The Things with the Fetish

Imagine you have a family member that comes to your house. It´s kind of picky, as he/she -gender really does not have any relevance here - and already had some bad experience him/herself - with life, relationships and his/her own family. He/She doesn´t like your house, doesn´t like you, and even if you may be the other person in the world, he/she will not care a dime about you because the idea is to keep playing the role of the outsider no matter what and when.

The story of Jewish community in German after the war and particularly in the last three decades is complex and complicated, both in terms of human resources and conflicts, halachic challenges, perceptions and membership. For everyone coming from Israel or the USA, the difference is huge, but I suppose a Jew from Germany will feel the same about communities and traditions in the USA or France. 

Most of the people who are members of the community in Germany, do want to earn their life, have a place for the holidays, educate their children in the Jewish tradition, celebrate a Bar/Bat Mitzvah and eventually be guaranteed a place in a Jewish cemetery. Not everyone has plenty of time to play the star and conceptualize their identity. 

One of the things I always find impressive when I moved to Germany was to hear the stories of Jews coming from the Soviet Union. People who went to prison because they wanted to learn Yiddish, people who were harassed because they were Jews, no matter how high the personal status they reached. People who insisted to remain Jews no matter the challenges of being a Jew. There are not too many former communist countries whose Jews are so proud of their identity.

By attacking those humble people whose stories are worth so many good novels, someone is just following a pathway of those extremists this person is assuming she left to become herself. It´s so convenient to be an outsider in this country, talk about ´fetish´ while being oneself part of the system allowing only those funny individual people to take the floor. Claiming cancelled membership in a community does not promote you to an expert and even the less a judge in all things related to a community whose ´deep knowledge´ was acquired from newspapers or encounters in the bar around the corner. 

Playing the role of the outsider for purely personal branding reasons may work for a while, but repeating over and over again, on a highly pitched indignant voice the same empty sentences learned by heart to an audience paying you to play this role is aimed to fail. It does not take too long to figure out the intellectual kitsch. 

 

Sledgehammer

 

Some ideas need time and right circumstances to happen. Sometimes it happens independently of individual people as it took enough time for the idea to grow and for the diplomatic discussions to advance to make it happens.

The Abraham Accords, definitely, haven´t start with Pres. Trump administration. In order to achieve such a historical peace between the State of Israel and some Arab/Muslim countries, it took time to create the momentum. Discussions and negotiations, steps forward and meetings behind the close doors were ongoing long before Covid. For instance, at least 10 years ago, in Dubai there were Bar Mitzva celebrations organised and a small Jewish - mostly American - community was discretely burgeoning. 

Sledgehammer. How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East by former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman accounts about the final steps of the process, when he, together with Jared Kuchner and Jason Greenblatt sealed off the signing of the Accords. It is also the testimony of the ambiance in the Middle East and Israel during Trump administration.

Friedman used to be involved in various legal cases for the Trump family, a Cohen, with strong connections with Israel. In general, for important embassy positions, US administration - and not only -usually nominates people close to the winner at the White House therefore Friedman´s presence was normal in the logic of things of American bureaucracy. Definitely, an ambassador is not alone and his everyday activity was facing sometimes opposition on behalf of the State Department diplomats. However, no matter what, some of the decisions took during Trump administration, often leaked to the press in advance for various non-diplomatic reasons, were still in force nowadays. The embassy remains in Jerusalem and there is no rebuke of the Golan Heights administration by Israel. 

A businessman rarely have time for the byzantine intricacies of diplomacy, but this is what is needed in times of crisis to take a decision and move things forward. I am not sure that there would have been any other administration opposed to the courageous steps took by the Abraham Accords - the current Biden administration, for instance, supports the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel - but what is important is the alignment of political will and circumstances that made it happen. 

As the ongoing events in the region already show, we are far from getting the real clarity in this respect, but good things take time to happen.

Amb. Deborah Lipstadt: ´Never Seen Anything Like That´

In times of incertainty, one needs clarity. The surge of antisemitism in the campus and streets of US and European capital cities has no precendent and the implications are going far beyond the Israel versus Palestinians conflicts: it threatens the democracy, stability and national security of every state where such events are taking place.

US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Amb. Deborah Lipstadt firmly outlined today in an online media briefing that media nowadays has the responsibility to tell what is going on, while carefully checking the sources and naming the things as they are. Although freedom of speech and of reunion should be allowed, attacking Jews is antisemitism. 

No context or explanations about the causes of the incidents do dilute the gravity of the situation. The right to peacefully protest does not allow anyone to break the law. ´(...) when you see people chanting or hear peiople chanting kill the Jews or calling for a violent Intifada, for saying gas the Jews, for when they harass Jewish protesters (...) That´s not support for the rights of the Palestinian people. That´s antisemitism, pure and simple´, mentioned Lipstadt. A historian and author on the topic of antisemitism, she said that the wave of current antisemitic surge is unprecedent: ´never seen anything like that´. Current antisemitism is ´ubiquitous´, originating from the left and from the right, from Muslims and Christians as well.

Lipstadt visited in the last weeks many European capital cities, among which Rome and Berlin, and outlined that there are discussions also with representatives of the European Union in order to create a ´worldwide strategy´, ´globally happening´ to combat antisemitism. When Jews, citizens of those countries are threatened, the state has the responsibility to protect them, a ´vulnerable population´ that needs state protection.

A Moving Target

 

The tragic events from 7/10 in Israel changed definitely a lot of details from the overall Middle East equation. Alliances, geopolitical positioning, Western perceptions as well. One thing though remained the same: the constant Iranian threat against Israel, done through supporting a war of proxies, even with the price of destabilizing the countries were those proxies are located - for instance, Lebanon, who has for years enough of the mullah´s regime intrusion in their everyday life and politics.

Target Tehran by Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar is an informative approach on the Iranian-Israel cyberwarfare and sabotage stories - if you already read Ronen Bergman you may not discover too many new information - but also delves deep into the behind the scenes diplomatic efforts to achieve the Abraham Accords (more about this in an upcoming review featuring the political memoir of former US Ambassador in Israel David Friedman). 

As both authors are journalists, they are extensively using sources, especially part of the various establishments - particularly Israel and US - which give more credibility to the account. I´ve found very interesting the mentions about how smartly Israel used the soft diplomacy - vaccines´ during Covid, among others - in order to expand cooperation with former ´enemies´. I am looking forward one day to read about a Middle East free of poisonous intrusions, where former enemies are fighting hard to achieve common economic goals and exchange scientific experiments.  

An Iranian Jew in Wedding, Berlin

 ´Ein kleiner, von allen gehasster, feiger Jude war ich. So fühle ich mich zumindest´.

Arye Sharuz Shalicar is a often spotted in the German media those days, as a spokeperson of the IDF for the German journalists. He is articulated, up to the point and fluent in the international language of public relations. But before, a few years ago, before making aliya in 2001, he was a boy from Wedding, versed in the language - both body and verbal - of (mostly) Arab gangs of Berlin, like the PLO-Boys and many more.

In a similar vein with Ben Salomo´s memoir of life as a Jew - and Israeli - in the Berlin rap scene, Shalicar adds a different layer of information about the heated hate against Jews among his Palestinian and non-German colleagues. While reading his fights and humiliations as a teenager growing up as a non-religious Iranian Jew, I was automatically thinking the latest weeks of anti-Israeli protests in areas like Neukölln or Sonnenallee. Nothing new under the sun, apparently.

Shalicar´s memoir also shares his limited contacts with the local Jewish community, limited both in terms of language - due to the predominance of Russian - but also the reserves against non-European Jews. 

The book is a journey of self-discovery and reconnecting with his own roots and heritage, against all odds. A story of resilience in an unkind world. 

Être Juif, according to Edmond Jabès

´Être Juif, c´est avoir à justifier de l'existence; c'est avoir, en commun, les mêmes nuits sans sommeil, avoir essuyé les mêmes insultes; c'est avoir cherché désespérément la même bouée, la mêmê main secouable; c'est avoir nagé, nagé, nagé pour ne pas sombrer.

Être Juif, c'est avoir les mêmes cernes sous les yeux, le même sourire sceptique - et, pourtant, le Juif est capable de grandes enthousiasmes -; c`est avoir cligné les yeux face au soleil défendu.

Victime de l'injustice, le Juif est l'ennemi de ceux qui fondent leur justice sur l'injustice. Gênant pour les pouvoirs absolus, il est la cible de ceux qui détiennent le pouvoir absolu; gênant parce que réfractaire.

Être Juif, c'est apprendre à se mouvoir à quelques mètres du sol qui vous est contesté; c'est ne plus savoir si la terre est d'eau ou d'air ou d'oubli.

Que de ruses emploie-t-il pour survivre. Quelle ingeniosité dans les moyens, quelle application dans ses métamorphoses.

Déduire, s'adapter, tracer. On peut s'acharner sur lui, on ne réussit pas à le détruire.

Mi-homme, mi-poisson, mi-oiseau, mi-fantôme, il y a toujours une moitié de lui qui échappe au bourreau'.

Edmond Jabès, Le Livre des Questions