Yitzhak Rabin, epiphanies, and Tel Aviv on the final leg of the Birthright Tour

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Mike Godbe, a young American on a free Birthright tour of Israel, continues his diary and photos of the tour, reporting his experiences and the ways the tour staff present the history and politics of the country. Earlier posts from Masada, Mt. Herzl, Jerusalem, a kibbutz, and Caesaria can be accessed by clicking the corresponding links.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
The day began with a much welcome 2 hour bus ride to Tel Aviv, which most people slept through the entirety of due to only getting a few hours of sleep the night before.
Our first destination was the Save a Child’s Heart Foundation, based out of the Wolfson Medical Center in South Tel Aviv. Save a Child’s Heart is a program aimed at helping children from developing countries where pediatric cardiologists are not available or few and far between. They do their work in three ways, they completely cover the costs to bring children to Israel for treatment, they train doctors from developing countries in Israel, and they go to developing countries and do training and surgeries side by side.
The lady giving the info session tells us that 50% of the children who come to Israel to receive treatment come from the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan and Iraq. One of my peers comments that it seems like a political gesture to take such a disproportionate number of kids from the West Bank and Gaza. The SACH spokesperson, a late twenties girl originally from New York, says that it is not political, but that it is simply “a community in need, and we respond to that need.”
While I applaud the great work done at SACH and even think that such organizations should disproportionately cater to Palestinian needs (as their own development is precluded by the Israeli occupation), of course such a disproportionate meeting of Palestinian needs is political, and of course it is political to take a birthright group to an Israeli organization doing this work. Of the little we’ve heard about the Palestinians (more often referred to as Arabs – there is a power in language), we get a sense that they have been unreliable partners for peace that have turned on Israel after Israel offered a hand (rockets from Gaza after withdrawal in 2005), but that Israel is still doing what it can to foster good relations like the SACH program and building security walls instead of fences so as not to destroy homes (the account of this explanation is detailed in an earlier post).
SACH does great work and should be a model for other charitable Israeli organizations; they have helped over 2,200 children in the past fifteen years. But the visit to SACH takes on a certain significance and meaning when put in the context of the birthright program and our sponsored activities. What troubles me is the total picture that my group has been left with about Israel’s relationship to Palestine and Palestinians.
After visiting the SACH house and playing with the wonderful children that are currently staying there, we made our way to the old city of Jaffa. We got 2 hours or so to ourselves to get lunch and explore Jaffa before the organized tour. I ate some delicious shwarma with friends on the trash covered beach of old Jaffa; and Israeli flag flew on one of the far off rocks protruding from the surprisingly turbulent water.
Old Jaffa is a beautiful city based around a small hill by the shore of the Mediterranean. Tel Aviv originally started as a small Jewish only suburb of Arab Jaffa in the early 20th century, but now it is much much larger than Jaffa and the economic, cultural, and diplomatic center of Israel. Like Jerusalem, Jaffa’s narrow alleyways and buildings are built out of weathered and smoothed yellow sandstone and limestone. There are artists colonies, markets, churches, and mosques nested between centuries-old walls. Jaffa is my favorite place that we have visited so far.
As the sun slowly floated down closer to the Mediterranean we made our way into nearby Tel Aviv. Taken from the title of book written by the father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, “Tel Aviv” translates into Tel – old hill, Avv – new spring: Tel Aviv – old city new life. Our first and only stop before the hotel was Rabin Square, formerly called the Kings of Israel Square. It was renamed in 1995 after the Prime Minster of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by a right wing Israeli extremest after giving a pro-peace speech to a large crowd at the square.

If nothing else, the story of Yitzhak Rabin shows how difficult and complicated achieving peace will be given the Israeli political, religious, and ideological landscape. Here is a man who was born in Israel, moved up through the military to the highest position in the Israeli government in the seventies, stayed in politics, saw that real security depended on real peace and began to work for that cause, became prime minister again in the early nineties, won the nobel peace prize with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, and was then assassinated for trying to actualize that peace.
I was thinking about a lot while we were sitting up on the concrete benches from where Rabin gave his speech, and the historical background we got on Rabin is somewhat of a blur to me now. I remember though that we didn’t talk much at all about the peace process, but that we just got a history of Rabin the man. Ah yes, how I do love important-man history (read sarcasm). But really, it would have been very worthwhile to get some overview of the peace process.
Instead, we were shown the picture of Rabin, Peres, and Arafat receiving the nobel peace prize and our attention was directed at how Rabin and Peres were wearing suits while Arafat was not. We were told, “as long as he (Arafat) remained in a military uniform, peace was going to be very difficult to achieve.” As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it is this type of oversimplification that is so harmful to our understanding of the past and our ability to constructively move forward in working for peace. Arafat was no gem and he certainly acted in ways that did more harm to Palestinians than good, but to say that the future of the peace process after Oslo and Rabin’s assasination boiled down to a matter of dress – and with blame lying on the Palestinian side – throws out the window all Israel has done post Oslo. This is what I think the effect could easily be on some of my peers who have not had a chance to look more deeply into this issue.
Some 80% of the settlements in the West Bank were built post Oslo. Though a settlement freeze was not a stipulation of the Oslo accord (it was left to be decided at a later stage in the process), what does it say for Israel’s role as a partner for peace when it continues to expand and build new settlements and settlement infrastructure (walls, Israeli only roads, checkpoints, etc) on Palestinian land – something that the UN has stated over and over again is in blatant violation of International law?
After dinner at the Hotel we had a free evening in Tel Aviv – our last night as a group. I was still feeling sick so I didn’t stay out long, but it was St. Patrick’s day, and who would’ve known Israel had so many enthusiasts of dark creamy room temperature Irish beer?

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

The last day. This has been an exhausting trip and has gone by very fast. I have seen many incredible and unexpected things in Israel, met some wonderful friends, and done some things I will never forget. Though I have picked away at the presentation and historical narrative of Israel woven by birthright, and though I ultimately disagree with a program that implicitly advocates Jewish immigration to Israel while completely denying the right of return to Palestinians expelled from their homes some 60 years ago, I am very thankful to have had the experience of the past ten days and appreciative of those who sponsored my trip.
We began with a morning birthright session after breakfast at 8:30 or 9am – much too early for many of those who spent their last night in Israel as you might imagine a bunch of 18 to 26 year olds would spend their last night in Israel. The trip organizers reiterated that they weren’t trying to make us feel any one way about the experience, but that if we enjoyed it, they encouraged us to pay it forward and tell people . . . and that if we recommended friends they would get priority on a future trip. Fair enough.
We then continued in a sense where we left of yesterday in Jaffa by moving to the first (Jewish) suburbs of Jaffa outside the old city, Neve Tzedek and Neve Shalom. Neve Tzedek was begun by a Jewish Moroccan Frenchman who desired cleaner air and open spaces for his daughter’s asthma. He built a little synogogue next to his home, and then came the Jews from Jaffa. Neve Shalom, “oasis of peace,” was the second neighborhood built outside of Jaffa and was begun by an eastern European Jew, a furrier.

A fun fact about these Jewish suburbs involves the little contraptions for keeping the window shades open. Because these suburbs originally didn’t have schools of their own, the men would bring the children to school in Jaffa and stay during the day to work. Since you couldn’t leave the women alone unprotected, there were gaurds in Neve Tzedek and Neve Shalom that would keep the women safe while their husbands were away. The little contraptions used to keep the shades open were little two sded heads, that when flipped up (to hold the shade open) would show the head of a man, and when flipped down would show the head of a woman. Apparenlty these were often used by the women to communicate to the guards if their husbands were home or not – a man’s head showing meant that the husband was home and a woman’s head showing meant, well, that a discreet visit from a guard may be acceptable. So we’re told anyway.
For lunch we were let loose in Shenkin, an old part of tel aviv with street markets and venders of all sorts. Some friends and I followed one of our Israeli soldiers probably into an entirely different part of Tel Aviv just to find a special place to eat that she knew about, but she couldn’t find it so we ended up walking all that way to get the same shwarma and fallafal that is everywhere in the center of Shenkin.
After lunch came one of the most interesting experiences of the entire trip, the Mifgash – encounters with IDF soldiers – summary and conclusion.
We broke up into groups of six or seven, one soldier with each group, and began to discuss questions posed by the birthright staff. The questions encouraged us to talk with the soldier about what we all were least and most proud of about Israel and the United States. Since our group wanted to make the most of this short discussion time with an IDF soldier, we focused mostly on our impressions of Israel.
Two of my peers mentioned that they were impressed with how Israel had transformed the land and built up innovative agricultural and water preservation technologies. There was a nonchalant side comment from one of the other Americans in the group about what Israel might look like if it was still in Arab hands. Another of my peers mentioned that it is impressive that Israel exists – that there is a state and a homeland for Jews – so recently after the Holocaust.
Then it was time for Yuval, our IDF soldier to answer. I had been rooming with Yuval for the past two nights and hadn’t had any substantial conversations with him, and I had sort of subconsciously written him off as some young Israeli soldier only interested in partying and American women. It was surprising then when he dropped a sort of expectation-bombshell on our group. Even though the question was about what we were most proud of about Israel, our Yuval answered, “Israel’s biggest strength is also it’s biggest weakness, we are great at war, but we have a wasteful and corrupt government, bad schools, and social injustice.”
. . . What?
Our group was sort of taken aback, stunned that these words were coming out of the mouth of not just and IDF soldier, but of the happy go lucky party man that we had gotten to know over the past few days. Needless to say this is not what we expected from what seemed to be a very typical Israeli solider. Thus when the second question about what we were most proud of about America came, we were a bit caught off guard.
Before the group could come back to Yuval and ask him to speak more about his answer, a girl in our group that I respect and like said that it was the concept of the American dream that made her most proud of the US – “if you work hard and work straight, you can succeed.” She said that she was a “fan of capitalism” and truly believed in the ‘American Dream.’ As much as I personally would have loved to talk about this in another context (as I personally have great reservations about this sort of Glenn-Beck-anyone-can pull-themselves-up-by-their-boot-straps-and-make-it-in-the-USA mentality), I was more eager to hear this soldier’s complicated and unexpected outlook on Israel.
I was glad then when others in the group expressed my desires for me and Yuval was asked to speak more about his frustration with Israel. He took the most issue with conscription system of the Israeli military and the social disparities that he considered to go unacknowledged or dismissed as not important by the government. He said that there is a big lack of equality and of education along ethnic lines. “There are people of all sorts here in Israel, of all religions, but Jews get money for every child and Arabs don’t have to join the Army. While Israeli Jews have to join the army, ages 18 to 21, Arabs can be learning and going to school, but we have to join the army and start all this much later, when we get out.” [orthodox Jews are not mandated to serve] Furthermore, he said that, of the Jews who are eligible and have no religious reasoning not to serve, about half of the girls and a third of the guys find a way to get out of serving in the army.
I asked if he thought it should be mandatory for Arab Israelis to join the army as well, and to my surprise he said, “no, the military shouldn’t be mandatory for anyone.” Yuval said that it made sense in the beginning of Israel’s history to have mandatory conscription, but that now it’s too big and it’s unnecessary. Yuval then directly addressed us and our experience, saying that what we were getting on birthright was “a very pretty picture,” and that “the country doesn’t look like this at all.”
The question of what we were least proud of about Israel came to me and I immediately answered that Israel’s troubled relationship with Palestine is the most upsetting issue for me, and that given Israel’s effective monopoly of force and power, and cohesiveness as a fully legitimate state, it has the obligation to act first and to extend its hand further, which it hasn’t been doing. Unprompted, Yavul explained that many Israelis perpetuate a narrative of victimhood, almost mimicking an earlier conversation I had with a birthright staff person. Yavul’s opinion was that this narrative of victomhood was no longer appropriate given the current political context and Israel’s postion of power. The same girl who spoke on behalf of the ‘American dream’ agreed and said she felt many Jews and Israelis take on an inappropriate “sense of entitlement” due to this narrative of victimhood.
Speaking about the Israelis in general, Yavul blew away my expectations with another point of view. “We have a strong sense of pride,” he said, “but it’s very liquid.” I asked him to explain ‘liquid,’ and he said that on the holidays – independence day, fallen soldier memorial day, holocaust memorial day – “we are one country, but on a daily basis it’s not typical to hear someone say that they love their country.” Clearly some Israelis would surely say different, but wow, this was not something I imagined when I thought of Israel and Israelis – naïve, but still. My peers’ reaction was the same.
The conversation shifted to soldiering and how Yavul held his relationship with the army at the same time as these complicated feelings and opinions. He said essentially that there was a clear line. However much he disagreed with and disliked certain aspects of Israel, when he was a soldier he was 100% a soldier. He followed orders, and took a lot of pride in being a soldier for his country. It was hard for me to understand how something like this could be so black and white for him, how soldiering was something that could just he switched on and off and removed from ones ideas. But you could fill a book with what I don’t know or understand. Probably a couple books.
Yavul went on to explain the pride he took in fighting for the IDF. He retold a story where he and some other troops entered a home to find a completely terrified Arab (Palestinian) family. They were afraid for their lives, and I waited and listened to see how Yavul was going to connect this to pride. “Scaring people like this,” he said, “never feels good. It doesn’t feel good to have someone scared of you. But, this man, the family’s father may be a (potential) Hammas terrorist, and my action may stop them from blowing up a bus.” [I’m sure that he meant that the man could become a terrorist, not that he was one, as the English would imply] I’m not sure if something was lost in Yavul’s English, or if this was just more that I couldn’t understand, but I found his explanation of how he gets pride from his soldiering to be much more complicated than I would have guessed and thus very interesting.
We settled back into one large group and were asked about our expectations of the conversation topics and how they were met and not met. I felt lucky to be in the group with Yuval, as some of my peers from other groups said that the questions were answered as they expected they would be. Since this was not the case in my group, we shared with the bigger group some of the highlights from our conversation.
In the large group we discussed the concept of the underdog, and what it means for Israel to now be a very powerful state and have the firm backing of the US. Yavul was at first a bit shy in front of everyone, but after some prompting he stated that Israelis were “not victims anymore, but sometimes it’s easier to conceive of yourself as a victim – it gives you legitimacy.”
One of my peers said that during the Holocaust, the Nazis were a seemingly insurmountable enemy for the Jews. He pointed to the massacre of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza as evidence that, when it wants to, Israel now also has the power to be a seemingly insurmountable enemy. He asked if the casualties were really worth it and made sense in terms of the security reasoning given by the state. He said that it seems Israel values Israeli life much more than Palestinian life, as it is willing to go to war and kill many many civilians “over one Israeli soldier” (I imagine he was talking about Galid Shalit, though I’m not so sure that this is an accurate justification of Israel’s assault on Gaza a year and a half ago).
Yuval responded with an interesting point: “conscription is mandatory,” he said, “and every soldier’s mother needs to know that the army will do whatever it takes to bring their sons home.” This comment received some claps from some members of the group who had beforehand been somewhat alienated by the nuanced critique of Israeli society present in the conversation up to that point. Everything that comes out of Yuval’s mouth interested me in him more and more; it was hard to guess how he was going to feel about any given issue . . . It was great.
Our WWII-era-rifle toting security guard Dvir said that while everyone knows that the eventual solution between Israel and Palestine will not be found in unending military actions, but will be a political solution, most likely a two-state solution, he said that in the present Israel needs to defend itself (implying that security by way of force and walls now supersedes the need to implement a long term vision for peace. I didn’t say it then in front of everyone, but I cringe when I hear the security justification being used to justify Israel’s illegal actions; it is short sighted. It is hard for me to see the wall and the heavy militarism present in the occupied territories (including east Jerusalem) as doing anything but making true peace more difficult to attain in the long run, and it is that true peace – bread through redemption and forgiveness – that the vast majority of people involved desire.
Sadly, these conversations happened on our last day together. I had been dying for this kind of diologue for days, and now we can’t continue the conversations on our own because it started so late. At least it happened though; birthright did not have to raise the question, “what are you least proud of Israel for?
With the sun setting, we proceeded to our final place of interest, the grey rectangular building where Ben Gurion declared the state of Israel in May of 1948. There were some interesting things mentioned in the presentation we got at Independence Hall, but I feel as though I have already gone on too long at this point, and I think that the interesting conversations with our IDF companions were much more worthy of mention.
We piled into a restaurant reserved just for birthright, reviewed everything we had done and seen in the past 10 days, and then at a delicious middle eastern dinner. After a few somber goodbyes with some wonderful people, I parted ways with the group (most of them headed to the airport to fly back to New York) and began the next leg of my journey. I walked through a not so posh area of Tel Aviv in search of my peace activist couchsurfing connection, Lior and his girlfriend Spela. I found them with ease, shared some stories from birthright, listened to their take on the program, and then drifted easily off to sleep, exhausted from the jam packed last ten days.

0 thoughts on “Yitzhak Rabin, epiphanies, and Tel Aviv on the final leg of the Birthright Tour

  1. It is so heartening to hear of guys like Yavul, contradictions of soldiering notwithstanding (we have the same here with US soldiers, in particular a friend of mine who’s a vet from Gulf War I–it’s just something I don’t understand, despite practicing martial arts where budo isn’t some intellectual concept but an internalized system and praxis). I’m grateful to Mike for sharing this series and to Tikkun Daily for posting it. This is such important stuff. I wish the local anti-Israel activist folks could have the guts to read it. Nothing is ever black and white. Thanks, Mike for holding lightning in both hands on your ten day journey.

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