Waves (sometimes), gals (every day), bravery (three
existential wars) and a desert in bloom. What's not to love!
“The Jews bring the world poverty, trouble and disaster.
They are monsters and the basis for all evil in the world ….Arabs,
rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews
wherever you find them. God is with you.”
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, from Radio Berlin, March 1, 1944.
| “Oh, you who murdered Allah’s pious
prophets Oh, you who were brought up on spilling
blood
You have been condemned to humiliation and
hardship.
Oh Sons of Zion, oh most evil among creations
Oh barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs…”
Six-year-old Palestinian girl recites poem on Palestinian
television, 2013.
|
It ain’t easy being a Jew. Don’t believe me?
Come and step into the hallways of the dirtiest and most tortured
of histories. A lost people and two thousand orbits jammed with
degradation and bestial treatment.
I’m not going to throw you down the yawn-fest of the Egyptians,
the Romans, the first-borns being slain by Pharaohs, seas parting,
baby Mo in the bull rushes and we’re not even going to swing by the
Crusades (when Christians took their swords to every Jew in Europe)
or the Spanish Inquisition, as rad as it was, with its garrotting
and Jews being burnt alive.
Yeah, it helps with our story, it helps with your understanding
of the Jewish diaspora and why these smart, industrious and brave
people had to set-up shop in every crummy Eastern European and
Middle Eastern craphole over the last two thousand years, enriching
each county with its music, arts, crafts, trade and native
intelligence, all the while suffering the worst privations, the
pogroms, the excessive taxation, the restrictions, the boycotts,
the lies, the scapegoating.
Out of these horrors developed Hassidim (those orthodox Jews
with their side-locks and wild frenzied praying), the mysticism of
the Cabala (a fav of Madonna!) and, more importantly for our story,
the Zionists, the foot-soldiers of a movement that decided, enough
was enough, the Jews gotta get some land of their own. And where
else but the Holy Land? Wasn’t it where they came from?
Discrimination, racism? Yeah, the Jews know it better than
anyone.
But I want to make it easy.
So how about we just step back three generations, recent enough
to be when your grand or great-granddaddy was stepping around as a
kid. Let’s begin with the Nazi invasion of Poland, home to
three-and-half mill Jews. One in every 10 Polacks a Jew. Not that
you’d figure it, given the Jews’ history with their home country.
Jews paid more tax. Suffered trade restrictions. Were routinely
massacred. And so the Jews clung together, were guided by their
Rabbis who attempted to decipher their problems through the Torah
(the Old Testament for us goyim) and the Talmud (a scholarly
interpretation of the Torah and the rules Jews should follow.
And then the Nazis came. The greatest war machine in history in
their gorgeous, slim-fitting uniforms designed by Hugo Boss (yes!)
and all trussed up inside magnificent Panzer Tanks and screaming
dive bombers and with the infantry goose-stepping over the Polish
army in a week, the newest piece of the rapidly expanding Third
Reich after the crushing of Czechoslovakia.
And what was the west going to do? America wasn’t interested and
the Brits had a handful of planes and the shittiest little army.
They figured they could let Hitler cut a few slices off here and
there, create his lebensraum (living space) and the world
wouldn’t be driven into another pointless war. Who wanted to be the
prime minster who committed another generation of young men to be
butchered in Europe?
And it ain’t a secret how the Nazis felt about the Jews. Oh, you
know about the Holocaust? Of course you do. You’ve seen the movies,
you know the number, six-and-a-half-mill shot and gassed.
By the time the Nazis were finished in Poland, with its death
camps and walled-off ghetto where children fell dead in the streets
from starvation and cold and where thousand were regularly marched
out to the city’s cemetery, lined up, shot, covered in lime and
buried just in time for the next group to roll up; where brave
Jews, the forerunners of the New Zionists, young, muscular,
vigorous, fought the might of the Third Reich with a handful of
guns and home-made bombs. Who fled to the sewers underneath the
city and who committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the
SS. Want a movie version? Download The Pianist (2002).
When the war ended 90 per cent of Poland’s Jews were dead. The
rest? Where were they gonna live? Europe didn’t want ’em nor what
was left of the rest of European Jewry. And despite Britain
promising ’em that hunk of rock and sand in the eastern
Mediterranean, The British Mandate of Palestine, could become the
Jewish homeland, the Brits changed their mind ’cause they didn’t
want the Arabs to shut off oil supply or slam the gate on the Suez
canal. The Brits even used their military to limit Jewish
immigration to Palestine, escorting their ships to distant
internment camps in places like Cyprus and Mauritius.
Most of these wretched souls had just survived the worst horrors
in history, mass-extermination on an industrial scale by the most
efficient people on earth, and they found ’emselves back behind
barbed wire, this time in the hands of the good guys.
But some made it. And by this time, the Zionists had bought a
fair chunk of the land in Palestine, always at over-inflated prices
from their Arab landowners (of course!), and starting building
their famous kibbutzes, farms run as collectives but surrounded by
towers and barbed wire. The Jews weren’t dumb. The Arabs might’ve
sold the land but they weren’t guaranteeing their safety.
After the Holocaust, after everything, Jews weren’t going
anywhere. They would turn this godforsaken, shitty, Biblical land,
that had sat fallow for thousands of years, into the most
culturally advanced democracy the world had ever seen. The people
would work the farms in the name of Jewish unity. Every boy would
leave school at 18 and go straight into the army for three years of
compulsory service; the girls would go in for two. It didn’t matter
where you were from. If you are Jewish, Israel welcomes you. Come,
come.
Three years after the war ended, having been cut a piece of the
Palestinian Mandate for a Jewish homeland by the UN, the newly
minted state of Israel began a nearly two-year existential war
against surrounding Arab countries. That, after a year of civil
war, between Arab and Jew.
And the Jews fought for every kibbutz, every road, every town
and every city. Even when Jerusalem was besieged, the newly-minted
Israeli forces would take terrible casualties, bringing supplies in
through the long, mountainous road that linked Tel Aviv with
Jerusalem. Go there and you can still see the wrecked trucks on the
side of the highway.
In 1967 Arab figured they’d have another swing at the Jews. But
the Israelis, who had informers at every tier of Arab government,
pre-empted ’em and wiped out their enemies in six days. Six years
later, the Arabs had another shot. This time it was closer, but the
Jews won.
So where’s that leave us today? And how about the Palestinians?
Don’t they have just as much of a right to live in peace and
prosperity like the Jews? Of course. But peace is a two-way street,
honey. What do you do when there’s such a visceral hatred of Jews?
When kids happily recite hateful songs about the “wretched monkeys
and barbaric pigs.”?
The Israelis split from Gaza and what happened? The bombs
started to rain. Remove the check points, demolish the mighty west
bank wall, that’ll tap out at 700 clicks when it’s finished, and
what’ll happen? Suicide bombs, random shootings and massacres. Even
Islamic Jihad sheepishly admits that skittling Jews had gotten way
harder since the wall was built. Talk about taking away all the
fun.
Whatever happens, the Jews aren’t going anywhere. Never again
will they be led to indiscriminate slaughter. Never again. Never
again.
**********
The Middle East is not known for its
fabulousness. Afghanistan ain’t what you’d
call… progressive. No one’s reading about Jong’s “zippless
fuck” or the Female Eunech out there. Gals in school? Driving?
Working? It ain’t gonna happen. Saudi Arabia. Yemen. Wherevs. If
you’re a gal or you’re a guy kinky for dick in the Middle East,
it’s hell on earth.
But here in the city of Tel Aviv, girls and boys can flash eyes
at each other in public and swim together in revealing swimsuits
and not fear a vengeful brother or father. It’s a city where gay
men can openly lasso tongues and not cower under the threat of jail
or violence.
You’ve gotta admire somewhere that’s surrounded by countries
whose sole reason for getting up in the morning is the desire to
see it destroyed with as much fire and histrionics as possible. It
happens to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day in
1945 when the biggest of the death camps, Auschwitz, was liberated
by Soviet troops. A handful of survivors out of the six million
Jews killed by the German Final Solution.
But, again and again, year after year, wars, bombs, intifadas,
suicide hits, massacres, murders, reprisals, invasion and
propaganda. The people feel it. And it hairs ’em out. There’s the
ongoing tension that more rockets are going to be launched from
Lebanon or Gaza or maybe somewhere inside Israel. Tension that Iran
is going to get the bomb. Tension that Syria’s and Lebanon’s dirty
wars will drip across the border.
Of all the places in the world to fall into on such an
auspicious day is Tel Aviv, the nation’s second-largest city. What
a jewel in the desert it is. Palm trees line the six-lane highways.
The city is marked in the modernist style of architecture, public
buildings and apartment blocks designed by Jews, who’d studied at
the famous Bauhaus school of architecture, fleeing Nazi Germany.
White sand beaches stretch almost all the way to the border of
Lebanon. Drive an hour inland and you hit Jerusalem and its ring of
holy sights. And all this under that sublime Med climate of hot
summers and mild winters. Even in January, I sweat as I write in a
cafe soaked by the sun.
Life is somewhat perfect, you’d think. The people go to soccer
games, they watch Big Brother, they argue and they shovel
impressive amounts of hummus and bread into their gourds. But the
more the world turns, the less some things change. Hamas announced
on Holocaust Remembrance Day that it would never accept the
two-state solution or “give up one inch of the land of
Palestine.”
On a two-page spread of daily news in the Jerusalem Post the
nine stories are: US Senate may fracture over Iran sanctions.
Tehran won’t dismantle any of its nuclear program; Hamas cell
captured; Ministry official assassinated; Israeli PM says peace can
only come when Palestininians recognise a Jewish state; US is
detaching itself from being the world’s policeman; Ex-CIA head says
US would use force to to stop Iran.
In the comment section, the lead piece is, “Exposing the myth of
the Arab bystander to the Holocaust.”
Can you imagine what it’s like to’ve created a model society
amid dictatorships, military juntas and artificially created
kingdoms and yet every single day you wonder if it’ll be your
last? And that because of the poisonous relationship the west has
with Middle Eastern oil you fear a return to 1948 when the British
discreetly took the side of Israel’s genocidal enemies.
I asked the wife of a guy I met if she was going to have kids.
Standard small talk. “With this tension? Last year we were running
into bomb shelters. Do I want to bring a child into this?”
When I asked a young surfer if he felt tension between Jews and
Arabs he said of course he did, but “it’s our destiny to be chased.
It’s our destiny to be hunted.”
The surfer said whenever he travelled he was treated differently
once it became known he was an Israeli. He even tested the theory
on two Canadians while on vacation in Thailand. They asked his
nationality and he said he was Australian. An Australian! A beer
was poured down his throat and he was embraced like a brother.
When the surfer admitted that he was actually Israeli the mood
soured and he was chased out of the bar with taunts of “We wish the
Germans had succeeded.”
“We have a very stressful existence. You feel it all the time,”
he says.
Meanwhile, Iran inches closer to the bomb and we flippantly talk
about fairness and a level-playing field; about the plight of a
people used as pawns by the thugs of Hamas.
One of the filmers I’m driving around the country with admits
that he thought Israel would be a repressive, backward and somewhat
terrifying country.
“I mean, because of everything they’ve done to the Arabs,” he
said.
And yet he found a desert in bloom, the friendliest bars he’d
ever been to and streets safe to stagger around drunk in at three
am; men who could snap your neck in a second politely moving away
in crowded nightclubs, the sea of smiling people parting like Mo’s
Red Sea two millennia previous. Pretty army gals in fitted khaki
uniforms and freckled faces with machine guns swinging off their
backs. Smoking in restaurants (social!) and tables dressed in bowl
after bowl of hummus and baba ghanoush and giant skewers of lamb
and chicken and cow (but defs no hog). The blue and white flag. The
star of David.
*********
I took a little gang of surf pals with me to
Iz. A surf trip for the mag I started (Stab)
and that ran in issue number 75. The mag’s site
stabmag.com actually ran this story but pulled it
when it attracted a little heat. Anti-semitism. It’s everywhere,
baby.
Anyway, it’s interesting, important even, to note that all of
’em wanted to swing to Israel for the experience of… being
there. The home of the three great religions. The hottest spot on
earth, politically, culturally. And they were going to come even if
it meant a Sydney-LA-New York- Tel Aviv (Craig Anderson) or
Sydney-Bangkok-with-overnight layover-Istanbul-Tel Aviv (the rest)
odyssey. Creed McTaggart and Dion Agius flew the national carrier
El Al and were torn apart prior to boarding. Dion’s Cairo and Dubai
stamps in his passport and the pair’s artful, but dishevelled,
appearance, were clues that maybe they weren’t just Christian
pilgrims headed for the holy land. They were taken down two flights
of stairs at Bangkok airport and pushed into a basement room.
Interrogation!
“How do you make money?”
“By surfing.”
“How much”
“Well, I make (censored) and Creed makes (censored).”
“You live like this?”
“Well, yeah.
“And you come to Israel… for waves? But you live in
Australia? We have no waves! Why do you go to Egypt? Why do you go
to Dubai?”
When Dion and Creed got on the jet, clear of any suspicion they
were carting dynamite, they marvelled at it’s zig-zagging flight
path on the back-of-the-seat TV screen. Left, right, up and down, a
curious and illogical route to Israel. But, yes! El Al can’t fly
over Islamic countries like Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Saudi
Arabia. They’re Jews!
Thirty-six hours of planes, lounges and airport hotels. And,
yeah, we waited for swell. This is the Med, after all, and even if
it at its most eastern point and therefore open to enough fetch to
deliver eight-foot waves you make sure there’s going to be waves
unless you wanna play bat and ball on Hilton Beach.
And you land at Ben Gurion airport, a stunning, hyper-modern
creation made with Jerusalem stone and you drive along highways as
perfect as anything in Singapore and you see the Tel Aviv
university and the Opera house and the green fields and the rad mix
of Brutalist concrete and art deco architecture.
And you go to surf and the surfers freak when Craig Anderson and
Josh Kerr, mostly, but also with reflected heat on Creed and Dion,
surf their waves.
“I love your style Craig Anderson! Today is a special day!
“Josh Kerr! Josh Kerr surfs my waves!”
And amid screams of “Op! Op! Op! Op! and drop-ins and the
happiest of chaos, we surf. We surf in raging onshores and in dead
glass. Six-to-eight-foot burgers, four-foot wedges and in between
beachbreaks that behave like the dreamiest D-Bah.
And at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest sight in all
of Judaism, while Hassidim make their frenzied prayers and a boy
takes his bar mitzvah, a voice rings out, “Craig Anderson, you’re
my favourite surfer! I love Slow Dance!”
At the Jaffa gate, the ancient entry to the Old City, while we
zip around on segways that’ve been thoughtfully provided by a very
nice man called Ron from Corona beer, a group of gals sing out,
“Craig Anderson we love you!”
We take pastries, dates and beer on the beach after floating in
the radically salty Dead Sea where our wet hair drips into our eyes
and causes the most excruciating pain. We drive and we drive but
there are no roadhouses or billboards just cherry blossoms and
fields of green with water pumps painted in lavender and past that
Israeli prickly fruit of the cactus, the Sabras, also the name of
Jews born in Israel, and all under the loveliest of winter sun.
“I like the Jewish steez,” says Creed.
When I leave, the prettiest teen customs gal, one of many
serious Sabras working security, looks at me as she searches me and
says, “I believe someone may have tried to get you to carry a bomb
on board the plane.”
Oh, honey, I love your honesty, but if you only knew! Tel Aviv,
Israel, you steal my heart!
Special thanks: I wanna thank my former
Bondi-living pal Yossi Zamir for carting me and the boys the length
and breadth of Israel, from Tel Aviv to Haifa to Jerusalem and
everywhere else. Every whim, every need, every technical glitch,
he’d attend to with calm air you’d expect from a former IDF
warrior. Mickey, Tel, you were rad, Hilla for the cute Topsea hats,
the manager of the beachfront hotel where we stayed (Leonardo Bazel
Hotel) for cutting us a deal (did I mention that Tel Aviv is crazy
expensive?), Oren Maor from Landver Cafe and Roza Bar for all the
grinds, the booze, the red carpet experience, Omer Shenar, Nimrod
Glazner, Alon Evron, Rhythm Israel, Quiksilver, Rusty, Carver,
Trash Surf Shop, Billabong (these real nice co’s bought our gang
tickets) and the men behind the labels, Haiin Sakal, Dotan
Markovich, Micky Cook,Tzaki Housw, Yoav Bilu,Tal Falach, Boaz
Tamir, Eshay Asher.
