The somber wave at the curb

November 4, 1995. Yitzhak Rabin is officially dead. So dead that U.S. President Bill Clinton steps out to the lawn before the White House and gives his famous, succinct statement. He then turns around, and walks into the violet darkness behind the open doors.

We, Israelis, are left to our own devices. The president could not have empathized with us more than he did; could not have given a better shot at comforting the bedazzled who are not yet morose. But when that moment ends, he goes back to the sanctuary that is America. With its insurmountable moat that is the Atlantic Ocean, brandishing waves that wash away any grain of Middle Eastern reality back to where it belongs. Here.

Ever since that moment, I have become acutely sensitive to senior diplomats' moment of departure. That minute or so that seems to last an eternity, when the official or world leader is standing at the curb and makes one last gesture before mounting the stairs. And then the leader is gone, ingested by the warm darkness of a house or an airplane.

And today this moment will repeat itself. Certainly not as dramatically as Clinton's but nevertheless it will possess some of its benumbing quality. Condoleezza Rice was here again. Condoleezza Rice will board the plane. We will be left with our reality, she'll go back to face her own.

I guess the emptiness I describe originates in a very primordial yearning for peace. Not just political and diplomatic, but personal more than anything else. That sense of envy that pricks the heart of every Israeli at the thought of the nations that enjoy economic prosperity that is not accompanied by a Despite, that is not achieved in the shadow of a military conflict with no end in sight. And in a sense, the goodwill efforts of those nations, the United States in particular, to help us get to the same position as they, are both disheartening and inefficient.

For the same reasons that America failed to accept Vietnamese mentality and lost the war; for the same reasons Iraq is now falling apart and so are its residents (literally). America just doesn't get the Middle East.

Maybe if we were left to our own devices in making peace the efforts would yield something other than empty slogans. Maybe we should be told once and for all that we need to go it alone.

One thing is certain: We won't suffer the emptiness after the somber wave at the curb.

The human zoo and why Israelis need it

Tel Aviv was taken over by a 3,000-strong mob of English supporters of their national team for a match with Israel on Saturday. TV channels and newspapers didn't miss out on an opportunity to flash an image of a beer-merry geezer (the SAME geezer on all channels, papers, wire-services and Websites) to convince us this visit is nothing short of an Anglo-Saxon invasion to the first Hebraic city.

Succumbing to the media hype I ventured to see for myself what was the actual extent of the Brits' invasion. And I was in for a real surprise.

It began with finding any and every outlet selling beer on tap boasting at their front a Union Jack, an English flag or both. This move was probably made on the presumption that the true beer-heads from Albion would be more attracted to a pub demonstrating solidarity than to the nearest place that sells the booze.

Well, the presumption turned out to be very wrong.

The city streets were empty as on any other Saturday, but as my partner and I drew nearer the both famous and infamous Mike's Place, we understood just HOW wrong pub owners were.

The 50 meter by 15 meter perimeter of the city's usual foreigner / backpacker hangout was swarming with proud pink nosed beer gut owners who did no dishonor to their title. The hour was 11.30 A.M. and beer was piled in jugs on the wooden tables; inflatable beer advertisements bounced against the wind with their hot air; and more official-team-shirts-wearing patrons strode along the promenade, slowly making their way to the beer fountains.

But I am not writing here the lament of business owners that know no better. Alas, the surprise I wish to describe did not lie amongst emptying pints and beer-breathed London homies. It lay on the other side of the street.

Israelis from all walks of life had gathered on the promenade and watched the beer guzzling process, making it a point not to hide the observational nature of their activity.

I won't be radicalizing the scene too much if I'll say that it just fell short of serving as a human zoo. The occupants were offered a constant flow of mead, were surrounded by a fence and were dull-faced and mostly oblivious of the observational activity around them. The visitors were standing at a safe distance, protected by the moat that is Tel Aviv's Sunset-Boulevard-wannabe driveway, at times pointing at the objects of observation and bending down to their children for elaborate, studious explanations.

A proper disclosure is in order. I too left my house to bear witness to the miracle of English geezers ridiculing themselves ahead of the match. I too stood there for a few minutes to ingest the unusual sight. But, admittedly, I felt very uneasy about the whole thing.

Why is it that we, Israelis, feel so inclined to turn any deviation from the familiar into a spectacle, an attraction that makes cover page pictures and Friday night feature stories on TV? How can we be this comfortable with establishing an instantaneous relationship of zoo occupants and observers?

We crave an otherness that is not threatening. We crave momentary visitors we do not need to suspect, such that we can welcome and embrace, allow adding color to our everyday lives (which are, after all, gray worldwide), and then part amicably.

We had just that for a brief moment in the summer of 1967. We can have it again, with the same visitors / neighbors of yore. We can but we won't.

The Hoax

I don't know if we were fooled by others or if we fooled ourselves, but the appointment of our first-ever Muslim Arab minister had to turn sour sooner rather than later.

True, he is a Knesset member for Labor. True, of the Arab MKs he has been silent on many a volatile issue over which his fellow Arab parliamentarians roared ferociously from the small, auburn dais in Jerusalem. Yet he's an Arab after all. Can we expect anything but trouble? After all, the dagger must be hidden somewhere underneath his cloak.

Our political pallet didn't have to wait long for the anticipated sourness. Just this morning I heard a most embarrassing discussion on Raleb Majadele's refusal to sing The Hope (Hatikva), the throbbing heart of whatever it is we still like to refer to as Zionism.

"A minister in the State of Israel turns his back on one of its foremost symbols?" The radio news anchor wondered aloud in Majedele's ears? "Will you or will you not sing the anthem" she added in a tone that would make any cadet Shin Bet interrogator proud.

The answer was a plain "No." No.

The recalcitrant minister, a Muslim Arab, would not utter the lyrics depicting the yearning soul of every Jew for the Land of Israel.

Our anthem is unlike other national unity songs, because it does not call for the unity and togetherness of all inhabitants of the land. It appeals only to Jews worldwide to partake of the yearning for freedom in our country, the land of Zion and Jerusalem. It does not echo the call of the Declaration of Independence for Israel to be a country of all of its citizens. Nowhere does it even relate to the existence of any nationality but the Jews on Israeli soil.

The counter-arguments raised by the anchor, and later by right-wing parliamentarian Zvi Hendel, don't even merit their mention here. The patronizing air of their all too amicable conversation reeked of a Jewish conspiracy against the poor Arab boy who, for a minute, was led to believe he got accepted into the Club.

I apologize for the radical leftist subversive air of my commentary today. But I didn't touch this comment by MK Hendel: "If an Arab chooses to join a Zionist party we must encourage him."

We are not doing any Arab a favor by making him or her Knesset member, a public servant, or our car mechanic. The scepter of infinite wisdom is not held in our hand, for wise we are not nor are we superior in any way to the non-Jew or the generally Other.

Let us not disgrace The Hope by allowing it to expose our ugliness. Let us not turn it into The Hoax.

Today it might befit us to discuss God's finger. The metaphor for the Almighty's involvement in human lives, in this petty world of ours, seems appropriate for two reasons. First: A personal hunch. Second: A funny news story.

A hunch.

Personally, I think there's a lot to be divined about our world from studying the weather. Maybe because it has such a tremendous impact on our lives – our moods, plans, and income – the weather seems to reflect a day's events. An average day, only a fortnight ago, when MK Esterina Tartman was forced to withdraw her candidacy for the position of Tourism Minister, serves as a perfect example.

You'll have to excuse my poetics, but this is an accurate account of what happened the very next day after she announced her candidacy is withdrawn.

The morning opened bright and clear, but by 9.00 A.M. the heavens opened and torrential rains swept Tel Aviv. Soon thereafter the waters mounted, washing the roads in a broad stream that forced pedestrians to wade their way across to the other side. But this is no analogy to the biblical Flood, because minutes later the streets were awash with filth. Cigarette butts surfaced by the dozens, flowing into the gutters alongside assorted scum and muck. The shit did not hit the fan. It was afloat on the city's main street – not as a metaphor – but as fact.

Funny news.

An item in today's Haaretz, which has already been circulating for a while, discusses right-wingers' glee at the personal and professional catastrophes that befell the main figures who engined the Disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.

On the face of it, the eerie claim to a divine curse on the heads of the state, security forces and political echelons almost makes sense. One by one, the head of state and his right hand, the army and police chiefs, and several other senior figures have all met tragedy up close.

Ariel Sharon is lying in a coma, three serious police investigations are conducted against Ehud Olmert, former justice minister Haim Ramon was convicted of indecent acts, both Dan Halutz and Moshe Karadi were forced to resign from leading the best part of Israel's security forces, and the list goes on and on.

No one can deny that they were all involved in the disengagement. No one can deny that they could have done a lot better for themselves than they have since the Disengagement.

But did the Heavens intervene there? Did the finger of God touch upon the lives of the Disengagement "traitors," or set the scene for the embarrassing exposure of Tartman's shenanigans?

Hardly.

The tragedies that "befell" each and every one of the above, are without fail the rotten fruits of their own labor. No need to go into details – these have been spread across every broadsheet in the country for months on end.

Can we consult meteorological maps to prepare ourselves for the next scandalous crisis? I doubt that. It's nice to be able to poeticize over such sad, sad events as the ones we witness almost daily. Nothing more.

And yet, I'm writing this because a thick cloud of dust is hanging above the city today. The weatherman tells us it will be washed away soon and be replaced by storm. In light of past correlations, I shudder to think what scum it will bring to our doorstep this time.

So here we are – another ordinary day in what we convince ourselves is our ordinary life. A peep at today's paper, maybe a news bulletin or two on the radio, and back we go to our so-called ordinary life.

Why so-called? Because everything about it is all but ordinary. The public servants we elected to office are everything but normal, and they cannot be blamed for all their misgivings. Someone placed a note at the ballot for them to be where they are, and that someone is us. Those who chose to turn their back on their democratic right to vote are responsible also. They chose to tuck their ostrich heads even deeper into the sand.

But that's okay: Life goes on, work is waiting to be done, children to be picked up from kindergarten and school, meals cooked, houses cleaned. Yet this abnormality looms like the stripe of pollution that settles on the horizon on days of heavy heat: sallow, sickly, interminable.

It is the only way conceivable to continue living without giving in to perpetual anxiety. And it is this same sedative we dose on ourselves that is the stumbling block to our burning desire to make a change, to have our leaders come just a tad closer to ordinariness.

It seems as though it was easier to be active and make a change when we didn't have it so good. When it wasn’t granted that people would have a telephone line in their home (until the early 1980s), or go on holiday abroad (until the mid-1990s). It seems that as long as ideology was not a worn out concept, when leaders had a modicum of genuine care for their constituency, for their people, the concept of true leadership was also intact.

And by true leadership I mean a person who not only can ensure he gets elected. I mean someone who can follow on his declared intents, word for word; someone who has an agenda and sticks by it come rain or come shine; that one person, who when everyone else is looking for broad shoulders to stand behind, offers his/her own and pulls through. While ideology's heyday is long-gone (and it seems that leadership came by the bucket load back then), the need for leadership has not in the least waned. If anything, it increased.

The reason why leadership is such a vital commodity is that we need that one person to prove to us our life is not an illusion. That online investment, hi-tech startups, the stock markets, car leasing companies, mortgaged houses, TV-based entertainment, are not a hoax. That someone whose sense of reality is more intact than ours won't pull the plug on the supercomputer that generates the virtual space of our existence.

Tough call, I know. But who is to pick up the gauntlet?