A day at the Haifa court

I spent a day in the Haifa court trying to see a friend who has been detained for two weeks on charges of publishing lines from a poem on Facebook. I can report the State of Israel is functioning as intended.

“Therefore, the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil.”

Book of Amos, chapter 5, verse 13

Some of my friends who have posted verses from the Koran on their Facebook pages during these difficult days have found themselves behind bars, so I thought that maybe, in the Jewish state, posting a verse from the Bible would be safer.

Of course, I cannot publish what I really think. The last time I carried a sign that called for a “Ceasefire Now,” or, in fact, I did not even carry the sign but just held it folded between my legs, I was attacked by several policemen and spent the night in the dungeons of the Haifa police. In the days before that, at a “Women in Black” demonstration and a vigil for a prisoner exchange in Carmel Center, even more moderate signs were torn from my hands by police. Finally, even my peace-loving friends begged me to stop the “provocations.”

So I stopped, at least for now.

In the meantime, for those who are concerned about the situation, I can report from here that the internal front is stronger than ever. I am not a military or political commentator, but I live the beat of the Haifa street, and from this vantage point, the State of Israel is functioning as intended.

I was at the court in Haifa today to check on the well-being of a friend who has been held in detention for two weeks on the charge of publishing a few lines from a poem on Facebook. The prosecution filed an indictment on the charge of “supporting terrorism” and requested the extension of his detention until the end of the proceedings. The hearing was adjourned until the defense could study the case. My friend, as is customary these days, was not brought to court. In the minutes of the hearing, the judge took the trouble to note:

“Noting the law on holding hearings in a visual conference with the participation of prisoners and detainees in the state of emergency, the hearing progresses in the absence of the suspect on video when he is in the detention center, the suspect identifies himself on video before the judge in a loud voice and says his name and ID, and the judge explains to the suspect that the hearing is held on video in light of the announcement of a partial restriction on participation of detainees in discussions.”

(The errors in gender, punctuation, and language are in the original protocol, much of it lost in translation. And, not to judge our poor judge too harshly, she probably just cut and paste it.)

Indeed, the discussion took place “in the absence of the suspect on video.” This means the video application was activated, but we did not see our detained friend.

Before the hearing on our case, we had time to see Israeli justice in action in three other remand hearings. First, a shooting suspect was brought in. He was released to house arrest for a few days, ordered to stay at a distance of at least 150 meters from the victim’s house, and banned from talking to the victim. A stabbing suspect was brought after him. He was also released after a short hearing under similar conditions. Both were personally brought to court. In both cases, the victims (as well as the suspects in the attacks) were Arab.

After that, the court turned to a more important matter, which was concerned with ensuring public peace and security in these difficult days. The suspect, a 43-year-old father with no criminal record, was seen in a video broadcast from the detention center. During the discussion, we learned that the suspect, a resident of the West Bank, had permits from the occupation authorities to enter and work inside “the green line” for the last four years. To get these permits from the “Matfash”¹ office, he must have passed all the most brutal Shin Bet tests there are, and no blemish must have been found. However, as we learned, due to the situation, all the permits have been cancelled. Thus, by a swing of a keyboard, the suspect became, like tens of thousands of other poor, hard-working people, a criminal whose very existence endangers the security of the State of Israel and the Jewish public living in it quietly and peacefully.

The suspect’s lawyer tried to cut short the hearing by saying, “then deport him.” The judge, for her part, tried to shorten the hearing according to her own method and stated at the very beginning of the hearing, before hearing any argument: “To be clear, I am not releasing him.”

The policeman who requested the remand emphasized that the suspect’s crime does not only amount to an illegal stay but also to violating the conditions of his original work permit. Since the suspect was not charged with any additional offense, it is clear that the violation of the permit conditions does not involve any criminal activity itself. The policeman was not willing to elaborate on how the conditions were violated, but when the defense attorney hypothesized that the suspect was permitted to work in agriculture but instead engaged in assembling plaster walls, oh my god, he did not deny it. He only repeated that it was a violation of the permit’s conditions and that the suspect had been interrogated about it.

The defense attorney reiterated that no one informed the suspect that his permit had been revoked, therefore, even if he was technically “illegally present”2, he was caught in this situation without his knowledge. He emphasized that the “Matfash” offices are open and functioning (“thank god!” he added). As they issued the permits, he claimed, they were able to call the holders of the permits and inform them of their cancellation. He even described how he bothered to check the Matfash public website, and nowhere did he find any notice about the cancellation of the work permits.

The judge, who was presented with the investigation materials (at this stage, the defense attorney still has no access to them), took the trouble to answer the defense attorney and claim that the suspect admitted during his interrogation that there were people – although “not any official source” – who advised him to leave the area. The police prosecutor, like “righteous people whose work is done by others,” did not bother to answer, while the judge did his work.

The police, despite the seriousness of the case, only asked for two days to complete the interrogation. The judge stated that the suspect, due to the security situation, posed a danger to public peace by his very existence and presence among us. Finally, the judge extended his detention by one day.

When we left the court, we met a lawyer rushing to his day’s work. He proudly told us that he also defended a guy who was accused of posting on Facebook but managed to convince the court to release him. According to him, his client was held with security detainees in Megiddo prison. After the release order came, the guards took him to a separate room and took turns beating him badly. “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalms, chapter 121, verse 4)

I looked up in Wikipedia (in Hebrew) the background of the verse from the Book of Amos at the top of this story. It explained:

“In the book of Amos, chapter 5, the prophet laments Israel, who do not walk in the ways of God, pervert the justice in their courts, support the strong, but trample and plunder the weak, despise the words of the prophet and the reprover, and forget the greatness and power of God. Therefore, God will punish them personally, so that they will not be able to enjoy the wealth and prosperity that they have accumulated in corrupt ways. The prophet summarizes this section of the prophecy with the phrase in question: ‘Therefore, the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil’.”

Haifa, October 23, 2023

(This post was originally published in Hebrew in my Haifa Ha-Hofshit blog. At Mondoweiss’s request, I translated it to English.)

Notes

1. “Matfash” is the Hebrew acronym for “The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).” I use the term Matfash because it is the way it is called in Israeli-Speak, where military acronyms are a natural part of daily language. I also find this acronym ugly, so I think it is well expressing the designed content.

2. I used the term “illegally present” for the very common Hebrew term “Shabah” (שב”ח), a very special acronym for people from the 1967 occupied territory that are present in ’48 Palestine without special permit from the Matfash. Google translates it to “Illegal resident,” but I think it misses the point. Being Shabah is a special kind of Human Existence, which allows you to be arrested or even shot at from the moment that you cross one of those Apartheid walls, usually while looking for some work to feed your family, so it has nothing to do with residency. In Hebrew Wikipedia, there is a long page about it, explaining from the occupation’s point of view. Unfortunately, this important term has not yet been investigated by world public opinion.

My Failure as Gang Leader and Lessons for the USA

If you would have ever told me that I will write a piece comparing myself to the USA… well, I wouldn’t take it gracefully and my response might have been ugly. However, now, this is exactly what I was tempted to do. All the blame is on the hapless President Biden, or, more specifically, on his relentless search for allies that will stand by the USA in its desperate quest to contain China. This reminds me of some dark pages from my own past.

* * *

I was born in a small village, and my parents’ house was the last along the small road leading to it. My big brother was a year and a few months bigger than me. When I was born, I robbed him of his mother’s attention, and I felt his ire over the next years. Even worse, it happened that in the houses around us there were some kids of his age, but none of my age. The kids in the village (in the fifties of the previous century) use to roam around in the yards and between the fields, coming home only to eat and sleep. All I could do was to try to join my brother’s “gang”, or try to follow them, or spy on the awesome things they were doing. As far as I can remember, I was an unwelcomed interference wherever I went.

When I grew up a little, maybe four or five years old, I expanded the geography of my wandering, and discovered some kids of my age. It was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. We constituted our own gang and now we could roam around together. Finally, I felt empowered to confront my brother and his vicious gang.

I don’t remember much from these far away days, but one moment of disillusionment struck me so hard that it stayed with me for the rest of my life. After playing with my new friends and having fun together, I shared with them my plans for confronting my brother’s gang. They didn’t think it was a good idea. All my dreams of leading my own gang to glory collapsed prematurely.

* * *

What are the lessons for the USA?

First, China, as a state and an economy, is your bigger brother, having many more people, and there is little that you can do about it. True, the USA used to be the hegemonic power, but the only way to preserve that status was to prevent others from developing. Well, you tried your best, but failed. Actually, since maybe 2014, China’s is the biggest economy by the most “objective” measure of the capitalist economic “science”, GDP by PPP. It doesn’t matter how everybody in the capitalist propaganda press will repeat the term “the second biggest economy”.

Second, going around the world and just propose on all other nations “let’s confront China together” is foolish and futile. China is a vital component of our one world and the world-wide ever more integrated economy. Everybody should play together if we want to save the planet and pool its people out of poverty. Well, you don’t, but at least you should pretend to care.

The last years are a museum of failed senseless USA initiatives of this kind. Who remembers the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that was all designed to exclude China? Who remembers the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, that was declared ceremoniously by the G7 in June 2021 as an alternative to China’s “Belt and Road”, only to be forgotten and replace by a new empty catch-phrase in the next summit?

Well, in short, do your own thing, have some fun, go play with the kids.

Tell the truth… (about sectarianism)

(This short story was initially published in the Haifa Arabic weekly Al-Madina on September 14, 2018. You can find the original Arabic text in Haifa Al-Hura.)

May 22, 2017 was a special day. We attended another session of the detention court for poet Dareen Tatour. The Court again rejected the request for the abolition of the house arrest imposed on Dareen, which lasted more than two and a half years until she was sentenced to imprisonment for 5 months and was returned to prison. On this special day, however, the court allowed Dareen to leave her family home in Reineh, the location of her house arrest, for several hours each day, provided she was accompanied by “qualified guards” from her family. On this occasion, to make use of the new crack in the wall for breathing freedom, Dareen and her companions did not return home after the hearing. But, for the first time since her arrest more than a year and a half before, she started wandering the streets of her beloved city, Nazareth, and we were wandering with her.

In this short passage, written more than a year later, I do not want to write another chapter in the famous story of the trial of the poet Tatour. But I want to touch on a passing conversation that took place during our tour of the streets of Nazareth. It touched an exposed nerve and its complex meaning is still echoing within my head even today.

We walked through the alleyways of the old market towards the Church of the Annunciation when we met, by coincidence, a group of foreigners, accompanied by a local activist. We learned that they are active in minority rights movements in the United States, especially Black Lives Matter. They came to Palestine as an act of solidarity on an educational tour, and our friend guided them on their trip to Nazareth.

We were pleased with this opportunity to get acquainted, and we requested the guide to tell the respectable foreigners about Dareen’s case as well. He began to explain, but was not familiar with the details. With his permission I explained all the issue of the trial from Dareen’s arrest until the last court hearing on the same day. My explanation was brief but it was ample, and I felt that the guests were delighted to have the opportunity to meet in person one of the conflict stories.

But, when I stopped talking, it seemed that our guide friend was not satisfied. He told me, “Tell them the truth.”

I thought I had explained the details of the case accurately and honestly and did not understand what truth he wanted me to tell, so I did not respond.

However, it seemed that this truth that I couldn’t grasp was clear to other members of our small group, except for the foreigners. Some of them, Arabs, Jews and foreigners, urged me: “Yes, tell them the truth!”

I was confused. I was, as they say in Arabic, like “a deaf in a wedding”. I didn’t understand. “I have told the truth as I know it,” I said. “If I made any mistake, please correct me.”

“No, you were not mistaken. But tell them you are a Jew!”

At this point I lost my nerve. Some of my beloved friends felt that the foreigners, who were of different races and ethnicities, and who heard my balanced and objective words, could miss the main “attraction” – that the person who spoke this was someone of Jewish origin… Seeing such a scene should be regarded like seeing a dancing monkey in a street show.

“OK, OK, I will tell the truth,” I laughed.

“You have to know that we live in a society steeped in sectarianism,” I explained to the guests. “Zionism has taken control of all our thinking and we have stopped dealing with people as human beings. We are dealing with them first and foremost according to their sectarian affiliation. But even our concept of sectarian affiliation is wrong, distorted by Zionist misconceptions. Judaism, as I know it, is a religion. And any religion is based on faith and a set of convictions. As of me, as a person, I do not believe in this religion and have nothing to do with it. But Zionism wants to convince us that religion is transmitted by heredity through our genes… and that the son of a Jewish mother is definitely Jewish. I regret to tell you that, but my friends have requested me to introduce myself to you as a Jew.”

Thus I spoke the truth, as I found it in my heart, to the respected guests, to my beloved friends and to you, my dear readers.

 

A spark of AI

My doctor decided that I have to do another heart test.

I went with his reference to the Heart Institute, hoping to schedule the test.

I approached the clerk at the reception and told her that I have a reference from my doctor.

“We don’t schedule tests”, she told me. “You should phone the call center.”

I found a free chair nearby, sat there and phoned the call center. After going through several stages with the bot, I had a woman on the line. I told her what test was required.

“No”, she said. “I can’t schedule this test for you. You can only schedule it directly in the institute.”

“Well”, I told her, “In the institute they said that I must call you.”

I crossed the corridor and approached the clerk at the reception.

“The call center says that only you can schedule the test”, I told her. She tried to deny that, so I let her talk with the woman on the phone.

“Well”, she told me, “why didn’t you tell me what kind of test you need? It is true that this test can only be scheduled directly”.

She scheduled the test for next Wednesday.

All this was daily practice of all human bureaucracy, not something worth writing about. But there was a twist in the plot that sounded to me like the harbinger of a new period.

We are all excited about how machines are acquiring artificial intelligence that allows them to emulate human reasoning and behavior.

Well, as I called the call center, the first response from the bot was to say that “we are sorry for the inconvenience but the system is very busy right now and response time is unusually long. Please try to schedule through the site.”

As I ignored this “try with another” initial response and filled my details anyway, the response was immediate, with no delay at all.

I really appreciated how the bot was adopting the intelligent methods of our human brothers and sisters, making me feel at home.

(Haifa, July 2018)

The day that Nur took responsibility

Nur, Christmas 1993

They were four kids from Halisa, this struggling poor neighbourhood on the slopes of Mount Carmel, on the eastern entrance to Haifa. Nur was the biggest of the four. At the time that this story happened, in the spring of 1994, he was about six and a half. Yes, half a year is important at such an age. He was already going to school, a first grade student at the Carmelite school located between Wadi Nisnas and Downtown Haifa.

The other 3 kids were still going to kindergarten, in the Sacred Heart monastery. Hadaf and Yasar were the son and daughter of our good friends and neighbours. Adam, my other son, was not yet three years old, the youngest in this small bunch.

The school and the kindergarten were some 3 kilometers away (by air) and, naturally, we had to drive the kids there every morning and bring them back after school hours. I used to take the four of them in the morning on my way to work. Osama, the father of Hadaf and Yisar, had a more flexible job and would take them back home.

Once Osama came to our house and informed me that on the next day he will be busy and would not be able to take the kids from school.

On the next day I went out of work, initially heading for the Carmelite school to pick up Nur. When I arrived there children were already pouring in a steady stream to the street, some of them finding their parents waiting, others, some of the older kids, walking home or going to catch a bus.

I waited patiently, but there was no sign of Nur. As the stream of kids dried out, I went into the schoolyard and looked around, hoping to find him playing there. But there were very few kids at the yard and Nur wasn’t there. I entered the school’s office and asked about Nur. Yes, he was at school but probably went home… Nobody really noticed.

Hadaf, Yasar, Adam, Fady, Luay – Probably 4 years later…

Going out I looked in the small streets around the school but there was no hint of where Nur might be. I decided to go and pick the other three kids from the kindergarten, some 500 meters away, before I will think of new ways to look for Nur.

I parked the car in front of the kindergarten. There were no kids waiting at the entrance, as most of the kids have already gone. I went in to take my three kids, but they were not there either. Finally one of the teachers told me: I think their brother came and took them.

It could seem crazy, a six and a half years old kid taking with him three small kids from the kindergarten in the middle of downtown Haifa, into the messy streets busy with traffic, far from home… But, to say the truth, for me this was a big relief after the daunting worries of the previous hour. So, Nur was not kidnapped after all. The four kids will not easily disappear together.

Nur & Adam, Christmas 1993

I started driving along the road home, but there is more than one way you can drive to Halisa and even more ways to walk. If I remember well I didn’t find them until they came home.

Nur explained that he heard Osama saying that he was busy and will not take the kids. So he simply did what he had to do.

When I think again and again about this day, one of the most frightening in my life, sometimes I think it might show how little trust Nur had toward his parents. But apparently he didn’t think he was abandoned or that there was anything unnatural in his parents being busy or him taking the kids walking home. He used to be a responsible kid, the biggest one in the bunch.

 

 

My First Protest…

You can say I was a shy and quite kid, in those old days… I lived in a small village and the local school even didn’t have enough kids to open a new class every year. But for some reason, which I fail to remember now, I always regarded myself to be from the opposition, unlike the good kids that only wanted to do what the teacher wanted them to.

It was in the seventh grade, when I made my first public protest. My teacher was a narrow-minded woman that came to the school after finishing a religious teachers-seminar. At about the same time my aunt, which used to live in New York, lost her husband and came back to the village to live with the family. She started teaching English in the local school. At night we would all gather in my grandma’s “Tolstoyan” salon, speaking about life. Making fun of our provincial school was a favorite topic.

One day my aunt taught us an English phrase: “The teacher is not always right, but he is always the teacher”. I liked it. Soon I organized my best friend and together we wrote this phrase (in Hebrew, of course) on a placard, waited after school hours when the classroom was empty, built a pyramid of school tables and chairs, and hanged it on the top of the wall, just near the ceiling.

When the teacher came the next morning she clearly didn’t like what she has seen. She threatened to punish the whole class, so we admitted that we did it. But when she demanded that we put off the placard we refused, and were thrown out.

For several days we spent our schooling time in the yard. I don’t remember what we were doing there, but it could hardly be more boring that attending classes. After some days my best friend told me that he want to surrender – his parents were not happy with him spending his time out of class and he couldn’t stand their pressure. So he went on to remove the offending phrase.

I never told my parents about the whole issue. But a few days later, when my mom waked me up, she had something to tell me. “I hear you make problems at school.” She told me. “Your teacher talked with me. I don’t know exactly what you did. And I know that your teacher may be sometimes narrow-minded… But…”

“Yes, mama, I know. She might be wrong, but she is always the teacher.”

“Yes, exactly”

It was a special joy to be punished for telling the truth.

 

Down and Out in Amsterdam 1973

As I was visiting friends in Amsterdam lately, I remembered my old days in Amsterdam in the autumn of 1973.

I was a shy, long haired, village boy and just finished my first year in the University of Jerusalem. I flew for a vacation to London and had an open return ticket from Amsterdam.

The war started while I was still in London. I continued according to plan and took the ferry to Amsterdam, but I definitely didn’t want to go back while the war was still raging, so I had to wait it out on low budget and hope for a fast ceasefire.

Amsterdam was a pretty good place for a young guy to kill time in that period. I embarked in a cheap youth hostel near the center. There were flocks of young people from all over Europe wandering around, still infected with the fever of the youth rebellion of the Sixties. You could sit with everybody to hear music for free in the open air. I was already pretty serious by that time about my political activism, but I wouldn’t say no to a joint if it passed by me.

Israelis looking for war

Wandering around just to keep myself away from war, I met some Israeli guys that were just looking for a way to go home to take part in the war. They were no regular flights but there were rumors about some flights that might fly to Lod from Amsterdam or some other European airports.

I remember especially one of them. He left Israel and already had good life in California. He came to Amsterdam as he heard that there may be some flight he could catch. It was not his first station in Europe. He told me how unlucky he was as he was only 18 in 1967 and just missed the war. He enlisted to the army later and continued to the USA, but he wouldn’t let himself miss another war. I still wonder whether he finally succeeded to get himself killed.

Criminal or just polite?

At the time you could hardly pass by in the streets near our hostel without having somebody whisper in your ear: “Hash, hash, hash… want hash?”

I could see where they took the willing customers. There was a middle-aged man seated always at the back of the longue in the hostel. They would seat with him while another guy would bring the stuff and soon they will go away.

Once I was hanging around in the street myself while one potential customer turned to me: Do you know where I can get hash?

Like the other guys (but without whispering in anybody’s ears), I brought him to the reliable source. I thought I’m entitled to get my fees for the service but decided to leave it like that, just being polite to everybody.

It was not a simple decision, as I was really running out of money.

Money problems

I was really naïve at the time. I had my last hundred dollars, and I tried to buy something in the street. The seller took the hundred dollar bill and requested me to wait while he is going to bring some change. He never returned. The other sellers around were looking at me like saying: you brought it upon yourself.

The war already finished and I had my flight back home, but for the last night I didn’t have money to pay the hostel, not to eat, not even to pay for the bus ticket to the airport.

In the evening I was wandering around in the streets of Amsterdam, just killing time, when some people called me. “Hey, they said, we know you from the hostel”. As I explained them my situation, they said they plan to sleep out on a boat and invited me to spend the night with them. I don’t really remember but I assume I even received some unexpected meal that night.

Complications

Sitting with my new benefactors under the deck, I was not sure it was such a good luck. They were planning a robbery for that night. They went to sleep out so that there will be no evidence that they left the hostel in the middle of the night. There were maybe five men and one woman. It was her role to wake them up at around four o’clock in the morning.

I don’t think I slept much that night. But I was too egoistic to help my new friends and wake them up when the woman failed to do it. When they noticed it was already maybe six in the morning and the city around was starting to come to life – no good time for a robbery.

Happy End

I went to the station to take the bus to the airport.

As I arrived there I turned to the first man that happened to pass in the street.

“I have a ticket to go abroad, but I don’t have money to get the bus to the airport”, I told him.

He looked at me wearily.

“I know you’re lying. But I will give you the money anyway”.

I thanked him.

If you know him, please, thank him again.

 

 

Security Affair… in the Kindergarten

The following – completely true – short story is dedicated to all those people that are longing for the “democratic past” of Israel under “Mapai”.

In the middle Seventies, I was active in “The Workers’ League”, a small organization of the radical left that split from the famous “Matzpen”.

Two of our comrades were a couple of new immigrants from France. They came as Zionists but soon were disillusioned and became active in the Anti-Zionist organization. At the time that our story begins, the wife was working in a kindergarten that provided special care for children with Autism.

At the time there were not many institutions caring for these children. The kindergarten, in West Jerusalem, was affiliated to a local hospital. Our comrade was a specialist in her profession and did her best to help the children. She was loved by the management, the children and their parents.

Then, for some bureaucratic reason, the responsibility for the kindergarten was transferred from the ministry of health to the ministry of education.

As every Arab teacher knew very well at the time, in the ministry of education the last word about all appointments was given to the almighty Shin Bet – the Israeli secretive “internal security services”.

It came out that the Shin Bet’s authority didn’t spare Jewish teachers also, even not a kindergarten teacher that cared for autistic children. As soon as the ministry of education took control of the institution they informed the management that the leftist teacher should be immediately fired from her job.

Finding a new qualified teacher for the hard task was not easy or fast, but the security authorities in the ministry refused even a temporary stay of execution until a replacement could be found. The parents faced a real problem also, as they couldn’t send their kids to the kindergarten without a teacher. Many of them had to skip work and stay at home. They organized a protest of their own, but, of course, their selfishness will not deter those responsible for the state’s security from fulfilling their sacred task.

All this was regular “no news” in the “Jewish democracy” under the “leftist” Labor Party. I wouldn’t waste your time with it unless there was a strange twist in the plot.

The teacher’s husband’s father happened to be one of the leaders of the Jewish community in France. When he heard the story he thought it is too foolish to be true. He didn’t support his son’s and daughter in law’s political activity in any way. But he thought that there is no reason that the teacher will be removed from work in a kindergarten where she obviously couldn’t have any subversive influence on the kids…

He remembered that he has a good friend. They went together to the same school and were active together in the Zionist movement. His friend made “Aliya” long time ago. By the time of our story his friend was already a pretty important minister in the Israeli government.

So he called his friend and told him of the extraordinary senseless persecution of his daughter in law. The minister quickly agreed that this doesn’t make sense and promised to speak with the responsible people and solve the problem.

The old French Jewish leader waited for a few days to hear from his minister-friend. There was no news. He tried to call him, but his good friend, untypically, was not answering his calls. He left messages in his office and home – but couldn’t get any response.

It was only a long time later when the two old leaders met by chance… The question of returning the daughter in law to her job was not relevant any more. The Israeli minister came to his old French friend and apologized: “I really tried. I did my best. But, you know, it was a security issue. I couldn’t do anything about it!”

 

How technological progress made me like everybody else?

Travelling along the streets of the occupied West Bank in the seventies and the eighties, there was a pastoral view that caught my imagination. Many kids of all ages were walking to school along the narrow roads. Apparently they had to walk like this for many kilometers. The view was even more surrealistic due to the eye-catching unified school dress that painted each section of the road with different colors and unnatural designs. But what really impressed me at the time was that many of the kids, boys and girls, used the opportunity to read, probably rehearsing their studies.

Like so many other things, I tried to learn this virtue from the West Bank kids. It worked for me very well. Mostly I was reading “The Economist” to keep myself updated with world affairs.

Over the last decade I’m using my dinner break at work to go to the sea shore, walking and reading. Sometimes with long white hair blowing with the wind – I made a strange figure.

Once a police patrol stopped near me and I heard one of them saying: I know this man, he ran away from Tira. Tira, originally Tirat Al-Louz a Palestinian town to the south of Haifa, ethnically cleansed and renamed to Tirat Ha-Carmel, a poor Jewish suburb, is the location of the main local hospital for the mentally ill. I succeeded to make myself calm and normal enough to pass this encounter and go on walking my way.

Read walking became such a central feature of my life that I even wrote a short story about it.

The problems started as the economist’s distribution network in the area stopped functioning. I would make the extra tour from the road to the beach to the books’ shop only to find that the last issue didn’t arrive yet. Try tomorrow, they would say, day after day. Finally I made a subscription to get the magazine by mail. But it didn’t really work either. After an initial grace period the issues were arriving four at a time, three weeks late by average.

Being deprived of my drug, I started reading the paper from my smartphone. It worked wonders. For the first time I could read the paper before readers in London…

Walking and reading my phone completely transformed my public image. As I was walk-reading along the beach, some guy looked at me, saying: Well, these new phones are really indulging… He smiled at me, sharing understandable human weakness.

Finally I became like everybody else.

 

I was so afraid…

It was in the beginning of the eighties. We were cooperating with the Communist Party and its fronts in “The Committee for Solidarity with Bir Zeit” and “The Committee Against the War in Lebanon”. Usually we would agree on a common platform between their two-state position and our conviction in ODS. But, at that specific occasion, they decided to make a leaflet calling explicitly for “two states for two peoples” – so I told them I wouldn’t take part in its distribution.

The leaflet had to be distributed at “Beit Ha-Kranot” in the middle of “Herzl St.” – not exactly “Tahrir Square”, but at the time it was regarded the place most likely to see some spontaneous gathering in the middle of sleepy Haifa.

I don’t remember what drove me to Beit Ha-Kranot at the designated time, maybe I just passed by or I felt uneasy to leave the comrades alone…

As I arrived there, I saw that only one comrade was leafleting. He was almost fifty (at the time I thought it was an old age), a respected professor from the Technion. I knew him as a very calm and peace loving person.

He was surrounded by a small crowd that clearly didn’t like the message in the leaflets. People shouted at him. Some young guys were teasing him, closing on him and tried to prevent him from distributing the leaflets.

I pushed my way into the crowd, trying to use my supposed neutrality to defend him. The crowd was becoming ever angrier and the scene could become really violent at any moment.

To say the truth, I was relieved when the cops came. Maybe some of the cops recognized me, or maybe my neutrality was not so convincing, as they arrested me also.

As we climbed into the police van, I sat near the professor. He was clearly stressed, but now he stretched his body, as much as you can do inside a police car, and smiled at me:

– I was so afraid…

Well, I thought I understood him very well. But he continued:

… I was afraid that I would beat them!

I could not hide my astonishment.

He told me that while he was a student in the US he made a living as a professional boxer. Later he became a pacifist, avoiding any violence. He was satisfied that he endured this experience without beating his attackers.

I told him that if I knew that the only danger was that he might have beaten those right wing racists, I wouldn’t bother to intervene.

I hope I was wrong.