hatikva

travel writing is an art in which i have no experience. but the question keeps getting asked: what did you make of it? the question is asked like it would not be asked, were we talking about italy, spain or greece – even though these countries apparently compare not too badly to israel, climatewise, that is. i‘m not big on southern europe, so i wouldn‘t know whether things that struck me about israel could be experienced in a similar fashion in those countries, though i do know that some have to be unique to the „holy land“. i‘m calling it the „holy land“ not because it is „holy“ to me, as i do not believe in such things, but in recognition of the unsurpassed importance this place holds for so many people. This land means so much to so many different people, for such different reasons – for me it is unique in that it is the one place i have read the most about without ever having been there. until recently, that is. i read about it out of interest fuelled by „guilt by association“, as m. would say, as well as – primarily – an interest fuelled by a deep rooted commitment to ideas of justice and a never-ending thirst for understanding how something like the holocaust could ever be allowed to take place (read my forthcoming book on the history of international law for an ever longer-winded take on that). well, yeah, right, but what was it like, then? enough of the excuses, get on with the show! 

coming into ben gurion-airport, i am surprised at how relaxed everything is. the differences to arriving in, say, germany or australia are there, but more subtle than i expected. i was prepared for an experience akin to my arrival in new york in october 2001, but no. the biscuit is taken by annoying ex-russians with german passports, not big guys with guns. sure, the percentage of jews is higher than at an arrivals hall in germany or australia, but come on, that in itself is hardly surprising. 

what do i see on my first visit to israel? the main thing i see is that i do not want it to be my last visit. true, i do not like haggling about prices and i‘m bigger on a bit of quiet than the majority in this place, but the feeling of a community searching for its place within the world and within itself is ever present here – and it makes for an unbelievably rich experience. questions remain unanswered, because they are not asked or there are no words to put them into. who/how do you ask what it feels like to live in a place where you cannot enter a restaurant without going through a security check? in israel, „our“ way of looking at things is put into question. not dramatically, but in a very subtle way. the experience of a bomb scare on our last night (streets are cleared, we have to move from our nice table on the porch to a place inside as a probably harmless suspicious object is blown up) is just an unsurprising confirmation of the clichés i expected, taken in stride by our local companions. not upsetting, more like, reassuring. we‘re in a young country. we‘re in a country that people have opinions on, like they don‘t have on, say, norway. nothing against norway, where i‘ve never been. in israel i see a diverse range of people on the people that i wouldn‘t expect to see in norway (i could be wrong). but mention the word „arab“ and it‘s likely to cause an uneasy feeling. this can be explained, yet it doesn‘t fit in with my expectations of how a society should function. then again, which society functions that way? in the end, the situation in israel is not only more extreme, but also more visible. we were on a trip to hebron with a great guy from b‘tselem and the conclusion we came to is that nowhere in this world does one get this unique combination of human rights abuses and the freedom to report about them. mindblowing!

 

so i leave israel after a packed week with the most diverse emotions, probably summed up nicely by my experience of the visit at the jabotinsky institute in sun-filled tel aviv. i am convinced that jabotinsky was one of the bad guys and that the settlers i do not agree with agree with him a lot. but i can‘t help but cry a little when his story is told and i can‘t help but laugh a lot when it‘s told through a rather hilarious multimedia-installation. never mind the „conversation“ his „son“ has with him, check out the presentation on illegal immigration in the 1930s! it‘s one of a kind.