The Cry of an Arab from Gaza

Few heard it, no one heeded it.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly where this story begins. I might point to the Oslo Accords, a pitiful capitulation to sworn enemies that could only have been conceived by a mad consortium of Jewish luftmenschen, airheads, and brought to fruition by the peace-pipe dreams of duped bureaucrats and politicians. I might point to that, but it would bring attention to a chapter of modern Israel that should be derided and spit-upon, except that in doing so we may forget the more than a thousand Israeli Jews blown up in buses and restaurants or simply stabbed in the streets. A pox upon Oslo devisers and a double pox upon those who still support that initiative after all the Jewish blood shed because of it.

Instead, I will begin with Slava. He was one of the million or so Russians who came to Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union, half of which were not Jewish according to Jewish tradition (meaning that their mother was not Jewish), but Israeli enough for the Law of Return because one of their grandparents was Jewish. When I met him, he was living with his brother in the backyard of a family’s plot in a small agricultural community in the south of Israel, whose inhabitants had been given government subsidies to drywall unused chicken coops so there would be adequate housing for this massive influx of citizens. Both Slava and his brother had highly visible Christian tattoos. They were Law of Return Jews. LOR Jews brought with themselves Christmas trees, vodka-based alcoholism, and for the first time in Israel, pork products sold openly in non-kosher shops.

I had a contract job with my partner Uri, loading tomatoes for export at our communally owned packing house. The tomatoes were sorted and boxed by Arab workers from Khan Yunis and would travel on a conveyor belt through a metal detector until they reached our staging area. Here we would stack the boxes on pallets, strap them in and load them on the semi-trailer for the trip to the airport. This was physical work—especially the top two rows on each pallet where it was all shoulder and wrist— and on busy days we needed both Slava and his brother for help. Though he was highly recommended, I had my doubts about Slava in the beginning. He was slightly built, though muscular. He had a distinct limp—one source of my doubts—and was a scarred man. I mean physically scarred. Knife cuts and bullet holes, in and out. When he saw me noticing that he favored one shoulder on the high rows he stopped and showed me why. A bullet had passed through his shoulder. I raised an eyelid and he said: “Red Army. I can do the work.” When we got to know each other better he gave me the full story.

After a month of work, Slava asked if he could live on my farm. He would guard the farm in exchange for rent. He would also have a ride to and from the packing house as he would ride with me. This was fine by me because we did not patrol the farm area of our settlement at night, and there had been a spate of back-pack fumigator thefts. Also, during the day he would be watching my back. This was no small thing as every now and then an Arab laborer would attack the nearest Jew. I went to sleep that night aware that for the first time in a long time I would sleep without worrying whether I would be able to spray the crops in the morning.

In the morning I knew something was different when I turned the corner of the path leading to my farm. Along the length of it small groups of Arab laborers from the surrounding farms were gathered looking towards my farm. As I approached my shed, I cringed. Slava had my eight laborers standing at attention. He stood cross-armed, smiling at me. I pulled up slowly. When I got out of the car, I was expecting to hear complaints from my workers. Silence. Slava approached me and turned his head in so not to be heard by the workers. He was making sure that I would buy in to his project. I, being flummoxed, had just noted the Bowie knife in his belt. He said: “I put disciplina, like Red Army.” His Hebrew was spotty, but I understood that we were now communicating with symbols that far predated words and syntax. He said: “Boss, come check your workers,” and just like that he was the Seargent, and I was the Lieutenant inspecting the troops. Each step I took, looking each worker up and down, solidified the new order. Some of these workers had been with me since they were children. Before the Intifadas I would pick them up at their home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp. When I would take them home, I would sometimes take a cup of tea with them. As I looked at them, I realized that they were all in. The change was so sweeping and complete that I found myself acting—acting is the word here—in an entirely new manner. I was foreign to myself. But the quantity and quality of the work on my farm increased, and that is the bottom line, so I made my foreign self not foreign, and we had a good year.

Slava left after that year, to try his luck in Canada, though the last I heard of him was that he was a security guard in Eilat, some years later. After he had left, poof! All the Red Army discipline disappeared. The workers took long breaks, and sometime during the first Intifada they had all become observant Muslims, so they were praying all the time, devoutly—meaning slowly—and the farm suffered for it. It was depressing, but a farmer can not walk away. You plant the crop you see it through. I was in this mood when word of the ridiculous treaty bringing Arafat to Gaza reached us. I was thinking: “This is bad for the Jews.” Everything seemed topsy-turvy in our world. People who were out of touch with reality were making decisions willy-nilly that would have serious repercussions.

Being so preoccupied with what I perceived as a complete and disastrous capitulation by my government, I didn’t at first notice the change one morning as I approached my farm. There they were, standing at attention for the first time since Slava had left. The sight caught me completely off guard. My first thought was that Slava had returned unannounced, but no, he was in Canada. What was going on? I parked the car and approached them. Hamdan, the eldest, stepped towards me. Good morning, I said. I was looking at his face and saw the eruption coming. He screamed at me.

“What are you doing!”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but he wasn’t about to let me speak.

“You are Majnun (crazy)!”

“What are you talking about? What did I do to you?”

“To me? You did it to all of us! This is bad!”

I gave up, and stood silent, waiting to understand.

Hamdan was almost in tears. “They are bad Arabs, really bad.”

“Who is?”

“Arafat. Why are you bringing him here?”

I tried to laugh it off. What else could I do? “I’m not the one bringing him here. Who do you think I am?”

“You can stop it. I know you can.” All the workers were looking at me now, and I could see that they all agreed with Hamdan.

If ever there had been a time when I wished that I could have lived up to what was expected of me, it was then. I truly hated to let them down. Before giving up I tried to think of something to do. I know that sounds ridiculous, and it was, but the power of their petition overwhelmed me. They did not actually believe that I could solve this problem, but they had no place to turn. In pure desperation they turned to me, their lieutenant. Through me, they were speaking to our prime minister, and letting him have a piece of their mind. I resented being a stand in for our leader, one of the duped mentioned above, but I must admit, for a second there, I was really feeling the power.

What happened to the Arabs of Gaza is now well-known and recorded in the chronicles of modern political madness.