Life and death on King David street
For much of my adult life I have studied, taught and worked on King David Street in Jerusalem. It is certainly no ordinary work address. World leaders stay there - in recent months we have played host to Bush, Blair, then Bush again, Blair, Rice, Blair Carter, Sarkozy, Blair (I'm beginning to think that man has nothing better to do), Brown, Mc Cain, Obama - and that doesn't do justice to the tens of less famous officials - Fishing Ministers from Ruritania and Tax Inspectors from Uzbekhistan.
Then there are the Life Cycle Events. Families compete with each other to hold the most opulent and often gaudy events: barmy Bar Mitzvahs, wild weddings, and far from circumspect circumcisions. And let's not forget the welcome crush of tourists, staying in comfort and often returning home with some expensive artifacts purchased at one of our street's many upscale emporia. More hotels are on the way, along with a plethora of swanky apartment buildings aimed at visionaries and speculators.
Comments (25)Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness
The recently-issued Annual Report by the Association of Civil Rights makes grim reading. In the section on racism in Israeli society, it notes that there has been a steep rise in expressions of hatred by Jewish Israelis towards Arabs. 2006 saw a 26% increase in the number of racial incidents directed against Arabs; the intensity of feelings of hatred towards Arabs has almost doubled. Over half of the Jewish Israelis polled said they would not live in the same building with Arabs, that they opposed the inclusion of Arab parties in the government, that they approve of plans to encourage Arab emigration, and so on. The report also talks about the systematic degradation of Israeli Arab citizens when they want to get on an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport. Most of those interviewed thought that Arabs smell, and are unclean.
In Israel, this report has been met by what might be described as a 3-D response. I don't mean to suggest by this that we have all decided to engage in a three-dimensional soul-searching treatment of the weighty and distressing evidence before us. Rather, the three Ds we prefer to employ are Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness. We deny the veracity of the evidence, suggesting that whoever could claim that such views abound in Israeli society must be a self-hating traitor. We dismiss the data clearly those interviewed were not representative of most people, or they were joking when they answered the questions. That so-called increase in incidents, we say, it is just our Arab neighbors being over-sensitive over nothing.
About this blog Reform Reflections
Dean of the Jerusalem school of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Michael Marmur, scrutinizes contemporary spiritual issues.
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