As the plane touched down there was a smattering of applause from the Jewish passengers, many of whom had never been to Israel. Benjamin Dahan was returning home for his first visit in almost ten years. He had mixed feelings. The intifada was still raging, and while he was not particularly political, Ben was torn between his feelings as a Jew, as a Zionist, and his increasing concern that something was terribly wrong in his homeland.
He couldn’t understand the rehabilitation of Ariel Sharon and his election as prime minister. How could Israelis elect the man, he fumed, who was disgraced at home and abroad twenty years before after presiding over the Sabra and Shatila slaughter in Beirut? He also couldn’t understand why the Palestinians were in revolt after the promise of the Oslo Accords and the land compromise offered by prime-minister Ehud Barak in 2000. Ben knew he was returning home to a very different Israel to the country he left in 1994.
Ben drank in the moist humid air of the Israeli summer as he stepped out of the plane. The air of home, air you could taste, so unlike the climate of Philadelphia where he now lived. He was no sooner off the steps and walking towards the waiting bus when a young woman with an ID tag moved directly in front of him.
“Security” she said, “May I have your passport”.
Ben, startled at the sudden halt in his progress, handed over his Israeli passport. After glancing at it the woman asked him in Hebrew where he lived in Israel.
“Actually I don’t live in Israel now” said Ben, the now unfamiliar words rolled off his tongue with hesitation. He had rarely spoken Hebrew since the move to the USA, and in fact avoided the tight-knit Israeli community in Philadelphia, preferring to assimilate into mainstream American culture.
“How long have you been gone? What is your destination in Israel? In what town do your parents live?”
The questions were rattled off to him as he stumbled his answers. Suddenly it occurred to him that the questions were all directed at finding out whether he was Jewish or Arab. His Moroccan grandparents had bequeathed to him a swarthy skin and he sported a bushy moustache more common among Arabs in Israel than Jews. Moreover his halting Hebrew had obviously made the woman suspicious since many Arabs in Israel spoke Hebrew with an accent since they lived mostly in tight knit Arabic speaking communities and rarely had contacts with Jewish Israelis especially during childhood.
“Look”, said Ben who was accustomed to blunt language, “If you want to know if I’m Jewish, why not just ask? Why this runaround?” The security officer gave him a tight smile and, obviously satisfied, handed back the passport.
“Todah” she said, and turned to scrutinize the other passengers.
A bit rattled, Ben boarded the waiting bus and was whisked off the spanking new terminal that had been opened just months before amid great ceremony. How things have changed, he thought, as he walked through a grand causeway after disembarking the plane. The last time he was in Israel the old terminal was still in use; a modest building that had been there forever, and had a sense of intimacy for Israelis who traveled abroad. The new structure was a monument to grandiose architecture, intended to awe and perhaps intimidate newcomers.
It felt strange to present his Israeli passport at the counter. Ben had gained US citizenship several years before and never used his Israeli passport when he traveled. However Israeli law required citizens to enter the country with their Israeli passport.
It took about half an hour for Ben’s luggage to come through the carousel and he spent the time reflecting on the trip, and what he hoped to achieve. His father had died two years before he had left for the USA, and his mother followed the next year. Only his older brother was left of his immediate family, now living in Modi'in, a new city that the government had carved from the Judean hills, straddling the Green Line as a monument to Jewish Return and permanence. The city was a giant suburb with most of its 60,000 residents working elsewhere. Ben had read that the government planned to eventually make Modi’in the largest city in Israel, stretching from the suburbs of Tel Aviv almost to Jerusalem.
What possessed them, thought Ben, why on earth do they have to cover every inch of Israel with new cities and towns, leaving so little of our precious land for farming and conservation. He knew, of course. Deep inside his troubled spirit, rarely articulated, was the knowledge that these new communities were for Jews only, and intended to establish such a massive Jewish presence that the adjacent Arab communities would not be able to grow naturally. Over the past fifty years Israel had developed within demographic priorities and much the same pattern was also happening in the West Bank where settlements were expanding at an ever-accelerating rate, at the expense of nearby Palestinian towns and villages.
Perhaps there is a reason the Arabs are in revolt, Ben thought. However part of him also knew that the Jews of the world have no place to call their own, except Israel, and the country could only remain a Jewish state if the majority of citizens were Jewish. However American values were now deeply ingrained in Ben, and he was on beginning to become aware of the dichotomy between his democratic and Zionist values.
These thoughts were wiped from his mind as he emerged from the customs area into the arrivals hall and searched the signs for the car rental offices. Disappointingly his brother had been unable to meet him and he had arranged to pick up a rental car at the airport. After being directed to the shuttle he went outside, located the waiting vehicle, and soon arrived at the rental agencies’ parking lots. The paperwork was soon sorted out and he found himself in a tiny Fiat, barely able to accommodate the luggage he had brought for his month-long visit. But it was a set of wheels. As he drove off Ben felt increasingly exhilarated at the thought of the freedom he would have with his own car. He even forgave his brother for not picking him up.
Ben marveled at the new four-lane highway that swept round the airport from the new terminal and led to the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. On a whim he decided not to take the highway but instead exited the airport onto Route 40 to take the more roundabout route to Modi'in, passing the towns of Lod and Ramleh, known as ‘mixed cities’ in Israel with both Jews and Arabs living there. Ben had recently read the modern history of these cities and initially refused to believe the incredible story of 1948 when David Ben Gurion, then head of the Jewish Agency, had ordered ‘Operation Danny’, which mandated the expulsion of the cities’ Arab population. Apparently the Jewish army, then known as the Haganah, had driven through the streets with loudspeakers on vehicles and ordered the Arab inhabitants to exit their homes only taking personal belongings with them.
They were loaded onto trucks and driven to the Jordanian ceasefire line, forced across it and never permitted to return. In Ramleh only 2,000 Arabs remained after the war, out of an original population of 18,000. Most of their homes were given to Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. When Ben had read this account he found it unbelievable since he had been taught that the Arabs who left Israel during the war of independence did so of their own accord. However he checked the story thoroughly and even found the Ramleh municipal web site on the Internet where he located a page that detailed ‘Operation Danny’. To his amazement it not only acknowledged the tragedy but glorified acts of Jewish terrorism that were intended to ‘soften up’ the population prior to the expulsion.
With these thoughts on his mind Ben started driving towards Lod, known as Lydda in Arabic. Traffic was congested and only opened up after the underpass of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Glancing up he noticed two police helicopters circling a neighborhood on the outskirts of Lod near route 40. Curious, he slowed the car, then on impulse turned at the next light and entered the neighborhood. He didn’t get very far. In front of him was a large crowd facing a huge contingent of police and military troops.
Ben pulled over the car and observed from a distance. It looked like an ugly scene was developing and he wondered if he should just turn around and get out of there. But something compelled him to park the car. It was the same compulsion he had felt several months before when he decided to make the visit home. He had to know what was going on in his country. Well, here it was, right in front of him. There was no better chance to feel the situation on the ground.
As Ben walked towards the crowd he noticed that it was almost exclusively Arab, and they were angry. With fear in his belly he circled around the fringes, trying to locate someone whom he could ask what was going on. Finally he approached an elderly man in a traditional white kafiyah (headdress).
“Excuse me”, said Ben, “Could tell me what’s happening here”.
The man looked him up and down with distain.
“The Jews are demolishing another house” he said as he spat on the ground, “It’s the fifth one this week. The bastards won’t even let a crippled man live in peace.”
“What do you mean they’re demolishing it? Why?” Replied Ben.
“Who knows” said the old man, “it’s just another way to show us who’s boss”. He glanced at Ben; obviously worried he had said too much, and drifted away.
Ben moved around the perimeter of the crowd for a better view and saw a huge bulldozer in the distance with an enormous jackhammer mounted on it, preparing to crash through the roof of what looked like a shed attached to a house. The police were not allowing anyone within about two hundred meters and had formed an impenetrable cordon around the whole area. There were about a dozen police and paramilitary vehicles and about two hundred troops armed with automatic weapons.
The drone of the two helicopters dominated the background noise. Through the cordon Ben could see a small group of people near the house arguing with police officers. There was one person in a wheelchair, several children and four adults. One man was arguing vehemently with the police, shouting and waving his arms but not threatening in any way. Suddenly two of the officers stepped forward and thrust the man to the ground and twisted his arms behind his back in an obviously painful manouver. The crowd erupted. Several men tried to push their way past the police cordon and were immediately beaten with large batons. Some children next to Ben picked up stones from the side of the road and prepared to throw them at the police. They were immediately pounced on by nearby adults who grabbed the stoned and roughly pushed the children to the back of the crowd.
Suddenly there was a sharp crack and Ben saw a small canister sailing into the crowd and hitting a woman as it spewed white gas. Immediate people scattered and Ben did the same, his heart pounding and his eyes watering as the tear gas caught up with him. As more canisters were fired he ran across a dirt lot with several other people. They rounded a corner and halted, out of breath.
“Here” said the man next to him in Arabic, handing over an onion cut in half, “It will help with the effects of the gas”.
Ben didn’t understand the words but took the onion and following the actions of the others he placed it close to his nose and inhaled a few times. He wasn’t sure if it helped but he noticed that it placed him in the same category as the others in the group. They were all Arabs and that made him nervous.
“You a Jew?” queried the man in Hebrew. When Ben nodded assent the man thanked him for joining the demonstration. He obviously thought that Ben had come in support of their opposition to the demolition of the house. Ben felt it was prudent to go along with this assumption.
“We’ll go back in a few minutes after the gas has dispersed,” said the man, continuing in Hebrew, “They probably won’t fire again unless someone attacks them.”
He then companionably offered Ben a cigarette and they squatted on the ground, exchanged names, and meditated silently for a few minutes.
Ben thought this a good time to venture a few questions so he asked about the home being demolished and the circumstances. The man, whose name was Salim, turned out to be an uncle of the fellow in the wheelchair, and the brother of the man who had been pushed to the ground and arrested. Apparently the house was owned by the Israeli government housing agency, Amidar, and the 40 square meter (360 square feet) shed being demolished had been part of the house for decades. Salim explained that the young man in the wheelchair, Yusef, was 23 years old, physically handicapped from birth and needed considerable assistance to perform functions that most people take for granted such as bathing or going to the toilet.
Yusef’s father had applied for a building permit but found that no permits were available for renovations to the building since the site had been slated for redevelopment at some future unspecified date. So after being refused a permit for the renovation the family quietly went ahead and improved the property without altering the exterior except to paint it. Salim explained that the main part of the house contained two rooms providing living and sleeping space for six people. After years of saving, Yusef’s father had renovated the shed in order to provide him with a better quality of life. The doors were extra wide to accommodate the wheelchair, a special bath had been installed so he could bathe in privacy, and a ramp built to a private exterior door providing access and a modicum of independence. Salim started to get angry at this point.
“Why can’t the municipality the happy that a poor family is trying to improve their lot?” he raged, “especially for a handicapped person. Why send two companies of police and soldiers as if he was a menace to society.” Salim sighed and was silent.
The others in their group started drifting around the building so Ben and Salim got up and followed them. A quick look showed that things had settled down a bit and the tear gas had dispersed. The bulldozer was finishing up the demolition of the shed and the police had their guns back on their shoulders and were starting to pack. A prison van stood at one side and seemed to have several people inside, including Yusef’s father who had been hauled off in handcuffs. As they watched, its engine started and the van drove off with the ill-fated prisoners inside.
Then Salim asked Ben if he wanted to meet the family. Ben’s adrenaline was still flowing and he was shaking a little, so he felt uneasy approaching anywhere near the police. Salim tried to reassure him. “Look” he said, “I’ve been to these things before. Once the house is demolished the demonstration ends and police leave”
He also explained that the family now needed moral support and it was a time for the community to rally round. Ben felt a little awkward to be included in the ‘community’ but agreed.
As they walked towards the house the police merely glanced at them but made no move to stop them. The large bulldozer was being loaded onto a flatbed truck and the helicopters had disappeared. A group of men were starting to erect an awning next to the house which Salim explained would be used for visitors, similar to a mourning tent. Ben also saw a group of people who looked more Jewish than Arab and he asked Salim if he knew them.
“Oh they are from one of the Jewish activist committees that help fight the government on issues of house demolitions and Arab rights” he explained.
“I don’t know any of them personally but they come to all the demonstrations”.
Ben and Salim passed the heap of rubble where a smaller bulldozer was finishing the work and arrived at the house where some women were setting up chairs and small tables under the awning. A car drove up, parked, and a man emerged who unloaded crates of soda from the trunk and set them up on the tables, along with plastic cups. Salim seemed to know everyone and invited Ben to sit beside some other men. Ben felt more than a little strange amidst a group that was speaking only Arabic. Very few Jewish Israelis speak fluent Arabic, and many of those who take the trouble to learn do so only to qualify for special tasks in the security services.
Soon Yusef was wheeled up in his wheelchair and greeted somberly by the men. No women, of course, were sitting with the men, a reflection of traditional Arab culture. It was almost like a funeral atmosphere. Sounds of women wailing came from inside the house. However one thing that Ben noticed immediately was that Yusef was smiling, which seemed out of place given the preceding events. Salim apparently had explained to the company that Ben was Jewish and they turned to him with interest, and switched easily to fluent Hebrew as they asked how he came to be there. Ben explained that he had just arrived back in Israel after a ten-year hiatus. One man laughed and said,
“Well, you’ll find the country much as you left it. Nothing has changed for us”. As coffee was passed around Yusef was wheeled over to where Ben was sitting, and then began a conversation that was to change Ben’s life, although he didn’t know it then.
He talked with Yusef for some time, as the bulldozer mopped up the rubble. Ben found that Yusef’s handicap was only physical, and has been with him from birth, restricting the movements of arms and legs, distorting his fingers, twisting his face so his words are slurred and head movements jerky. However his Hebrew was fluent, and he also had a good command of English. Ben was able to understand most of what he said with only occasional intervention by Salim. They didn’t talk much about the demolition as Ben gently probed the circumstances of Yusef’s life and how he had learned to cope. Yusef’s eyes lit up when he discussed his work repairing computers, and the Internet that had become his window to the world. Ben quickly realized that here was a man with a quick mind and thoughtful answers to his questions. There was a quiet wisdom is his eyes, and a keen intelligence hampered not at all by his physical infirmity and the circumstances of his family.
As the story unfolded Ben’s eyes became wet with tears for when Yusef talked, he smiled and lit up the space around him with a light that comes from a pure soul. Five minutes in his company were enough to convince Ben that there might even be hope for his Israeli Municipal tormentors who have done their worst with Yusef, but evoke no rancor or hate, only puzzlement and sadness.
As others in the group gained Yusef’s attention Ben was left to wonder where the humanity has gone in a society that allowed these atrocities to occur on a regular basis to minority citizens, especially the least among them. And he started asking himself what happened to the Jewish people’s sense of outrage, what happened to their sense of common decency, to allow any among them to be treated like dogs and garbage.
Ben looked at his watch and realized that it was past time to be getting back on the road to Modi'in. He said goodbye to Yusef, promising to visit again soon. As Salim walked him back to his car he talked about the tragedies of the Jews of Europe and expressed amazement that they could commit such crimes against others.
“Has the legacy of the Holocaust done this to you?” He asked. “Are you Jews so traumatized as a people that you truly cannot see others as deserving a life?”
Ben had no answers. What he witnessed that day had shaken the foundation of his beliefs and he wished Salim a final farewell and got back into his car a very troubled young man.
Are we so devoid of feeling that we cannot even consider a non-Jew to be worthy . . . of existence in this land? He thought as he drove off. Never had he imagined the Israeli authorities capable of committing such a heartless and senseless act of cruelty. And yet he could only see Yusef’’s eyes, shining as he talked of his computers and his friends on the internet. Ben couldn’t believe that as the bulldozer had demolished the last of Yusef’s house he was still smiling, at him, a Jew.
Welcome home, he thought, as he turned onto the main road.
2005 Fred Schlomka
He couldn’t understand the rehabilitation of Ariel Sharon and his election as prime minister. How could Israelis elect the man, he fumed, who was disgraced at home and abroad twenty years before after presiding over the Sabra and Shatila slaughter in Beirut? He also couldn’t understand why the Palestinians were in revolt after the promise of the Oslo Accords and the land compromise offered by prime-minister Ehud Barak in 2000. Ben knew he was returning home to a very different Israel to the country he left in 1994.
Ben drank in the moist humid air of the Israeli summer as he stepped out of the plane. The air of home, air you could taste, so unlike the climate of Philadelphia where he now lived. He was no sooner off the steps and walking towards the waiting bus when a young woman with an ID tag moved directly in front of him.
“Security” she said, “May I have your passport”.
Ben, startled at the sudden halt in his progress, handed over his Israeli passport. After glancing at it the woman asked him in Hebrew where he lived in Israel.
“Actually I don’t live in Israel now” said Ben, the now unfamiliar words rolled off his tongue with hesitation. He had rarely spoken Hebrew since the move to the USA, and in fact avoided the tight-knit Israeli community in Philadelphia, preferring to assimilate into mainstream American culture.
“How long have you been gone? What is your destination in Israel? In what town do your parents live?”
The questions were rattled off to him as he stumbled his answers. Suddenly it occurred to him that the questions were all directed at finding out whether he was Jewish or Arab. His Moroccan grandparents had bequeathed to him a swarthy skin and he sported a bushy moustache more common among Arabs in Israel than Jews. Moreover his halting Hebrew had obviously made the woman suspicious since many Arabs in Israel spoke Hebrew with an accent since they lived mostly in tight knit Arabic speaking communities and rarely had contacts with Jewish Israelis especially during childhood.
“Look”, said Ben who was accustomed to blunt language, “If you want to know if I’m Jewish, why not just ask? Why this runaround?” The security officer gave him a tight smile and, obviously satisfied, handed back the passport.
“Todah” she said, and turned to scrutinize the other passengers.
A bit rattled, Ben boarded the waiting bus and was whisked off the spanking new terminal that had been opened just months before amid great ceremony. How things have changed, he thought, as he walked through a grand causeway after disembarking the plane. The last time he was in Israel the old terminal was still in use; a modest building that had been there forever, and had a sense of intimacy for Israelis who traveled abroad. The new structure was a monument to grandiose architecture, intended to awe and perhaps intimidate newcomers.
It felt strange to present his Israeli passport at the counter. Ben had gained US citizenship several years before and never used his Israeli passport when he traveled. However Israeli law required citizens to enter the country with their Israeli passport.
It took about half an hour for Ben’s luggage to come through the carousel and he spent the time reflecting on the trip, and what he hoped to achieve. His father had died two years before he had left for the USA, and his mother followed the next year. Only his older brother was left of his immediate family, now living in Modi'in, a new city that the government had carved from the Judean hills, straddling the Green Line as a monument to Jewish Return and permanence. The city was a giant suburb with most of its 60,000 residents working elsewhere. Ben had read that the government planned to eventually make Modi’in the largest city in Israel, stretching from the suburbs of Tel Aviv almost to Jerusalem.
What possessed them, thought Ben, why on earth do they have to cover every inch of Israel with new cities and towns, leaving so little of our precious land for farming and conservation. He knew, of course. Deep inside his troubled spirit, rarely articulated, was the knowledge that these new communities were for Jews only, and intended to establish such a massive Jewish presence that the adjacent Arab communities would not be able to grow naturally. Over the past fifty years Israel had developed within demographic priorities and much the same pattern was also happening in the West Bank where settlements were expanding at an ever-accelerating rate, at the expense of nearby Palestinian towns and villages.
Perhaps there is a reason the Arabs are in revolt, Ben thought. However part of him also knew that the Jews of the world have no place to call their own, except Israel, and the country could only remain a Jewish state if the majority of citizens were Jewish. However American values were now deeply ingrained in Ben, and he was on beginning to become aware of the dichotomy between his democratic and Zionist values.
These thoughts were wiped from his mind as he emerged from the customs area into the arrivals hall and searched the signs for the car rental offices. Disappointingly his brother had been unable to meet him and he had arranged to pick up a rental car at the airport. After being directed to the shuttle he went outside, located the waiting vehicle, and soon arrived at the rental agencies’ parking lots. The paperwork was soon sorted out and he found himself in a tiny Fiat, barely able to accommodate the luggage he had brought for his month-long visit. But it was a set of wheels. As he drove off Ben felt increasingly exhilarated at the thought of the freedom he would have with his own car. He even forgave his brother for not picking him up.
Ben marveled at the new four-lane highway that swept round the airport from the new terminal and led to the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. On a whim he decided not to take the highway but instead exited the airport onto Route 40 to take the more roundabout route to Modi'in, passing the towns of Lod and Ramleh, known as ‘mixed cities’ in Israel with both Jews and Arabs living there. Ben had recently read the modern history of these cities and initially refused to believe the incredible story of 1948 when David Ben Gurion, then head of the Jewish Agency, had ordered ‘Operation Danny’, which mandated the expulsion of the cities’ Arab population. Apparently the Jewish army, then known as the Haganah, had driven through the streets with loudspeakers on vehicles and ordered the Arab inhabitants to exit their homes only taking personal belongings with them.
They were loaded onto trucks and driven to the Jordanian ceasefire line, forced across it and never permitted to return. In Ramleh only 2,000 Arabs remained after the war, out of an original population of 18,000. Most of their homes were given to Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. When Ben had read this account he found it unbelievable since he had been taught that the Arabs who left Israel during the war of independence did so of their own accord. However he checked the story thoroughly and even found the Ramleh municipal web site on the Internet where he located a page that detailed ‘Operation Danny’. To his amazement it not only acknowledged the tragedy but glorified acts of Jewish terrorism that were intended to ‘soften up’ the population prior to the expulsion.
With these thoughts on his mind Ben started driving towards Lod, known as Lydda in Arabic. Traffic was congested and only opened up after the underpass of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Glancing up he noticed two police helicopters circling a neighborhood on the outskirts of Lod near route 40. Curious, he slowed the car, then on impulse turned at the next light and entered the neighborhood. He didn’t get very far. In front of him was a large crowd facing a huge contingent of police and military troops.
Ben pulled over the car and observed from a distance. It looked like an ugly scene was developing and he wondered if he should just turn around and get out of there. But something compelled him to park the car. It was the same compulsion he had felt several months before when he decided to make the visit home. He had to know what was going on in his country. Well, here it was, right in front of him. There was no better chance to feel the situation on the ground.
As Ben walked towards the crowd he noticed that it was almost exclusively Arab, and they were angry. With fear in his belly he circled around the fringes, trying to locate someone whom he could ask what was going on. Finally he approached an elderly man in a traditional white kafiyah (headdress).
“Excuse me”, said Ben, “Could tell me what’s happening here”.
The man looked him up and down with distain.
“The Jews are demolishing another house” he said as he spat on the ground, “It’s the fifth one this week. The bastards won’t even let a crippled man live in peace.”
“What do you mean they’re demolishing it? Why?” Replied Ben.
“Who knows” said the old man, “it’s just another way to show us who’s boss”. He glanced at Ben; obviously worried he had said too much, and drifted away.
Ben moved around the perimeter of the crowd for a better view and saw a huge bulldozer in the distance with an enormous jackhammer mounted on it, preparing to crash through the roof of what looked like a shed attached to a house. The police were not allowing anyone within about two hundred meters and had formed an impenetrable cordon around the whole area. There were about a dozen police and paramilitary vehicles and about two hundred troops armed with automatic weapons.
The drone of the two helicopters dominated the background noise. Through the cordon Ben could see a small group of people near the house arguing with police officers. There was one person in a wheelchair, several children and four adults. One man was arguing vehemently with the police, shouting and waving his arms but not threatening in any way. Suddenly two of the officers stepped forward and thrust the man to the ground and twisted his arms behind his back in an obviously painful manouver. The crowd erupted. Several men tried to push their way past the police cordon and were immediately beaten with large batons. Some children next to Ben picked up stones from the side of the road and prepared to throw them at the police. They were immediately pounced on by nearby adults who grabbed the stoned and roughly pushed the children to the back of the crowd.
Suddenly there was a sharp crack and Ben saw a small canister sailing into the crowd and hitting a woman as it spewed white gas. Immediate people scattered and Ben did the same, his heart pounding and his eyes watering as the tear gas caught up with him. As more canisters were fired he ran across a dirt lot with several other people. They rounded a corner and halted, out of breath.
“Here” said the man next to him in Arabic, handing over an onion cut in half, “It will help with the effects of the gas”.
Ben didn’t understand the words but took the onion and following the actions of the others he placed it close to his nose and inhaled a few times. He wasn’t sure if it helped but he noticed that it placed him in the same category as the others in the group. They were all Arabs and that made him nervous.
“You a Jew?” queried the man in Hebrew. When Ben nodded assent the man thanked him for joining the demonstration. He obviously thought that Ben had come in support of their opposition to the demolition of the house. Ben felt it was prudent to go along with this assumption.
“We’ll go back in a few minutes after the gas has dispersed,” said the man, continuing in Hebrew, “They probably won’t fire again unless someone attacks them.”
He then companionably offered Ben a cigarette and they squatted on the ground, exchanged names, and meditated silently for a few minutes.
Ben thought this a good time to venture a few questions so he asked about the home being demolished and the circumstances. The man, whose name was Salim, turned out to be an uncle of the fellow in the wheelchair, and the brother of the man who had been pushed to the ground and arrested. Apparently the house was owned by the Israeli government housing agency, Amidar, and the 40 square meter (360 square feet) shed being demolished had been part of the house for decades. Salim explained that the young man in the wheelchair, Yusef, was 23 years old, physically handicapped from birth and needed considerable assistance to perform functions that most people take for granted such as bathing or going to the toilet.
Yusef’s father had applied for a building permit but found that no permits were available for renovations to the building since the site had been slated for redevelopment at some future unspecified date. So after being refused a permit for the renovation the family quietly went ahead and improved the property without altering the exterior except to paint it. Salim explained that the main part of the house contained two rooms providing living and sleeping space for six people. After years of saving, Yusef’s father had renovated the shed in order to provide him with a better quality of life. The doors were extra wide to accommodate the wheelchair, a special bath had been installed so he could bathe in privacy, and a ramp built to a private exterior door providing access and a modicum of independence. Salim started to get angry at this point.
“Why can’t the municipality the happy that a poor family is trying to improve their lot?” he raged, “especially for a handicapped person. Why send two companies of police and soldiers as if he was a menace to society.” Salim sighed and was silent.
The others in their group started drifting around the building so Ben and Salim got up and followed them. A quick look showed that things had settled down a bit and the tear gas had dispersed. The bulldozer was finishing up the demolition of the shed and the police had their guns back on their shoulders and were starting to pack. A prison van stood at one side and seemed to have several people inside, including Yusef’s father who had been hauled off in handcuffs. As they watched, its engine started and the van drove off with the ill-fated prisoners inside.
Then Salim asked Ben if he wanted to meet the family. Ben’s adrenaline was still flowing and he was shaking a little, so he felt uneasy approaching anywhere near the police. Salim tried to reassure him. “Look” he said, “I’ve been to these things before. Once the house is demolished the demonstration ends and police leave”
He also explained that the family now needed moral support and it was a time for the community to rally round. Ben felt a little awkward to be included in the ‘community’ but agreed.
As they walked towards the house the police merely glanced at them but made no move to stop them. The large bulldozer was being loaded onto a flatbed truck and the helicopters had disappeared. A group of men were starting to erect an awning next to the house which Salim explained would be used for visitors, similar to a mourning tent. Ben also saw a group of people who looked more Jewish than Arab and he asked Salim if he knew them.
“Oh they are from one of the Jewish activist committees that help fight the government on issues of house demolitions and Arab rights” he explained.
“I don’t know any of them personally but they come to all the demonstrations”.
Ben and Salim passed the heap of rubble where a smaller bulldozer was finishing the work and arrived at the house where some women were setting up chairs and small tables under the awning. A car drove up, parked, and a man emerged who unloaded crates of soda from the trunk and set them up on the tables, along with plastic cups. Salim seemed to know everyone and invited Ben to sit beside some other men. Ben felt more than a little strange amidst a group that was speaking only Arabic. Very few Jewish Israelis speak fluent Arabic, and many of those who take the trouble to learn do so only to qualify for special tasks in the security services.
Soon Yusef was wheeled up in his wheelchair and greeted somberly by the men. No women, of course, were sitting with the men, a reflection of traditional Arab culture. It was almost like a funeral atmosphere. Sounds of women wailing came from inside the house. However one thing that Ben noticed immediately was that Yusef was smiling, which seemed out of place given the preceding events. Salim apparently had explained to the company that Ben was Jewish and they turned to him with interest, and switched easily to fluent Hebrew as they asked how he came to be there. Ben explained that he had just arrived back in Israel after a ten-year hiatus. One man laughed and said,
“Well, you’ll find the country much as you left it. Nothing has changed for us”. As coffee was passed around Yusef was wheeled over to where Ben was sitting, and then began a conversation that was to change Ben’s life, although he didn’t know it then.
He talked with Yusef for some time, as the bulldozer mopped up the rubble. Ben found that Yusef’s handicap was only physical, and has been with him from birth, restricting the movements of arms and legs, distorting his fingers, twisting his face so his words are slurred and head movements jerky. However his Hebrew was fluent, and he also had a good command of English. Ben was able to understand most of what he said with only occasional intervention by Salim. They didn’t talk much about the demolition as Ben gently probed the circumstances of Yusef’s life and how he had learned to cope. Yusef’s eyes lit up when he discussed his work repairing computers, and the Internet that had become his window to the world. Ben quickly realized that here was a man with a quick mind and thoughtful answers to his questions. There was a quiet wisdom is his eyes, and a keen intelligence hampered not at all by his physical infirmity and the circumstances of his family.
As the story unfolded Ben’s eyes became wet with tears for when Yusef talked, he smiled and lit up the space around him with a light that comes from a pure soul. Five minutes in his company were enough to convince Ben that there might even be hope for his Israeli Municipal tormentors who have done their worst with Yusef, but evoke no rancor or hate, only puzzlement and sadness.
As others in the group gained Yusef’s attention Ben was left to wonder where the humanity has gone in a society that allowed these atrocities to occur on a regular basis to minority citizens, especially the least among them. And he started asking himself what happened to the Jewish people’s sense of outrage, what happened to their sense of common decency, to allow any among them to be treated like dogs and garbage.
Ben looked at his watch and realized that it was past time to be getting back on the road to Modi'in. He said goodbye to Yusef, promising to visit again soon. As Salim walked him back to his car he talked about the tragedies of the Jews of Europe and expressed amazement that they could commit such crimes against others.
“Has the legacy of the Holocaust done this to you?” He asked. “Are you Jews so traumatized as a people that you truly cannot see others as deserving a life?”
Ben had no answers. What he witnessed that day had shaken the foundation of his beliefs and he wished Salim a final farewell and got back into his car a very troubled young man.
Are we so devoid of feeling that we cannot even consider a non-Jew to be worthy . . . of existence in this land? He thought as he drove off. Never had he imagined the Israeli authorities capable of committing such a heartless and senseless act of cruelty. And yet he could only see Yusef’’s eyes, shining as he talked of his computers and his friends on the internet. Ben couldn’t believe that as the bulldozer had demolished the last of Yusef’s house he was still smiling, at him, a Jew.
Welcome home, he thought, as he turned onto the main road.
2005 Fred Schlomka
