Adama by Lavie Tidhar

´They´re good boys, but bad things happen in war´.

 

The Hebrew word ´adama´ - earth, do include the word ´dam´ - blood.

Lavie Tidhar´s noir story of Israel, is subversively embracing a different, less romanticized narrative of the country. An inter-generational story that does not act according to the usual back and forth towards the memory lane, with gangster kibbutznik women following revenge until death do us apart. I laughed and had second thoughts and even checked some references that were obviously fictional, intentionally confusing the reader.

In Adama the kibbutzim and their inhabitants are everything we wished they are, and what some of them really were: fierce, boiling revenge, breaking up every single rule, breathing freedom. Tidhar moves with a joyous irony through fragments of Israeli history, with fine irony and historical references made in full honesty.

Ruth, the matriarch of kibbutz Trashim - ´rocky ground´, not ´trash´, but who knows - a fictional location placed in the North of Israel, is the perfect new Jew. A Holocaust survivor from Hungary, hard as stone, fierce. She hates Zohar Argov. Unstoppable even when touched by early setting of dementia. But some things simply cannot be forgotten. 

I always despised the Romantic view on kibbutzim. Pioneers, hard working, patriots. They were all of it and a bit more. Tidhar, a prolific science fiction writer and pulp fiction consumer, instilled life in the usual stereotypical kibbutznik. And how I love the gangster touch of it. After all, history is made by people, people like Ruth and the boys hidding weapons between the freshly harvested vegetables. 

The book is the second installment from the Maror Trilogy, and it was only my personal choice to start with the second one. I will continue with the reviews of the other two books at a later time.

Rating: 5 stars

No Other Land

I am terribly late in terms of catching up with latest films and cultural productions from Israel that got a certain notoriety. Those times are hard for the truth and what really appeals abroad may be rather what the audiences are expecting to hear and see. Definitely not the truth.

No Other Land was extremely praised and I wanted to keep my mind clear from various toxic views on a conflict that is commented from abroad and rarely shared from inside. 

Basel and Yuval, one Palestinian and another Israeli are witnessing the constant demolition of Palestinian homes in the village of Masefer Yata in the West Bank. Watching the movie and seeing how the IDF is repeatedly destroying the houses rebuilt overnight and sends the inhabitants in a precarious cave-based habitations you can hardly control your hate against the IDF. Women fighting barehands, children growing up in the middle of the rubble, men took to prison, Yuval recording everthing, Basel looking forward in this hopeless world. Terrible times and precarious existences.

It´s really sad, but you know what is also sad: half-truths or undocumented affirmations. No one producing this movie seems to really care to offer a bit of background about why we have this situation, what exactly in bureaucratic terms creates this unclear property situation. In no normal country in the world is it possible to start building without construction permit. 

And you know what is also sad: that the Palestinian living there, do have authorities to represent them, to have their rights defended using the democratic tools. No authorities to check out and negotiate new legal arrangements and laws allowing people to live in houses instead of caves, giving the chance to someone like Basel who studied at the university to get a job. 

Yuval and Basel may do a great job documenting, but decision making is somewhere else, in the place where people taking decisions may be. Until there will be no responsibilities taken and people in charge with clarifiying the legal framework, children will continue to waste their childhood in the middle of the rubble.

Indeed, there is No Other Land, but don´t expect others to do for your land what you are not doing yourself for it. And it is not about the ´resistance´.