Camping Out in the Acropolis

Tour Groups traveling through Tel Aviv recently might have been very surprised. Down the street from the Theater and Culture Hall, right smack in the bustling central streets of Israel's largest metropolis, an endless row of colorful camping tents popped up like mushrooms. Young couples with guitars and homemade demonstration signs lay in the summer heat and humidity, men and women trying to gain attention for their worthy cause. Under the shade of the ancient sycamore trees that line the Boulevard, these demonstrations seems almost as out of place as the trees themselves. Here in a city whose residents are constantly reproached for their apathy and lack of conviction, no one thought a new movement would take to the streets.

The young rebels are protesting against the hike in real estate prices all over Israel and in Tel Aviv in particular. "We will be left with no option but to live in tents" they say. They are angry at the government who they say is not doing enough to restrain apartment prices or create new budgetary housing for students. Their rhetoric often strays to socialism although they would never admit to being socialists; often they stray to other vexing issues and seem to lose focus. Yet they seem to embody something far more encompassing then their own opinion, a notion almost universally felt and expressed.

Walking between the tents this week I couldn't help but think of Tel Aviv's modest beginnings. In Patrick Geddes's town plan blue prints from 1919, which are the foundation of the city plan till this day one finds a social utopia, a city where green urban gardens serve all classes of citizens, and shade and benches are provided for everyone's pleasure, where intimate residential blocks are weaved together to form a wider communal form of city life. The apex of this plan was to be situated on the top of the hill just off the main boulevard, an urban acropolis that would serve both as city hall and the city's cultural epicenter with theaters and concert hall. Geddes's Acropolis is today where the youth demonstrations are held.

Around the thousands that came to the acropolis to manifest their discontent the Bauhaus international style buildings for which this city is famous seem but a shadow of their glorious past. The international Bauhaus style was an ornament-less functionality-first school of architecture that became popular in Tel Aviv in the 1930's because it provided affordable and practical housing . Their white exterior gave the city its reputation as the White City.

Today the white exteriors are covered with black and grey soot, many of the old sycamore gardens where cleared away to make room for modern high-rises, and although we they are far more rich than they were, Israel's working class find much less time to engage in cultural activities at Gedes's Acropolis.

Perhaps the youth procession in Tel Aviv expresses our nostalgic longing to the social ideals this city was founded on. Even if it was only a utopia and was never realized, at least we once aspired to build a better more socially just society where every person can afford a roof over his head, a night at the theater and some pleasant shade under the old sycamore trees.

Glenn Beck Preaching to the Choir in Israel

Popular and controversial American TV commentator Glenn Beck arrived in Israel. Speaking at a meeting of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee Beck Said: "We have created a system of politicians who are afraid to tell the truth. Instead they're telling people what they think they want to hear," said Beck, recalling that he mistakenly viewed Israel as a hostile, war-torn nation before actually visiting himself.

When asked why he retired his show on Fox News Beck said "I was tired of preaching to the choir".

Beck touches on an important issue. He complains that the only people who tune in to his show, are people who already agree with his opinion, people who subscribe to the gospel he preaches.

Becks gospel like any other is a narrative, a story. People are storytellers and the stories are the way our mind views history and justice. It serves as a framework for our human experience and the foundation of our moral, social and national values. Although truth may be predominantly the premise of the stories we choose to tell ourselves it is seldom an entire and all-encompassing truth.

However flawed our perception of the world may be, we are inclined to strengthen our conviction with the embrace of like-minded individuals and communities. We find people who agree with us, at least to some extent, and surround ourselves with their soothing voices of solidarity, adding our own to the mix to the constant sound of their applause.

It is in this spirit that chairman MK Danny Danon (Likud) invited Glenn Beck to share his support of Israel with the Knesset committee and the reason he was so lavishly praised by its members. "It isn't a coincidence that you're a religious person [and support Israel]," said Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely. "This conflict isn't territorial. If it was, it would have been solved a long ago".
Hotovely continued: "This is a religious battle led by Islam. We can't ignore this basic truth. It's important that we stand behind a historical truth: We're not just here because of Zionism, but because of the Bible."

As an Israeli, I believe in this truth, in our right to be here, in our just cause, in the danger of fundamental Islam and yet it does not suffice me to hear this truth alone. If its truth we are after it cannot be partial it must be inclusive, it must include the Palestinian story, the Muslim story, the Christian story, the Jewish story. It is not history and fact that lend importance to these stories but rather the abundance of people that believe in them and live their lives by them.

On August 24 Beck will host a "Restoring Courage" rally in Jerusalem. He said thousands are expected to attend, including 70 prominent world politicians and four US presidential candidates. Beck said he hopes the event will help Israelis see that they are not alone, even if the mainstream media tries to make it out as though they are.

Glenn Beck is right about mainstream media covering only the stories in line with their school of thought. But the reason Glenn Beck is still preaching to the choir is that he acts in precisely the same bias.

What is needed in order to achieve true change is not more preaching but rather more listening. Not bigger mega-phones and rallies but rather bigger and more sensitive ears and hearts. if we seek a truth that is more inclusive we can find a narrative that leads to peace, a story with a happy ending.

Identity Travel Israel's 'The Traveller' Newsletter June 2011

Obama and Netanyahu Battle Like Prophets

This week the world was treated to a spectacular event, a champions' competition of an ancient sport, practiced since Homo Sapiens uttered their first spoken words. Two of today's leading orators collided in a match of prose and rhetoric excellence. Obama and Netanyahu sharpened their pens, cleared their throats and battled!

Oratory is a subtle art. In Judeo-Christian tradition it is widely associated with the prophets Ezekiel, Amos and Joshua, and lest we forget Jesus. These men stood in turbulent times, faced their people and spoke with conviction, eloquence and a determination to change the wrongs of their society.

It would perhaps be interesting to note the similarity in the content of their speeches. All of the aforementioned prophets lectured on morality and religion. Standing at the city's gate, they reproached sinners for their religious hypocrisy and for using their temples as refuge while committing immoral acts against their fellow human beings. They contended that human solidarity and social justice are of greater importance than religious fervor.

"Away with the noise of your songs (of praise)! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!"
Amos 5:23

Here we are in turbulent times once again, glued to our TV screens and listening to the new leaders of men, political leaders. Obama and Netanyahu disagree on many issues, however, the Israel-USA alliance stays strong because of the core values they share. The belief in certain unalienable rights that amongst them are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is key to democracy. As the USA looks for Middle Eastern countries to adopt these values Israel still stands alone as the only democratic state in the region.

"Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the middle east"
Benjamin Netanyahu

"Palestinians leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection"
Barrack Obama

Netanyahu and Obama reproached the Palestinian authority for its reconciliation with the religiously violent Hamas organization. They both share the fear that religious fervor would undermine the advances towards democracy in the Middle East.

Many more eloquent speeches would undoubtedly be sounded on Palestinian statehood, but the prayer for democracy and peace in the Middle East will go unanswered until Arab leaders speak of human decency and generosity before prayer and martyrdom. Then the Palestinians and all of the Middle East might enjoy Justice and righteousness like a "never-failing stream".

Identity Travel Israel's 'The Traveller' Newsletter March 2011

Unmasking the World

This week, as the Muslim world trembles and regimes fall one after the other like flies the Jewish citizens of Israel celebrated Purim. Huge festive parades marched through the streets. From school children to working adults from kindergartens to offices through every street in the city, it seemed that everywhere everybody was dressed in customs and masks.

This age old tradition began long ago in Persia, as recorded in the Esther Scroll After Jews got the upper hand and escaped persecution, winning the favor of king Xerxos. it was hip to be a Jew. Many of the local non-Jews dressed up as Jews in the hope of escaping punishment.

Esther 8:17:
And in every province, and in every city, wherever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land behaved as Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.

This ancient tale is a wonderful example of the fickleness of public opinion and its hypocrisy and is a stark reminder that things are not always as they seem.

Nobody knows today what the shift in the Arab world will bring but there is no doubt that many of our past conceptions about the Arab world and about western foreign policy have been debunked. Perhaps the Arab world and western policy never changed but their true nature was unmasked for all to see.

The recent events have managed to unmask the poverty, lack of rights and despotism, so wide spread in Arab countries. The western world's dependency on oil and its effect on foreign policy have been unmasked by the unbalanced stances regarding the Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian and Baharanian civil unrests.

The Arab League's unity was unmasked as nothing but empty rhetoric. Iran's invisible hand in Middle Eastern politics became very apparent. But most importantly Arab governments around the world have been unmasked for what they are, terror-based dictatorships, travesties of human rights, corrupt and unjust.

Unmasking the villain has allowed Arab citizens to fight for their rights for the first time, to fight for democracy. Their success will depend largely on their ability to spot hypocritical villains and unmask them, to see thing for what they are, Then they too will be able to parade proudly and unafraid in the streets of their cities.

War of Words, War of Worlds

Saturday's gruesome murder in Itamar, an Israeli West Bank settlement, horrified Israelis. A Palestinian perpetrated a violent murder killing a mother, a father and three children, the youngest of whom was a three-month-old infant.

As opposed to other terrorist attacks this attack did not yet instigate a war of weapons but rather a War of Words.

Israel is demanding an apology from CNN over its coverage of Saturday's terrorist attack in Itamar claiming it was "tendentious and deceptive."

The CNN report stated: "Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a 'terror attack.'" Israeli officials contested the quotation marks around the term terror attack stating that there should be no argument on the fact that this is a terrorist attack.

The report went on to say: "According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 am, made his way into a family home and killed two parents and their three children."

The report rephrased the IDF's official statement that noted forces were searching for a "terrorist" using instead the words "intruder" and "assailant". I myself remember many articles that called a suicide bomber, a freedom fighter.

Why is terminology such a controversial issue? Or as Shakespeare put it "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

To answer this question we should consider another article that hit the wires recently.

In Rome Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ. He deconstructs one particular Biblical account which has the crowd saying, "His blood be on us and on our children" — a phrase frequently cited as evidence of the collective guilt Jews bore and the curse that they carried as a result.

The phrase, from the Gospel of Matthew, has been so inflammatory that director Mel Gibson was reportedly forced to drop it from the subtitles of his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ," although it remained in the spoken Aramaic.

The reason for Pope Benedict's interest in this debate could be traced to his childhood, when he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. As an adult he has made improving relations with Jews a mission and has visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Years of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus along with newer anti-Semitic propaganda may have led to the extermination of Jews in World War II.

Words and terminology motivate people to action. Language has cultural and practical consequences. The Pope understood this. Israel has become aware of this and is now asking the world media as well as global leaders to unequivocally denounce these most recent attack.

One of the workshops we run on our tours is an exercise in the vocabulary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is the language used in your local media to describe the conflict? How do you reconcile between terms such as apartheid wall and separation fence, terrorist and freedom fighter, targeted killing and assassination?

At the end of the workshop we show a clip and deconstruct the phrasing of each sentence. By choosing our words we choose our moral ground, our social values and our identity – In effect our world is made up of words.

How were the Itamar "killings" reported in your part of the world?