2. Remembering John Updike.

3. The new Jewdas.

4. Epichorus.

5. Literary Interpretation.

6. Cronenberg does Delillo.  

7. Portnoy Gay?

8. Da Mystery of Chessboxin.

9. A Nation of Commentators.

10. Tarantino in Zion.

אהוב יקר, רונית שחר, גל ירוק

Beginning with the end; the spirit of Jose Gonzales creeping through these lovely pluckings. Back but yet it’s time to go…

Blindsided, Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago)

I’m going to break a rule this time: two tunes from the same fella. But what a fella! Truth be told, every song from Bon Iver’s debut merits a place on this list; it’s been on repeat ad infinitum. Top five dead or alive and that’s just off one LP. For now I’ll make do with Blindsided…

The Rules, Saigon & Statik Selectah (All in a Days Work)

Saigon + Statik Selectah = Dope. This album was done in 24 hours. Even so, it sounds slightly too preened. No matter – even a slickened Saigon is doper than your average emcee. This is the difference between me and them…

Electronic Renaissance, Belle & Sebastian (TigerMilk)

It’s those keyboard twerks at the beginning, giving way to the gorgeous melodies and driving rhythm. Perfect for some movie about a past decade, the sound of people getting perky right away, irrepressible smiles.

Frankly Mr Shankly, The Smiths (The Queen is Dead)

I have to confess that somehow this was stuck on 3 stars on my iTunes until a few months ago when I realized that it’s perhaps the best song ever. As the SB says, it’s all about different registers…

It’s Alright (The Guvnor’s Mix), East 17 (Walthamstow)

This tore shit down at The World’s Greatest Ever 90s Party, reminding me of my days as a teenage rapper. East 17 were better than Take That, period.

Fox Song, Alice Music

My favourite correspondent with her unparalleled melodies; a hypnotic sound first heard late at night at the Gaon’s place.

What If? feat Nas, Jadakiss  (The Last Kiss)

Jada’s back with yet another concept record, ably assisted by Nas.  What if indeed?

Underground Ambassadors feat Afu-Ra, Krumbsnatcha (Hidden Scriptures)

The black rap messiah’s back, deeper and darker, but still scurrying through the darkness carrying his torch, Afu-Ra by his side. Eyes and ears the fuck open: this hits hard.

Shake This, Royce da 5’9

And they say Primo’s a one-trick pony?!? Epic hip-hop record, Royce letting it all come down on wax, orchestra by his side, preparing us for Street-Hop…

Reality Check feat Black Thought, Jay Dilla (Jay Stay Paid)

OK so there’s a dubious morality about posthumous records, but I can’t see Jay minding Black Thought ripping this ridiculous instrumental. This. Is. A. Jay. Dilla. Beat. RIP.

Death Final, Bonnie Prince Billy (Beware)

This is what death music should sound like: celebratory, loving, ambiguous about whats next, optimistic about humanity despite it all. Bonnie Prince Billy wins. Simple as that.

Son’z of a Loop Da Loop Era

Another 90s classic: old-skool is the genre of the hour. Those sentimental pianos, the wheeeeeeeeeeeeew, and the drop of the beat. Hat-Tip to Schlags and Seth.

חלומות של אחרים, Idan Raichel (Within My Walls)

This is music for the preliminaries, burning through wintry sheets while the air-conditioner does battle with the window.

Re: Stacks, Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago)

“This my excavation/and today is Qumran.” The sound of a man heading out on the road, catharsis completed, possibilities multiplying before him. Where would we be without Bon Iver?

Because our invader was also but a dog – a mutt, a scavenging mutt that had made our base its home. After a brief search, we soon found it, rummaging in the dirt, and gently coaxed it into the back of the jeep. From there, we took it to the camp commander, who we assumed had some secret kennel in his office or some other cunning solution. But there was nothing of the sort. Instead, he told us to take the dog to the road behind the central bus station in Ramle, and to leave it there. In the most Moral Army in the World, we do not shoot dogs – we merely evict them.

My past was coming back to haunt me. A few months earlier, I had got into a fight with some friends in Eilat over what to do with an injured cat that had been discovered on the side of the road. I wanted to leave it behind; my friends insisted that we care for it. So this mission was my punishment. Remembering the barren consequences of my decision in Eilat, I decided to offer resistance. “Can’t you get an animal shelter to come and pick it up,” I asked. No, he replied, I don’t have their number.

Throughout all this, Igor stood on impassively, which was strange given that he was rather emotional when we were trying to convince the dog (who we belatedly named Michel) to join us in the jeep. This, combined with my excitement at the prospect of my first armed trip off base, meant that my resistance faded no sooner had it started, and soon we were on our way. As we approached the gates to the base, Igor told me not to worry – the dog would be back by the morning.

Off into the minaret-dotted night we went, and within five minutes we had reached our destination. In an unlit street behind the station, Igor crawled out of the vehicle and said his goodbyes to Michel, while I kept my eye on the clock in case any of Ramle’s residents thought they were witnessing a rerun of 1948. My intensive training had all been leading up to this moment, and I wasn’t going to fail now. Michel scampered off, while Igor shrugged his soldiers and got back into the car. “He’ll be back in the morning,” he prophesised again, before blasting out my ear-drums with some Russian hip-hop.

We reported our successful completion of the mission to the commander, who congratulated us for our sterling efforts to defend the State of Israel. He said that they perhaps even surpass the efforts of the pilots who bombed Syria the other week without even knowing what they were being sent to target. At least you showed an interest in what you were doing. That dog was a menace to the safety of the soldiers, like a Qassam exploding every minute. It’s not as if he had any space to roam around here, after all, given that it takes six minutes just to drive around the base. He was a constant menace.

With a warm feeling of patriotic pride, I headed off to order some take-away, having missed dinner for the cause. Early next morning, I wandered over to the front-gate to pick up the newspapers, to be greeted by the pastoral image of Michel nosing around. Igor’s prediction had come to pass. The dog had returned. And this time, when the commander found out, he didn’t hatch any grand plans, or suggest putting a bullet in its neck. He just shrugged and let out a wan smile, a gesture that suggested Michel’s right to come back would not be violated. He returned in peace, and now he is here to stay.

2. India institutes national ID card.

3. Debating Jay-Z’s hegemony.

4. Hamas exposes sexy Zionist chewing gum plot.

5. Tim Allon.

6. The Death of Bunny Munro.

7. No Leonard Cohen in Ramallah.  

8. Fighting for African refugees in Israel.

9. Granta in Anglo-American denial.

10. Ten books to be tossed out the canon.

Max Blumenthal is back! The agit-prop journalist who created the already-seminal YouTube documentary Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem has now released the equally sophisticated sequel, Feeling the Hate in Tel Aviv. The original, which received 400,000 hits on YouTube, depicted American-Jewish teenagers (for some reason described by the filmmakers as Israelis) hurling racist obscenities at Barack Obama during a drunken night out in Jerusalem, and caused a predictable storm about authenticity and the morality of airing one’s dirty laundry in public. Now, it’s Tel Aviv’s turn. 

Blumenthal describes the aim behind the video succinctly: “On May 27th, journalist Jesse Rosenfeld and I set out on the streets of Tel Aviv to probe the political opinions of young local residents.” This was a pre-emptive response to criticism he received from Haaretz journalist Benjamin Hartman, who suggested that the Jerusalem video was “circling the internet at a critical velocity on a mission to humiliate the Jewish people,” before suggesting that he go to Tel Aviv to get a more balanced look at Israeli society.

But ha-ha! “Unbeknownst to Hartman,” Blumenthal writes, “I had already filmed my next segment in Tel Aviv.” And guess what’s in the video? More of the same. They began the day at Tel Aviv University, talking to students who had gathered to protest the ‘Nakba Law’ that proposes criminalizing public commemoration of the losses suffered by the Palestinians in 1948. There they found “a group of students who gathered to heckle their Arab classmates and demand their deportation,” as well as two “genial business students” who expressed support for the Nakba Law. [Even these descriptions, by the way, are exaggerations – watch the video and judge for yourself] Later that night, they covered White Night, where “a group of teenagers launched into a virtually unprompted diatribe against Barack Obama, referring to him as a Nazi, a Muslim, and a “Cushi”, which is Hebrew slang for “nigger.” In the Blumenthalian universe, there is little daylight between Israel’s two leading cities.

It would be naïve to argue that Blumenthal’s video does not in some way reflect authentic trends in Israeli society. There is plenty of evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, that Israel is steadily moving in an openly-racist, authoritarian direction, and I see no problem with discussing this issue openly. Feeling the Hate in Tel Aviv, however, is too real, condemned as inaccurate by the dog that didn’t bark. It is impossible that somebody could spend a serious amount of time interviewing Israelis in Tel Aviv (or indeed any other Israeli town) without finding a single voice expressing more progressive sentiments. Israeli society may be moving to the right, but it is far from monolithic.

Blumenthal’s methods are about as sophisticated as Borat’s or Bruno’s. He picks weak targets: in this case, the English of the Jewish interviewees is never more than passable, in contrast to the Palestinians. As one commenter puts it, he puts “smart, articulate Palestinian students…up against drunk arsim,” comparing this to interviewing an “intelligent, liberal professor from Columbia,” and putting him up against “some white trash from Alabama.” He goes to White Night and manages to interview a single group of drunken teenagers. Was there other footage? Why are we not privy to it? He goes to a Tel Aviv University where feelings are likely to be running high, without providing any context, and grabs the most inarticulate passers-by he can find, including one man who is absurdly described as a ‘Jewish-Druze’ (he has clarified this in a subsequent post, but the original caption demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of Israeli society), reflecting the strange description of the subjects of Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem as Israelis. His methods are cheap.

Doing a serious vox-pop in Tel Aviv is not a complicated task: Spend the entire day going from café to café, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, hummuseria to sushi bar, interview people and then edit it in such a way that accurately reflects the multiplicity of voices that you hear. In this case, there is simply no evidence that Blumenthal has bothered to be this rigorous. And the reasons for this are clear. He has long ago drawn his conclusions about Israeli society, and is now simply gathering the evidence to back it all up, rather than going from evidence to conclusion. This is the work of a propagandist – a deeply unserious approach to a deeply serious problem.

Yes there is “crude racism,” “bellicose nationalism,” and “anti-democratic sentiments” in Israel. But there is a lot more going on as well. Blumenthal is doing a disservice to those who want to gain a fuller picture of Israeli society by refusing (and that can be the only word for it) to depict these complexities and nuances in the film. It is very easy to find what you are looking for, and rather harder to be open to being surprised. Blumenthal tells a story about two Palestinians arrested for speaking Arabic on the bus. I have also heard stories of this nature, but I have also heard people frequently speak Arabic throughout Tel Aviv, and I can honestly say I have never seen anyone encounter any trouble as a result. Does this mean Blumenthal is mistaken? Not necessarily. But he has to acknowledge the limitations of the anecdote as a journalist device.

The same applies to interviewing a handful of people in Tel Aviv and calling it a wrap. Blumenthal has taken a single insight and inflated it into a grand theory of Israeli society, a theory far beyond his basic means of analysis. He may be feeling smug about answering his critics with this latest video, but if he has any pretensions to seriousness he should begin to seriously examine his methods.

2. The problem, in a nutshell.

3. Ball of confusion.

4. 7/7.

5. Cast Lead Revisited.

6. Long march in Gaza.

7. Chess, not checkers.

8. The great semi-colon debate.

9. New Zadie.

10. Tha Blaqprint.

“I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the State of Israel,” Atlas told a conference of the Israel Bar Association, which focused on reforming Israel’s Land Administration.

This is profoundly anti-democratic. All Israeli citizens should have the right to live wherever they want in the country. If they act against the state, they should be prosecuted. 

He continued, “if we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee [i.e. to Jews]. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don’t think that it’s appropriate [for them] to live together.”

Always beware those who would tell you who it’s appropriate and not appropriate for you to live with. It is none of their business. And lest you think he merely doesn’t want Jews living with Arabs:

“There is a severe housing crisis among the young ultra-Orthodox couples, and in the general population. I, as an Ultra-Orthodox Jew, don’t think that religious Jews should have to live in the same neighbourhood as secular couples, so as to avoid unnecessary friction. And since some 5,000 to 6,000 religious couples get married each year, a problem arises because they require a certain kind of community life that goes along with their lifestyle.”

Tough. In a democratic country people must learn to live alongside those with different lifestyles. I live in a neighbourhood which is about 30% religious and there are no problems. Here’s an example: Now it’s summer, I go to the laundrette late on Saturday-afternoon. I carry my clothes in a suitcase, the rumbling of the wheels creating an echo in the alleys of the Vineyard. If I do my washing while there are services in synagogue, I take a detour so as not to disturb prayers. But nobody forces me to do so. If I walked past with my suitcase, or talking on my mobile, there would not be a riot. Religious and secular people are quite capable of living side-by-side, and we do not need Mr Atlas to set the bar for integration so low.

It’s ok though. There is a solution: “I plan to market large amounts of land to the Arab population in the Galilee in order to solve their problems, as well as land for secular and religious Jews.”

I did not come to Zion to live in a box; I came here to be an Israeli. The key to saving Israeli democracy is to promote a shared sense of Israeliness among all the different populations in this country. This is no wild fantasy, and is the only way to save the state from the racism and intolerance of our Housing Minister.

2. Roth remixed.

3. Al-Kamanjanti centre burnt down.

4. Chess-boxing.

5. I before E no longer in Britain.

6. How the talk became big business.

7. The world’s strictest parents.

8. Bikinis sans frontieres.

9. He’s Barack Obama.

10. Naomi Watts in Zion.

Before continuing, I want to put one misconception aside. I do not claim to understand the Israeli ‘national pulse’ (itself a fiction) anymore than anyone else; I am also painfully aware that my views, which I would unsatisfactorily describe as Progressive Zionist, are held to be naïve by a majority of my countrymen. The narrative of an Israeli public who genuinely believed in the promise of the Oslo years, only to see it thrown back in their faces with the outbreak of the Second Intifada, is well known to me.

It is one thing to recognise this perception, however, and quite another to accept it uncritically, to equate the experience with the reality. The Israeli public is right to be angry about the wave of murderous violence unleashed with the Second Intifada, not to mention the constant barrage of rockets that came in response to the Disengagement. Our primary task, however, is to look closely at the behaviour of our own government, not in order to exculpate the other side for their crimes (this is not possible; murderous violence cannot be excused), but so that we can be sure that we have done everything we possibly can in order to ameliorate the difficult situation faced by our neighbours, a situation which is at least partly our responsibility, while at the same time ensuring that our security is paramount.

We have a good example of this from last week: The removal of a number of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank (obstacles between Palestinian areas as opposed to obstacles separating Palestinian and Israeli population centres) was announced. Remember, we are often told that these checkpoints are absolutely vital for Israeli security. In the words of IsraeiNurse, “So I’m really sorry if it takes 4 hours to get from Schem [Nablus] to Ramallah, but that’s the price the Palestinians will have to pay until they renounce terror and we can be sure that no other schoolchild will have to suffer like my friend’s son did.” So what happened last week? Did the Palestinians renounce terror? Was the threat suddenly lessened? Or is the key word politics, namely the need to make a gesture to the Americans, pace ‘economic peace’, in order to try and stave off the unremitting White House pressure regarding the settlements. If the government was solely concerned about security, a hermetic separation barrier would have been built long ago between Israelis and Palestinians (note that this does not necessarily mean along the Green Line, although obviously far flung settlements would have had to have been evacuated), as opposed to the gobbling snake that currently weans its way through the West Bank. As for the checkpoints, like the old shtetl story of the goat, it seems we put up checkpoints as bargaining-chips, to be taken down in order to avoid making other ‘concessions’. In short, to justify them solely in terms of security is risible.

IsraeliNurse also suggests that I am not attuned enough to understand the full gamut of Israeli opinion. She is correct: I have only been here for three years (on July 10th; HPers in Zion are welcome to join me for a small celebration in the Vineyard), and am well aware that the ריח של ב”קום still trails behind me. She is right that I should walk humbly, yet I wonder if she is ready to take her own advice when it comes to Palestinian society. Both IsraeliNurse’s and PetraMB’s knowledge of Palestinians But  seems to have been drawn largely from the op-ed columns of the Jerusalem Post, and is entirely lacking in any sense of empathy for the situation faced by the Palestinian people (accompanied by the repetitive refrain about recognition of Israel as a Jewish State), a significant degree of which is the result of decisions we have taken over the past twenty years, in which, with few exceptions, we have consistently exploited our legitimate quest for security in order to take land from other people.

PetraMB argues that it is difficult for a young immigrant to get the “sense of Israeli identity that is shared by veterans/sabres for whom the country’s story is part of what shaped their lives and families and friends.” This is both false and irrelevant. I witness and admire it on a daily basis. What more would she have me do? As for the debate surrounding the ‘national pulse’, according to Petra “it’s a contest you lose by a devastating margin.” While it was never my intention to engage in a ‘contest’ over this issue, there is an interesting point to be made. Perhaps Petra and IsraeliNurse are not as confident in their Israeliness as they would have us believe, despite all their years here. At the outset I acknowledged that a majority of Israelis would not agree with my views, as is reflected by the consistent poor display by left-wing candidates in the polls. But this does not mean that the majority is right. I am an Israeli which means that I have the same rights in this country as someone who was born here (Gert and the other anti-Zionist vultures circling overhead; yes, I’m aware of the irony – we can discuss this another time). If I am considered to be less Israeli because I do not buy into the national pulse as offered to us by Petra and IsraeliNurse, then so be it. Thankfully, though, that hasn’t been my experience. I interact on a daily basis with Israelis who are perfectly aware of my views yet do not seek to patronise me. In fact, for some, my views even come as a pleasant surprise.

IsraeliNurse closes by arguing that a successful absorption is about casting off my ‘Londini’ experiences, “which…may just as well be another planet” and becoming an Israeli, by which she seems to mean falling into line with a monolithic worldview by which we’ve-done-our-best-but-they-still-want-to-throw-us-in-the-sea. I take issue with this. Like other multicultural societies, Israel is successful because it has people from all over the world bringing something new to the table. In my case, I happen to bring with me a relentless commitment to liberal democracy and an unblinking opposition to racial discrimination (Gert et al – see above). This give-and-take is a strength of Israeli society, and I would take issue with anyone who claims otherwise. I am a proud and confident Israeli and I believe in this country and I will not accept anyone attempting to deprecate my views for any reason other than their content.

But perhaps they are right. Perhaps in twenty years I will think differently. Given the current reality, though, I am not so convinced that it will be in the direction they foresee. As Nas says, “Much success to you/even if you wish me the opposite/sooner or later we’ll all see who the prophet is.” At a certain point, we have to agree to disagree.

In Cairo, Barack Obama laid out his vision for the new Middle East. Its particulars were not new, but the idea of a President genuinely committed to comprehensive regional peace was. Obama laid out the path towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It was, as Alex rightly put it, an incrementalist approach. There was no comprehensive solution; just an idea of what the first steps needed to be and a vision of the future.

The government in Jerusalem panicked. They were stuck between a popular American President they needed and their own conservative base. On Sunday night, speaking from Bar Ilan in Ramat Gan, one of the biggest conservative institutions in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu had a chance to respond to Obama’s historic Cairo speech.  Netanyahu embraced Obama’s vision of peace by extending his hand, his middle finger up. His big concession, the need for a Palestinian state, was something that every Israeli Prime Minister since…well, Netanyahu the first go round, had already acknowledged. In fact, Netanyahu’s great concession took Israel back to a more conservative place than it had been in a decade. The conditions Netanyahu laid down sent a clear message. There would be no serious peace talks and no Palestinian state.  As David Grossman wrote in his excellent peace in Haaretz, Netanyahu “did not lead Israel to a new future. He only collaborated with its old, familiar anxieties”. This, in itself, is not a surprise even if it was a disappointment. Netanyahu was never going to abandon the settlers. What was deeply dismaying however, was the positive response this speech got in Israel. Netanyahu’s popularity went up 16% after the speech. The erstwhile left wing Labor applauded a speech that they should have derided.

The idea that eventually both sides would get tired and eventually realise that peace was the only way forward has not come to fruition. Instead, we are moving backwards.  The Palestinians still seem bent on destroying Israel while complaining that Israel isn’t moving towards peace and Israel is more interested in excuses as to why it must confiscate more Palestinian land (“We can’t remove the settlements because of Iran, terrorism, and the rise in the price of shakshuka”).

So, what can Obama do? Obama must have been hoping that Netanyahu would reconstitute his government with Kadima (by staying mostly in the same place politically, Kadima has gone from centre -right, to centre, since its inception.)This didn’t happen and Netanyahu will now demand some Palestinian action in return for what he thinks was a large concession. (What the Palestinians can possibly offer after that speech eludes me.) What I think Obama will do is keep pressing gently on all sides. Little concession by little concession until something big happens-a Palestinian unity government, the fall of Likud, or something similar. Netanyahu has indicated that he will fight every incremental move towards genuine peace tooth and nail forcing Obama to use more political capital than he would like to accomplish very little. I still have some hope in Obama’s ability to force all sides towards some solution. However, I am a lot less hopeful after Netanyahu’s speech than I was a week ago.