As part of the documentary projects I create for television, I get to meet quite a few artists who were stars and cultural heroes in the past. Just this week, for example, I had the privilege of filming a program related to Israel’s great Eurovision songs, which went right back in time. Almost all the characters I photographed felt the need to express, at one stage or another of the interview, the gap between the old and good Land of Israel – according to their method, and current Israel. One sentence was repeated over and over again, and echoes in my other projects as well: there used to be conflicts and disputes here, but there wasn’t so much hatred.
This longing for a more calm and homogenous country, a country that had central tribal fires and some kind of shared vision and heart, also floats and rises among the protesters against the new legal reform. Some kind of feeling as if taken from a beehive’s “homeland lesson”. That’s how it was, soft simplicity. It was depicted in our childhood, which was beautiful.
This feeling also fits well with my own childhood memory. A memory from the super-calm Haifa of the 80s, where I don’t remember any violent confrontations on political or social grounds. where almost everyone was a patriot, no matter which side of the map. And wept with excitement the day that Yizhar Cohen brought the Eurovision to Israel with “Avnivi”. The same Yizhar Cohen that I photographed this week, and who himself resented the deterioration that had taken place here, according to him. Also as someone of Yemeni origin, who felt at home both in Kerem and in “Kasit”, and did not believe that we would reach the situation of such hatred and slander.
This feeling can be attributed to nostalgia, which tends to paint everything pink. But the more I rummage through my memory, the not bad one, I really get much calmer feelings from there. Dipped in a thick sauce of solidarity. So was there really much less hatred here once?
Can be. And it may not be. Take, for example, the 1981 elections. The same election campaign in which his uncle Topaz gave the Chachachaim speech, Shimon Peres was attacked with tomatoes in the Beit Shemesh market, and Menachem Begin talked about the pools that millionaires from the kibbutz have. Or the murder of Emil Grinzweig in February 1983, in the midst of the “Peace Now” demonstration in Jerusalem. Not to mention, of course, the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And these are only the external and extreme products of hatred. One can only speculate on the background of what broad base of hostility they grew. Only then there were no social networks to express the hatred publicly, and the media, which controlled the external means of expression, was very state-controlled and censored.
On the other hand, when I rummage really deep in my memory, I realize that in that solid and idyllic Haifa of my childhood, almost everyone I knew voted for the same party, heard the same music and grew up in the same culture. No wonder I didn’t feel hatred – we were all from the same village. more than that. We were – inclusive of course – in the beauty of a village. The members of the middle class, the secular-liberal-Ashkenazi (essentially, at least), who in those days held most of the key positions in the country. Life was quite comfortable, and the future looked promising too. In such a reality, when you are good, there is no reason to hate either. And then it is also easy for you to look curiously and critically at those who do express hatred. Because their hatred may violate the social order that is so beneficial to you.
In the midst of the filming I held this week, I also interviewed Bezalel Aloni, the eternal manager of the late Ofra Haza, and someone who over the years has acquired a media reputation as a “professional whiner”, especially against the background of repeated claims of deprivation. We talked, among other things, about the song “Hai” by Haza, who represented Israel in the Eurovision 1983, and then Bezalel said something that shook me. He said that before “Hai” he approached three times with Ofra for the pre-Eurovision and was rejected. And all, in the years when she was “singer of the year”. Pre-Eurovision, yes? Not a hotbed of eternal quality songs. And when were they accepted? Only with the stamp (wonderful in itself) of Ehud Manor. I want to say: the calm and solidary country of the strong side, can be the source of the hatred of the weak side.
Ehud Manor (Photo: Eric Sultan)
on the knife
And yet, even the natural sources of anger cannot justify the incitement and distortion of reality that we are experiencing here, according to Dodi Amsalem’s “Rolex and Mercedes speech”. And what is most frustrating is that it has no price. In other words, an elected official can make ridiculous and offensive statements towards the public Giants, ones whose absurdity screams, and to get out of it without any damage to his image or status.
The ease with which people allow themselves to talk about civil war, as if it were a legitimate option or part of a skit by Shaoli, is simply unfathomable. And perhaps it expresses a disguised ambition to prevail over entire communities in Israel by force, after the attempt to defeat them at the ballot box failed. Either way, I suggest obliging anyone who entertains the idea to serve on the front lines.
Yair Sharki’s coming out of the public closet, and the reactions that followed, indicate that, contrary to the horror messages prevalent at the moment, not everything is dark here. The complex character of Sharkey in itself is an important lesson in the need to avoid automatic catalogs, especially in the context of the religious public. A bright moment in a sad time.