Tal Law

Since arriving back to Jerusalem from my visit to Australia, the rollercoaster ride that is my life resumed with added fervour. Most of the chaos is due to the High Court's decision not to renew 'Tal Law'.


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The Power of Youth

My experience this week with the army got me thinking more broadly about the model which now shapes the Israel Defence Force. I don’t have much hard evidence of my opinions, only a little firsthand experience.

The position I thought I had, mentioned in previous post, within the education core has somehow fallen through the tracks of communication within the army’s chain of command. My name had be lost off the placement officers’ lists and I was one “yes sir” away from being placed working daily shifts from 8am-5pm in a warehouse on a base 3 hours from my house.

This wasn’t a blow to my ego, a friend of mine which a Masters in Mathematics and an undergraduate in computer engineering had been placed there as well. I knew that it wasn’t a reflection of what the army though about me - that the task of doing stock take on toilet paper rolls and paint tins was all I could amount to within the army.

This didn’t cross my mind.

Refusing to take the position, I was seated in front of a commanders office and told to wait. A sentence which ended up being for 5 days, from 8-5pm.

Throughout the week I took it upon myself to shorten those hours, so that by the last day I was only there from 11 till 1:30pm with a solid two hour lunch break in the middle.

I used my time to read my book, speak to friends on Skype and I would give myself top secret missions each day; to find the cable TV, the cafeteria with the best food, and to find the army base café.

Outside of army time I also managed to fill my evenings with activities to excite the mind and ignite the soul. African Dance is my new hobby, the class is simply electric, and the next day muscles I didn’t even know I had ache.

I also went to a cool gig in a hippy commune in down town Jerusalem, a band of 6 phenomenal musicians were playing Ladino tunes from Bulgaria, Libya, Greece and Turkey.

Finally on day 5 of the waiting I received my transfer documents to a base a short bus ride from my house. On Sunday I start the process again.

It wasn’t the waiting which upset me to the core. It was the defeatist attitude of the office workers there. This base I was waiting on is the size of a small city, run by people 19.5 years old (by my estimate average), and every person I spoke to just answered “that’s the way the army is, you can’t change it”.

I started thinking to myself, when did the army which was founded by a Youth Movement mentality start to extinguish the power of youth?

There was a time in this country’s history where the youth volunteered to serve, and did not consider it revolutionary, simply a “conservation of the fruits of the revolution of their parents’ generation.”¹

The amount of social loafing and disenchantment in the very fabric of the army amongst the youth who represent the army is sad. I don’t think this is coming from a place of doubt in the morality of the army or a disagreement with its actions. I think it grows out of the soil of disempowerment of youth from the ‘contracted soldiers’ who are hired by the army after their compulsory service.

For an 18 year old, 3 years (the required service for men) or even 2 years (the service for women), is an eternity! Even for me as a 24 year old 3 years seems like 12 lifetimes away. What you could do, see and experience in that time!

Perhaps, and I hope, it is just in the category of the army I am experiencing. That is, the paper pushing departments. I’d like to think that the soldiers who are given leadership training and responsibility feel a sense of achievement, self-importance and most of all the knowledge that things can change, because the youth are still the foundations of this army.

1. Adler 1963, p12. In Roots of Civic Identity: International Perspectives of Community Service and Activism in Youth. Edited by M. Yates, J. Youniss. 1999. Pg 209-11.

Middle Eastern Predicitons

Arab Spring

This is my 42^nd blog post.

42 – The meaning of life.

Significant in a time in my life where I have chosen to abandon exploring the ‘why’:

-Why are we here?

-Why do I care?

-Why do I need to keep my elbows off the table when I eat?  

And focus more on the ‘what’;  

-What should I do today?

-What should I have for the lunch?

-WTF?

etc.

Distractions. It’s all about the distractions.

One perfect distraction is the upcoming UN delegation and subsequent impending doom on the State I now call home!  

I decided to do a bit of field work and find out what the people of this tiny land actually think is going to go down on that momentous day.

It seems that at most 2 million Palestinian refugees residing in Syria will march toward the Israeli border, partly because they want to reclaim the land of their ancestors, and partly because the Syrian government with mow them down with machine guns.

At least we might see a bit of colourless fireworks near the security fence along the 1967 armistice line.

Most people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will wake up as usual, go to their favourite, or most convenient, café and order their usual.

I think there’ll be unrest which could turn violent.

There might be a little fire. There may not. It could go either way. I think it’ll stop/pause some of the internal protests regarding social justice. Sorry for being vague, it’s the nature of my generation. 

Apartment

This is a short tour of my apartment. It's minimal, but functional.

This was taken about four months ago so the cupboards and fridge are more full, and the bathroom is less clean.

Production, cinimatography, lighting design, set design, costume design, script, acting, editing is all me - could you tell?

SHAKAKI!

"הפלשתינאים ביקשו יפה מדינה. קיבלו? זיבּי קיבלו. עברו להתפוצץ על ילדים באותובוסים, פתאום התחילו להקשיב להם"

“The Palestinians asked nicely for a State. Did they get one? They got babkas. They moved on to blowing up children on buses, suddenly we started paying attention to them”

-          Etgar Keret - Suddenly, a Knock at the Door, 2010 (My translation)

Last week I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Khalil Shakaki, the #1 Palestinian pollster, speak. It was really refreshing hearing a summary of the conflict from an academic grassroots perspective, as opposed to an emotional irrational lecture littered with remarks containing vocabulary from another people’s suffering. i.e. “The Israeli Holocaust Apartheid Regime, inflicting a Hiroshima-like barrage of bombs on the Palestinians. Israel is building a slave trade out of their babies, tsunami, Stalin, 9/11, Satan, bad men…”

I feel it necessary to mention that Prof. Shakaki’s brother was head of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Israel may or may not have assassinated him. Despite this Khalil was quite a moderate speaker.

The topic of his talk was on “Palestinian Domestic Politics and the Peace Process” focusing on number of subject areas but basing his opinions in statistic he gathered from the residents of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

I will try to attach the slides to his presentation but the main fact which interested me was the differenced statistically of the perception of one another’s intentions.

The amount of surveyed Palestinians who support a two state solution where Israel lives side by side with them as two separate states, each having autonomy of their own territories with the right to defence and economic freedoms was 62%! A fantastic majority.



I hade the breakdown of these stats if someone is interested

Of course I’m not so naïve as think that if half of Jerusalem is handed over to the current governments of the Palestinian territories along with the West Bank and all the Israeli settlements within it, that peace will come to our doorstep on the wings of a dove riding a rainbow like a teenager dizzy on acid.

But the most interesting part was the surveyed Palestinian’s perception of Israel’s goals. Only 15.7% perceive Israel as wanting to resolve the conflict.

On the Israelis side the perception of how many Palestinians want a two state solution is less.