Turkey in the Negev
In Hebrew class Thursday night, the teacher joked about the influence of American immigrants on Israeli life by pointing to the supermarket availability of whole turkeys instead of just parts. She knew that Thursday was Thanksgiving, the holiday centered around huge birds that, she said, Israelis at first had no idea what to do with.
The next afternoon I took a bus further south toward Thanksgiving dinner with friends, a day later than the US holiday because Thursday was just a work day here. I’m not much of a Thanksgiving fan, which strikes me at home as an exercise in excess wrapped in distorted myths about Pilgrim encounters with native Americans, but — as one of my US-born friends now living in the Negev told me – it’s a reason to party.
There was, of course, turkey and stuffing and pumpkin and apple pies, and plenty of wine, and a house filled with people ranging from US and Canadian-born immigrants to their Israeli-born children and friends. I got to re-connect with an old friend I hadn’t seen since 1973, when I abandoned my own effort to live in the Negev and returned to the States.
My friends who remained are now scattered around Israel, and as I wrote after meeting with some of them during my last visit here almost two years ago, they are generally disheartened with the state of affairs in the Jewish state they embraced. Mostly holding various positions on the left of the Israeli political spectrum, they pretty uniformly oppose the Occupation and government policy toward Palestinians across the Green Line as well as toward those here in Israel. They’ve reached varying points of rejecting some of the Zionist fundamentals they and I absorbed in our teenage years, and some would abandon the Zionist fundamental that Israel must remain a Jewish state if they thought — which they mostly don’t — that a secular democratic Israeli/Palestinian state was really possible.
At dinner Friday night, I responded to questions about my activities here by rambling on about my experiences in Beer Sheva, my visits to Birzeit University in Ramallah and Al Quds University in Abu Dis, my interactions with Israeli Palestinians and Palestinian Palestinians. The wine made rambling come naturally, but the others did mostly seem interested in my impressions of Palestinian attitudes. This reinforced my more general impression here that the urge for reconciliation, and the disgust with those on both sides who stand in the way, are real. I don’t get the impression, though, that even those on the more-or-less Zionist left are ready to let down their guard.
I think this stance is not that different from many other Israelis, immigrants from other places as well as many who were born here. I know I’m not meeting a complete cross-section of Israelis. A lot of the professors and students I’ve met are working on a variety of political and research projects aimed at changing the situation. I’m not hanging out with West Bank settlers or their supporters. The students in my class here at Ben Gurion University seem split between the left and the middle. Some Israelis accept the points I make about the inconsistency between the country’s Jewish identity and democratic pretensions, but move on to focus on other things. Others say they are too ashamed of their country’s policies and actions to go to East Jerusalem (where they are allowed) or to meet with Palestinians. But in any case, most Israelis I meet are aware of the difficulties. They despair.
At another point in Thursday night’s Hebrew class, the teacher illustrated the word “to suffer” by commenting on Palestinians in Gaza who suffer because of the poverty, collapsing services, and other components of life under Occupation. She doesn’t often raise political topics, at least intentionally, so her example stood out. A short while later, she illustrated the word “to give up” this way: “It’s like with Israelis and Palestinians — no one gives up, so there’ll be war until the end of the world.”
Maybe not. Maybe someday there’ll be reason for Thanksgiving here, with reconciliation rather than just “giving up.” Turkey, without the myths.
November 26th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Amin to that..