Yefe Nefesh, or a Gaza protest

The word Yefe Nefesh (a beautiful soul) means in Hebrew slang, a self-righteous bleeding heart. It's how you describe people who are politically further to the left than you are.

I spent Saturday morning at the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza, where 1,000 people arrived to protest the closure of Gaza Strip. Read about it at Haaretz, JPost, Yediot Aharanot.

Over the last month or so, Hamas has been firing rockets from the Gaza Strip into southwestern Israel, killing five people, including an Ecuadorian volunteer in the fields of a kibbutz. In response, Olmert declared a blockade on Gaza, and stopped the flow of fuel across the border. Gaza was gripped with rolling blackouts, dozens died in hospitals that had run out of power, and still the rockets kept coming.

Enter the protest. The event was a convoy of 25 buses and about 100 cars that left from points across Israel - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beer-Sheva, Nazareth and met at the Erez crossing, a giant compound where people cross the concrete border splitting Israel from the Gaza Strip. I had never been to Erez before, but I had been to the region in summer 2005, when thousands of right-wingers flocked to western Israel to protest the Disengagement - aka withdrawal of settlements in Gaza.

We left Tel Aviv at 10 in the morning and inched southward in the convoy, until we finally parked on the side of a two-lane road and walked to the crossing point. People unloaded supplies they brought to be sent to Gaza - it wound up being three tons of flour, rice, oil, sugar, lentils, other things. Supposedly they will be sent to Gaza today.

The leaders shouted out slogans like "Don't shoot, don't cry, leave the Territories immediately," "Barak, Barak, Minister of Defense, how many children have you killed today?" "We won't die and won't kill in the service of the USA," and "Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, enough of this collective punishment!"

The protest was a good example of how the Israeli left works. On the one hand, loads of people did actually show up, and the protest got decent press coverage. On the other, you'll notice in the pics that most of the flags are Palestinian, communist, anarchist. That's because apparently there was an agreement among all the groups organizing the protest that nobody would bring flags, as the groups have very different goals. At the beginning of the event, there was some grumbling about the Palestinian flags coming out. The effect of this is that the protest looks all Arab, when in fact there was a big contingent of anti-Zionist Jews. At the same time, the woman leading most of the protest was Palestinian, and there were plenty of signs calling in Arabic for one Palestinian state.

My favorite moments? A girl from the town of Sderot, which has been hit lately by a tremendous amount of kassam rockets fired from Gaza (which is why the Strip was blockaded in the first place) spoke. You could say it was a bit of a misfire. "Our lives in Sderot are very hard. But what keeps me going is knowing that the lives of people in Gaza are even more horrible."

I was also with some people who did not take the protest very seriously and who kept imagining how funny it would be if we got hit by missiles ourselves.

End the Occupation! Yes to an Israeli-Palestinian peace!
Gaza: Lift the Blockade!
Welcome to Erez Crossing Point.
Israeli border soldiers and the concrete border of Gaza behind them.
The group walking along the wall and watchtower to the protest site.
There is no military solution.
Uri Avnery, founder of the Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) movement and pillar of the Israeli left.
A sweet umbrella: "End the Occupation" written in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
The only Israeli flag I saw.
One of the organizers.

Loading up the supplies to be shipped to Gaza at the end of the protest.

Beit Alpha: No Hand-to-Udder Contact

On Friday morning, my friend M and I were trying to figure out a weekend getaway. After two hours of phone calls, the guest housing manager at Kibbutz Beit Alpha said there was room for the two of us. A kibbutz is a communal farm, in which all houses are owned collectively, everyone receives the same salary, and the members eat together and farm together. Most kibbutzim in Israel are dead - that is, they have undergone privatization and have hired workers from Thailand to tend the fields.

About 70% of our rationale for going to Beit Alpha was that it features heavily in an old Zionist pioneering song, called Shir Ha'Emek (the song of the valley).

Rest comes to the weary
Calm comes to the worker
A pale night spreads out
Over the fields of Emek Yizreel
Dew below, white above
From Beit Alpha to Nahalal

We rolled into Beit Alpha at abut 4.30 pm. The sun shone on the green and brown fields below, and trees dotted the hills and the Gilboa Mountain in the distance. We had arrived at one of the mainstays of the early dream of the State of Israel.

Except that once we checked in and asked the manager what the status of the kibbutz was, she said it had been privatized and that most of the people still living there were senior citizens.

"No worry," we thought. "We'll pick up some guys at Friday night dinner."

We went to the communal dining hall, where most of the 27 long tables were empty. The soup was cold. The chicken was dry. We took our trays full of gruel to a table on the edge of the cafeteria, the better to scope out the prospects.

Yes, you do have to be pretty desperate or pretty Zionist to look for love in a kibbutz that is so old, there are special rolling walkers in the cafeteria for the elderly to put their trays on while they load up at the buffet. The kibbutz also hired foreign workers to tend not only the fields, but also the elderly.

To my shock, we actually did wind up picking up a guy named Tal, who was the one person in the room who seemed to have both finished high school and not yet have children. He collected a few friends and we got ready to go out - but first we had to go check the dairy.

On Beit Alpha, the cows wallow in their own shit for most of the day, until they get the urge to be milked. Then they walk over to the milking robot, where a laser beam finds each teat and 4 suction tubes latch onto the udders. Since one of Tal's friends was on call for the dairy, we wound up wandering around the cows and the milking robot for around 40 minutes waiting for the machine to come back online. During that time, there was no hand-to-udder contact. There was, however, a cow that clearly had prolapsed hemmorhoids.

When we finally piled back into Tal's pickup truck, our feet smelled like cow shit. Our hosts were wearing plaid shirts they got out of the communal laundry. We spent the evening asking if kibbutz romance happens (yes) and whether there were volunteers (no, because they always showed up too drunk or hungover to work).

The next day, we went to another kibbutz nearby, and checked out the Beit Alpha supermarket. There were 4 different brands of instant coffee, a mind-boggling assortment of teas, tacky packages of plate sets, and a full shelf of compact flourescent lightbulbs . In fact, the store was better stocked than most of the supermarkets near my apartment in Tel Aviv.

The only negative part of the stay was when we went to the bus stop outside to catch our ride home. Across from the kibbutz is the "Beit Alpha Absorption Site," a fenced-in compound of stout, small houses filled with Ethiopian immigrants and their children. Long clotheslines looped between the houses, and groups of kids crowded along the fence, clearly bored enough to talk to any passing person. As we waited for the bus, about 30 of the Ethiopians gradually joined us. We looked down the road, wondering where the bus was, as cars and pickup trucks zipped in and out of the kibbutz across the street. It seemed unfair - if you're a kibbutznik, you choose to live in a pastoral village in the countryside, and you have a car in case you need to get the hell out. If you're an Ethiopian immigrant, you live in a shantytown in the middle of nowhere and the only way out is by waiting in the cold for two hours for an unreliable bus.

As the sun set, we began to fear we would never get home, so we walked out to the highway to hitch. I guess we looked pretty sketchy in the dark, because cars sped up as they passed us. We walked all the way to the next bus stop, at which point our bus finally came and we got on it, followed by all 30 Ethiopians.

The weekend was a nice refresher - I don't get out of Tel Aviv enough. At the same time, it was a reminder of how dead the kibbutz movement really is. What is the future for a place like Beit Alpha, where the members are greying rapidly and there is no ideological reason for new people to move there?

Kiss my ass or I'll kick yours!

So if you thought all the hot gossip was going on exclusively in the offices of the Israeli environmental movement, think again. Turns out someone high up in my mother's office has started a subversive blog about the United Jewish Communities, or as the blogger calls the organization, Disunited Jewish Communities. This is one truth that really Herzl:

"These can't be the best of times at Disunited Jewish Communities, but your bloggers agree it's the worst. Now, on top of losing critical Senior Managers one after the other; on top of promoting a dictated "Organizational Strategy" that can't possibly move the organization forward but is presented as the best thing since Saran Wrap, federations of all City-sizes are not just protesting their super sized dues, they have decided not to pay them in whole or in part."

One reader commented on the management style of the UJC: "Sounds like the typical Jewish Federation Executive Director, whose motto is a variation of 'Kiss my ass or I'll kick yours'"

The story has even been picked up by the Jewish Daily Forward.

Totally saucy...and you thought these were just middle aged wonks asking for donations!

Perspective

On Saturday, I went to my favorite cafe and managed to let my cell phone fall out of my pocket and into the toilet as I flushed it. Thinking quickly, I dove for the phone, washed it off and took it apart. The whole time I was cursing to myself and feeling frustrated that for the 4th time in five years, I have damaged my phone, possibly irreparably, with water. The only exception is when I left my first-ever cell phone in a taxi cab, and spent the next two weeks calling it and pleading with the guy who answered it to give it back.

My experience has taught me that as long as you take the battery out and dismantle the phone immediately, it should be fine 24 hours later. I was at home Saturday, two hours after laying my phone's six component parts out on a towel to dry for the night, when my roommate stumbled in nearly too drunk to stand and definitely too drunk to stay on a chair. He spent the next morning getting a plumber to fix our freshly clogged bathroom sink. Makes me feel like a little less of a shambles.

As a further feather in my cap, my phone is now fully dry and back in action.

The politics of free range eggs

If you make a Venn diagram of Israelis who want to eat vegetarian/organic/free range goods, and those who want to end the occupation, there is probably quite a large overlap.

Which is why this Haaretz article - in Hebrew - is so fascinating. Reporter Orna Coussin writes about how Israel's organic food is sold through marketing firms, who buy from various farmers and suppliers and stamp it all with the brand names like Harduf and Adama. The packages often don't include the exact place of production, which means Israeli bleeding hearts could be buying free-range eggs grown by settlers whose existence curtails the free movement of their Palestinian neighbors.

Likewise, organic strawberries are only available from farmers in the settlements for about two months a year.

This article reminded me of a thought I had as I was in the car on the way home yesterday. As we drove past the settlement of Modi'in Ilit, I saw solar-powered water heaters on all the roofs. I found myself scoring the settlement. "Oh man, look at this huge settlement built on Palestinian land," was my first thought. "But they are at least using solar energy...on the other hand, it's still a settlement."

What if a truly amazing invention comes out of the settlements? Or a groundbreaking achievement in architecture, or agriculture? Does it lose merit for being accomplished on stolen land? In other words, is there any value in doing something immoral with touches of good behavior?

First we take their land, then we take their food.

I'm hosting a friend, Sarah, who has been on Birthright and so has seen the big sights in Israel. I was thinking of what we should do when I saw the e-mail I get each week regarding Friday protests in the West Bank.

"As in previous weeks you are invited to register to the organized transportation to the week end demonstrations. Point of meeting is in the East of the central buss station near service taxi 4/5 at 10:15 Friday 11th for the demonstration in Bilin; For Bethlehem region Friday 11th (Um Salmuna) and Saturday 12th (Beit Umar) demonstrations details will be known later; (Village style cloths are recommended.)"

So I called up the organizer and said we wanted to go. I didn't know where Bil'in is, or really why there was a protest. Sarah started to get nervous, so I called the organizer again and asked for detail on what exactly we were doing. "Don't worry," he said. "It's very calm, nothing serious happens."

After staying out until 4 the night before, we woke up bleary-eyed at 9.30 and caught a ride with three Israelis to Bil'in. They told us why we were protesting - the Israeli security barrier runs on the village's land, and even though the Israeli Supreme Court has said the barrier must be moved, it hasn't yet. Along the way they gave us tips about how the protests work. "If you are tear gassed, make sure you don't touch your eyes...when the kids start throwing stones, don't stand by them or you'll get hit by rubber bullets...don't run fast away from the soldiers, just walk quickly."

What the hell are we doing, we thought.

We got to Bil'in and walked over to a front lawn where around 20 Israelis and internationals were lounging around on the grass, reading Haaretz and eating felafel, which an enterprising guy was selling a few yards away for 3 shekels. We sat there, brushing off Palestinian kids trying to sell us cheap bracelets with the Palestinian flag on them. We were waiting for the Friday morning prayers to let out, after which each week the men unload from the mosque and walk to the security fence to demonstrate. The demonstrations have been going on for the last three years, and the Israeli army expects them.

The final prayer sounded and a group of men holding Palestine and Fatah flags began marching down the street, singing and shouting. We joined the group towards the back and walked down a paved road to the security fence, where a line of soldiers stood on the road and more stood stationed a few meters apart spread in a line in either direction. Eventually our group reached the soldiers. Sarah and I hung back and watched the action from a distance, figuring it would be better to see clouds of tear gas than breathe them in.

After a short while, the army threw a canister of tear gas in the direction of the crowd. The boom it made was jarring. Most of the gas flowed away from the crowd and towards the soldiers because it was windy. There were a few more tear gas canisters. An old man was evacuated on a stretcher by Red Crescent workers - he apparently was ill and had to be taken home. We saw the soldiers talking with the demonstrators for a while, more tear gas was fired, and then adolescent boys began slingshotting stones toward the soldiers. We heard some rubber bullets being fired. The crowd began walking away from the soldiers, who fired more tear gas in the direction of the boys throwing stones. Little by little we all returned from where we came. Once we breathed in a very small amount of tear gas, which burned my throat and nose. I put my scarf over my face and kept walking, and I could soon breathe normally.

Apparently the role of Israelis and internationals is to document the protests and to give the soldiers a sense that they are being watched - people at the protest said before foreigners came to the demonstrations, the army used live ammunition and there were a lot more deaths.

After the demonstration we went with the people who drove us to drink tea at one of the villager's houses. After tea came coffee. After coffee our host started asking us if we eat chicken. Before we knew it, he was in his car, driving to the grocery store. We debated if we wanted to stay, weighed how rude it would be to leave versus how guilty we felt about taking from an obviously poor family. "First we take their land, then we take their food," quipped Nili, one of the Israelis we came with.

While the wife cooked, a group of about 8 of us stood around a makeshift heater. It was a campfire inside a repurposed giant olive oil container, which was on top of a grill and filled with hunks of wood from around the house. Eventually we went inside a small chilly room and sat on plastic chairs and stools around a plastic table. We each got a spoon (no plate) to dig into a massive tray loaded with maqlube - rice cooked with carrots, onions, tomatoes, chicken and potatoes. Our hosts insisted that we eat more time and again. We spoke in a mix of Arabic, Hebrew and English.

At 5.30 pm we managed to inch our way out of the house as our host pushed deep-fried dough balls on us while we stood on his front porch. We drove through the hilly and poorly lit terrain of the West Bank until we reached the check point leading back into Israel. The soldier waved us back into Israel proper without checking any of our papers. The land quickly flattened, streetlamps lit up the highway, and we were back in Israel within 25 minutes. We drove around Tel Aviv looking for the turn to the Beit Daniel synagogue (Sarah and I went straight to Friday night prayers smelling of burning wood and with alcohol-soaked pads for tear gas in our pockets).

We came to the junction of Jabotinsky and Zionism Streets. "Hmm, you can't turn left onto Zionism street," Nili observed, reading the street signs. "You can only turn right, and it leads to a dead end."

The Tel Aviv Informal Economy

There is a flea market in Yafo, which is the southern part of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality. If you need a refrigerator, a sofa, tapestries, or other household wares of questionable quality at low prices, that's your address.

I decided to take advantage of my mother being in Israel to buy a desk, chair and bedside table. So we drove her rental car to Yafo to see what 100 dollars (400 shekel) would get me. As we parked our car on a narrow alleyway near the market, it was already drizzling. Not to worry; the vendors at the market leave their merchandise out even if it's pouring - the really good ones have tarps they cover the more valuable stuff with.

I picked out a bedside table from one place and a chair and a desk from a man named Tzvika at another place for a total of 380 shekels. "Leave your table here, and when you're ready, we'll get it all in your car," Tzvika said. Then the heavens opened, and in the rain, the vendor Tzvika and a few of his cronies tried shoving the desk in my mom's roller skate of a rental car. No dice. We wound up paying another 100 shekels to get the stuff moved to my apartment.

An hour and a half later, a mover shows up with the desk strapped to his roof, soaked from an hour's drive in pouring rain. The chair was on his passenger's seat. "Where's the bedside table?" I asked. "What bedside table?" I called up Tzvika and asked him about it, but he said it wasn't his problem. Then the mover, Mores, tells me he is a disabled veteran, and do I want to see his scars, and he shouldn't even be carrying my desk up the stairs because of his injuries, but he doesn't want my help.

He finally gets the desk and chair to my room (5 flights of stairs). The desk is vomiting buttons and sewing pins all over my floor because Tzvika hadn't totally cleaned out the drawers. I paid Mores 100 shekels, tipped him 10, and he stood around talking about how he was injured and asking for more money, and offering to go get the forgotten table for another 40 shekels. I was searching for the words in Hebrew for "get out of my house right now, I'm broke and I need less of you." Eventually he left.

An hour later, I got a call from Tzvika that he and Mores decided to absorb the costs of sending my little table back to my house. It finally arrived, and now I have a place to sit like a human, instead of on pillows on the floor. All it cost was 500 shekels and some of my dignity.

Bike crash, smoking computer and Spain

New year, new resolve to actually update this thing. Life got in the way.

A lot of interesting things have happened in the last month or so, including my very first bike accident. I was biking on a pretty busy street in Tel Aviv and thought I could squeeze between a parked car and a double-parked car that was stalling. Maybe that would have happened if I had slowed down. Instead, I continued at normal speed until I heard a crack, then I backed my bike up to see a shattered rearview mirror that I created. For some reason, although I took photos of the mirror and gave the driver my name and number, I haven't heard from her. Maybe she detected my American accent and just gave up. I also grazed a pedestrian and got brushed by a taxi-van. I had my mom bring out my helmet for the rest of the year.

About a month ago, my computer became harder and harder to charge. Each time I had to fiddle with the black power cord for a few minutes before the icon changed to "charging." What could be the matter, I wondered. A few days later, as smoke came out of the black box, I realized that for some reason my cable had slowly been preparing itself to ignite. Last night I came out of three weeks sans computer. I've been downloading food podcasts like it's my job.

I just got back from Madrid, where I spent New Year's in an elaborate and possibly futile effort to save my immigrant benefits. I was there for 6 days with a high school friend. Madrid is beautiful, but I found myself missing Tel Aviv a lot more than I would have expected. That may be because of the Europe syndrome: Everyone there is always better looking, wealthier and drunker than you are.

A few cultural differences between Spaniards and Israelis:

Bus service: When you get on a bus in Israel, you have to use your elbows to make sure you make it out of the glom of people standing at the door and onto the bus. Even then, sometimes you wind up sitting on the floor. I took a bus from Madrid to Toledo, and not only were there pre-purchased seats, but the driver almost kicked me and my friend off for not getting our seats assigned to us at the station. Luckily, while Spaniards are organized, they don't care about enforcing rules. We just stayed in our seats and some poor suckers wound up missing their 5 pm bus because we were on it instead.

Israeli food - good. Spanish food: all pork, pretty much terrible. I have never seen cured legs of pigs for sale (with carrying case) in a supermarket before, and I don't think I need to ever again. On the other hand, their wine is nice and cheap.

City planning: Madrid has wide sidewalks and pretty streets that lead to lovely views of public fountains. The subway system is efficient and reaches all the important parts of the city. The Tel Aviv bus network is a jumble run by two different companies. The routes are rarely shown at bus stops. There is no subway. The sidewalks are narrow in many places, and often lead to felafel stands.

Spaniards dress extremely well and look polished when they go out. In return, their big nightclubs are often on easily accessible streets near public transport. Israelis go out with their bra straps sticking out and with 5 o'clock shadows. In exchange, their bars are sometimes located on litter-filled roads, sometimes on the edges of industrial areas and highways. It makes me wonder about the potential if locals here just made the first step.