Negation of the Diaspora

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Photos by Jacob Blumenfeld.

Field Notes March 5th, 2015

Negation of the Diasporaby Jacob Blumenfeld

Clowders of cats wander the streets of Tel Aviv like stranger kings to whom all must pay theirrespect. Lying under chairs, sitting on top of cars, relaxing in cafes, they settle on other people’sproperty without regard for anyone or anything. A friend tells me a story: When the British ruledover Palestine, there was a massive rat infestation. To solve the problem, they introduced cats allover the country. One population was displaced, and another took its place. This story, like mostnarratives that circulate about Israel, is false. There were always cats here, and they come not fromsome mistaken British policy, but from the ecology of the region itself. Yet its falseness contains amoment of truth: no origins are given here, nothing is taken for granted as a fact of history—everything is contested terrain.

Here’s another example. Sitting in a café in the hipFlorentin district of Tel Aviv, I ask a few leftist friendsabout the war in Gaza last summer. “Horrible,unnecessary,” they say. “Some people just cannot believethat not every war is absolutely essential for the survivalof the country, that some are rather functional tomaintain the occupation.” Tell me about the anti-warprotests. “We were attacked, called traitors, no one fromthe left parties would officially endorse the protestseither.” None except the Jewish-Arab Marxist party,Hadash, which has only a few seats in the Knesset. Noteven Meretz would support the protestors.

On a different night in a different bar with different Israelis, I ask the same questions about thesummer war. “Horrible, unnecessary,” one woman answers. “Some people just cannot believe thatwe are constantly under attack, that these wars are necessary for our survival.” She tells me aboutthe tunnels that Hamas built, the rockets, the sirens, the bomb shelters. The “hippies” who protestedat Rabin Square enraged her. “Fools” she says, “but they have the right to be stupid.”



Wandering through Allenby Street between chabniks and hipsters, soldiers and synagogues, I fall

into a little bookstore overflowing with dusty paperbacks of Hebrew, French, German, Yiddish and

Russian poetry and American science fiction, overhearing a conversation between the owner and a

customer about skyscrapers, mafia, too many Americans, and remember the good old days when this

used to be a socialist country. Cramped, crushed, I escape into the winter sun, landing on a beach

packed with people playing paddleball. Passing by Bialik Street and the homes of Hebrew artists,

turning down Rothschild Boulevard where sushi stands and juice shops dot the walkway, I glance at

hundreds of black, brown, yellow, red, and green soldiers entering a museum for their “culture” day,

a museum about the history of the very army they are serving in. Tasting Israeli dim sum and local

craft beers at the Carmel Market, then stuffing myself at a little Yemeni hummus shop a few streets

away, I stop to catch a breath with a pastry at an Arab bakery in Jaffa. At the Super Jude kiosk, I find

the übercool Berlin drink, ClubMate, now with Hebrew labels. Brooklyn style vegetarian cafes run

by a women’s collective serve bagels near Ben Yehuda Street. Even the army is going vegan.

White Bauhaus buildings remade as new with old chic stand pure next to decrepit, empty shells of

homes. Avoiding birthright and birthwrong tour groups, I meander down the boardwalk,

overhearing Hebrew mixed with English, French mixed with Russian, Arabic mixed with Hebrew. In

South Tel Aviv at the ghostly shopping-mall-bus-station-shantytown, asylum seekers from Eritrea

sell trinkets while Ethiopian Israelis guard the doors with AK47s. Anti-fascist graffiti of the ultras

supporting the Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer team on one wall, messianic nihilist graffiti supporting the

self-destruction of Israel on another. Raving religious Jews jump out of a bumping techno van at the

corner of King George and Nahalat Binyamin, dance for a few minutes to German beats, trying to

recruit some fresh blood for the ecstatic love of Adonai. Even Jews need to be converted to Judaism

sometimes.

Everyone here complains, whether it’s the rent, the wars, the politicians. Gentrification,

immigration, annihilation: pick your poison. Kvetching didn’t die with the diaspora, but solidified

into a national identity. Another day of sun, another day of hell. Sababa. Sipping disgusting Israeli

coffee with a few friends, all from military families, now radical leftists. They are philosophers, doing

critical theory and feminism. Some lived in the states for a while, and are now back in Tel Aviv.

Radicalized—or at least opened to the left—in their university days, when the “campus would not

remain silent” around the second intifada. Coming back after the financial crisis and Arab Spring to

a daily life of class resentment and permanent war, they wonder why they returned. At least the food

is good, they chuckle. In a renovated warehouse club at the harbor in Jaffa, I talk to a bartender who

complains about the Arab Spring because it cut off the good weed supply to Israel. What about the

uprisings? I ask. What about them?

In 2011, the biggest social movement in Israeli history brought hundreds of thousands to the streets

to protest against high rents and low wages, in effect, good old class rage. Not necessarily working

class, but rage nonetheless against the economic status quo. These tent protests did not attack

capitalism, did not even connect their woes to the economics of the occupation, and so ended up

with some new parliamentary candidates, some new populism, some new old slogans. What was left



of this momentary massive outburst? Marx’s Capital was republished in Hebrew, but no Marxistsemerged. The blossom of class war soon wilted when security returned as the only conceivablehorizon of politics. Yet something changed. Cooperatives sprouted all over the country, urbankibbutzim bloomed and connected into a network of self-managed, self-organized bars, cafes, andrestaurants, in short, a sustainable subculture. Yet the rents, prices, and wages didn’t budge an inch.In the face of neoliberal restructuring, when massive street protests fail to put a dent in austerity, it’snormal that people turn to each other to collectively share the burden.

Waking up in Jaffa to the call of prayer from the mosque, grabbing a coffee on Rabbi Pinchas Street,where artists, proletarians, and the haute bourgeoisie mingle, picking up some seasoned bread atAbulafia’s “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies” bakery, you can almost forget where you are forone second, before it comes crashing down on you like a guillotine. On a warm winter morning, abusload of people are stabbed by a “lone wolf” terrorist by the Maariv Bridge. A few days later, somesoldiers are blown up by Hezbollah on the northern border, allegedly as retaliation for an Israelistrike a week earlier. Election ads surround Rabin Square from the right and center parties, eachwith the same slogan: It’s either us or them. The Arab parties are united—communist, nationalist,and Islamist—due to a new law requiring a higher percentage of votes to enter Parliament. Anti-Semitic attacks in Europe are making headlines every other week or so, with Israelis shrugging. Nowyou see, someone tells me. A war in the north is coming, everyone says, and another in Gaza. It’s justa matter of time. How to prevent it? End the occupation, one burly guy tells me, and stop theblockade. Another laughs and replies, why don’t we just shoot ourselves and skip the collateraldamage? A third woman chimes in that Israel should just annex it all and make them full Israelicitizens. But what about Israel being a Jewish State, the first guy says, a permanent refuge forpersecuted Jews? This is a capitalist state, she answers, not a Jewish one. Money doesn’t care aboutour gods.

The special exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is currently on the concept of Erasure. Whilethe pieces are mostly conceptual, one wonders about the choice of theme itself. What is being erasedhere? What is inerasable? Perhaps the fear of collective erasure itself is the subtext? Compared toGermany or the United States, the Holocaust is barely memorialized here. The Jewish DiasporaMuseum has only one room dedicated to it. On the streets, markers of local suicide attacks or signsdocumenting Jewish militia activity in Mandate Palestine are more common. The museums arethemselves relics of another era, when cheesy installations and romantic docudramas of history weremeant to inspire the next generation of Sabras to embrace the early Zionist values of collectivism,idealism, and sacrifice. Today, those words are demonized attributes of a leftist bogeyman that darenot return unless you want ISIS and Hamas to eat your children alive. That is, unless you’re talkingabout the army.

I’m on a bus with 20 Germans and Americans touring the West Bank with Breaking the Silence, ahuman rights N.G.O. composed of ex-soldiers who show people the reality of life under occupation.Driving through the South Hebron Hills, our guide describes his transition from religious,ambitious, wide-eyed soldier to conflicted, morally-torn, human rights activist. We see land that



can’t be developed because the laws are so convoluted that not even a real estate tycoon can scam it.Families moved from one acre to the next and back again depending on some baroque mix ofOttoman, British, Jordanian, and Israeli law. Archaeological digs displace the exact people whothemselves would love to work at such sites. Settlers attacking villagers protected by soldiers, whoare then reprimanded for interfering with settlements. I ask a Palestinian farmer about his hopes forthe future, and he tells me, we had a future once, when Jews and Arabs worked together for peaceduring the Oslo days; but then you killed Rabin. Seems like the dream of the ’90s is alive inPalestine. The Germans and Americans on the tour rattle on about apartheid, boycott, racism; thetour guide says it’s a bit more complicated than that.

In the middle of Haifa, you can walk into bars whereeverything is in Arabic, or a university cafeteria whereDruze, Jews, Muslims, and Christians are all discussingsome Russian text in Hebrew. Thank God we haveB.D.S. (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction) to boycottsuch horrors. An Israeli woman I met in Haifa justreturned from years living abroad in a peacefully boringcountry to find the prices in Israel tripled, the rentoutrageous, and the job market impossible. Grown-upsare moving in with their elder parents, debt is becominga part of life; the promised land of the start-up nation isrunning out of spiritual credit. “So why did you come back?” I ask. “Where else would I go?” sheresponds. “Europe?” Amos Oz recounts a funny story in How to Cure a Fanatic (2010): “When myfather was a little boy in Poland, the streets of Europe were covered with graffiti, ‘Jews, go back toPalestine,’ or sometimes worse: ‘Dirty Yids, piss off to Palestine.’ When my father revisited Europe50 years later, the walls were covered with new graffiti, ‘Jews, get out of Palestine.’

In Letters to an American Jewish Friend (2013), Hillel Halkin argues that Jewish life in thediaspora is on a slow but sure decline into insignificance, and there is an ethical imperative for Jewsto migrate to Israel if they still want to be part of Jewish life. The diaspora is fine if you want to besomething else, but if you want to be Jewish, there’s only one place for you, Zion. But does Israeltruly escape the diaspora? In Philip Roth’s soul-bending book The Counterlife (1998), it is the Jewsof Israel who are condemned to repeat the diaspora: enclosed by enemies all around, isolated fromthe world, always anxious, self-deprecating, fearful. The Jews in America, on the other hand, arefree, confident, successful, happy, and proud to be who they are. In his even funnier book, OperationShylock (1994), Roth takes this logic to its absurd conclusion, where a double of the author himself,while visiting Israel, advocates diasporism, the movement for massive Jewish emigration to Europe,where they’ll supposedly be welcomed with open arms. This idea sums up a lot of left thinking on“the Jewish question” today. Why not just send them back to diaspora?

One of the pillars of Zionist ideology was the concept of “negation of the diaspora,” shlilat ha’galut.What does it mean to negate the diaspora? According to Hegel, there are two types of negation:



indeterminate and determinate. A determinate negation not only rejects a claim, but alsosimultaneously births a new claim from within the critique of the old. Zionism didn’t just want tonegate the diaspora; it wanted to create a new idea of Jewish life: hence, a determinate negation. Butwith every such negation, something of the old is preserved and incorporated into the new. Tel Avivis that remnant of diasporic negation that not even the Zionists could eliminate.

Is there still a difference between the diaspora Jew and Israeli Jew? In Joseph Cedar’s film Footnote(2011), the struggle between diaspora and Zion is restaged as one between father and son withinIsrael. The old diaspora Jew—stubborn, rude, bookish—is being upstaged in his own field ofTalmudic research by his son—strong, warm, personable. The clash of generations climaxes in a caseof mistaken identity, in which the son must decide how to deal with the obsolescence of his father’srelevance. But the father never really disappears, always returning to haunt the son, like a wanderinggod forever unsatisfied with its creation.

One of the funniest Israeli writers today, Etgar Keret, tells stories about the problems of narrative ina time of utter confusion. In some sense, his writing is a retrieval of the centrality of storytelling forJewish life, diasporic life especially, in a place where stories are crushed by facts, wars, andpropaganda. In his very short parable, “Pick a Color,” a silvery God arrives in a wheelchair to visit ayellow priest comforting a black husband mourning a white wife. In response to the priest’s insult,God retorts with the following:

What do you think … that I created all of you like this because it’s what I wanted? Because I’m some kind ofpervert or sadist who enjoys all this suffering? I created you like this because this is what I know. It’s the bestI can do.

Alas, not even a god can save us.

How do you explain the work of Sayed Kashua to a Zionist, Anti-Zionist, diasporist, or nationalist?One of the best living writers in the Hebrew language, Kashua is an Israeli Arab or PalestinianIsraeli, depending on your linguistic politics. His stories, dialogues, and incredibly hilarioustelevision show Arab Labor provide an image of diaspora within the homeland, the Arab minoritywithin a Jewish state, reflecting on the paradox of belonging and non-belonging that has plaguedJewish life for millennia. In one episode, the Arab family seeks to impress their Jewish neighbors bystaging a “traditional” Muslim holiday dinner. The joke is that the dinner is a complete fake, anattempt to appear “authentic” to impress the Jewish family whose Passover Seder impressed them.The Jews fall for it, duped by their own orientalist respect for a foreign culture. The level of satire,critique, irony, and double-consciousness at play in this one scene is enough to give any Larry Davidsketch a run for its money.

If only life was so funny. Perhaps nothing better captures the tragic comedy at the core of Israelisociety as Nadav Lapid’s film The Policeman (2011). Symptomatically arriving the same year as themassive tent protests in 2011, it captures the class divisions of a society caught on the edge of an



abyss it cannot recognize for fear of falling over. On the one side, a fraternal order of young elitepolicemen bonding over family and loss, on the other side, a group of young anarchists planning aspectacular action to wake the public up to its own misery. The slow burn of the film is punctuatedby the repetition of an insurrectionary manifesto that the female protagonist reads with vigor. Thedialogue of the youth expresses the hopeless hope of a generation that knows no future and can’tidentify with the past. Caught in the pincers of the present, they seek a messianic rupture with deadtime. But the messiah always comes too late. In the following scene, two young revolutionariesdebate their manifesto. I give them the last word:

It’s time for the poor to get rich and for the rich to start dying. The Jewish State has become a state of mastersand slaves. Those who have a private plane to take them wherever they want and those who don’t have moneyfor a bus ride. An evil state yelling at us to stay tranquil. Tranquility is a lie, silence is mud. At least thePalestinians know they’re occupied.

Why mention the Palestinians here? We have to make it simple. Israel is the Western state with the biggest

gap between rich and poor. World Champions.

It’s time for the poor to get rich and for the rich to start dying. The majority is numbed with hatred of theother. This is obvious. The minority, perceiving itself as free, is numbed with individual freedom and free sex.Today nothing is less subversive than sex. We, a group of comrades who refuse to detach what we think fromthe way we live. We—at the age where supreme happiness is not sleep or leisure. We have decided to act.Herzl wrote: “The Jews, precisely because of their history—”

Forget about Herzl.

CONTRIBUTOR

Jacob Blumenfeld

JACOB BLUMENFELD lives in Berlin, at home in diaspora, serving proletarian beer and bourgeois philosophy for a living.

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Negation of the Diaspora

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