Hostage by Eli Sharabi translated into English by Eylon Levy

A couple of weeks back was chatting with an American-Jewish writer who just returned from Israel and on her storytelling voice she was rhetorically asking how the cruelties of 7/10 were possible? What monsters can do what the Hamas terrorists did to women, children, other humans?

Hostage by former hostage Eli Sharabi, translated into English by Eylon Levy is a testimony that can be only compared with the similar Shoah testimonies. It shows a permanence of the evil, generated this time from individuals growing up in a fanatic cultish ignorance or cultivating the same ignorance for the sake of illicit political and economic power. 

For 491 days, Sharabi, who is of Moroccan-Yemeni origin and an Arabic speaker, was kept barefoot, moved from one tunnel to another, humiliated, starved and ´offered´ to convert to Islam - as it happened to other captives as well. He was submitted to psychological terror, being lied they were abandoned and that Israel will be soon destroyed. 

Those fanatics for whom Titanic is a great newly released movie, clapped their hands for Iran, and predicted a massive Islamic take-over of the ´West´. They nicknamed Sharabi Abbas, as in Mahmoud Abbas or by his nom de guerre, Abu Mazen, whom they despised. 

Sharabi and his other fellow hostages nicknamed their guardians as well, based on their physical features or behavior. It was their distraction in between the verbal and physical aggression they suffered, and their deteriorating health situation. Food, as in the Shoah memoirs, plays an important role in the survival strategies. But bravely, the solidarity won in the front of the efforts of their captors to create dissent in the group, due to the food rations. Every Friday evening they recited the Shabbes songs, and the next day the Havdala songs. They prayed in the morning. Another example of strength and survival.

Sharabi found out the day of his liberation that his brother, Yossi, also took captive from kibbutz Be´eri was killed. His beloved wife and daughters were killed on 7/10 and although he imagined this scenario, he was informed about only upon his return to Israel. 

It is so much tension in this book and you feel overwhelmed by the weight of the dramatic realities of the last two years. I think we should not try finding an answer about the human nature and how was it possible, but to find the best ways to never allowed such a cruelty to be committed. It is like the post-WWII history is written over and over again. 

I´ve had access to the book in the audiobook format, extraordinarily read by actor and coach Geoffrey Cantor. 

Jerusalem, via Berlin

 

The intellectual history of Israel is still to be written, but for sure it reveals as more complex than a black-and-white painting separating Zionists from anti-Zionists. As it usually happens in the case of intellectuals, the more nuances the better in order to reach a higher level of understanding.

Personally, I believe that historians should take a big distance from emotional involvement and often felt like the split between the abovementioned categories of historians is too feeling-driven. It´s like each is trying desperately to prove the other one is wrong, ignoring on the way to accomplish the researcher´s mission of finding and exposing the truth. 

Hence, I usually took very critically the works by Tom Segev, but could not resist the temptation of reading his memoirs, hoping that maybe I can have a better understanding of his background.

Born as Thomas Schwerin, in a German family, his parents fled Germany in 1935. Both of his parents were involved with the Bauhaus movement, his mother a photographer, his father an architect and toy manufacturer. Only his father was Jewish, and he grew up speaking German as mother tongue. His sister, Jutta, is based in Germany and is an architect and a politician for the Green Party.

For many years, Segev worked as a journalist, among others, for the left-wing Haarets, reporting from many parts of the world, interviewing famous local and international personalities. Maybe his love for journalism, permeated too much his everyday life, as according to his memoirs, he used at least twice his acquaintances as subjects of daily feuilletons and reporting - one was his adopted son, an Ethiopian-born Jew, another one, a drug addicted acquaintance who stalked him obsessively for years, asking for money and a warm blanket, a weird relationship between source and journalist to be honest.

What is really important to understand from his memoirs - subjective, as one may expect from this type of writing - is the many nuances and motivations of the Israeli intellectual life. Layers of personal experiences, expectations, personal choice, ideological profile. After reading this memoir, I will be most probably interested in reading his historical books as well, obviously, with that grain of salt that comes into question when reading history anyway.

Ironically, for a language buff is that the book was published by Munchen-based Siedler Edition House. ´Siedler´ translates as ´settler´, but the name of the edition house does not have anything to do with the category that people like Segev do not agree with. The name takes it from the founder, Wolf Jobst Siedler.

´No Room for Small Dreams´

 ´In Israel, in order to be a realist, you should believe in miracles´.

No Room for Small Dreams - that I´ve had access to in audio format, read by the actor Mark Bramhall - is the book published in Peres last year of life. Half-memoir, half-inspirational book, this is just another testimony of a brave man who loved the people of Israel. A man who, together with other founding fathers like Ben Gurion, had the chutzpa to believe in their dream and set out of nothing a country. And not any country, but the country of the Jews.

A warrior, Peres also believed that peace is inevitable, and he personally worked toward it while concluding the agreement between the state of Israel and Egypt on one had, and Jordan, on the other hand. In his optimistic vein, he declares that peace is inevitable, and the current shift taking place within the Middle East is a proof that, again, he was right. 

People like Peres, or Rabin, or Ben Gurion, did have a humble dedication to the public office that unfortunatelly seems to be vanishing nowadays. Being part of the state project is a duty and they are grateful for the chance given to build The Dream. Which does not coincide with their and their family dreams of acquiring personal wealth and priviledges. Their families felt compelled to help them, from the shadows, without any expectation of public acknowledgement. They lived their religious upbringing through actions and good deeds, not by dangerously playing the card of the public piety for the sake of the cameras. Those were the days...

Peres prediction is that the future of Zionism is a two state solution, otherwise a one-state solution without Jews might happen. In an Israeli democracy, Jews and non-Jews should be equal, with the right to be different as a legacy of our own past of persecutions. Bridges would be made only through direct contact and dialogue, and this was the objective Peres had in mind when he created in 1996 Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. 

Shimon Peres had the moral courage to change from a hawk to a ´vocal dove´ ´on behalf of the Jewish people´. From the Hagana to the ´start-up nation´ and the creation of the nuclear resource facility in Dimona he had both the chutzpah and the vision. I am sure many of those reading him will see the difference and, as this writer, will be reminded that, indeed, miracles are such a reality of the Jewish life that one must work hard to achieve.