Tag Archives: Middle East

Israel

The wonderful world of Guy Bechor

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Guy Bechor, while exemplifying the legitimate fears of Israelis and Jews, writes a confused mess, seemingly sent from some mythical world invented by 20th-century European fascists.

Deep breaths. I just finished reading an article on Ynet, by Guy Bechor, titled “A Middle Eastern lesson“; it was shared by Peace Now on Facebook to “give insight to Israeli fears”. That it does. It also gives insight into a romantic populist world-view, forged of myth and nationalism, in which countries are populated not by people, but by peoples (German: Völker), embodied by their leaders (German: Führer). And while writing this imaginative nonsense, he manages to call those who would strive for peace “gullible”. Deep breaths.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Fable

Bechor begins with a fable of Aesop’s… Something about wolves and sheep and dogs. This is a good way to start, as it puts the reader in exactly the mindset needed to believe Bechor’s hysteria. There are three kinds of players in Bechor’s world: the wolves, who are really bad, the sheep, who are just helpless, and the dogs, who are not wolves and no simple sheep, but can at least defend themselves.

(BTW, is this fable the original version of the allegory in Team America, where it’s “assholes”, “pussies” and “dicks”, respectively, in exactly those roles?)

Genius

Having set the stage, we now go on to discuss the actual complex realities of one of the most politically difficult regions currently to be found on our planet. Except there are no complex realities, since Bechor is so much more intelligent than us morons.

Allow the genius to teach us the ways of the Middle East: it boils down to Arabs being brutal and violent, and Jews and Christians having to create heavily-armed nation-states to defend themselves. I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen! At last, Bechor has revealed to us the simplicity of the Middle East, and there it is, in one sentence! Thank me later.

Facts, of course, are irrelevant. In Bechor’s world, things are simpler, and more fantastic. In Bechor’s world, Christians are being “butchered” in post-revolution Tunisia and Egypt (citation needed). In Bechor’s world, what’s happening in Syria is about Arabs killing minorities. There is no context, there are no politics to speak of, just a people being evil.

Sin

What Bechor does here is, to me, an immense sin. Like certain Führers of times gone by, Bechor sees the world as composed of peoples, acting as united wholes. There are Arabs, there are Christians, there are Jews. Wolves, sheep, and dogs (his words, not mine). Never mind that someone can be an Arab and Christian at the same time, that kind of complexity is incompatible with this simple, simple world. It is divided into nations, these nations are in some kind of eternal struggle, and, hence, they need armies. End of story.

What’s worse, when it comes down to choosing who represents these nations, again Bechor sides with evil. It is the Assads and the Mubaraks and the Ghaddafis and the Ben Alis, and their paid thugs, who show Bechor’s “true Middle East” — not the masses of people, oppressed by those asshats for decades, who finally take to the streets, put their lives on the line, and demand their freedom. Not the soldiers and officers who defect or desert when ordered to fire on civilians. No, the Führer is the nation, and the people must follow.

Excuse me while I throw up.

Morality

But if all that weren’t enough, of course Bechor must also paint the Left as a dangerous enemy.1

[…] outside elements – and to my regret domestic elements as well – try to weaken the IDF via needless commissions of inquiry, incitement and criticism, propaganda, and an effort to taint the army’s moral prestige.

I don’t know, Guy, don’t you think the army’s moral prestige might also be tainted by soldiers trashing houses, systematically humiliating civilians and prisoners as a kind of sport then (sometimes) posting photos on Facebook, or firing white phosphorous on residential neighborhoods? Don’t you think that being put in the position of policing an occupied, largely civilian population, with mainly just combat training as preparation, might be having some ill effects on the army’s morality as well? Don’t you think commissions of inquiry might help make sure soldiers stick to the IDF’s moral code, and incidentally increase its moral prestige by proving it can take scrutiny? And most of all, is a reputation for morality really more important than actual moral behavior?

I don’t know, man.

Truth

The Middle East is a difficult place to be. Bechor is right in that the dictators’ response to the Arab Spring is revealing. It reveals the dictators’ true colors to anyone who had a doubt.

Yet the revolutions themselves are revealing a reality that should have been clear, but is clearly lost on Bechor and his ilk: the Führer ist not the Volk. The people under dictatorship are not represented by their so-called “leaders” — they are their victims.

Rivers of blood flow through the Middle East, as usual. This is a difficult time, and even more difficult is to guess what comes next.

But the basic and obvious reality — one which I’ve incidentally heard from at least two Arabs I’ve spoken with here in Germany — is that peace is in everyone’s best interest. Most Israelis know it, on some level. Most Arabs know it on some level. And finally, we may just see some governments in the Middle East which strive for everyone’s best interest, and not just the interests of the dictators and the elites behind them.

Footnotes

  1. Fun fact: Dachau, the first German concentration camp, was built just weeks after Hitler took power, and its first inmates were German lefties, imprisoned for being in the opposition. [↩]
Israel

Not funny. Gaza again.

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This blog started with a post about Gaza. In recent days, Israel has been escalating the conflict on the Southern front while Hamas pursue aggressive diplomacy, i.e. firing rockets while asking for a ceasefire. I feel like I have to do something. Yet all I can really do is write.

The enigmatic Six in Battlestar Galactica incessantly reminds us: “all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again”.

Remember, in late 2008 we embarked upon the very same path, unleashing massive amounts of firepower on Gaza, killing at least 700 civilians and launching us into Israel’s most isolated couple of years in its history. Back then the idea was the same: hit them so hard that they can’t hit us back.

The problem is that this logic never, ever works. We’ve been trying it for decades. We kill them, even demolish their infrastructure, but in the process we give so many people cause to hate us that within a few years their ranks are replenished and out to get us again.

Chatting with a right-wing friend the other day, I said something about the families of the victims and how they’ll feel about us after we take their siblings/children/parents away. He said the mistake is to leave any family. (I’m not sure whether he was serious or not — this was a textual conversation and I didn’t feel like pursuing the topic.)

Yet even if we follow this sick logic to its conclusion — total annihilation of the rival tribe — we will gain no peace. We will only push the frontier a little further, gaining enemies in places where nobody used to give a damn about us. We will only gain international isolation and brain drain, as people leave what has become of our country, a country created by and for the victims of genocide.

Observation: there are some 11 million Palestinians in the world (according to Wikipedia). Total genocide of the Palestinians will give Israel the dubious honor of having surpassed the Nazis’ genocide of Jews. (I suppress nausea, breathe deep, continue.)

Incidentally, it will not end all of our haters.

So long as we use violence, we invite violence. The more we kill, the more people will want to kill us. So long as we continue acting as we’ve acted, we will not break the cycle. Hamas could try to break the cycle as well. But bombing Gaza is not the way to convince them to do so. Israel’s citizens and few remaining allies must demand and enforce a ceasefire.

We now have Iron Dome, a system that can destroy rockets fired out of Gaza in mid-air. Instead of financing another war, build more Iron Dome units. Fund peace proposals. Pay Arabic-speaking copywriters, pay printers, and bomb Gaza with flyers. Stop wasting money and lives on a cycle of violence in which Israelis and Palestinians – especially the poorer of both groups – have their everyday lives disrupted or destroyed, every day.

 

All I can do is write, but for days I have not been able to. Every time violence flares up against Israel, I am reminded of how urgent it is to strive towards peace. There is always a sense of the inevitable to it; knowing that my country continues to use violence, I know we will be faced with violence.

It’s painful, and all I can do is write. It seems like so little. I don’t know if I’ll write about this again any time soon.

For now I’ll just continue to try not to think about it, while thinking about it all of the time. I’m an Israeli; denial’s my life.

 

UPDATE (two hours later):

I’ve just read that there’s some kind of tacit cease-fire, apparently as of last night. I hope this lasts and the rhetoric of “final escalation” loses out to some common sense. A strategy that has failed us dozens of times will continue to fail us no matter how many times we try.

Israel

In Israel, denial isn’t a river

Written on March 30

Demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah.
Demonstrators at Sheikh Jarrah. Even the fiercest anti-occupation activists benefit from the state of things.

I am on my way to Augsburg, where I will be giving two talks about democratic education. But while my the train heads to Southern Germany, my mind is in the Middle East, where my involvement in democratic education began, where people are killing one another, perpetuating the conflict while convincing themselves and each other that they are acting to end it.

After preparing notes for tonight’s talk, I watched Occupation 101, a pro-Palestinian (but not anti-Israeli) documentary. As always when confronted with a non-Israeli, non-Zionist view of the conflict, watching the movie was highly uncomfortable. As much as I read and write about my country’s wrongs, there’s still something deeply unpleasant about having it criticized from without. I found myself constantly checking how much longer the movie runs, but managed to watch through to the end, feeling it was important to see that side of things. The movie is not perfect, but I do recommend it. It illustrates the horrors of our conflict, including Palestinian terrorism, but focussing on the unimaginable ongoing suffering of the Palestinians.

Many Israelis are going to dislike what I’m about to write, but it has to be said: Israeli existence is a state of denial. From the violent ideological settler to the fiercest anti-occupation activist, every Israeli profits from the state of things (me and my family included, of course). Not only do we profit, but one had best not think about what previous generations have done to ensure we do so well. It is utterly awful to think about the (few?) massacres and the destruction of (many!) villages1 that led to the fleeing of so many Palestinians and subsequently to the post-1948 situation, in which Jews are a vast majority within sovereign Israel. It is particularly awful to think about because it stands in such stark contrast to the kind of society that has developed within that land in these past 63 years. How can we understand our existence as a fundamentally cosmopolitan, modern, diverse society while thinking about what was essentially an ethnic cleansing, one understood as such by its perpetrators (who may have used the euphemism “Judaization”)?2 And how can our limited human minds possibly reconcile between the terrific life one can lead in Tel Aviv and the hellish desperation of Gaza refugee camps?

The answer is that we, all of us, every single Israeli, try to reject agency over the bad things.3 Personally, my way of rejecting agency has been to leave the country and, for a while, try not to know about what goes on there. (This blog is a testament to the failure of that approach.) For many on the Left, the way is to blame the mainstream, or the Right, or the settlers. For the center, I guess the way is to blame the “extremists” on both sides, particularly ideological settlers and Palestinian terrorists. For the Right, the way is apparently to blame the Palestinians and occasionally the Left.

But blaming other people, whether or not they are factually to blame, is counter-productive to improving the situation. No one group is entirely to blame for the conflict or its continuation — not the terrorists, nor the settlers, nor the governments, nor Israelis in general, nor Palestinians in general. When we blame others, we deny our own ability to change the situation. This absolves us for all those many moments in which we did nothing to stop the conflict, all the myriad ways in which we benefitted from the situation. It allows us, with clear conscience, to continue standing by while the conflict persists, to continue to benefit from the Israeli economy that thrives on it. Unfortunately, this is necessary to some degree, because tossing and turning all night for shame and guilt certainly won’t help our ability to change things.

However, the least we can do is to acknowledge reality, warts and all. Reality is that, one way or another, our side used force to cause hundreds of thousands of people to leave the land in 1947-8.4 Reality is that our side has never treated the Arabs under Israeli control equally — inside or outside of our borders, with or without citizenship. Reality is that we have been part of making the lives of a few million people incredibly difficult over generations. Reality is that while we have a state, the victims of ’48 and their offspring are for the most part consigned to life of destitute poverty in refugee camps.5

Make no mistake: one can acknowledge these basic, undeniable realities while holding any opinion on the political spectrum. One may hold that all of these realities are justified because of a Biblical claim to the land or the necessity of a Jewish nation-state. One may hold that these realities were the right and just response to violence and pressure towards Jews and towards Israel. Or one may hold that these realities obligate us to make amends and seek ways to right our wrongs. But we will make no progress while in denial of reality.

 

A final note

I don’t know my way around Palestinian politics, but it’s fair to assume similar issues apply there. I imagine those in favor of violent resistance — which keeps the conflict alive and heated — claim they have no choice and are forced into this course of action. I’m sure many Palestinians are in denial of the suffering violent resistance has caused, or simply choose to see that suffering as a necessary price for their liberation. But due to my near-total ignorance, I’ll leave it to Palestinian activists to deal with Palestinian denial and continue to focus on the Israeli side.

Footnotes

  1. Yuval Ben-Ami at +972 recently found a curious old map documenting some of these. [↩]
  2. Apropos Judaiziation, Max Blumenthal has a pretty good overview of the Jewish National Fund’s role in this ongoing project. [↩]
  3. Emily L. Hauser has an excellent post on this topic. [↩]
  4. Whether or not there were massacres, whether these people could be said to have been driven out or merely to have fled, and whether or not they considered themselves Palestinians at the time. [↩]
  5. As is often pointed out, this could have been resolved by our Arab neighbors offering them citizenship and housing. But clearly they are no more disposed to offer these to the refugees than we are. [↩]
Israel

The occupation defiles the Holy Land

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Barbed wire near the south edge of the West Bank

Yesterday morning, me and my mother embarked on a tour of the South Hebron Hills guided by Breaking The Silence. I highly recommend the tour, if you ever have an opportunity to take it. I was impressed at how positive it was. No anti-Zionistic sentiment seemed to be involved, just a sense of collective responsibility. During the tour, one of the things that repeatedly struck me was how beautiful the West Bank is — and what an eye-sore the occupation is, with its soldiers, vehicles, barriers and all.

Just now I was at the weekly demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, and again I was struck by the ugliness of the occupation. The Palestinian houses seem to be in much better shape than the homes occupied by settlers, which in one case sported badly graffiti’d stars of David all around its door.

I can easily understand why someone would want to build a house on the West Bank and live there, somewhat in isolation, surrounded by the charming hilly landscape. The thought is quite tempting, really.

But what are we doing to this country? The occupation disrespects not only the people who live here, but the very land itself! How do self-professed lovers of Israel support the regime that scars the landscape with vandalism and the colors of concrete and steel, jeeps and uniforms? You’d expect them to take better care of what they call a Holy Land.

Do those in favor of the settlements and occupation have some kind of fetish I’m not aware of, or are they simply intent not only on performing ugly deeds but on deforming a beautiful landscape?

Internet, Israel

Burning racism: Eden Abergil, at it again


Via Room 404 / Ido Kenan

Remember Eden Abergil, the young Israeli woman who became an instant Internet meme after posting photos from her army days in which she poses with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees? (If not, Google her.)

Ido Kenan over at Room 404 brings us some news from the famous Facebook profile. The Itamar massacre has prompted her to re-post one of the most memorable photos from, as the album was called, “the most beautiful time in her life” and spew some fresh unreflected racist hatred into the net.

Seen on the right, we have, from top to bottom, a video of (reportedly) soldiers abusing bound detainees, with the charming caption “death to the Arabssssssss”; then the picture that made Abergil famous with the caption of, roughly, “fuck you, stinking Arabs!!!”; and finally a video of images from the murder of the Fogel family in Itamar with the caption “let’ssssss do a Holocaust for the Arabs nowwww and immediatelyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!”.

Kenan reports that when a friend half-jokingly warned Abergil this all might wind up on TV, she replied “Death to the Arabsssss!!!! Let it show up!!!”

It’s worth noting that back after her “beautiful” pictures originally surfaced, she apologized.

H/t to Itamar Sha’altiel. This post is not a direct translation of Ido Kenan’s post, but still  mainly reproduces the information he posted, in English. Credit is due to him, I just thought this worth sharing in a way accessible to non Hebrew-speakers.

Government, Israel

What should our protest achieve?

International Solidarity Movement activists
International Solidarity Movement activists

I just talked with my mother about a certain Israeli-Palestinians protest movement which people she knows are involved in but she has decided not to take part in. Like many such discussions, it came down to a general question of what the goal of non-violent protest is supposed to be. Is it supposed to be about changing the minds of the Israeli public? Is it about informing people about wrongs being done in their name? Is it about giving the world an alternative to the official narrative? Is it just about generally getting the authorities to overreact so as to draw attention to their abusive behavior?

I think this is an important debate to have, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of actually doing something. My thinking in the past months has been that one very important goal is indeed re-education of anyone who’s willing to listen. Israelis are taught that we have a highly moral army used only for defense; it took me years to realize how inaccurate that is. Most people accept the occupation as a necessary evil without knowing quite how ridiculous, abusive and petty it has become. A lot can be achieved by just making sure concrete, current examples of this are out there. Many who accept the occupation might change their mind once they realize what it has made Israel become.

But there are problems with focussing on the ills of the occupation. First of all, it’s a hard thing to sustain. Following these abuses eventually just gets you down. What’s worse, many Israelis are disinclined to believe it when lefties report this kind of thing. They are distrustful and take us for dupes under hostile foreign influence. So if any change is to happen, the left certainly has to do a better job of creating public debate, and we have to be more convincing to average Israeli nationalists.

I don’t know. What do you think? Comments are open.

Image via Wikipedia

Education, Israel, Links

[Video] Elizabeth Lesser: Take “the Other” to lunch

Video 1 Comment

This excellent TED talk goes along the lines of what I’ve been thinking lately regarding Israeli politics and Israel/Palestine politics. Talking to the other sides is crucial in all conflicts, on whatever scale, internal or external — in a school, in a town, in a state, or between states. “Otherizing”, as Lesser calls it, is the seed of continued conflict and violence.

Government, Internet

Israel and the Enlightenment

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by nerissa's ring on Flickr

The Enlightenment achieved many things, some good, some bad. About a year ago, in a conversation, I realized that one of the good things was eliminating the role of religion in public discourse and policy in Europe. One of the bad things, perhaps, is stigmatizing spirituality in the personal sphere, an unfortunate side-effect of its elimination from the public sphere.

You see, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with people having faith in something supernatural, so long as they know their belief is their own business. In Israel, the Jewish religious establishment tied in with the state has never internalized the Enlightenment. The establishment, and the mainstream Judaism to which the secular majority belongs (together with some of the orthodox minorities) rejects the Enlightenment outright, denouncing it as “Hellenizing” and foreign.1

This is no accident, of course, as religion provides some of the classic arguments for the Zionist project and the resulting existence of the state. And indeed, when one views Israel through a naive Judeochristian lens, it’s really pretty amazing that a Jewish state with its capital in Jerusalem exists today. This fact, particularly in isolation, has tremendous emotional power, and the state clearly cannot afford to shut up about that kind of thing.

The problem is that religion-oriented political discourse has been losing currency in the developed world for a couple of centuries now. In most of Europe it’s a thing of wacky backwards foreigners and the crazy past. That the United States re-elected George W. Bush seven years ago is evidence that in America this is still a divisive issue.

Israel is swimming backwards in this current. Where the founding generation’s Judaism was a secular nationalism with some religious symbols, religion has been creeping into politics for decades. In recent months it’s been getting positively scary. As such, it’s probably too much to hope that Israel will realize sometime soon that in today’s world, you sound like a crazy person when you claim the Bible as an authority in your favor in a dispute over land.2

And as long as hasbara goes back and forth from sounding like an attempt to change the subject to sounding like the politics of a time predating the invention of the airplane, Israel will not convince the world of anything.

I remember there used to be a load of public outcry amongst the Israeli secular and reform regarding religious coercion (kfiya datit). What ever happened to that? Is that simply a battle we’ve already lost?

Footnotes

  1. Ironically, certain well-known European fascists called the Enlightenment a Jewish plot. All nationalist projects need an outside force to associate universalism and humanism with, so that they may be rejected. One cannot see all human beings as equal and at the same time consider one’s own nation especially important. [↩]
  2. Consciously or not, this is using an excuse that has little direct bearing on most people’s current reality but is used to justify gross injustice towards large groups of people. As such, it is morally reprehensible and should be rejected outright. [↩]
Israel

Israelis: Consider supporting BDS

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and besides the exams I had last week this is the main reason I haven’t posted anything in a while. What I’ve been thinking about is the situation in Israel/Palestine and how it could ever be solved. I hope to be writing more about this soon.

One aspect of the Israel/Palestine problem which seems undeniable is that — whatever the reasons behind Israel’s policies, no matter how valid or invalid the reasoning is, and regardless of who is to blame for this — the current policies create a reality which is harsh towards the Palestinians, even unbearable, while the Israeli population can lead more or less normal lives and act as if everything is okay. In the long run, the occupation is not sustainable — morally or practically — especially with “stability” in the Middle East disappearing before our eyes. What’s more, there are strong forces within Israeli politics which strive to further skew the situation against the Palestinians, and the opposition towards them is clearly far from capturing mainstream consensus. (I am willing to bring up specific examples for this if asked, but I assume everyone knows what I am talking about.)

With random violence against non-Jews in the news every day now I am convinced Israel is on the way towards a situation which will rob the Zionist enterprise and the very existence of the Israeli state of any last remnant of moral high ground they may possess. This is not a desirable situation as far as I’m concerned, because Israel is a great many things, many of them beautiful and amazing, even if some cause a shudder and are easier to just not think about.

I know how hard it is to do anything about this as an Israeli, in Israel or abroad. In Israel, it’s scary to talk about these things. People are aggressive and extreme in their reactions. Increasingly, the settlement movement — born as a Labor party enterprise, one should note — is succeeding in selling its narrative in which the settlements and the occupation they require are integral and inseparable from our state. However, we all know that the occupation — in which certain roads are only open to Jews, in which the rights of a new-born baby are predetermined to be extremely limited and largely ignored if they are Palestinian, or many and protected with force if they are a Jew — is morally unacceptable to begin with (even if you think it’s necessary at the same time) and simply unsustainable in the long run, as increasingly Israel becomes a state of minority rule over millions with reduced rights.

So what can we do? Well, one thing we can do is support BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. This is a series of measures taken by individuals, corporations, and governments (respectively) in order to isolate a rogue state, and it was used with great success to end the apartheid regime in South Africa. The right wing recognizes the power of BDS and is working on legislation to make it illegal for Israelis to speak out in support of it. The goal of BDS is to make the occupation unsustainable not only morally or in the long run but in immediate ways, as soon as possible. Its goal is to put international pressure on Israel to end the occupation, one way or another, by sending a clear message that a “temporary occupation” going on for decades without any exit strategy is not an acceptable thing for a member of the international community to engage in, and that Israel will only become more isolated if the occupation persists.

This is a tremendously difficult issue, and not the most straightforward approach for a citizen of a democratic state to influence their government’s policy. This is why, although I have read about BDS many times in the past months, I have not been sure what to think of it. This morning I read a very clear FAQ (Eng / Heb) targeted at residents of Israel and Israeli citizens abroad. If you fall into these categories, I urge you to read the FAQ and give this matter some thought.

Joining the statement is not much work, and certainly liberals, moderates and pragmatics in Israel have a lot of real work to do to change things from within. (Personally, I’m trying to figure out in what ways I could do that if I were to move back.) But with the rising waves of incitement and violent racism, with legislation brought in to Knesset every week to limit our rights and constrain political opposition to maintain the status quo, a little pressure from outside may go a long way to change the status quo and reign in the atrocities waiting to happen. The fact that Israelis support such measures is crucial to promoting them abroad. Moreover, if we are ever to normalize relations with the Palestinians, it is absolutely crucial to develop a sense of mutual solidarity in face of the current situation, which one day will be looked at as a period of history which people prefer not talk about too much.

I’m certain most Israelis disagree vehemently. I’d love to hear why in the comments — but please check the FAQ first so I don’t find myself copying and pasting from it in lieu of actual discussion. I can be convinced to change my mind and admit I was wrong, I promise!

Israel

The stranger in the locker room

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The locker room at my local swimming pool was unusually crowded on Saturday morning and the old-timers were looking for someone to blame. Someone said it was because of “those people from the university” – apparently their pool was closed for repairs and they invaded ours. Someone else said “how dare they,” until a third woman tried to make peace, declaring: “The pool belongs to everyone, whether new or old.”  Even though I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 21 years and am a heavy user of our sports facilities, I still wasn’t sure where I fit in: I am not part of the gaggle of elderly ladies who seem to go back together many decades; I only know a few faces and fewer names, and rarely exchange more than a polite hello and a smile. I wondered if they considered me “new” or “old.” I think they weren’t sure either, and the test was whether I would express solidarity with their group. While I was changing into my bathing suit I stayed out of it, but when I came back after a refreshing swim I discovered passions were even higher.

It was even more crowded. Some of the population had changed while some of the same ladies were still working on their hair and nails, but now there was a new common cause. It started innocently: “She’s been in there for a long time, hasn’t she. What’s going on there?” one woman asked nobody in particular. “I know. She’s been showering for 20 minutes or something. We would never take a shower for more than three or four minutes.” There was collective agreement. “We” would never do such a thing. “She must be a foreigner,” said another. “If she were one of us she would know better.” A discussion began over which water-rich country this water guzzler was from; surely if she were “one of us” she would know Israel is suffering from a water shortage and not wasting water is one of the highest forms of patriotism.

The tone of conversation was rising to an angry panic, until someone couldn’t stand it anymore and went to the shower stall and called through the curtain: “What kind of long shower is that? Enough already.” The stunned addressee called back sheepishly, “Oh, is somebody waiting?” And was answered with a curt: “No, nobody’s waiting, but you can’t take such a long shower. You’re wasting water.”

Then the vanguard came back and reported: “She’s a foreigner. She looks Japanese.” I knew this meant “she has Asian features but I have no idea what ethnic group she’s from,” but in today’s isolated, xenophobic Israel you can still sound like you are in the U.S. in the 1960’s, before cultural sensitivity and political correctness. It is also completely acceptable to make racial slurs openly in a crowd of people, without anyone pointing out that as a descendant of Jews who suffered for generations because of their minority status you should know better.

A woman getting dressed next to me tried to enlist me: “You can tell she’s a foreigner. One of us would never take such a long shower and waste Israel’s water.” Undoubtedly, there is a plot underway by foreigners to use up our country’s water, she implied, waiting for my approval. I couldn’t help noticing that these high-minded environmentalists, so concerned about our natural resources, are the same people who in the summer insist the windows of the gym stay open while the air conditioner runs even when it’s 40 degrees centigrade outside, “so it won’t be stuffy.” While toweling myself off I tried to de-escalate. “If she’s a foreigner she might not know about our local rules and problems,” I tried, “but I’m sure she’ll learn.” My neighbor gave me a dirty look and turned away, but I saw another young woman flash me a smile of support. I was definitely “new.”

It was still a few minutes until the “Japanese” lady got out of the shower, during which the women could talk about nothing else but her impertinent wastefulness. Out of nowhere sprung a consensus that she be reported to the management and barred from using the pool. When she did emerge, the woman was showered with scorn. I wanted to go up to her and offer some compassion, but was relieved to see someone else talking to her gently in the corner, explaining what the uproar was about. I wasn’t sure if those were tears in her eyes or just redness from the pool. But I felt deeply disturbed by the ease at which a random group of people who happened to show up at the swimming pool at the same time turned into a lynch mob. All the rules of “in” and “out” group psychology kicked in instantly, from the presumed superiority of the in group to the shared hostility towards anyone outside of it.

On my way out I passed two of the defenders of the pool and Israel’s honor, complaining to the receptionist about the foreigner who was trying to use up Israel’s water. In that context it didn’t matter that the receptionist was an Arab; as an employee of the pool he was still “one of ours.” As long as he doesn’t try to rent an apartment in our neighborhood or date one of our daughters.