The other side

Smells like a Jew

Man on a Tel Aviv street  (Mor Levy)

I'm in the car, and we're travelling along, Zahi, Karim and me, up to Yafa cafe. We've just been to a solidarity meeting with Arabs and Jews where they read poetry in Arabic and Hebrew, and people from the Jaffa community came. It started with a minute's silence for those who died in Gaza. Mohammad, who was leading, had to stop two or three times because he couldn't talk, because he cried.

Jews and Arabs stood in a line on the stage and held each other's hands. System Ali rapped their poetry without music, to mourn. 

And now we're going for something to eat in Yafa cafe.

What no car, Zahi? What happened to your car? Zahi always used to come by and pick me up in a little white car. I don't remember the make. He'd come by when he didn't need to, even, just to be nice. Like, if I could walk there, if it wasn't even far, he'd come by just to take care of me. But anyway, now we're in Karim's car, working out why Zahi doesn't have his.

'Did you write it off?' I ask, turning to Zahi in the back.

'No – it was stolen.' Karim answers for him. Zahi's slow off the mark, he must be tired.

'Stolen–'

'Yeah, stolen. By some Jews.'

What do you mean some Jews? I don't say this. Because I remember the other day, the first day I met Karim, in fact, when we were sitting down to a dinner at Yafa cafe. A dinner with music and oud, and everyone gets up to dance, like Michel the owner and a beautiful girl. And Zahi's asking me if I recognise that kind of dance, if I know what it means, and I say, Zahi, you know some things we have everywhere, and he's, oh you have Arabs in London? And I say, no Zahi – some things are universal. Like what? OK, do I have to spell it out? Some things are universal, like sex.

Karim's to my right at the table, and opposite there's this Jewish woman with very short hair. It's grey and short, and she's always smiling with crinkly bits around her eyes. I think she's the only Jewish woman there, apart from me. This woman asks if we'll light the Hanukah candles. Michel looks around, and there's a menorah, but candles are nowhere to be found.

'Never mind.' Karim leans into me. 'Let's burn some Jews.'

I'm like, what? I don't know what to say. I need some time. Let's burn some Jews. He has a merry twinkle, the kind of goatee you'd find in Shoreditch, and American hip-hop clothes. 

The conversation has moved on slightly. The Jewish woman's spooning up kubbe and smiling again. And I still don't know what to say. OK, now I do. 'I think you meant that as a joke,' I tell Karim, 'but I found it offensive.'

'Why? Are you Jewish?' he says.

'I am, but even if I wasn't, you know, I'd still say it's wrong.'

'But I think it's funny!' the Jewish woman says. 'Don't you see? The power imbalance. Between our two groups. It's funny because of that!'

OK. So you feel better if you get the shit ripped out of you. Somehow, that way, you pay.

Back in the car with Karim, and he's still on his Jewish trip. I'm kind of tired. 'Listen,' I tell him, 'don't do that. You know it feels bad.'

'Jews – yeah, Jews are everywhere. They stole his car.'

I turn my face away. We're still driving, up Yehuda Hayamit. 'Enough,' Zahi says, but he's laughing and it's not enough, yet, for Karim.

'There's a Jew in the car! I can smell a Jew.' He's staring hard ahead. 'Smells like a Jew in the car.'

I slam out as soon as we arrive. Karim follows me and we're both pacing up the hill. We go into the restaurant and sit down – there are five of us at the table. Four men, and me.

'You're not still mad at him, are you?' Zahi asks.

'Why? What happened? What did he say?' Abed wants to know.

So I'm sitting here at this table with these guys in the restaurant where they always go, and I have to say it. 'We were driving in Karim's car, and he told me ... he said ... Smells like a Jew.'

The whole table bursts out laughing. Abed's laughing. Zahi's laughing, Mustafa's laughing. Karim looks around, then bursts out laughing too. I'm just sitting there and I really wish to be swallowed up by the ground. Instead, I push back my chair, and I go to the bathroom and all of it, Gaza, Jericho, East Jerusalem, the death and the killing, all of this hate, swells out of me, and I cry.

Israel no love

Adjami, Jaffa - candlelit vigil for Gaza 

At Jamilah's house Al Jazeera is on the TV. Al Jazeera shows what bombs do. Limbs come off. Eyes melt shut. Dead children have white faces from the dust. Jamilah's mother puts her head in her hands and cries.

Jamilah reports that a colleague at work (they're all Jewish except her) demanded to know today, are you for or against Hamas? 

'Why should I tell you that?' she says to her colleague. But he won't let up, so she tells him, 'look, it's not like you see on TV - you know only half the story. We see the whole picture.'

'We have to do it,' the guy says. 'We don't kill children on purpose.'

'Did I ever ask to talk politics with you?' she says.

'You're a traitor,' he replies.

The manager calls Jamilah in and Jamilah's shouting, she can't stop shouting: 'Look what he's doing to me!'

'It's not the case,' the manager says. 'You provoked him. That's what he told me.'

Jamilah's big-boned brother is lying on the sofa. He turns to me and says: 'Israel - no good, no bad ... Israel - no love.'

The lives lost

Women hold candles in remembrance of the lives lost in Gaza, street protest, Jaffa

A boy and a girl make the sign for peace

A mother and her children

We refuse to be enemies

Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies, the placard reads. 

An anti-war march, Saturday, through the streets of Tel Aviv. Pro-war shouters collect like flies along the side of the route - the Magav keeps them surrounded, but sometimes they're a nose-distance away, fist-thrashing and enraged. We move from Rabin Square along Ibn Gvirol to the Cinemateque, Arab and Jewish Israelis, side-by-side. Stop the killing. We want a different future for our peoples - a future of peace, we chant.

Sometimes an Arab teenager has to be restrained by friends as the mob on the sidelines provokes, with a Death to the Arabs! or Your mother is a whore! Hadash party stewards stand between the groups, trying to keep them apart.

By the Cinemateque square, crowds of pro-war demonstrators are baying to be let in. But the Magav won't allow them near us. They're not even letting the residents through - 'I have to go, I live there,' argues a woman in a black winter coat.

Two teenage girls who've been sitting on the Cinemateque steps suddenly burst into a chant: It's our country! It's our country! Somehow, they managed to slip through. Within seconds, a group of Arab boys confronts them, only feet away. Police hustle the girls, modesty protected by skirts over trousers, out of the square.

It's dark. It's getting late. People are standing around, and a crowd wrapped in Israeli flags has gathered at the top of the street. It feels ugly but the police hold them at bay.

'What's going to happen now?' I ask Uri. 'Oh probably a few beatings and then everyone will go home,' he says.

We walk through the side streets, away from the march. Men are running towards it, shouting, leaping and waving Israeli flags. Uri zips up his jacket, covering the Hadash logo on his vest. A bald-headed guy in a white T-shirt comes at us, punching the air. 'We have only one country!' he shouts. 

* Watch the march here - as filmed by Lisa

Nobody says a thing

On the bus it’s not like usual, no one talks. They’re all just staring straight ahead. 

In a seat by the aisle, a black woman with a headscarf wound to her scalp. Fine features, a long, religious skirt. Opposite, a blue-blonde Russian girl looking out of the window with empty eyes. Her rose wool dress, the one she chose this morning, outlines her thighs. Music plays – the driver’s – but nobody says a thing.

‘Shelach–is that yours?’

A crushed chocolate milk carton rolls past my foot. I look up. Is that yours? – an old man, maybe 60, wants to know. His brown, furrowed face buries exhausted granite eyes.

Everyone’s waiting. Nobody says a thing.

He has a kippa, the man – it’s black – he’s almost crouching in his seat. Who, he wants to know, has dumped their carton on the floor? His shelach? hovers, then drops like rock into a pool.

My eyes meet his, I just look back. Nobody says a thing.

Protest in Tel Aviv

Enough! War Crimes, reads the placard. Arab and Jewish Israelis protest the Gaza bombings, Saturday, outside the Ministry of Defence, Tel Aviv. Right, veteran Jewish activist, Yakov Manor.

Palestinian Israelis protest.

Yasam, police special patrol unit, and demonstrators.

Capitalist government will not bring security: Trotskyite group Ma'avak Sotzialisti – ‘Socialist Struggle’

Lift the siege on Gaza, reads the placard, centre. Right, in Hebrew: The Israeli government is guilty of war crimes. Arabic, foreground: Stop the bloodshed. Gaza won't bow down.

Enough of the massacre on Gaza (placard, right): members of Marxist party Da’am. The sign in the background says: Solidarity with the families of Sderot, Ashkelon and Gaza.

For those who died in Gaza today

East Jerusalem, lunchtime today. I’m in Wa’el’s restaurant, having coffee with Jamilah and Khaled. We’ve been driving these last two hours, just arrived.

I take Wa’el’s picture. He wants me to show him. I take a few more. I show him. ‘Good,’ he says politely.

I get a bit closer. ‘You look sad,’ I say.

Jamilah translates. ‘Yes, he is sad,’ she says.

‘Why is he sad?’

She asks him. ‘He’s sad because 120 people were killed in Gaza today. By the Jews.’

The market is closing. All the stalls are closing for those who died in Gaza today. ‘For the 150 – not 120,’ Jamilah tells me after speaking to one of those shutting up shop.

It’s Saturday, only a quarter to two, and normally the stalls would stay open until five. We walk back up to the Damascus Gate. The alleys are dark, shuttered and silent. A group of Israeli soldiers stands in front of us, faces curled into a sneer. Arabs and Jews are fighting in the Old City; they’ve started throwing rocks.

We buy water from a man who’s folding his last blanket of items away. ‘It was 200,’ he says. ‘The Jews killed 200 people in Gaza today.’

Life must go on

Lisa Goldman at On the Face brings to our attention an inspiring blog,
Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot, written by two friends, one Palestinian one Israeli, who met 18 months ago when Gazans could still enter Israel. Read it for real voices, beyond rhetoric, of those who live this conflict:

‘ First Post – 20 January, 2008

‘Today has been quiet so far. Only one siren went off. I heard one faint rocket fall in a far distance and another somewhat closer. Not too close. I was glad that all my kids were already in school and not anywhere near the falling rockets.

‘The past week was very difficult. Probably close to 200 rockets with several people wounded. A couple rockets fell in a range of 40-60 meters from our home. One fell without any preparation (siren) and caught me in the shower.

‘This morning I called my friend "Peace man" from Gaza. He told me that things have been quiet today. Israel has cut all fuel and goods supply to Gaza. This means that they have electricity only an hour or so a day. He fears that the electricity will shut down completely. I asked about food. He told me that prices have gone up even more due to the lack of goods.

‘In the past week Israel has been using more force than in the past few months. This has brought about a new chain of violence with many Palestinians killed. About half of them unarmed civilians. As a result the Hamas which has stopped firing rockets to Israel for several months has once again started shelling Sderot.

‘We decided to start this Blog to bring to people's awareness the true nature of what 2 peace seeking people on both sides of this insane situation are feeling, thinking and going through.

‘We will both try to write here on as often as possible. I hope Peace man will have electricity to write.’