A kitchen Knife Wrapped in Conspiracy Theory

This week, the latest round of attacks of Arabs against Jews and Jews against Arabs promise to make the year 2015 one of the most violent.  It’s nothing new.  Attacks and counter-attacks date back more than 100 years, decades before Israel was established.  What is new are the actors.  It is no longer army against army, or militias against insurgents, or tribesmen against organized kibbutz settlers. This time individuals, vigilantes, and loners take center stage.  Just in the last 48 hours, ten Arabs, acting independently of one another, lashed out at Israeli-Jews all over the country.  These young Arab men (and two Arab women) were armed with knives, screwdrivers, any sharp implement they could get their hands on. Weeks before, Jewish extremists also lashed against Arabs villages, burning houses with the occupants inside.

Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Jewish Western Wall in the foreground and the Al Aqsa Mosque on top

Who are these madmen?

On the Jewish side, it’s mostly right-wing settler-extremists who want to drive away Arabs from the West Bank.  They’re driven by faith to settle Judea and Samaria at all costs.  Through their elected members of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), they wield great influence to build more settlements.  When their demands are not met, they take the law into their own hands and raid Arab villages and mosques in the dead of night.  After numerous attacks, few if any were apprehended.  Those caught by Israel’s security forces and police choose to remain silent under investigation.  With no “evidence” to try them, they are soon released.  It’s this kid glove attitude; it’s this turning a blind eye to the violence that invites counter-violence from the Arabs.

Arab resistance in East Jerusalem

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not justifying the recent Arabs’ violence.  Throwing rocks is wrong. Hurling burning molotov cocktails at innocent Jewish drivers is wrong.  Running over Jews with automobiles is insane.  Stabbing Jews in the street is cowardly.  Arab social media instructional video on how to stab and kill Jews is demented and sick.  But why are they killing?  Arab frustration is at an all-time high.  Despair is higher.  Fear of Jews infringing on their sacred Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem turns sleeper-cell Arabs, college students, and seemingly normal men and women into murderers.  Something goes berserk in their heads, and they start looking for the first Jew to kill. I attribute much of this insanity and violence to conspiracy theory.  Here’s my theory: The more educated and democratic a country, the less the likelihood its people will subscribe to conspiracy theory.  Let me illustrate.  Some people in America still think Americans never landed on the moon, that JFK was killed by the mob, or by space aliens, or that the tragedy of 9/11 was an inside job. They’re the minority.  Most Americans know better.  However, in Arab countries ruled by strongmen with an iron fist, conspiracy theory is alive and kicking.  It’s their narrative; it’s how they explain the world.  It’s how the uneducated and no access to power by peaceful means deal with events beyond their control.  Were it not the Arabs who invented the fables of One Thousand and One Nights? They love a good story to explain life’s mysteries.  Let me invent a story to help explain: There’s a dinner party in Washington DC.  A senator is rushed to the hospital where he’s pronounced dead. The next day, the newspapers reveal he’d suffered a heart attack. End of story. Take this same event, only this time put it in Cairo.  An Egyptian delegate dies after eating a rack of lamb at the president’s banquet.  The word on the Arab street the next morning: “Delegate was poisoned because he was critical of the president’s policies.”

Why am I telling you a story of conspiracy?  Recently Naftali Bennett, Israel’s current Minister of Education, chose to speak less of math and grammar and more of God-given rights to Jews.  As a right-wing extremist he said Jews have the right to visit Jerusalem’s entire Temple Mount, including the compound assigned to the Muslims at the doorstep to the Al Aqsa Mosque.  This is a definite red line.  It was crossed before in 2000 by then prime minister Ariel Sharon.  Hell broke loose.  The trampling over this holy Arab site triggered an Arab Intifada (uprising) that took the lives of many.  Today, one slip of the tongue, one misspoken word (Bennett’s), one incitement or challenge to their faith or Mosque ignites the Arabs’ imagination that we’re out to get them.  They soon run into the streets with knives between their teeth.  Conspiracy theory at work.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Who’s the winner?  No one.  Who’s the loser?  Everyone.  Israel is isolated diplomatically.  To those who say it doesn’t matter, only security matters, think again.  We need friends.  We can’t cut off everyone.  Tourism is down.  Hotels in Jerusalem are near empty.  Jerusalem’s mayor urges his residents to carry pistols.  Schools in the city are closed until security guards can vouch for the children’s safety.  Arabs too are losing big time.  Jews who wanted to give peace talks a chance are now disillusioned.  Images of Arabs stabbing innocent bystanders will not convince even the doves in the crowd that Arabs want coexistence  Jews are boycotting Arab businesses.  Daily 50,000 Arab documented laborers and 50,000 undocumented workers come to work in Israel from the West Bank.  If violence were to continue, they will be blocked from entering.  Assuming these 100,000 workers provide for a family of six, then 600,000 will go wanting.  This will lead to more despair, more violence.

Mahmoud Abbas

What’s the solution? There isn’t any.  But for now, cool heads must prevail.  Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should stop with his “rally around me because everyone’s out to kill us” rhetoric. Enough of scaring us.  Not all Arabs are killers.  Netanyahu is not acting; he’s only reacting, turning his nightly appearance on our TV into a war room.  He’s weak; he lets right-wing extremists run the show so long as he stays in power.  For what purpose?  But he’s done two things right this week: 1. He put a freeze on expanding the Jewish settlements in the West Bank (reacting, not acting).  2.  He prohibited all members of Knesset – Jews and Arabs — from entering the Al Aqsa area (reacting, not acting).  Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, is still coordinating his security forces with those of Israel to stem out the violence.  It’s not because he loves Israel; it’s his fear that if the PA falls, Hamas and others will come after his neck.  Abbas may walk softy, he may carry a long stick, but he knows there’s no military solution to his aspiration for a Palestinian statehood.  Knives will not help.  Our futures are locked for generations.  And that’s no conspiracy theory.

 

Jerusalem today: below is a video showing the aftermath of two Israeli policemen hit by friendly fire (Israel’s security forces) after trying to apprehend an Arab terrorist/stabber.  He was later shot dead.

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Maurice Labi is an Israeli-American who lived in Los Angeles for many years. In 2011 He returned to Northern Israel (Galilee) with his wife and twin teenage daughters. He is of two lands, of two cultures and he blogs about his experiences in Israel, particularly from Galilee where Jews and Arabs dwelled for centuries.

He has also written three novels: “Jupiter’s Stone,” “Into the Night,” and “American Moth” — available at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Maurice-Labi/e/B00A9H4XEI

or at BN.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/maurice-labi?store=allproducts&keyword=maurice+labi

God is watching…PART 1

For the longest time, man has been meddling in the affairs of God, generally, for the benefit of man. Lately, in Israel, ultra-orthodox men appear to be running the show in what was originally God’s show.  They know better.  Left unchecked, God might strike us all with a thunderbolt and start creation all over, this time without man (and woman).  Who needs the headache, He might be asking.  This is undoubtedly one of my weirdest opening for a blog post.  But bear with me.  People of all persuasions, particularly Jews in Israel, think they have God figured out.  They know what’s to come in the afterlife and who’s invited, who’s a kosher Jew and who’s suspect.  To the best of my knowledge, no one’s come back yet from the other side to tell us what’s in store.  I can think of three possible reasons: 1.  There’s nothing  2. There is something, but it’s so wicked and so horrible, that no one has been able to climb out of the fiery abyss and report back to us  3.  There’s something so good out there, so paradise-like, that whoever’s there, members sipping banana daiquiris and nibbling on Belgian chocolate, choose not to tell us nor include us in their “Club Med.”

Yet ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel, using their unlimited minutes calling plan, seem to have a direct line to God’s ear and God’s will.  General elections were held here 4 months ago.  The religious parties returned to power with Netanyahu as prime minister.  They’re holding him by the jewels. They insist on turning us more Jewish than we already are.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis whose Jewish conversion is in the process for months, sometime years are told that they’re not “Kosher.”  These applicants — children of mixed marriages, those whose ancestral lineage was broken, non-Jews who’d married Jews and wish to establish a home in Israel are told an emphatic No!  They live in limbo.  Rabbis will not marry them.  Couples usually trek to Cyprus, the neighboring island-state, or to Greece, to tie the knot.  Their future children will be deemed not Jewish, undeserving and underprivileged.  Before the elections, the right-wing parties courted them, invited them into the fold, made promises, and now that they’re in power, they’re regarded as pariah.  That’s their lousy fate.  They can’t catch a break after death, either.  They are not allowed to be buried with Jews although their sons or daughters (non-Jews) serve in the military, although they know Jewish holidays, and they’re as patriotic as the next guy.  Where’s the love?  Is that what God really wants?

minstry of religious affairs

And doesn’t all this talk of righteousness and purity remind us of something?

Israel has only one form of Judaism: Orthodox.  But in America and in Europe, Reform and Conservative Judaism is also practiced.  This week, David Azoulai, Israel’s minister of religious affairs called the Reform Jews in the U.S. “a disaster to the Nation of Israel” and “sinners.”  That’s when the Mazto Balls hit the fan.  They’re mad as hell.  Reform Jews make up almost 40% of all American Jews.  They practice Judaism Light; they drive during Sabbath, men and women sit together in synagogues; they fudge a little on the prayer-book, and they eat Kosher-style.  However, they support Israel overwhelmingly, contribute money, lobby, send their kids to Jewish summer camps.  Somehow God told Azoulai that these Jews are not good enough, either.  Israel has few friends.  Attacking its own brothers smacks of stupidity of the highest order.

Take the world’s population, for instance.  I did the math.  1 out of 500 is Jewish.  Take a good-size theater.  Only 1 Jew is sitting, front row, of course.  Take a soccer stadium to capacity.  Only 60 Jews are at the concessions stand drinking lemonade and eating Hebrew Nationals.  The other 29,940 are drinking beer.  I’m not saying let’s “Mother Teresa” everyone in the world, but shouldn’t we keep the Jews we already have?

For God’s sake?

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Maurice Labi is an Israeli-American who lived in Los Angeles for many years. In 2011 He returned to Northern Israel (Galilee) with his wife and twin teenage daughters. He is of two lands, of two cultures and he blogs about his experiences in Israel, particularly from Galilee where Jews and Arabs dwelled for centuries.

He has also written three novels: “Jupiter’s Stone,” “Into the Night,” and “American Moth” — available at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=maurice+labi&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Amaurice+labi

or at BN.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/maurice-labi?store=allproducts&keyword=maurice+labi

Living in a Bubble

This week, Israel’s general elections were Dead on Arrival.  The autopsy wasn’t pretty; a gunshot wound to the head.  To the left, liberal head.  What started out as hope to replace the Netanyahu government, collapsed onto itself like a circus tent after all the animals had run out.

This is a time to admit that after almost four years since my return to Israel, I live in a bubble. What’s not to like about a bubble?  So long as it continues to inflate, so long as the world beyond it looks soapy, clean; so long as the bubble rises in the mild wind, leaving all else behind – I can continue to live in a make-believe world.

Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you’re goona get

The villages and the kibbutzim  around my home supported the opposition overwhelmingly.  The numbers were stacked in my favor, or so I thought.  The neighbors I talk to, the friends I associate with – we all sing from the same music sheet.  We wanted to replace the right-wing government.  I threw my support behind Itzhak Hertzog, leader of the Zionist Camp party. His pedigree is without question: His grandfather was a respected rabbi, his father was the president of Israel.  Hertzog had no skeletons in the closet.  During the campaign he spoke for me: negotiate with the Arabs, advocate a two-state solution, one Jewish, one Arab, in an attempt to end the conflict.  He promoted social programs and an accountable government.  A speech therapist coached him on how to drop his squeaky voice.  Political strategists helped him how to show more presence in front of the cameras.

The bubble continued to inflate.

My wife Pnina showing our daughter Romy the voting booth and the democratic process on election day

Until Netanyahu put a needle to it.  All came crashing the day after the elections when results were in.  Overnight, Netanyahu’s numbers improved markedly and Hertzog’s sank.

What went wrong?

In two words: 1. Demographics  2.  Hubris

In the U.S., for example, minorities will become the majority in 2040.  In just 25 years from now, the white man’s supremacy will be a thing of the past.  Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and other mixed races will outnumber whites.  It’s unlikely the Republicans in the U.S. will seize the White House unless they will learn how to include Jorge, Jun, and Jerome in their political platform.

In Israel’s demographics, the left will not win unless it learns to include, or at least understand the mindset of the Sephardi Jews (originally from Arab-speaking countries), the disenfranchised blue-collar sector far away from Tel Aviv’s glitz, the Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and the orthodox.  It’s a tall order.  And now, days after the defeat, it’s not likely the left will win anytime soon.  Unless things get a lot worse and the voting public will take a gamble on the alternative.  Unless the left will drop its arrogance (mine included).  At the ballot box, a minimum-wage factory worker from a hole-in-the-wall town is equal to a university dean in his/her ivory tower.  For the left to think that they know better is naive. Its leaders need to roll up their sleeves, reach out to these marginalized groups, reinvent themselves.

The left has to change its language.

My sketch of Netanyahu

It’s not to say Netanyahu has done anything to help these groups.  He hasn’t.  He’s just a better demagogue, borrowing tactics from Ronald Reagan.  Netanyahu is a great speaker; he doesn’t use dollar words like Hertzog when nickel words will do.  In Israel, he gets to the largest common denominator, scares the shit out of people regarding Iran and Isis, then retires to his Prime Minister home and sips French wine.  A true king.

See you in four years, Hertzog.  In the meantime, go to the gym, lift weights, roughen your voice, roughen your beard, charm the ladies, and kick ass.

Israelis like to be kicked around.  Even if they don’t know it.

 

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Maurice Labi is an Israeli-American who lived in Los Angeles for many years. In 2011 He returned to Northern Israel (Galilee) with his wife and twin teenage daughters. He is of two lands, of two cultures and he blogs about his experiences in Israel, particularly from Galilee where Jews and Arabs dwelled for centuries.

He has also written three novels: “Jupiter’s Stone,” “Into the Night,” and “American Moth” — available at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=maurice+labi&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Amaurice+labi

or at BN.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/maurice-labi?store=allproducts&keyword=maurice+labi

Yellow Brick Lane to Nowhere

If you’re old enough to remember the 1976 movie “Network” with Peter Finch and a young, gorgeous Faye Danaway, then you’ll remember the famous quote:  “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE.”

During Israel’s general elections yesterday, it seems many of the voters have seen the movie, recited the quote or added some original lines of their own.

We’re off to see Netanyahu

What’s clear is that it’s no longer business as usual.  The people have spoken.  For four years they’ve taken the yellow brick lane to the “Promised Land,” only to find a confused man at the switches behind the curtain.  Many may say that “There’s no place like home” but half the voting public don’t want the home Netanyahu is offering.

My brush with Israeli politics came in the form of a postcard addressed to me.  It said I was now a registered Israeli voter and was told the location of the election booth during election day, yesterday.

I held the card in my hand and didn’t know what to make of it, what to think, what to feel.  I’ve been away from Israel for more than 30 years, in America, was glued to issues affecting the U.S.  For years I watched Israel from afar, unable to influence the slightest of outcomes.

Now I’ve been given that privilege, duty.  With each passing day I learned more about the issues, attended and listened to Yair Lapid last year when he came to Kfar Tavor, my hometown.  Friends threw in their two-cents (shekels?) about whom I should vote for.  I read articles.  Political horse-trading is common here.  Israeli parties who hate each other, have opposing world views, and are the strangest of bedfellows will jump into that same bed, will do and say anything — just so they can be IN the ruling government, to get their slice of the bagel.

Voting in Israel’s general elections

On election day I took my twin daughters to see me vote.  I dropped the envelope in the box.  I didn’t feel elated.  We went outdoors, sat on a bench, enjoyed the winter sun.

Judging by last night’s results, many are mad as hell.  Voters who sat on fence finally came down and voted differently.  Netanyahu’s party, the Likud, is still the dominant party, yet it can’t go it alone.  He will have to partner with the elections’ upset, the runner-up in  the number of votes – Yair Lapid.  Lapid has promised to spread the financial and military (read, the draft) burden among all Israelis, including the Orthodox.

This is a wake up call for the Orthodox.  They may be down but not out.  And it gives them pause.  They no longer have the Israeli prime-minster in their back pocket.  If they’re not invited to join Netanyahu to form a new government, they’ll sit in the opposition for the next 4 years.  They’ll sit (sleep?) with the Labor party, but also with the Israeli-Arab parties.  Will they like themselves in the morning.  Will they share tables at the Knesset (parliament) lunchroom?

Hummus and lamb kebabs anyone?  How about breaded Schnitzel and potatoes?

It’s also a historic opportunity for the Israeli-Arabs in Galilee and in the Negev and in Jerusalem and in Yaffo.  They can shed their stereotype as the disadvantaged.  They can pull themselves by the galabia belt and tell anyone that would listen that they’re Arab and Moslem (and Christian), but they’re Israeli, that they’ll consider 2 to 3 years of National Service in lieu of military draft.  That will go a long way and convincing the Jewish Israelis to trust them.

Time will tell if we’re headed toward peace with the neighboring Arabs, or toward war, or perpetual uncertainty.

If Faye Danaway was running for office, I’d vote for her.

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Maurice Labi is an Israeli-American who lived in Los Angeles for many years. In 2011 He returned to Northern Israel (Galilee) with his wife and twin teen-age daughters. He is of two lands, of two cultures and he blogs about his experiences in Israel, particularly from Galilee where Jews and Arabs dwelled for centuries.

He has also written three novels: “Jupiter’s Stone,” “Into the Night,” and “American Moth” — available at Amazon.com or BN.com.