There's something fun about writing in the Uni computer room.
It's a bit like spending time in the library, only instead of people breathing and pushing papers there's a clickety-clack of key boards.

I just had the most fascinating lecture about the Canaanite movement; how they were secular and wanted to create a new nation separate from Judaism which would bring together the different groups in the Middle East (the movement opposed Zionism and Pan-Arabism, as their goal was to create a nation based on the view that Jews (in the jargon, the "Hebrews") and the Arabs in the Levant were descendants of the ancient Canaanite people.

It's pretty neat, in a Nationalist way I suppose.

They opposed the Partition Plan, regarding it as a total disaster to the whole ethos of a united land and new nation, as it created an even greater rift between the local Arabs and the immigrant Jews.

It's an interesting History which had a great impact on Israeli and Hebrew culture after the formation of the state. It had a lot of potential, but it neglected to take Arab culture, history and language into account, which I think would have proved just a hindrance just as powerful as Judaism and the British mandate were in the formative years of the movement.

The lecture was specifically about Aharon Amir one of the ideologues of the movement who died (at 85) just a few months ago, because he was a writer and poet who, though not a recruited author, was quite clear in his ideology in his writing.

I think the nucleus of the idea, a new nation separate from the authority of religion and based on the land and territory, is still powerful. Because of the greater rift that is occurring between Israel and the (American) Diaspora (and other various socio-political reasons), it seems that there will be no other choice, eventually, to somehow create an alternative nationality that will incorporate all the multi-cultures that are found in this tiny stretch of sand.

Traveling is hard!
But fun when you're being taken care of by dear Papa.

Arrived, finally, at half-past eight (local time) in Cape Town. My memories of the place are very vague and everyone seems so much shorter and older.
Seeing as the last time I was here I was nine, this makes sense.

I slept like a rock. I don't think I moved the whole night.

Nobody can believe how big I am and some of the people keep referring to me with my older sister's name, Leigh. I suppose their sharpest memories of Leigh are of her with short hair, like I now have.

Today we went to wine country near Cape Town called Franchhoek (pronounced Fraan-tzuk... don't ask me how, I do not know how Afrikaans is built) and went around the very sweet and picturesque town. It was founded by the Huguenots (French Protestants who escaped France in the 17th century after the Nantes edict proclaiming France a Catholic Kingdom) who built the whole wine industry in the valleys in the area of the Western Cape which include Franchhoek, Paarl, Stellenbosch and another one which I can't remember, because there weren't any road signs to that one.
We decided to go because of the weather. The fog and most is blinding, you can barely see 100 meters ahead of you. We're hoping it won't get worse, but you can never know. It is weird going from the beginning of summer into what amounts to the middle of winter for me, even if they only started with winter now.
I'm chilly.

Daddy and I called Mummy while we were there and it appears that two people she and Daddy knew from their History live there, we only found one and Daddy said it was amazing how much time passed.

We went wine tasting too, which was fun, it's something I'd been wanting to do since I saw the movie "Sideways" but it was more the idiosyncratic characters than the setting in Napa Valley California that made it such a great movie.

We have since returned to our home base and will soon be going to sup with my Granny (who I saw last night) and the uncles, aunts and cousins I hadn't seen in years.

Another day of memorial, this one is present and thus, to me, much less poignant than Yom Ha'Shoah was last week, for some reason.
Dead soldiers and dead civilian victims, killed in War and Terror.

My feelings are mixed.
Last year I was depressed and the whole thing washed over me and was dimmed into the background of my own personal self pity and pain, to do with the war I participated in.
Now everything feels sharp, not the pain, but the facade of the (necessary and important) ceremonies in which the names of the dead will be spoken and candles will be lit, is so much more clear to me.
The ceremonies seem like theatrics to me. But I'll go to my elementary school where every year, younger and younger (because every year I get older) children stand on the grass slope where they will sing the same songs as last year, recite the same poems and maybe the choreography of the dance will be different, though I doubt it.
I'll go because dead men and women need to be remembered and at this point this is what we have.

Tomorrow is Independence Day, always after Memorial Day, so that we know what those dead men and women fought, lived and died for.

Korin Alal (though Ehud Manor wrote it) puts into words the way I feel best on these days... even if they are mixed:

I have no other land
Even if the ground is burning
Only a word in Hebrew, penetrating
Into my veins, my soul
In an aching body,
In a hungering heart.
Here is my home

I will not be silent, for my land
Changed her face
I will not concede to her
I will sing in her ear
Until she opens her eyes

Sometimes I think about the Holocaust, and especially today I do because it is Holocaust Remembrance Day; the public television networks are showing documentaries, the radio is playing dirges and at ten AM a siren, the siren used for air raids and times of emergency and war, was heard, stopping everything – traffic, exams, fights, classes, shopping – creating an ear piercing moment of silence that continued to ring in my ears for a few more moments.
It is surreal, to see the stillness while your brain is screaming that the noise is painful. It forces you to remember what today means and why we must never forget it.

In Israel, we use the word "Shoah" (שואה, eng. Holocaust) lightly, at least in my circle of cynical friends; "This exam is going to be a holocaust" – "המבחן הזה הולך להיות שואתי". We make jokes about German Sheppard's (Alsatian dogs, ya know) in Jewish ghettos and ask how many Jews you can get into one car – one in the boot, two in the front, three in the back and the rest in the ashtray.
Morbid, which is putting it lightly.
I don't know how other nations that have gone through genocide handle the memory.
Do they also make jokes?
Do they go on school trips to Poland to see where our families were murdered, where their hair was shorn and used to make water proof socks and their fat was used to make soap (everything you saw/read in "Fight Club" is true).

I don't think it's the magnitude of death that makes the Holocaust unique as genocides go.
I think it was the industrial-ness of it, the careful methodical planning of it all. The loss not only of life but of an entire culture that had been cultivated over centuries. The pornographically photographed naked women, children and men; dying, dead and piled up in heaps, each body indistinguishable from the next.
Nudity takes away individuality.
The numbering of the people, which took away a little bit more of their humanity in the eyes of the perpetrators; the lies that hid the material reality: "You'll be getting your luggage back soon" a smiling Nazi clerk would say and everything was catalogued in that meticulous bureaucracy the Germans would pride themselves in.

My own opinion on the genocide that massacred the branches of my family on both sides has changed over the years - Those that went on to create what is now my quite large family, who live around the world, left Latvia and Lithuania before Operation Barbarossa, indeed before WWII even began.

It's easy to succumb to the idea that Jews are eternal victims and that the Holocaust was the largest and latest of Pogroms. At the same time, there is the fact that from this incident of violence a new kind of Jew arose, one that is strong, stronger than ever before, with a country of his own and an army that is the strongest in the Middle East. It is with this new strength and army, the Jews will never fear for our existence again.

I'm pretty sure Israeli Jews are the only majority population in the world that fears for its continued existence, not "way of life", but actual life. It is for good reason; Jews are surrounded by nations who don't want us here (when are we ever "wanted" any where).
I always think it's ironic that we went from one ghetto to another, only this time we built the walls, the snipers are ours and we pushed those we didn't want out.
The Holocaust brought about the existence of Israel, it probably would have happened at some point, but the genocide of the Jews made the process that much more urgent, that much faster.

Israel was built to be a home for those who became homeless.
*sigh*

The conclusion Jews and Israelis in particular, must take from our tragedy, is that we must strive to be better than we were.
Than we are.
We must strive to create a country, a world, in which persecution, racism, antisemitism, orientalism, genocide, auto-genocide are History and not reality.

That's my conclusion as an Israeli Jewish girl and that's what I derive from the Holocaust and that's why I make sure to remember, remember and never ever forget.

.לזכור, לזכור ולא לשכוח לעולם

Remember - יזכור:
The Jews
The Palestinians
The Bosnians
The Darfurians
The Rwandans
The Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania
The Cambodians
The Tibetans
The Armenians
The West African Slaves
The Original/First/Native Nations of the Americas
The "Witches"
The Inquisition
There are more, many more, too many. Who else must we remember?

Consider this the sequel entry to my previous one.

It was brought to my attention that my previous post was lacking.
Lacking in what?
Lacking in actual testimony. I hadn't thought of putting any of the things I'd read here, because I trusted in people's curiosity to go a read the testimonies soldiers.
Kind of silly of me, because I know very well that's it's easy to ignore the links offered and then you need to open the .PDF files and scroll down and actually be really interested in what these boys (and some girls) have to say.

So I give a few and like before, I urge you to go and read the rest in Hebrew if you can, and in English, which is available.


***
Testimony 5, Hebron
I remember the first time I was really screwed up in Hebron, opening some street corner
or house on one of my first patrols, you know you really are in shock. I was sure that
any moment now I’d be shot. So you stare at every window, turn every corner really
stressed out. Then you become indifferent. Yes. But in the beginning… I remember I
took a corner and my rifle was pointing at this little child. I had a really hard time with this
one. He burst out crying and ran away. Things like that. Or say I remember once, you
know the patrol moves in two lines, so these two children passed along in between, an
older and a younger brother. The older brother held the younger close and they hurried
along. This picture won’t leave me. Later, after becoming indifferent, I remember I took
a corner once and saw some Arab looking at me through the window. Then just like
that, I have no idea why I did this – I pointed my gun at him, and he closed the door
and ran. And I went – “Wow, I’m really losing it. Really.” That’s how we all felt, it was like
- feels like talking to a shrink now – but you just say, “man, I’ve really been screwed.”
You keep talking about burnout all the time, all this shit and stuff. But it’s a real horror.
You keep getting under their skin. At first you’re really scared, then you allow yourself
some humane feelings, and then you just don’t give a damn. It’s like that everywhere in
the Occupied Territories, but particularly so in Hebron.
After how long?
Next to nothing. Two weeks maybe.
***

***
Testimony 17, Hebron
Being a TIPH (Temporary International Presence at Hebron) observer is really a bad
scene. Here’s another classic example of having a shitty time in Hebron. TIPH regularly
get a ‘warm reception’. Whenever they come down from Abu Sneina (neighborhood),
they are target for a stone or two at their car. Extra-special.
By the settlers?
Sure. Simply for being TIPH.
And what do you do about it?
I can just repeat what I told one of them. I’ll do it in Hebrew. He goes: “Stones have
just now been thrown at me.”
Where do you meet him?
He shows up. Comes back to Gross (outpost). I go, “Yes, I know. That’s why I was
summoned here.” Then I tell him, “Listen, you know that these are kids under the
age of 14 so there’s nothing I can do.” And the, in these very words: “I know, I just
wanted you to realize that.” Like, he already knows and there’s nothing to do about
it, absolutely nothing.
So what are the procedures you’re given, genearlly, regarding the settlers?
Nothing. Ask my deputy company commander, who’s really dying to do something
about them, what the procedures really are…
… Any time TIPH or CPT (Christian Peacemaking Teams) activists approach me
– before we absolutely prohibited any leftist or such activists enter Avraham Avinu
settlers, once they went in there and I told them: “Do me a favor, don’t. I can’t be
responsible for what could happen to you in there.” The funniest incident was when
this group, I mean all of the CPT activists came through, twenty of them, and I was
commander at Gross and I go: “What are you doing here?” You can’t mistake them,
with their CPT and those awful red caps they have, so “What are you doing here?” and
they go, “Why, is there a problem?” I ask them, “Did you coordinate this with anyone?
Did you inform anyone you were walking around here?” A huge group, I mean you
can’t really hide such a thing.
I was really concerned about their safety.
Where were they walking, at the wholesale market?
No, just plainly no the ‘David Route’ which you know as Shuhada Street.
Are there any special instructions regarding the Bnei Avraham tour groups?
Bnei Avraham (a group of activists that conducts guided tours in Hebron) arrive, and
they are not supposed to enter anywhere in Avraham Avinu neighborhood settlement.
I’m dying to know how we got to the point where a Jew is not allowed to walk around
Jewish public space. For leftists…
There’s an instruction forbidding them to enter Avraham Avinu?
Yes. There’s an explicit instruction forbidding leftist activists and international
organizations from entering Beit Hadassah, Avraham Avinu and other such
settlements.
***

This year marks 60 years of Independence for the State of Israel and 60 years to the Palestinian Expulsion from what is now Israel proper, commonly known as al-Nakba (the Catastrophe).

I won't be here to do anything about those dates, as I am leaving for SA in early May and will likely be missing the brouhaha that will no doubt commence.

I've spoken about this organisation before, but I'll mention them again.

Just before Pesach Breaking the Silence published, online, IDF soldiers testimonies of serving in Hebron in the years 2005-2007.

I'm really not sure what to say other than to urge you all to read them. All of them. Take your time, but read them.
These brave boys (and that really is what they are at this age) are doing something which, if I'm not mistaken, no other country even acknowledges and that is talking about the fact that what goes on in the Occupied Territories is... Well... there ain't no place like Hebron.

The Testimonies - in Hebrew.
The Testimonies - in English.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm the daughter of immigrants.
Maybe it's the fact that I find hypocrisy distasteful.
Maybe it's because I really am *shudder* a statist at heart.

Perhaps this is simply because this is the reality of the situation and no matter how humanist I am in my philosophy, I'm not the one who runs the current socio-political paradigm that creates that huge divide between Israelis and Palestinians.

It's no secret that I sympathize and empathize with Palestinians and Palestinian national self-determination... this is because it is the basic human and civil right of every nation on earth to live in a territory as a home-land. It is what I was taught (and understood) Zionism to be for the Jews; what Zionism actually was and is in praxis is not what I want to write about.

Because of the Zionist movement, Jews did create a home-land in historical Palestine (now Israel and the Palestinian Authority).
The problem is that Israel is a colonial remnant with all the baggage that goes with it.
Israel is different that other colonial remnants, is that it came late in the game and it has now based itself and isn't going anywhere.
Nor do I believe it should.

The history that we all go back to - 1948, 1967, 1987, 2000 etc. It doesn't do any good.
It doesn't matter anymore who started what and when.
Only that we finish it.
By communication, by stopping the usurpation of land, by shifting the status quo even if it pains those involved.
By agreeing, not on a Hudna, but an actual two sided agreement and not a unilateral decision.

It's not in Israel's best interests to keep the people of Gaza under siege and/or attack or keep building settlements in the West Bank. On the other hand it's not in Hamas' best interests to keep bombarding Sderot, the West Negev and beyond, and for Abu-Mazen to start flashing sabers.

Intifada #3 is in no ones interest.

Except the USA.
They get money.

BTW, you can call me naive all you like, but other than what I suggested, there really is only the annihilation of one or both of the Nations in question, which I don't think anyone wants.