Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "tel"
Tel Aviv at 100
Israel’s hippest, most tolerant city celebrates its centenary
By Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post
TEL AVIV—Purple fireworks sprayed off the roof of Tel Aviv’s City Hall last week to open festivities marking a century since Zionist pioneers began construction of the “first Hebrew city.” Watching among the crowd in Rabin Square, Marko Martin wept.
A German journalist, Martin travels the world to write cultural articles for Die Welt, filing from Myanmar to El Salvador. But he returns again and again to this Mediterranean metropolis, where his Israeli friends call him “Mister Tel Aviv.”
“No other place on earth makes me feel so much at home as this hot and shabby town, built by immigrants from all over the world,” says Martin, whose book “Tel Aviv—A Lifestyle” will be published in Germany this summer. “I was born in Communist East Germany, so I know how to appreciate an island of tolerance in an ocean of bloody fanaticism.”
At its centenary, Tel Avivians have many complaints about their city, from lack of parking to smog to the plain ugliness of most of its architecture. But they all agree with Martin that they’ve built a city that seems almost out of place in the Middle East. Where the rest of the region (including Israel’s capital, Jerusalem) is bigoted and hardline, Tel Aviv mirrors edgy European centers of social liberality like Martin’s native Berlin, even down to a flamboyant Gay Parade and a throbbing nightclub scene that brought you some of the most annoying “trance” music ever recorded.
In 1909, the area that’s now Tel Aviv was “a wilderness of sands,” according to the Zionist mythology. It had been a Canaanite settlement in the third century BC. When Napoleon besieged nearby Jaffa over two hundred years ago, he camped here. The early Zionists who decided to move the short way up the coast from Jaffa wanted to found a “Hebrew city,” unburdened by the biblical past.
They clashed with the Zionist establishment, which favored socialist collective farms and agricultural labor. Tel Aviv was home to tradesmen and shopkeepers. They called their new city “Spring Hill,” which sounds exactly like the bourgeois suburb it originally was. When the British army came through during World War I, it had a population of 2,000, compared to 50,000 in Jaffa.
But the Zionist dream was built around construction as much as agriculture. One of Israel’s national poets, Natan Alterman, immigrated from Warsaw to Tel Aviv in 1925. In his “Song to the Homeland,” he wrote: “We will clothe you in a robe of concrete and cement.”
Alterman might have specified that the robe would be a muumuu, because for a relatively young city Tel Aviv has the girth of a sumo champ.
These days Jaffa, where the Biblical Jonah took ship on his date with the whale, is the minor partner of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality, an Arab slum with a smattering of gentrifying yuppies. Tel Aviv is a town of 390,000, and its greater metropolitan district has swelled to a population of 1.3 million. Not huge, but pretty good going for a city that was an outpost in a British colony until 60 years ago.
Tel Aviv has its detractors. Jerusalem has a more religious, conservative population and is inclined to see the city 40 miles away on the coast as a modern Sodom. (The ancient city which gave us the word “Sodom” is, of course, south of Jerusalem near the Dead Sea.) Certainly the gay community is very much accepted in Tel Aviv and also provides a refuge for Palestinian gays who flee their own intolerant towns. By contrast, Jerusalem grudgingly allows a Gay Parade. But over the last few years Jerusalem’s religious zealots have attacked marchers, including one gay man who was stabbed.
Tel Aviv isn’t the loveliest place to look at, either. “It is shabby, like a neglected old woman,” wrote Yossi Klein in an Israeli magazine earlier this month. (An aside: the same magazine included an interesting article on Israeli sexism.)
Personally, having grown up in a mountainous country, I’m constantly lost in the featureless landscape of Tel Aviv. I’ve been there every couple of weeks for 13 years, but it’s always as though I’m visiting for the first time, clinging to a couple of identically sycamore-lined, grubby streets which I believe will get me to the highway and back up the hill to Jerusalem in the end.
The city has been through a number of attempts to pin a name on its unique character. In the 1990s, the municipality came up with “The City that Never Stops,” which gets a cheer when visiting rock stars parrot it at concerts, but is mainly used tongue in cheek by locals. (They know it’s a third-rate reworking of “The City that Never Sleeps.”)
More recently the central district--built by Bauhaus architects fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s--has been somewhat spruced up and Tel Aviv dubbed itself “The White City”. In 2003, UNESCO made it a world heritage site.
It’s undoubtedly among the ugliest of the 878 world heritage sites (If you don’t believe me, check out the list). But one would be churlish to say that this cosmopolitan oasis in a desert of hate didn’t deserve some recognition.
By Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post
TEL AVIV—Purple fireworks sprayed off the roof of Tel Aviv’s City Hall last week to open festivities marking a century since Zionist pioneers began construction of the “first Hebrew city.” Watching among the crowd in Rabin Square, Marko Martin wept.
A German journalist, Martin travels the world to write cultural articles for Die Welt, filing from Myanmar to El Salvador. But he returns again and again to this Mediterranean metropolis, where his Israeli friends call him “Mister Tel Aviv.”
“No other place on earth makes me feel so much at home as this hot and shabby town, built by immigrants from all over the world,” says Martin, whose book “Tel Aviv—A Lifestyle” will be published in Germany this summer. “I was born in Communist East Germany, so I know how to appreciate an island of tolerance in an ocean of bloody fanaticism.”
At its centenary, Tel Avivians have many complaints about their city, from lack of parking to smog to the plain ugliness of most of its architecture. But they all agree with Martin that they’ve built a city that seems almost out of place in the Middle East. Where the rest of the region (including Israel’s capital, Jerusalem) is bigoted and hardline, Tel Aviv mirrors edgy European centers of social liberality like Martin’s native Berlin, even down to a flamboyant Gay Parade and a throbbing nightclub scene that brought you some of the most annoying “trance” music ever recorded.
In 1909, the area that’s now Tel Aviv was “a wilderness of sands,” according to the Zionist mythology. It had been a Canaanite settlement in the third century BC. When Napoleon besieged nearby Jaffa over two hundred years ago, he camped here. The early Zionists who decided to move the short way up the coast from Jaffa wanted to found a “Hebrew city,” unburdened by the biblical past.
They clashed with the Zionist establishment, which favored socialist collective farms and agricultural labor. Tel Aviv was home to tradesmen and shopkeepers. They called their new city “Spring Hill,” which sounds exactly like the bourgeois suburb it originally was. When the British army came through during World War I, it had a population of 2,000, compared to 50,000 in Jaffa.
But the Zionist dream was built around construction as much as agriculture. One of Israel’s national poets, Natan Alterman, immigrated from Warsaw to Tel Aviv in 1925. In his “Song to the Homeland,” he wrote: “We will clothe you in a robe of concrete and cement.”
Alterman might have specified that the robe would be a muumuu, because for a relatively young city Tel Aviv has the girth of a sumo champ.
These days Jaffa, where the Biblical Jonah took ship on his date with the whale, is the minor partner of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality, an Arab slum with a smattering of gentrifying yuppies. Tel Aviv is a town of 390,000, and its greater metropolitan district has swelled to a population of 1.3 million. Not huge, but pretty good going for a city that was an outpost in a British colony until 60 years ago.
Tel Aviv has its detractors. Jerusalem has a more religious, conservative population and is inclined to see the city 40 miles away on the coast as a modern Sodom. (The ancient city which gave us the word “Sodom” is, of course, south of Jerusalem near the Dead Sea.) Certainly the gay community is very much accepted in Tel Aviv and also provides a refuge for Palestinian gays who flee their own intolerant towns. By contrast, Jerusalem grudgingly allows a Gay Parade. But over the last few years Jerusalem’s religious zealots have attacked marchers, including one gay man who was stabbed.
Tel Aviv isn’t the loveliest place to look at, either. “It is shabby, like a neglected old woman,” wrote Yossi Klein in an Israeli magazine earlier this month. (An aside: the same magazine included an interesting article on Israeli sexism.)
Personally, having grown up in a mountainous country, I’m constantly lost in the featureless landscape of Tel Aviv. I’ve been there every couple of weeks for 13 years, but it’s always as though I’m visiting for the first time, clinging to a couple of identically sycamore-lined, grubby streets which I believe will get me to the highway and back up the hill to Jerusalem in the end.
The city has been through a number of attempts to pin a name on its unique character. In the 1990s, the municipality came up with “The City that Never Stops,” which gets a cheer when visiting rock stars parrot it at concerts, but is mainly used tongue in cheek by locals. (They know it’s a third-rate reworking of “The City that Never Sleeps.”)
More recently the central district--built by Bauhaus architects fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s--has been somewhat spruced up and Tel Aviv dubbed itself “The White City”. In 2003, UNESCO made it a world heritage site.
It’s undoubtedly among the ugliest of the 878 world heritage sites (If you don’t believe me, check out the list). But one would be churlish to say that this cosmopolitan oasis in a desert of hate didn’t deserve some recognition.
The Writing Life interview: Alon Hilu
The most original voice in Hebrew fiction is that of Alon Hilu. His first novel “Death of a Monk” took a blood libel against the Jews of Damascus in 1840 and offered a startling alternative perspective on how the murder at the heart of the scandal might have taken place. The second of his novels “House of Dajani” will be out in English next year, but it’s already controversial in Israel. Set in 1895 it casts a different light on the early Zionist settlers of what was then Palestine, suggesting that the precursors of today’s Israelis might not have been quite so heroic. “Dajani” is set in Jaffa, where Alon was born in 1972. His parents were born in Damascus.
How long did it take you to get published?
I was first published at the age of 20 (two short stories were published in Israeli literary magazines), and my first novel, “Death of a Monk” was published when I was 32.
Would you recommend any books on writing?
“The Art of Dramatic Writing” by Lajos Egri – written originally for playwrights – gives the basics for writing, and I found it very useful. The most challenging part for me in writing is the structuring of plots, and for this particular purpose I use the book “20 Master Plots (and how to build them)” by Ronald B. Tobias, which I highly recommend.
What’s a typical writing day?
My writing discipline is very poor. I only write when I feel I want to write. It usually happens during the quiet hours of late night.
Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
“The House of Dajani” is a gothic story about a Palestinian child who lives in Jaffa in 1895, and can see the far future, and in particular the Jewish-Arab conflict and the many wars to come. He meets a 27 year old Zionist immigrant, and their relationship begins with love, but transfers into hate, when the child accuses the Jewish adult of killing his father. The book can be read as a metaphor of the Jewish-Arab relationship in Israel during the last century, became a best seller in Israel and is being translated into five languages. I love this book because it takes the readers back to late 19th century, and describes the landscape and people of what I call “Palestinian Tel Aviv”.
How much of what you do is dictated by formula – how much is complete originality?
I always work with the same formula of plot structure, which is comprised of a triggering event, a developing conflict, a crisis and a resolution. I write the synopsis in advance and remain pretty close to it. What changes from book to book is the content poured into the structure.
What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?
The first sentence of “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta”. It is poetically written, and absorbs the obsession of the narrator in few words. I also love the novel – it is undoubtedly a masterpiece.
How much research is involved in each of your books?
My first two books were historical novels, and naturally I had to invest time and energy to research the historical period and place (1840 Damascus in “Death of a Monk” and 1895 Jaffa in “The House of Dajani”). It takes me about one to two years to complete the research.
Where’d you get the idea for your main character?
From the research. I intentionally look for the forgotten characters, which are not praised by historians, and I usually have only one descriptive sentence about the character when choosing him. In my first book, the protagonist was Aslan Farhi, a 19 year old Jew from Damascus, who accused his father of killing a monk for ritual purposes. The descriptive sentence I had in mind was: “the son who falsely accused his father”. In the second novel, the main character is a 12 year old Palestinian child who foresee Zionism and the establishment of the state of Israel. The descriptive sentence of him was: “the child who could see the death of his people”.
What’s your experience with being translated?
Each of my books has been translated into five languages. Since I write in anachronistic Hebrew, it is always a challenge for my translators to depict the aroma of the Hebrew to the target language. Of my translated books, I can only read English, and I can tell that my translator, Evan Fallenberg made a terrific work in translating both books. [I interviewed Evan Fallenberg recently in The Writing Life series.--MBR]
Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before could make a living at it?
No, I work as a general counsel of a hi-tech company called Voltaire Ltd. and I make my living off being a lawyer.
How many books did you write before you were published?
One – the one that was published (“Death of a Monk”).
What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?
I went to downtown San Francisco to lecture at the LGBT center, and found out that the entrance was blocked by angry women. It was a contest against my lecture, held by an anti-Israeli Lesbian group based in California. They proclaimed that the LGBT should not host events sponsored by the Israeli consulate, because Israel was anti-gay (which is a ridiculous argument anyway).
What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?
No such thing – everything is worth to print.
Netanyahu holds his line
Israeli Prime Minister ignores Obama and reiterates same policies
by Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post
JERUSALEM — It’s as if Obama never happened.
Less than two weeks ago President Barack Obama laid out his plans for the Middle East in a speech in Cairo. He called for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction, among other things.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately announced that he’d make a key policy address in Tel Aviv. Commentators wracked their brains figuring out how Bibi, the nickname by which the Likud leader is known, would walk the tightrope between his nationalist coalition — which is very supportive of the West Bank settlements and disdains the idea of a Palestinian state — and Obama, who had made it clear that he sees the settlements as Israel’s main contribution to the failure of peace efforts.
But Netanyahu outsmarted them all. No smokescreen, no artful diplospeak, no talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Nothing but old-school Bibi.
The big policy speech turned out to be filled with typical nationalist rhetoric about the settlements. The olive branch held out to the Palestinians was loaded with the kind of conditions Netanyahu surely knows are unacceptable in Ramallah — let alone Gaza.
“We would be prepared to reach agreement as to a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state,” Netanyahu told his audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
He said “Palestinian state,” but he added an adjective that grates rather hard on the Palestinian ear: “demilitarized.” For Netanyahu that’s important because a militarized Palestinian state would, as he sees it, be much as Gaza is today, with the capacity to rain missiles on Tel Aviv and the country’s international airport. It could make a military alliance with Iran, like Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and Hamas in Gaza. We’ve all seen how that turned out for Israel.
To Palestinians, a demilitarized state sounds like no state at all. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu would “wait a thousand years to meet a Palestinian who’d accept his conditions.”
As for Obama’s gripe about settlements, Netanyahu seemed at first to be edging toward a compromise, something so cunning in its apparent straightforwardness that no one would notice he’d refused to comply with the American demands. “We have no intention of founding new settlements,” he said.
Well, that’s not the heart of Obama’s argument. He doesn’t want to be deflected by Israel pulling out of a few remote hilltop outposts. The U.S. wants even existing settlements to stay as they are — not growing by so much as a single brick — until the future of the land on which they stand is decided.
But Netanyahu trotted out the same formula Israel has always used for evading a settlement freeze: so-called natural growth. “We must give mothers and fathers the chance of bringing up their children as is the case anywhere in the world,” he said.
In other words, if children grow up in a settlement, Israel is bound to build a home for them there when they want to have their own place, so they don’t have to move elsewhere to find accommodation.
As if their parents didn’t move to the settlements from somewhere else.
As if Barack Obama didn’t insist there be no “natural growth” in the settlements.
No one expects Netanyahu to go head to head with Obama. The speech wasn’t intended as a gauntlet in the face of the U.S. But the Israeli prime minister is sailing pretty close to the White House wind.
It all played well with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. “It was a Zionist speech from his faith and heart,” said Limor Livnat, a leading Likud hawk. “I’d have preferred he hadn’t said ‘Palestinian state,’ but it was a good speech.”
The country’s rather lackluster opposition recognized that Netanyahu hadn’t given ground to Obama. “The speech was typical Netanyahu,” said Ofer Pines, a legislator from the Labor Party (Labor is part of the coalition, but some of its lawmakers including Pines refused to join the government.) “He said a very small ‘Yes,’ and a very big ‘No.’ He’s really only talking to himself.”
Except he’s not the only one listening. There must surely have been bemusement in Washington, as officials watched the speech, waiting for Netanyahu to adjust his previous positions.
Wait on. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he said. Jerusalem, too, “would be the united capital of Israel.” He didn’t even offer to open the checkpoints into Gaza to let in construction material to rebuild the city ruined in the war between Israel and Hamas at the turn of the year.
The most optimistic of assessments — at least among those who oppose Netanyahu — was that the speech was just words. “It’s not what he says, it’s what he does after this that interests me,” said Haim Ramon, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party.
Obama will surely second that.
by Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post
JERUSALEM — It’s as if Obama never happened.
Less than two weeks ago President Barack Obama laid out his plans for the Middle East in a speech in Cairo. He called for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction, among other things.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately announced that he’d make a key policy address in Tel Aviv. Commentators wracked their brains figuring out how Bibi, the nickname by which the Likud leader is known, would walk the tightrope between his nationalist coalition — which is very supportive of the West Bank settlements and disdains the idea of a Palestinian state — and Obama, who had made it clear that he sees the settlements as Israel’s main contribution to the failure of peace efforts.
But Netanyahu outsmarted them all. No smokescreen, no artful diplospeak, no talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Nothing but old-school Bibi.
The big policy speech turned out to be filled with typical nationalist rhetoric about the settlements. The olive branch held out to the Palestinians was loaded with the kind of conditions Netanyahu surely knows are unacceptable in Ramallah — let alone Gaza.
“We would be prepared to reach agreement as to a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state,” Netanyahu told his audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
He said “Palestinian state,” but he added an adjective that grates rather hard on the Palestinian ear: “demilitarized.” For Netanyahu that’s important because a militarized Palestinian state would, as he sees it, be much as Gaza is today, with the capacity to rain missiles on Tel Aviv and the country’s international airport. It could make a military alliance with Iran, like Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and Hamas in Gaza. We’ve all seen how that turned out for Israel.
To Palestinians, a demilitarized state sounds like no state at all. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu would “wait a thousand years to meet a Palestinian who’d accept his conditions.”
As for Obama’s gripe about settlements, Netanyahu seemed at first to be edging toward a compromise, something so cunning in its apparent straightforwardness that no one would notice he’d refused to comply with the American demands. “We have no intention of founding new settlements,” he said.
Well, that’s not the heart of Obama’s argument. He doesn’t want to be deflected by Israel pulling out of a few remote hilltop outposts. The U.S. wants even existing settlements to stay as they are — not growing by so much as a single brick — until the future of the land on which they stand is decided.
But Netanyahu trotted out the same formula Israel has always used for evading a settlement freeze: so-called natural growth. “We must give mothers and fathers the chance of bringing up their children as is the case anywhere in the world,” he said.
In other words, if children grow up in a settlement, Israel is bound to build a home for them there when they want to have their own place, so they don’t have to move elsewhere to find accommodation.
As if their parents didn’t move to the settlements from somewhere else.
As if Barack Obama didn’t insist there be no “natural growth” in the settlements.
No one expects Netanyahu to go head to head with Obama. The speech wasn’t intended as a gauntlet in the face of the U.S. But the Israeli prime minister is sailing pretty close to the White House wind.
It all played well with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. “It was a Zionist speech from his faith and heart,” said Limor Livnat, a leading Likud hawk. “I’d have preferred he hadn’t said ‘Palestinian state,’ but it was a good speech.”
The country’s rather lackluster opposition recognized that Netanyahu hadn’t given ground to Obama. “The speech was typical Netanyahu,” said Ofer Pines, a legislator from the Labor Party (Labor is part of the coalition, but some of its lawmakers including Pines refused to join the government.) “He said a very small ‘Yes,’ and a very big ‘No.’ He’s really only talking to himself.”
Except he’s not the only one listening. There must surely have been bemusement in Washington, as officials watched the speech, waiting for Netanyahu to adjust his previous positions.
Wait on. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he said. Jerusalem, too, “would be the united capital of Israel.” He didn’t even offer to open the checkpoints into Gaza to let in construction material to rebuild the city ruined in the war between Israel and Hamas at the turn of the year.
The most optimistic of assessments — at least among those who oppose Netanyahu — was that the speech was just words. “It’s not what he says, it’s what he does after this that interests me,” said Haim Ramon, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party.
Obama will surely second that.
Culture and harshness in Central Europe: Adam Lebor's Writing Life
Political writing at its best highlights the unexpected changes in parts of our world that are hidden to us. That’s true of writing about the corridors of power in our own capital cities, but it’s even more of a factor for a writer like Adam Lebor whose work – fiction and nonfiction – has captured the dynamism and double-dealing of Central Europe, in particular. Because I live in the Middle East while he lives in Budapest, Lebor first came to my attention with his wonderful “biography” of Jaffa, the ancient port city on the Mediterranean coast, “City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa.” It was a masterful stroke to profile this town, rather than Jerusalem or even Tel Aviv, which tend to attract the attention of writers more readily than a historic city that’s now a slum filling with liberal yuppies. It shouldn’t have surprised me, then, that Lebor’s new novel The Budapest Protocol, which I reviewed recently, would take an issue that many think of as boring and bureaucratic – the expansion of the European Union – and make it immediate and vital, linking it to the demons of Europe’s past through Nazism and genocide. The novel is firmly in the tradition of great British writers like Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and John LeCarre. Like them, Lebor knows that Central Europe’s cultured side comes with an accompanying harshness that makes for great drama.
How long did it take you to get published?
My first non-fiction book, ‘A Heart Turned East’, about Muslim minorities in Europe and the United States, was published in 1998 by Little, Brown, UK. It was commissioned so was published a few months after I wrote it. That was a fairly straightforward process. Since then I have written another five non-fiction books, all of which were commissioned.
Fiction, however, was a very different story. I first started writing the book that would become The Budapest Protocol in Paris in the winter of 1997. It was rejected by numerous publishers before I finally found one, Reportage Press, that would actually spend the time to tell me how to fix it. I always knew I needed the attention of a good editor, but apparently most publishers nowadays expect a perfectly formed novel to land on their desks, which is ridiculous.
Would you recommend any books on writing?
A search on amazon.co.uk for ‘writing a novel’ brings up 20,625 results. Most of the authors of these books are not well know novelists, because successful novelists are writing novels, not books about how to. That said, I have found ‘The First Five Pages’, by Noah Lukeman, very useful. Lukeman is a well-known American agent, and the book is full of good advice, from a commercial viewpoint. I would recommend it for anyone who is serious about getting published. I also like ‘Writing A Novel’ by John Osborne, which is enjoyably cantankerous but full of good advice.
What’s a typical writing day?
Breakfast with the Today programme on my Evoke internet radio, invaluable for keeping in touch when you live abroad - I am based in Budapest. Spend morning probably doing journalism or admin. Usually the muse arrives after lunch, and a good writing session will go from about 3pm to nine or ten at night. If it’s really flowing I will wake up in the morning with a plot solved or idea for a chapter plan that somehow my subconscious has sorted out while I am asleep and then I am straight back in the book.
Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
The Budapest Protocol is a conspiracy thriller that was inspired by a real American intelligence document from 1944. The document, known as the Red House Report, is an account of a secret meeting of Nazi industrialists in the Maison Rouge hotel, Strasbourg, where they planned for the Fourth Reich, which would be an economic imperium not a military one. That was the inspiration - I then used my twenty years reporting experience in eastern Europe to work out how that might actually happen. There is also a love story with several sexy, difficult girls and atmospheric scene setting in present day Budapest.
How much of what you do is formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
Thrillers are to some extent quite formulaic. The hero needs inner conflict to drive his outer battle with larger sinister forces. He needs to face and overcome repeated obstacles, each time getting in more and more danger. The trick is use the formula to make the structure work while making the setting, atmosphere and narrative drive powerful enough. Alan Furst, the master, gave me some advice: “Start with a murder and make sure the boy gets the girl” which was very useful.
What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?
“Heshel was watching him through the window of the car and smiled thinly as their eyes met. Here is the world, said the smile, and here we are in it.” A line from my favorite book, Dark Star, by Alan Furst. Dark Star is an espionage thriller set in late 1930s Europe. That sentence is subtle, telling, and somehow opens a world of the imagination.
What’s the best descriptive image in all literature?
It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing?
Alan Furst. Less is more.
Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing?
David Ignatius, author of Body of Lies and The Increment. I would also add Stieg Larson, who sadly is not writing any more.
How much research is involved in each of your books?
The Budapest Protocol did not demand any specific research as I have covered this region for twenty years. My non-fiction books, like ‘City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa’ about Jewish and Arab families in the ancient port demanded many weeks of research, hours of interviews and gaining the trust of the families.
Where’d you get the idea for your main character?
The fact that he is a foreign correspondent, who lives in Budapest, who is obsessed with sinister conspiracies and who is entangled with beguiling but unsuitable women and whose first name is four letters beginning with ‘A’ is entirely coincidental.
What’s your experience with being translated?
Fine. I have been translated into eight languages, but I don’t really check what they have done to the book, even in languages I know.
Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before could make a living at it?
Now, yes. But that is combined with journalism for big papers like The Times, Economist etc. I think it would be very difficult just to live off books, and I like the change of pace with journalism. I value my connection with The Times, it opens doors and my assignments give me ideas for books and characters.
What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?
I suppose it’s probably not that strange and happens to other authors but I was amazed that after two sell out events at the Edinburgh book festival with about 180 people in the room I only sold a handful of books. Why pay eight pounds to watch the author when you can buy the book for that?
What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?
I cannot reveal that as it’s such a good idea it may yet hit the shelves one day!
Israelis riot, thanks be to God
Orthodox Jews face off against secularists in the Holy Land — a sign that all is well. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — Ultra-orthodox Jews have been rioting the last few weeks against a parking lot the municipality wants to leave open during the Jewish Sabbath, leading to dozens of arrests and quite a few moderate to serious injuries. Secular activists have held protests in favor of free garaging for those who defy God by driving on Saturday.
All of which is a sign of good times in Israel.
Here’s why: It shows that Israelis think there’s nothing worse to worry about.
When I first came to Jerusalem in 1996, the ultra-Orthodox, or "Haredim" as they’re known here (it means “those who quake,” as in quaking before the wrathful God of the Jewish Bible) used to riot over a major thoroughfare that ran through one of their neighborhoods. They wanted Bar-Ilan Street closed between sundown Friday and the onset of Saturday night.
The Sabbath, they argued, ought to be sacred to every Jew, but at the very least no one ought to drive along Bar-Ilan, reminding them that its sanctity was being violated (by people who in turning their keys in the ignition were violating the rabbinic commandment not to kindle a flame on the Sabbath. It’s one of 39 tasks “set aside” on the Sabbath, because they were used in building the Ark of Covenant and therefore shouldn’t be carried out on the day of rest. No ritual slaughtering, tanning — of leather, that is — or separating of threads is allowed either, for example).
In my neighborhood, there was one old white-bearded rabbi who used to sit on a stool at the side of the road reading and wagging his finger at me as I drove by. But in more religious neighborhoods there was real violence. In Mea Shearim, the heart of ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, gangs of black-hatted rioters used to light trash cans on fire, throw stones, kick and spit on journalists, and aim rather feeble punches at policemen. (Feeble because almost all the rioters are full-time yeshiva students who are, to say the least, short on regular physical activity.)
Secular activists used to counter-protest in Jerusalem. They’d turn up, too, at shopping malls near largely secular Tel Aviv to barrack the so-called “Sabbath inspectors,” non-Jews employed by the government to hand out fines to businesses that opened on the holy day.
This was among the most important issues of those days.
Then came the intifada. The Sabbath wasn’t so contentious anymore with suicide bombers working every day of the week. Maybe it’s also that Israeli Jews decided it was time to unite against their attackers.But a month ago, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat (who replaced his ultra-Orthodox predecessor this spring) decided to leave a parking lot beside city hall open through the Sabbath. There are plenty of restaurants and bars open Friday night on a nearby street and Barkat’s aim was to prevent that street from filling with poorly parked cars.
Trouble was the lot wasn’t far from the edge of Beit Israel, one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods stretching through central Jerusalem. Rabbis ordered out their spindly troops and rioting ensued.
Barkat switched the parking lot to one underneath the Old City walls beside the Jaffa Gate. If he’d started out there, things might’ve been different. But the rabbis had a good head of steam up and had returned to the rhetoric of my early days in Jerusalem — namely that secular Israelis were the worst anti-Semites, because they were self-hating and felt inadequate in the face of the dedication to religion of their ultra-Orthodox compatriots whose observance they wished to destroy.
So this past weekend the rioting reached a new stage of ugliness. Police arrested 57 ultra-Orthodox protesters, many of whom had bussed in for the Sabbath. One man fell off a wall and was in serious condition in hospital. The riots continued throughout Sunday, as the ultra-Orthodox protested for the release of those who had been arrested the previous day. The riots centered around Sabbath Square in the middle of Mea Shearim.
There are plenty of problems for Israel these days, not least the tortuous attempt by the current right-wing government to persist with settlement building in the face of (for the first time in years) genuine American insistence on a construction freeze. It isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, too, that Europe might get tough on Israel unless peace talks with the Palestinians show some fruit.
But in comparison to the intifada, these are easy times for Israel. Long may the Sabbath be a time for rioting.
JERUSALEM — Ultra-orthodox Jews have been rioting the last few weeks against a parking lot the municipality wants to leave open during the Jewish Sabbath, leading to dozens of arrests and quite a few moderate to serious injuries. Secular activists have held protests in favor of free garaging for those who defy God by driving on Saturday.
All of which is a sign of good times in Israel.
Here’s why: It shows that Israelis think there’s nothing worse to worry about.
When I first came to Jerusalem in 1996, the ultra-Orthodox, or "Haredim" as they’re known here (it means “those who quake,” as in quaking before the wrathful God of the Jewish Bible) used to riot over a major thoroughfare that ran through one of their neighborhoods. They wanted Bar-Ilan Street closed between sundown Friday and the onset of Saturday night.
The Sabbath, they argued, ought to be sacred to every Jew, but at the very least no one ought to drive along Bar-Ilan, reminding them that its sanctity was being violated (by people who in turning their keys in the ignition were violating the rabbinic commandment not to kindle a flame on the Sabbath. It’s one of 39 tasks “set aside” on the Sabbath, because they were used in building the Ark of Covenant and therefore shouldn’t be carried out on the day of rest. No ritual slaughtering, tanning — of leather, that is — or separating of threads is allowed either, for example).
In my neighborhood, there was one old white-bearded rabbi who used to sit on a stool at the side of the road reading and wagging his finger at me as I drove by. But in more religious neighborhoods there was real violence. In Mea Shearim, the heart of ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, gangs of black-hatted rioters used to light trash cans on fire, throw stones, kick and spit on journalists, and aim rather feeble punches at policemen. (Feeble because almost all the rioters are full-time yeshiva students who are, to say the least, short on regular physical activity.)
Secular activists used to counter-protest in Jerusalem. They’d turn up, too, at shopping malls near largely secular Tel Aviv to barrack the so-called “Sabbath inspectors,” non-Jews employed by the government to hand out fines to businesses that opened on the holy day.
This was among the most important issues of those days.
Then came the intifada. The Sabbath wasn’t so contentious anymore with suicide bombers working every day of the week. Maybe it’s also that Israeli Jews decided it was time to unite against their attackers.But a month ago, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat (who replaced his ultra-Orthodox predecessor this spring) decided to leave a parking lot beside city hall open through the Sabbath. There are plenty of restaurants and bars open Friday night on a nearby street and Barkat’s aim was to prevent that street from filling with poorly parked cars.
Trouble was the lot wasn’t far from the edge of Beit Israel, one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods stretching through central Jerusalem. Rabbis ordered out their spindly troops and rioting ensued.
Barkat switched the parking lot to one underneath the Old City walls beside the Jaffa Gate. If he’d started out there, things might’ve been different. But the rabbis had a good head of steam up and had returned to the rhetoric of my early days in Jerusalem — namely that secular Israelis were the worst anti-Semites, because they were self-hating and felt inadequate in the face of the dedication to religion of their ultra-Orthodox compatriots whose observance they wished to destroy.
So this past weekend the rioting reached a new stage of ugliness. Police arrested 57 ultra-Orthodox protesters, many of whom had bussed in for the Sabbath. One man fell off a wall and was in serious condition in hospital. The riots continued throughout Sunday, as the ultra-Orthodox protested for the release of those who had been arrested the previous day. The riots centered around Sabbath Square in the middle of Mea Shearim.
There are plenty of problems for Israel these days, not least the tortuous attempt by the current right-wing government to persist with settlement building in the face of (for the first time in years) genuine American insistence on a construction freeze. It isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, too, that Europe might get tough on Israel unless peace talks with the Palestinians show some fruit.
But in comparison to the intifada, these are easy times for Israel. Long may the Sabbath be a time for rioting.
Rabbis: No pie for Jesus!
Her methods may be kosher, but in Israel baker Pnina Konforti faces a bigger commercial obstacle: She's a Messianic Jew.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
GAN YAVNEH, Israel — I always thought that by following kosher laws religious Jews only missed out on certain flavors and debatable delicacies. Turns out that by turning their back on “treyf” they also steer clear of Jesus.
At least that’s the verdict of rabbinates in two Israeli towns who’ve been denying a kosher certificate to a local cafe owner for three years — not because she doesn’t conform to the laws of “kashrut,” but because she’s a “Messianic Jew.”
Pnina Konforti, owner of the two branches of Pnina Pie in Gan Yavneh and Ashdod, this month won a decision in Israel’s Supreme Court forcing the rabbinates of the towns to give her a kosher certificate. Just because she believes in Jesus, the judges said, doesn’t mean she can’t keep kosher. Without the kosher certificate, many religious and traditional Jews refused to frequent the cafes and Konforti’s business was failing.
The case looks set to provoke a battle between the more secular organs of the government and the state rabbinate. It’s also a new point of conflict in the long battle between Israel — particularly its ultra-Orthodox community — and the Christian faith.
The rabbis insist they’re the ones who ought to decide about matters of kashrut and they refuse to allow a Messianic Jew (or a “Jew for Jesus” as they tend to be known in the U.S.) to receive a certificate. Though that sounds extreme, the rabbis aren’t entirely wrong (at least in the archaic terms of kosher law). After all, in Israeli wineries, non-Jews are forbidden from touching certain apparatus for fear of making the wine non-kosher — a prohibition going back to the days when a non-Jew might have used wine for idol worship.
Konforti’s point — which the Supreme Court accepted — is that she isn’t a non-Jew. She just happens to have decided during a stay in Ohio that the world’s most famous Jew, Jesus — or as she, an Israeli, calls him, “Yeshu” — is her savior.
The fear of Christian proselytizers or, even worse, Jews for Jesus is a common one among Israelis in general, and it has a long history that reaches back to a Europe where Jews were often persecuted or forced to convert to Christianity.
In that sense the court decision marks a rare gesture of conciliation by the organs of the Israeli state toward those who profess to be Christians.
It hasn’t always been that way.
In 1962, the Israeli Supreme Court denied citizenship to a Polish priest who had been born a Jew and converted to Christianity while hiding in a monastery to escape the Holocaust. Oswald Rufeisen, known as Brother Daniel, qualified for immigration under Israel’s “Law of Return” because he was born a Jew, but the court refused to accept a man who no longer called himself a Jew. (Eventually Rufeisen gained residence and died in a Haifa monastery a decade ago.)
Neither is pettiness a bar to paranoia. In my largely secular neighborhood of Jerusalem a few years ago, a tiny kiosk serving coffee in a small park was driven out of business because locals whispered that the owner was a Messianic Jew.
The lesson of such cases is that two thousand years of persecution at the hands of the church isn’t quickly forgotten, even by those who’ve never faced so much as a single anti-Semitic slur.
It’s a lesson only some in the Roman Catholic Church seem to have learned. Pope John Paul II won over many Israelis during his papacy with his visit to an Italian synagogue and talk of reconciliation during a 2000 visit to the Holy Land.
But the current pope, Benedict XVI, appeared cold and, to most Israelis, pro-Palestinian when he visited this spring. Many newspaper commentators complained that a former member of the Hitler Youth representing a faith with a history of persecuting Jews ought to have been less academic in his public addresses and more contrite toward Israel.
To understand the depth of fear among the ultra-Orthodox, consider the leaflets posted in Gan Yavneh warning residents against Konforti’s cafe: “Beware! Missionaries! What is hiding behind the Cafe-Bakery?” (In a community where television and radio are often not allowed, having been deemed negative modern influences, leaflets posted on walls are the favored way to pass information around among ultra-Orthodox Israelis.)
The answer, according to the leaflets: “Jews who sold their soul, betrayed their nation, and converted to Christianity.”
The leaflets advised citizens not to enter the cafe or “she will try to ensnare you in her Christian religion.”
Must be pretty good pie, you’re thinking.
I came across Pnina Pie in January when I visited Gan Yavneh during the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Missiles from Gaza landed several times on this small town, which is home to an air force base and several thousand Tel Aviv commuters.
I concluded an interview with the town’s mayor by asking him where I could get a decent lunch. He directed me to Pnina Pie, where a young Russian immigrant served me excellent bourekas, flaky pastry triangles filled with potato and cheese.
Unaware of the lack of a kosher certificate at the establishment, I bought a strawberry pie and served it to some guests that night. It happens all four of these friends were observant Jews.
At least they were observant Jews. Maybe by now they believe in Jesus.
After all, it really was very good pie.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
GAN YAVNEH, Israel — I always thought that by following kosher laws religious Jews only missed out on certain flavors and debatable delicacies. Turns out that by turning their back on “treyf” they also steer clear of Jesus.
At least that’s the verdict of rabbinates in two Israeli towns who’ve been denying a kosher certificate to a local cafe owner for three years — not because she doesn’t conform to the laws of “kashrut,” but because she’s a “Messianic Jew.”
Pnina Konforti, owner of the two branches of Pnina Pie in Gan Yavneh and Ashdod, this month won a decision in Israel’s Supreme Court forcing the rabbinates of the towns to give her a kosher certificate. Just because she believes in Jesus, the judges said, doesn’t mean she can’t keep kosher. Without the kosher certificate, many religious and traditional Jews refused to frequent the cafes and Konforti’s business was failing.
The case looks set to provoke a battle between the more secular organs of the government and the state rabbinate. It’s also a new point of conflict in the long battle between Israel — particularly its ultra-Orthodox community — and the Christian faith.
The rabbis insist they’re the ones who ought to decide about matters of kashrut and they refuse to allow a Messianic Jew (or a “Jew for Jesus” as they tend to be known in the U.S.) to receive a certificate. Though that sounds extreme, the rabbis aren’t entirely wrong (at least in the archaic terms of kosher law). After all, in Israeli wineries, non-Jews are forbidden from touching certain apparatus for fear of making the wine non-kosher — a prohibition going back to the days when a non-Jew might have used wine for idol worship.
Konforti’s point — which the Supreme Court accepted — is that she isn’t a non-Jew. She just happens to have decided during a stay in Ohio that the world’s most famous Jew, Jesus — or as she, an Israeli, calls him, “Yeshu” — is her savior.
The fear of Christian proselytizers or, even worse, Jews for Jesus is a common one among Israelis in general, and it has a long history that reaches back to a Europe where Jews were often persecuted or forced to convert to Christianity.
In that sense the court decision marks a rare gesture of conciliation by the organs of the Israeli state toward those who profess to be Christians.
It hasn’t always been that way.
In 1962, the Israeli Supreme Court denied citizenship to a Polish priest who had been born a Jew and converted to Christianity while hiding in a monastery to escape the Holocaust. Oswald Rufeisen, known as Brother Daniel, qualified for immigration under Israel’s “Law of Return” because he was born a Jew, but the court refused to accept a man who no longer called himself a Jew. (Eventually Rufeisen gained residence and died in a Haifa monastery a decade ago.)
Neither is pettiness a bar to paranoia. In my largely secular neighborhood of Jerusalem a few years ago, a tiny kiosk serving coffee in a small park was driven out of business because locals whispered that the owner was a Messianic Jew.
The lesson of such cases is that two thousand years of persecution at the hands of the church isn’t quickly forgotten, even by those who’ve never faced so much as a single anti-Semitic slur.
It’s a lesson only some in the Roman Catholic Church seem to have learned. Pope John Paul II won over many Israelis during his papacy with his visit to an Italian synagogue and talk of reconciliation during a 2000 visit to the Holy Land.
But the current pope, Benedict XVI, appeared cold and, to most Israelis, pro-Palestinian when he visited this spring. Many newspaper commentators complained that a former member of the Hitler Youth representing a faith with a history of persecuting Jews ought to have been less academic in his public addresses and more contrite toward Israel.
To understand the depth of fear among the ultra-Orthodox, consider the leaflets posted in Gan Yavneh warning residents against Konforti’s cafe: “Beware! Missionaries! What is hiding behind the Cafe-Bakery?” (In a community where television and radio are often not allowed, having been deemed negative modern influences, leaflets posted on walls are the favored way to pass information around among ultra-Orthodox Israelis.)
The answer, according to the leaflets: “Jews who sold their soul, betrayed their nation, and converted to Christianity.”
The leaflets advised citizens not to enter the cafe or “she will try to ensnare you in her Christian religion.”
Must be pretty good pie, you’re thinking.
I came across Pnina Pie in January when I visited Gan Yavneh during the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Missiles from Gaza landed several times on this small town, which is home to an air force base and several thousand Tel Aviv commuters.
I concluded an interview with the town’s mayor by asking him where I could get a decent lunch. He directed me to Pnina Pie, where a young Russian immigrant served me excellent bourekas, flaky pastry triangles filled with potato and cheese.
Unaware of the lack of a kosher certificate at the establishment, I bought a strawberry pie and served it to some guests that night. It happens all four of these friends were observant Jews.
At least they were observant Jews. Maybe by now they believe in Jesus.
After all, it really was very good pie.
Poetry from the ‘driest’ book of the Bible: Yakov Azriel’s Writing Life
A few years ago I was at a literary conference near Tel Aviv. I found an eclectic mix of writers on the panel with me. I’m a crime writer. You wouldn’t expect me to be paired with a writer of poetry who takes his inspiration from the stories of the Bible. But as Yakov Azriel read his poetry, I sat beside him feeling that no contemporary poems had ever touched me as deeply. They’re full of the knowledge of the Bible the Brooklyn-born poet garnered during his studies at Israeli yeshivas and his four decades living here. There’s something else though: they bring to life the hills and desert around Jerusalem. To an outsider, it can often seem strange that so many people are attached to a place that’s stark and rather ugly and certainly not a nurturing environment for sustaining human life. With Yakov’s poems I think you’ll find a sense of what the place means. Here’s his interview, followed by a wonderful poem from his newest book.
How long did it take you to get published?
It took a few years of submitting my first manuscript of poetry to different publishers until my first book of poetry was published.
What’s a typical writing day?
I make a living by working as a teacher, so during the daytime I do not have the opportunity to write. I usually try to write in the evenings and at night (especially at night); I try to write one new poem a week.
Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
My latest book is entitled Beads for the Messiah's Bride: Poems on Leviticus, and it was published in June by Time Being Books (a literary press specializing in poetry). Like my two previous books of poetry (Threads From A Coat Of Many Colors: Poems On Genesis and In The Shadow Of A Burning Bush: Poems On Exodus, each poem in the book begins with a Biblical verse and the book is structured as a running commentary, starting with chapter 1, verse 1 and ending with the last Biblical chapter.
This book was challenging for several reasons. My first book focused on the different characters in Genesis, and I especially tried to focus on the gaps in the Biblical narrative (for example, who was Abraham's mother?) or to give a voice to figures who are silent in the Biblical text (such as Dinah, or Joseph's wife Asenat). In the poems on Exodus, the many events in the Biblical narrative itself (the enslavement in Egypt, the Ten Plagues, Passover, the splitting of the Red Sea, etc.) readily lent themselves to poetry.
In contrast, the Book of Leviticus is considered to be "drier," without the drama and large cast of characters of the first two books of the Bible. One device I used in order to grapple with this difficulty was a conscious effort to fuse the English literary tradition with the Jewish-Hebrew heritage. For example, the first chapters of Leviticus deal with sacrifices; I decided to write a Petrarchan sonnet for each sacrifice, a sonnet that is a prayer, modeled after the "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne. In the end, one book reviewer felt that this book was the most powerful of my three published books (eventually, we will be publishing five volumes of poetry, one for each of the Five Books of Moses).
How much of what you do is:
a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with?
c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time?
I write poetry in all forms: mainly free verse (like most 21st century poets), but also formal, metric poems — sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, ballads, etc. Each poem has a life of its own, and it is the poet's duty to help each poem find its own voice. Just as a sculptor has to liberate the statue that is hidden in a block of marble, so the poet has to liberate the poem hidden on the empty page and grant it breath.
As I said, all my poems are based on the Bible. The Biblical verse is like an iceberg, with 90 % of its meaning under the surface; my job is to try to get under the surface.
T.S. Eliot said that there is little good religious poetry being written today because the religious poet tends to write what he thinks he ought to feel instead of what he really feels. All good poetry must be sincere. So part of my task as a poet is to be sincere, as much as possible.
What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?
This is a very difficult question to answer! One sentence that really resonates for me in English literature is when Hamlet describes his father to Horatio in Act I, Scene II, and tells him that "He was a man." What a wonderful example of praise, love and understatement in four simple words.
In Biblical literature, one sentence that that I find very powerful occurs right after the scene in which the prophet Nathan tells King David the parable of the poor man's lamb (First Samuel, Chapter 12) and King David, incensed, says that this man deserves to die; after Nathan exclaims, "You are the man," David does not argue but admits, "I have sinned."
What’s the best descriptive image in all literature?
Again this is very difficult to answer, but I think that Dicken's description in Little Dorrit of the banquet scene in Rome in which Mr. Dorrit relives the past he has been trying so hard to conceal, and calls out loud to Amy, speaking about the turnkey and his imprisonment in the Marshalsea prison — this is certainly one of them.
How much research is involved in each of your books?
I have been "researching" my books all my life.
Where do you get your ideas?
This is a very good question. Often in the middle of the night an idea comes; I have to write it down, and the following evening, I work on it.
Do you have a pain from childhood that compels you to write? If not, what does?
No, I do not think that it stems from a childhood pain. Why do I write? Ask me why I breathe. The great German poet Rilke said that no one should write poetry unless he would have to die if it were denied him to write. Perhaps this is too strong (for me at least) but I cannot imagine a life for myself without writing.
What’s your experience with being translated?
I have translated several of my poems into Hebrew. However, you could perhaps claim that all of poetry is a kind of translation of dream language into waking language.
What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?
To write it in Yiddish.
And now, some poetry: from Beads for the Messiah's Bride: Poems on Leviticus (Time Being Books, 2009)
THE SCAPEGOAT
“And Aaron shall place both his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confess upon it all the sins of the Children of Israel and all their crimes, whatever their transgressions; they will be put on the head of the scapegoat, which will be sent off to the desert in the hands of the executioner.” (Leviticus 16:21)
Bright crimson ribbons tied between his horns,
A clanking, clinking bell around his neck,
His back bedecked with ornaments of silk —
Why did the priest place hands upon my head,
Then trembling shout a list of sins and crimes?
I bet I know: they want to crown me king,
A wise and noble king who never dies.
An orchestra of Levites play their flutes,
Their golden harps, their ten-stringed lutes, their drums,
Their silver trumpets as he is taken out —
Why I alone am sent to Azazel?
And who or what the hell is ‘Azazel’?
I bet I know: they think I am an angel,
A pure, immortal angel full of grace.
Out of the Temple precinct packed with crowds,
And out the narrow lanes of Jerusalem,
And out Damascus Gate, toward desert cliffs —
Why am I brought here to this mountain peak?
Why rip the crimson ribbons from my horns?
I bet I know: they wish to worship me,
I bet I —
Israel grapples with a new kind of violence
Good, old-fashioned murder catches off-guard a country always prepared for war
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
TEL BARUCH, Israel — It may surprise you to learn that many Israelis are only now realizing they live in a violent place. And they’re freaking out.
Not the terrorist violence for which Israel is something of a byword. The murderous gang beating type of violence. The dismembered women kind of violence. The homophobic hate crime sort of violence.
Earlier this month, an as-yet unknown masked gunman shot down two men at a Tel Aviv gay hangout. Two women’s bodies were last week uncovered chopped into pieces — one in a dumpster near Tel Aviv and the other in a river further north. This week, a landlady showing a potential tenant around a Jerusalem apartment was stabbed to death by the man she intended to evict.
But the biggest headlines were for the beating death of Aryeh Karp on the Tel Baruch beach, just north of Tel Aviv.
Last weekend, Karp’s daughter was harassed by a young Arab man from a town near Tel Aviv. Karp warned him off, but the youth called some drunken friends over. A group of eight Arab men and two Russian women chased Karp along the boardwalk and kicked him repeatedly in the head. He was found dead on the beach soon after.
The shock among Israelis was as much for the location of Karp’s death as it was for its violent nature. The beach, particularly to Tel Avivians, is a refuge from the bustle and general craziness of Israeli society.
Just how crazy the country has become is at the heart of the chest-beating opened up by a few weeks of violence. Israelis have long bragged to foreigners that — apart from the terrorism — Israel is a very peaceful place where typically children can wander towns without parents worrying and anyone can go anywhere at night without feeling threatened.
Israel’s police chiefs maintain that this image is correct. The crime rate, according to a police official, is at its lowest since 1996. Break-ins and car theft are both down more than 20 percent, though that could be explained in large part due to the security barrier around the West Bank. (Burglary and car theft inside Israel were popular with Palestinian criminals, who can no longer cross the network of walls and fences separating them from Israelis.)
One politician from the largest parliamentary party reckons the police are cooking the books to make themselves look more effective. Yohanan Plesner of the Kadima Party accuses the police of categorizing violent crimes under less scary names. Thus, someone robbed by a menacing mugger is entered into the police’s crime statistics as nothing more than a stolen wallet.
Certainly it’s rare to see Israeli police patrolling as cops do in U.S. cities. They always seem to be going somewhere. As for pounding the beat, the only time you’ll see an Israeli cop outside his car is when he’s checking the identity documents of an Arab.
The one time I’ve had to report a crime against me here was some years ago when a man leaned out of his car late at night on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and started smashing the side of my car with a police night-stick. I called the equivalent of 911 from the car and was asked, “Was he an Arab?”
When I responded in the negative, I was told to come to the police station and file a report. I waited two hours at the station in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound to do so. Some weeks later, I received a form letter informing me that further investigation was “not in the public interest.”
Most commentators trying to make sense of the increase in violence point to the growing complexity of Israeli society. In the case of Karp’s murder, it seems disaffected children of Russian immigrants mixed with disaffected young Arabs. Add drugs and alcohol, and you have a murder, the explanation goes.
But there’s also an unrestrained non-physical violence that’s prevalent in daily exchanges with Israelis. It’s a society in which the aggressor generally wins.
Alongside the articles and radio spots about violent crime, the media has featured frequent comments from people who were forced by threats to sign over property rights to thuggish neighbors or who were told by the police that minor crimes weren’t worth pursuing. Moving from aggression to actual violence may not be such a big step.
It isn’t only in violent crimes that Israelis feel their society’s morality slipping away. The country’s most sacrosanct institution, the army, was tainted this week, when a soldier at the main Tel Aviv military base stole the credit card number of the chief of staff and sold it to an Arab, who racked up $500 in charges. The soldier also sold the Arab a couple of assault rifles. Under interrogation, he said he wasn’t the only soldier on the base who possessed the army chief's card number
At the Tel Baruch beach this Wednesday, there was no sign of a police officer. Bathers at the beach appear to be experts at ignoring things around them. They ignore the lifeguard, who barks into his loudspeaker constantly about the risks of shifting sands and rip tides, warning swimmers that they’re too far from the designated bathing areas. They ignore the noisy planes landing at Sde Dov Airport, which has its main landing strip just across the beach’s small parking lot.
And now they are struggling to ignore a murder.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
TEL BARUCH, Israel — It may surprise you to learn that many Israelis are only now realizing they live in a violent place. And they’re freaking out.
Not the terrorist violence for which Israel is something of a byword. The murderous gang beating type of violence. The dismembered women kind of violence. The homophobic hate crime sort of violence.
Earlier this month, an as-yet unknown masked gunman shot down two men at a Tel Aviv gay hangout. Two women’s bodies were last week uncovered chopped into pieces — one in a dumpster near Tel Aviv and the other in a river further north. This week, a landlady showing a potential tenant around a Jerusalem apartment was stabbed to death by the man she intended to evict.
But the biggest headlines were for the beating death of Aryeh Karp on the Tel Baruch beach, just north of Tel Aviv.
Last weekend, Karp’s daughter was harassed by a young Arab man from a town near Tel Aviv. Karp warned him off, but the youth called some drunken friends over. A group of eight Arab men and two Russian women chased Karp along the boardwalk and kicked him repeatedly in the head. He was found dead on the beach soon after.
The shock among Israelis was as much for the location of Karp’s death as it was for its violent nature. The beach, particularly to Tel Avivians, is a refuge from the bustle and general craziness of Israeli society.
Just how crazy the country has become is at the heart of the chest-beating opened up by a few weeks of violence. Israelis have long bragged to foreigners that — apart from the terrorism — Israel is a very peaceful place where typically children can wander towns without parents worrying and anyone can go anywhere at night without feeling threatened.
Israel’s police chiefs maintain that this image is correct. The crime rate, according to a police official, is at its lowest since 1996. Break-ins and car theft are both down more than 20 percent, though that could be explained in large part due to the security barrier around the West Bank. (Burglary and car theft inside Israel were popular with Palestinian criminals, who can no longer cross the network of walls and fences separating them from Israelis.)
One politician from the largest parliamentary party reckons the police are cooking the books to make themselves look more effective. Yohanan Plesner of the Kadima Party accuses the police of categorizing violent crimes under less scary names. Thus, someone robbed by a menacing mugger is entered into the police’s crime statistics as nothing more than a stolen wallet.
Certainly it’s rare to see Israeli police patrolling as cops do in U.S. cities. They always seem to be going somewhere. As for pounding the beat, the only time you’ll see an Israeli cop outside his car is when he’s checking the identity documents of an Arab.
The one time I’ve had to report a crime against me here was some years ago when a man leaned out of his car late at night on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and started smashing the side of my car with a police night-stick. I called the equivalent of 911 from the car and was asked, “Was he an Arab?”
When I responded in the negative, I was told to come to the police station and file a report. I waited two hours at the station in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound to do so. Some weeks later, I received a form letter informing me that further investigation was “not in the public interest.”
Most commentators trying to make sense of the increase in violence point to the growing complexity of Israeli society. In the case of Karp’s murder, it seems disaffected children of Russian immigrants mixed with disaffected young Arabs. Add drugs and alcohol, and you have a murder, the explanation goes.
But there’s also an unrestrained non-physical violence that’s prevalent in daily exchanges with Israelis. It’s a society in which the aggressor generally wins.
Alongside the articles and radio spots about violent crime, the media has featured frequent comments from people who were forced by threats to sign over property rights to thuggish neighbors or who were told by the police that minor crimes weren’t worth pursuing. Moving from aggression to actual violence may not be such a big step.
It isn’t only in violent crimes that Israelis feel their society’s morality slipping away. The country’s most sacrosanct institution, the army, was tainted this week, when a soldier at the main Tel Aviv military base stole the credit card number of the chief of staff and sold it to an Arab, who racked up $500 in charges. The soldier also sold the Arab a couple of assault rifles. Under interrogation, he said he wasn’t the only soldier on the base who possessed the army chief's card number
At the Tel Baruch beach this Wednesday, there was no sign of a police officer. Bathers at the beach appear to be experts at ignoring things around them. They ignore the lifeguard, who barks into his loudspeaker constantly about the risks of shifting sands and rip tides, warning swimmers that they’re too far from the designated bathing areas. They ignore the noisy planes landing at Sde Dov Airport, which has its main landing strip just across the beach’s small parking lot.
And now they are struggling to ignore a murder.
