A Beneficial Theft

Confusion.

I’m very confused tonight.  It was a long day of meetings, a trip to Masada, a trip to the Dead Sea, more meetings…  Much was discussed, including meeting our first Arab Israeli and hearing his point of view about the two-state solution (which he believes in.)  We talked about issues of identity, masculinity, telling your own narrative and not accepting the one that is told for you… But I regret that I can’t quite get my head around it all to make sense of it.  I wish I could.  

I did have a thought for a play.  A man who sues his country for stealing his narrative.  ”I am not that man you have told me and are telling others I am.”  If anybody figures out how that’s a play, I’ll kiss you on both cheeks.  And you get your choice of cheeks.  And I don’t want it to be a drama.  Satire.  Any help out there in the blogosphere?

I’m getting more and more fond of the bloggers.  They’re getting menschier as the trip goes on and I’m losing more and more of my bias.  I don’t know why I had such a strong bias against them.  They’re writers, after all.  Or maybe that’s why I was biased.  Some form of self-hatred.  Or fear of technology.  Or just because they were called the bloggers and I didn’t really have a title.  Anyhow, they’re pretty decent guys.  

I’m missing my wife and daughter very much.  I was at a restaurant today and the chef and I spoke for a while.  I was telling her about Eliza, and how she calls me “Dad-do” and how when I call her “Eli-zo” back, she says, “No, Eli-za.”  Then, tonight, when I called home, she called me “Blue Dad-do” and I called her “Green Eli-Zo.”  She said, “No, pink Eli-Zo.”  Is she brilliant or what?

Life can sometimes seem so simple and perfect.   

You can’t know a place until you know it’s people…

So it may seem like I’m a little preoccupied by this tour guide, Shmuelik.  I am.He reminds me of my late grandpa, Bud.   For those of you reading this who don’t know me (is anybody reading this who doesn’t know me?), I was very close to my grandpa.  So close I don’t even know what to write about him.  Not close in the sense that we saw each other a lot.  We didn’t.  We never lived in the same city. But our spiritual connection was inseparable.  

We shared a love not just for telling a joke but for appreciating someone who could tell one better.  I remember spending time in his rec room, sitting on shabby La-Z-Boy Chairs smoking cigarettes and listening to recordings of Shelly Berman, of Jimmy Durante, of Eddie Gonzales, and laughing ‘til we cried.  

He taught me a lot about respecting and loving a strong woman.  He loved my grandmother, and she could be tough, and he loved her because she was tough. Not difficult.  I’m saying strong.  Strong-willed.  Strong of mind.  Strong character. Like my mother.  And like Courtney (my wife, for those of you who don’t know me).  There is no possible way I could have found the love of my life in Courtney without my grandfather’s love of my grandmother.

And my grandfather was honest.  He never bullshitted me.  If he disagreed with me, he said it, and he said it strongly.  If he thought I was being a schmuck, he told me I was being a schmuck and I knew then I was being a schmuck.  He never gossiped, he never spoke out of school.  If he had something to say to you, he’d say it to your face and stick around to hear your response.  And he’d admit he was wrong if he was wrong, though he was very, very rarely wrong.    

Shmuelik is a man out of that mold.  The mold of a man who has character, has integrity, and respect for honesty and for honest people.  And the way Shmuelik loves this country reminds me of the way my grandpa loved his family.  I’ll bet you everyone in our family believes he/she had a special bond with my grandpa and they’re not wrong!  He was a spiritual chameleon— he could change his colors to adapt to whoever he was with at the time.  But it wasn’t a facetious changing of his colors.  He did it knowing exactly who he was— he changed so he could understand you better.  Shmuelik does this.  He is always him, and always you.  

Am I making any sense?  

I’ll bottom-line this cause it’s late and I should be sleeping… 

You can’t know a place until you know it’s people?  Knowing Shmuelik, I declare that this is a magnificent place.   

Vat a day!

Hard to pick out one highlight of the day.  We started by taking a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to Sderot and toured the local police precinct where they catalog all the Kasama rockets that are being fired from Hamas in Gaza four or five times a day.  There have been over 4,000 rockets fired in eighteen months and over twenty people have died.  

Sderot looks like any small town in Los Angeles.  A few streets with shops and then houses.  Public parks.  Kids playing soccer.  Only difference?  The bus stations double as bomb shelters.  There are cement canopies over the schools to withstand the impact of a bombing.  Different mindset.  Always on the defense from the randomness of the sky.

We flew back over the Old City.  When I was first here in ‘94, I flew with my father in a private plane over the country and we were grounded unexpectedly in Jerusalem but the tower wouldn’t say why.  We landed, got out on the runway, and looked up into the sky.  King Hussein of Jordan was flying in his personal plane over Jerusalem for the first time.  He speaks about it in this interview. (http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/96_feb23.html)  On the ground, I turned and looked at the Israelis who were with us, the pilots and the man my father knew who had taken us on the trip.  All three men were watching and crying.  

So.

We got back to Jerusalem, then went to the Old City.  We started in the Christian Quarter, at the 9th Station of the Way of the Cross.  Then into the church where Jesus was laid to rest.  You don’t need to be a Christian to be in awe.  From there, a bit of lunch, and then to the Wailing Wall.  I put two notes in the wall, one for Courtney and one for Eliza.  Prayers.  To let God know how grateful I am for them and to ask him to keep them safe for me.  

Brig. General Mike Herzog and MK Ephraim Sneh

Wow.  Now this is what I’m talking about.  Access.  

We went to the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv and met with Brigadeer General Mike Herzog, the Chief of Staff to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.   A man in his late 40s, he came in in a beautiful black suit, blue shirt, great tie… This guy had style. Turns out his brother is a well-known politician and that his father was once the Israeli President. 

The Defense Ministry is made up of two skyscrapers, very modern looking cylinders, all glass.  We were taken to the 14th floor and brought into a conference room where glasses of apple and orange juice and plates of cookies awaited us.  It’s nice, nu?  

Mike (and you call everyone here by their first name— you sit on ceremony) spoke to us on a variety of security issues, mainly about the Iranian threat and the various scenarios that could play out, particularly if Iran goes nuclear and with them having an admitted proxy relationship with Hezbollah and Hamas.  

Mike never once sped up his speech, or raised his voice.  He was a humble man, soft-spoken but stern in his convictions, and looked not just a little bit like my father-in-law Fred.  Every second of the hour and change talk we had with him was thrilling.  

At dinner, Knesset member (Labor) Ephraim Sneh also addressed mostly the issue of Iran.  It was his firm conviction, in agreement with Mike, that Israel cannot exist with a nuclear Iran.  He felt that Hamas was weaker than is publicized and that eventually Israel will have to go into Gaza and eradicate Hamas from the territory so as to give Fatah the chance to lead and to not give the Iranians a proxy within immediate striking distance.  

Ephraim was surprisingly optimistic.  Everyone we have talked to believed in the two-state solution but none of them believed it was possible.  Only Ephraim thus far has presented us with a pragmatic way to achieve that:  Negotiate an agreement with the Fatah government.  Eradicate Hamas from Gaza.  Find private investors willing to invest in Palestine and rebuild the country economically.

There are a lot of opinions here.  And they’re all very well thought out.  And very deeply felt.  It’s all somewhat overwhelming.  I think, “If they’ve put this much thought and energy and blood and tears into this, and they are still mired in the thick of the conflict/occupation, then what hope is there of a resolution?”  And yet they continue.  It’s beyond inspiring.  It’s breathtaking.