“crazy to go north at a time like this”

24 hours after canceling the sadaka reut volunteer work camp, we decided we couldn’t end the year on such a depressing low note, so we invited the seminar participants to come back for the weekend and help us put on a revised “end of the year” event, which took place last saturday night.

the event was revised to give it a degree of relevancy and appropriateness given the backdrop of current events in the region. also due to current events, several musical acts dropped out on their own. some presented understandable reasons, such as individuals from the north who did not want to leave their homes, although I was infinitely disappointed to learn I would not get to hear mc ward’s oft imitated anthem, “ana arabe, arabe, arabe” (i am arab, arab, arab). other groups offered less credible excuses; an act from bat yam (the city touching jaffa’s southern border) reportedly remarked, “it was crazy to go north [to jaffa] at a time like this.” some of the more cynical crowd at the office speculated that perhaps they meant it was crazy to participate in an arab-jewish event at a time like this.

nonetheless, the event went on in the courtyard of the arab-hebrew theater in the old city of yafo drawing a respectable crowd, a number of bands, messages of peace/against the war.and performance art suitable to be a final project in one of the classes annie took at brown.

and despite the daily barrages of rockets landing across northern israel, all of my friends in yafo who hail from the north keep inviting me, completely seriously, to come home with them. some offer me the possibility to sit on the roof, smoke nargila and watch for falling katyushas. others promise that their part of the north actually exists within a impenetrable bubble.

for now im sticking south of haifa, mainly in yafo and tel aviv, where life, for the most, part goes on as usual. but you can sit on the beach and watch the near-constant flow of helicopters flying back and forth, lebanon to gaza, rafah to beirut.

prepare for war: evacuate the bombshelter

all year I sort of treated our bombshelter-turned-office as a joke. it is kind of funny to think that the municipality rents out its shelters all over the city at economical rates. the last time the shelters were used was during the first gulf war, 15 years ago. and I personally never thought it would give us much protection considering how much it leaked during the winter rains.

there is a catch that comes with the cheap rent; a small clause that allows the municipality to give renting occupants of their bombshelters 4 hours notice to vacate if for any reason the city may need them. when the second gulf war didn’t warrant this action, I think most people thought it would never happen.

but now the katyushas are falling all over the north; hitting haifa, afula and other places people never expected, like palestinian population centers within israel. enough to make the threat of iranian-made rockets with 200 km range (sufficient to reach tel aviv) seem like a feasible threat. and enough for the municipality to give us that 4 hour warning early Sunday afternoon.

no time would have been a good time, but the notice probably couldn’t come at a worse time for us- four days into a five day activism seminar for 24 jewish and palestinian israeli teens from all of the country. and the day before the continuation of the seminar, a 5 day volunteer work camp which would bring another 30-40 teenagers and dozens of other volunteers to Jaffa to work on projects ranging from renovating schools to painting murals to running a local day camp for arab and jewish kids.

the news sent us into panic mode and we frantically called a staff meeting where we made the painful decision to cancel the camp we had been devoting all our time and energy to for the past 2 months and to send the seminar kids home on monday morning, a decision from which we are still reeling. we held two follow up staff meetings to rethink the decision (one which lasted until 3am) where tears, exhaustion, confused emotions and regret hung heavy around the circle.

clearly had we been in lebanon, where the death toll has surpassed 200, many of them civilians, or even in northern israel, the decision would have been simpler. but in tel aviv-yafo, life goes on as normal making the cancellation seem bizarre. last night we all went out for the beers and silliness that were supposed to happen next week. and after 8 hours of moving on sunday, our office sits empty, waiting to be used for something.

definitely not beer pong, we’re talking ‘bout beirut

what will happen if I call lebanon? will the shin bet or the mossad come knock down my door? or will my name just go on a list somewhere and wait quietly until it ambushes me at the airport on my way out or back in? i think I’ve been reading too much sayed kashua and his paranoid tone has rubbed off.

is it better to call from a land line? or will it be ok from my cell phone? could I fool them all by calling from a pay phone? someone told me a story recently about problems caused by calling arab countries from cell phones. she called down to Sinai one evening to make a reservation at a beach-side hut, a ritual of many Israelis who engage in an annual reverse exodus. sinai, a region that may have been returned to egyptian governmental control, is still under some sort of israeli tourist occupation (that is, when they aren’t scared off by terrorism). but the morning after making this call, she went to make a regular, local call from her cell phone and got an automated message that her phone service had been suspended and she could not make out-going calls.

bewildered, she called the phone company, who informed her that unprecedented calls to arab countries are earmarked as potential stolen phones and service is automatically discontinued (we could discuss the racist implications of this at a later date). after providing the proper identification numbers, she was able to prove that her phone was not stolen, and her service was restored.

but that was egypt, now I’m talking about lebanon. lebanon, where there isn’t anything resembling a pretense of peace between the two governments. lebanon, a country you are not allowed to enter if your passport contains evidence of a visit to the zionist entity that doesnt really exist. and coming into israel with proof of time in lebanon will require answers to many questions beyond the traditional "where did you pack your suitcase?" and lebanon, where a segment of the border is inaptly named “the good fence.” if “good” means hatred and that the only people who think about crossing are hizballah and the israeli army, then sure.

so say I make the phone call, and no one knocks down my door, and my name doesn’t get put on the black list of those to hassle at the check-in counter, then what? then maybe I start asking the next round of questions beginning with, is the naked run rule in effect? i mean, what will happen if I go to beirut?