Israel will disappear! That's why the Arabs don't sign a peace treaty with Israel: They don't want the Jews to disappear!"

I resist the temptation to join Musa in his village and go instead to have dinner with A., one of the top commanders of the Shabak, the Israeli Secret Service. I tell him of Musa's ideas and expect him to burst out laughing, but A. doesn't. "The equation changed. Go to Hebron," he advises me, "and speak to the young on the streets; you'll see reality you didn't know existed."

Hebron, if you ever chance to enter this city, contains within its walls the very essence of the Mideast Conflict in its sharpest colors. Take the spot where I stand right now: One side of the street is Arabic, the other Jewish. A narrow road divides the two sides. And both sides are armed to the hilt. Hamas is in control of the Arab side, IDF soldiers and armed Settlers of the Jewish side. A loudspeaker, coming from the Jewish side, starts: "This is our Holy City, in the Holy Land that God Almighty gave to our Forefather Abraham..." Not to be left alone, the Arab Muezzin, a bit louder, chips in: "Allah is Greater. There's no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger..." The two voices intermingle, two points of view that demand to be heard, two voices that each tries to silence the other. Yet, together, they miraculously create an almost perfect musical composition that totally captures your imagination. Two voices that adamantly refuse to die at the very same instance when both call upon you in the name of dead prophets, men you and I never met. You hear these sounds, louder than any Rock concert you ever lived through, and a thought comes to your mind: The Dead in this land speak louder than the Living.

Loud as they may be, the Dead still don't walk; but the Living do. And one of them soon approaches me, a young man with a big skullcap on his head. "You look like a Leftist," he says. "You have blond hair, you have frameless glasses, and you dress like a free-thinker. No faith. Are you European?" I like the kid, so I play with him. "Look," I say, "I'm a fat man. Have you ever seen a fat Leftist? They're all into health, no smoking, all that stuff. Me? I like to eat, I grow a belly, I smoke horrible cigarettes. How can you say that I'm a Leftist?" A smile immediately spreads on his face; he obviously likes my argument and gladly wills to befriend me. His name is Saadiah, he informs me; Brooklyn-born and raised. His rabbi died a few years ago, but "he came back and often shows up in Hebron. Do you want me to show you around?"

Around we go indeed; to Tel Rumeida, a Jewish settlement deep inside Hebron. As we enter the place I notice that the head of the Rabbinical Seminary in the area, Rabbi Schlisel, carries a pistol. "Excuse me, Rabbi," I say, "What does a rabbi do with a gun?" Rabbi Schlisel looks at me as if I were totally retarded. "Two years ago," he says to me, uttering every syllable very slowly so that my little brain would be able to comprehend, "a Jew left his house to pick a bag from his car, right here, and he was shot dead by Arab terrorists. If he had a gun he would still be alive." Good reason. "Did you ever use your gun?" I ask him. "This pistol, not yet. But I also have a rifle." Did he use his rifle? "Have a good day," comes the reply. "I can't talk anymore." I ask Saadiah why the rabbi stopped talking to me. "Because you look like a Leftist; I told you." I stare at him, not believing that this issue hasn't been settled already. "Sorry," he says, apologizing, "I should've pointed out to him that you're fat."

We continue our walk, by foot. No cabbies here. The Arabs, so Saadiah, "joined the Intifada and the Army kicked them out." Store after store is shut with iron doors, buildings are half-destroyed and stones, remains of past walls, are strewn on the empty streets as if in a deserted cemetery. The only sign of life comes from the soldiers, who man posts at every turn of the road; so many posts are here, my eyes can hardly see the end of them. A young Arab kid, dressed with a yellow t-shirt, is trying to cross a post into the Jewish side. He's stopped. "What do you want?" a soldier asks him. "My ball," answers the kid. The soldier radios to Command: "Can the kid cross over to get his ball?" Command responds: "Description of kid?" "Wearing yellow t-shirt..." comes the reply. Another command post enters the conversation: "Yellow t-shirt, you said?" Before long, and from each post to the other, everybody is talking about the yellow t-shirt. "Yellow t-shirt, you said?" "Yes, yellow. You know him?" Finally, forever minutes later, the kid is allowed to pick his ball. No sooner than the yellow t-shirt story is over that a new one is erupting: Two little girls, both Jewish, attempt to cross another army post into the Arab side. Soldiers: "Hey, girls; where to?" A new cycle of radios starts out. I look at them, mature soldiers with heavy weaponry, playing hide-and-seek with little kids, and I start laughing. It's embarrassing, I know; but I can't control it. The soldiers look at me. "Funny, isn't it?" one of them says. "Do you want to take a picture of us, to remember the funny men?" A picture?? "It's boring here," he says, his voice turning serious. "We have to stand here 12 hours every day. Can't sit. Can't smoke. Can't eat. You want to take a picture? As far as I know, taking pictures is allowed. You'll help us pass the time. We'll pose for you, and you'll click. Okay? You're European, aren't you?"

Saadiah thinks the soldiers are Leftists. As he sees it, they should kill all the Arabs, including women and children. But the soldiers disagree. "That's Nazism," they say. "You have to come to the synagogue and pray," Saadiah admonishes them. We keep on walking, until we reach another post. "Hey, European!" A soldier greets me. Yaakov, another settler, comes by. Somebody told him there's a "European" walking around and asking questions, so he came to investigate. "That's the grave of Ishai, father of King David," he teaches me, pointing at a hole in a mountain ahead of us. "How do you know he's buried there?" I ask. "Where else?!" comes the reply. Yaakov wants me to join him at the Cave of the Patriarchs. "This," he says, "is the Gate of Paradise; right here. All the souls of the righteous, when they die, come here and from here fly to Heaven." He's sure of it. He holds a Bible in his hands and tells me: "Everything is written here, the past and the future." I tell him that many Arabs told me the same thing, talking about their Quran. He laughs: "What do they know? This is The Book!"

Two policewomen join us. The first thing they notice is my camera and they ask if I could take their pictures. I do. They pose, I click. They want to see how they look in digital form, so I show them. They enjoy their look. Could I take more pix of them? Saadiah, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, is not allowed to look at women. He leaves, Yaakov too, and I stay alone with the girls. I click, they smile. They smile, I laugh. We have a great time, I can't deny.

The flirting done, I continue walking. A Druze policeman stops me. "Got a cigarette?" he asks. The cops, I learn, are allowed to smoke at their posts. He lights up. He likes my cigarettes, Indonesian ones, and he opens up. "I don't care much about the Jews or the Arabs. They all hate me. The Arabs curse me in Arabic and the Jews curse me in Hebrew. Only when I'm absolutely bored I answer them. Otherwise, I don't even listen." He invites me to join two of his friends, also cops. "Nobody stops to talk to us. It's nice to see a man treating us like human beings. You want Cola? It's cold. I just bought it. Come, sit with us. We're allowed to sit. You're 'The European,' right?"

We sip our Coke and thoughts wander aimlessly in my head: This is the mightiest army in the Middle East, but all these weapon-carrying people dream of is posing for a camera in order to pass the time. Is this real? The Settlers, not allowed to look at women, pass their time looking at Flying Souls. Is this what the Middle East Conflict is all about, two sides trying to kill time? Is this real?

I don't have much time to wonder and wander. Somebody, in the Arab side of town, suddenly starts shooting--and this is definitely real. "They do it from time to time," a soldier tells me, "and we got used to it. They like to kill each other. That's the way it is. You didn't read about it in the papers, did you? You never will. Nobody cares when the Palestinians kill each other. That's the way it is."

Strange. But the longer you stay here, the more you get used to the sound of bullets. Flying bullets, you discover, sound like a musical instrument. And it has a calming effect, really. I start getting hooked on this place, a city on the planet where dead men refuse to shut up and young girls beg to have your company.

My phone rings. I must go to Yafo; a previous commitment I made to a friend. Yafo, or Jaffa, is part of Tel Aviv and has a mixed population of Arabs and Jews. Before I ring the bell, my eyes catch a big poster in front of my friend's house. Made by the Arabs, this full-color poster shows a Jewish bulldozer destroying an Arab building; the fork of the bulldozer lifts dead bodies, supposedly Arabs. Only that these dead bodies, shot in black-and-white, look awfully similar to those old pictures of dead Jews in Auschwitz. A young Arab woman, head covered, passes by me. "Are these dead bodies from Auschwitz?" I ask her. "Does it matter?" she responds, "It's a good image, isn't it?"

Musa, it seems, got it right after all. Western leaders coming to the King David, are wasting their time. When you stay with the people you realize that the Conflict doesn't get resolved not so much because of disputes about land or religion but more so because both these Semitic peoples have found pleasures in the darkness of their mutual hate. Sip your cold Coke as you watch flying souls, listen to bullets flying and dead men talking, reprint old Auschwitz photos and spoil yourself with young police babes posing for you. And we didn't even start talking about the 70 Virgins of Paradise. Can't beat it. Life's good

Time to Take a Pic: Female Cops in Hebron

 

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