I’ve been going on non-stop about this book on Twitter for the past couple of days now, but I really loved it and I think it’s really an important read for anyone involved in any sphere of Middle Eastern relations, even as a navel-gazer.

MacFarquhar, who grew up in an expat compound in Libya, writes about his long experience in the region as a reporter and as someone who is constantly amused, amazed, and frustrated by movements there.

He focuses on Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon  as he intersperses apt analysis of the region with his experiences over 20 years of reporting for the New York Times and other publications from Cairo, Riyadh, Beirut, and Jerusalem (although Israel is not at all the focus of this book and only comes up tangentially.)

Reading this book is like having Turkish coffee for hours with a(n amazingly Arab-speaking) friend who is both knowledgeable and amiable and has all the right contacts to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how news is made and how journalists work, as well as a broad strokes view of how politics in the region work from the outside in.

Highly recommended read that I am recalling today as I read about the matzav between Israel and Lebanon.

(Full disclaimer: Thank you to Other Press for sending me a copy of the book.)

I  always judge books by their covers.  I have no remorse over this, and it’s lead me to great selections.  Based on simply cover alone, I surmised that The Debba is a spy thriller, much like The Moscow Rules, which would result in someone lying facedown in an unmarked sewer in Cairo.

So, for the next release, I recommend  a cover change that will appeal more to the author’s intended demographic:

Now there is something that draws my eye immediately.

Fortunately,   the book turned out to be a real page turner and an incredible philosophical exercise in understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I loved it, and I think it’s an important read for anyone interested in engaging on debate about hamatzav.

First things first:  If you have a set stance on Israel/Palestine that you will never change your mind on, you will hate this book.  It will drive you crazy because it refuses to take sides and offer simple black-white messages and consists of multiple twists and turns.  In general, I think there’s a lot to take away and to discuss long after you finish reading it.

The book starts,in 1977, with a phone call to David Starkman, ex-Israeli living with his Polish girlfriend in Canada, having renounced his Israeli citizenship,  while having nightmares dating back to his army service.  His father, who he has not talked to in seven years,  has been murdered in Tel Aviv.  Despite his extreme discomfort with going back to Israel, he books a ticket on the next flight and is soon in the country he hasn’t been to in almost a decade to figure out what happened to his father.

Tel Aviv Purim Parade, 1940s.

The descriptions of Israel are spot-on without being cloying and obvious and, I think, meant to make the reader homesick.  When David first gets off the plane late at night, he describes, “In a flash, the nocturnal smells converged on me like starved furies.  Orange blossoms; the salty smell of the sea; the dust; the hot tarmac.  I steeled myself and walked on. The hot wind ruffled my hair.”

When he lands, he stays with his army friend, Ehud and his girlfriend, Ruti, with whom David shares a past history (the prehistory, as the book often describes).  “An ancient Mercedes cab, its four doors dented, took me to Ibn Gvirol Street. The driver, a muscular man with a close-cropped head, assiduously avoidd looking at me.  I paid him…and got off at the corner of Eliyahu Street. Darkness enveloped everything, thick and fragrant like breath. The green glow of the streetlamps seeped through the tzaftzafa trees; white bedsheets, flapping slowly like ghosts, hung on clotheslines. A gray cat slunk into a yard. Nothing seemed to have changed since I left.”

It’s obvious that David loves the country of Israel while at the same time hating the army top-secret missions he was implicated in that caused him to leave.  Tel Aviv is described perfectly: Mediterranean, worn, dusty, hot, and, yet, completely loveable. The city is as much a character in the book as any of the others Mandelman creates- Amzaleg, the Sephardic police detective who helps David, David’s uncle Mordechai, and the ever-growing gangs of Shin Bet, internal security services.

As David begins to try to understand who killed his father, the police become less friendly and tell him not to get involved, to go back to Canada.  This makes him want to press further, and he discovers that his father’s death is possibly related to a play he co-wrote with Rubin Paltiel, called The Debba, which sparked Israeli-Arab riots the first and only time it was staged in the 1940s in Haifa due to its controversial content regarding Israeli-Arab relations.  His father’s will stipulates that the play must be put on again in order for David to receive the money, and somehow, everyone around him discourages it.  The story revolves around the mystery of the play and David’s role in it, as well as his father’s role in the 1948 War for Independence and in killing an Arab terrorist, Abu Jalood,  and unravels quite satisfactorily at the end.

Tel Aviv, 1948

I loved this book for many reasons, even though I hate mystery novels, stuff with murder in it, and books that try to wrap up Israel in a couple hundred pages.   First is that the ending is a complete surprise and really left me thinking about the book for several days afterwards. Second is that it gives an inside look at Israel in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as the days of the Israeli War of Independence, and it really leads you to believe that nothing is solid in history.

When I first learned Israeli history, I learned that all of the first pioneers to Israel were brave and strong, building the Jewish homeland, and there was no room for reinterpretation.  This is certainly not the case: the pioneers were not automatons and had human emotions,  some of which led to hard decisions, and this kind of behavior is shown clearly in the book.

I also loved this book because it really made me feel like I was in Israel during that time period.  The author’s clever use of inserting Hebrew and Arabic phrases throughout the text to get just enough effect and not oversaturate with stereotype, as well as the descriptions of the fresh cucumbers and sitting at Cafe Kassit really opened up Israel of the 1970s for me.

It’s true that, without at least a bit of knowledge about Israeli history, you could get lost in some of the terminology and references.  But discovering is always half the fun.

You can buy it here.

Interrupting my California recap to rant and to commend.

I am frequently bombarded by e-mails from Israel-related organizations that want my money either to help uphold the democratic values that Americans so value about Israel or to help poor starving children with one arm on this holiest of Jewish holidays.  I delete all of them.

I have donation fatigue.  And I have no idea where my money is going.  Yes, there is Charity Navigator for American charities. But I have no idea how effective the organizations that constantly send me e-mails are, even if I am very familiar with their work and know tons of people who work there.   If they are e-mailing me constantly, they are spending less money on actual work and more on administrative tasks.

Also,  if you are e-mailing me every day (every single Jewish organization on the face of this planet who unfortunately know that I exist due to my excessive active youthful participation in the mailing list of every single Jewish organization on the face of this planet), you will get $0 from me.  I’ll use Jewish organizations as examples, because those are the ones I’m most familiar with.  Here are some examples of the messages that beseech me to give:

Right into the trash.  Why?  Because I was a slave worked at Hillel on my own volition, giving the organization my blood, sweat, and tears for all of my college career (and it was great-I met the majority of my friends there).  And there is no way students leave legacies behind.  The people who wrote this don’t understand how campus Hillels work.  They are extremely fluid and, because of administration bureaucracy, manage to make not much of an impact beyond the four years you spend there.

Donations are not what makes the organization on a branch level run.  Usually, funding is obtained by writing tons and tons and tons of grant applications, a process that, had I spent just a bit longer on, I would have been qualified as a grant specialist in any non-profit.   These parents that this e-mail is appealing to, however, likely don’t know this unless they also toiled at Hillel.

Here’s another one.  The New Israel Fund, who I donated to once to give money to Russian Israelis to marry as Israelis in Israel, now have not taken the hint that I don’t really want to give any more money to them and keep sending me things like this, which cites a survey of dubious origins that polled only 500 Israelis (doesn’t say which area of the country, etc.), to alarm me into giving them money with a nice use of an urgent Ben-Gurion side-quote,

And then there’s the JTA.

JTA, I don’t know if you realize this, but EVERY moment in time is fraught with challenges and opportunities for the Jewish people.  And if I want a news update, I can get it from the Jewish Peoples’ News source: Twitter.  And if that fails, there’s my mom.  Stop patronizing me. Please.

I delete lots and lots of these e-mails every day. These organizations are not the only guilty ones.

And then, I found an effective way to give.

I very frequently read and share stories from David of Treppenwitz, one of my favorite Israeli bloggers. Recently,  he posted,

Long time readers will recall that one of the things I like to do throughout the year is drop off the occasional hot or cold drink (depending on the season) as well as the odd bag of cake or cookies for the soldiers I pass along my daily commute.

Up to this point these small gestures have been funded entirely by the ad revenue generated by this site.  However, as the revenue from the sidebar ads has been, ahem, a little slow in the past couple of months… I was hoping that some of you might like to step up and join me in participating in this small, but meaningful, gesture.

I sent money to him.  Because I know exactly what he is doing.   And he doesn’t send me beseeching and patronizing e-mails.  And, actually, he probably doesn’t remember, but when I was in Israel in 2006 during the Israel-Lebanon War, he was driving t-shirts and underwear up to soldiers in the North and I emailed him asking if I could come and help and he actually called me by cell phone to tell me that my help was much-appreciated, but that he was all set.

I don’t mean to pile on these organizations because some of what they do is very good work. And I understand how hard it is to raise money for Jewish causes, or for any cause for that matter.  However, the constant fund-seeking is really wearing me out, because I have no idea where my money goes with large organizations and because they need to stop being so patronizing.  With David, I get the following email,

Hi Vicki,

Thank you so much for your generous donation.  It will certainly buy
lots of cold juices, iced teas and sodas for the soldiers.  Thanks to
you and a few other wonderful people I will be able to delivery drinks
and snacks for the entire summer and probably most of the fall as
well.

And rest assured, I will make sure to let them know that there are
many wonderful people behind this gesture.

Warm Regards,

David

David Bogner
Efrat, Israel

www.treppenwitz.com

While Mr. B and I are losing our minds/moving to Pentagon City, Israel is honoring Memorial Day and Independence Day and I didn’t even have time to stop and think about it. Luckily, my friend and fellow blogger Benji Lovitt has his annual list of things he loves about Israel.

Memorial Day in Israel is a billion times more  amazing than in the United States,  and it makes me miss the country intensely.

The siren to remember Holocaust victims and those who have died in Israel’s wars sounds at 11:00 a.m. for two minutes everywhere across Israel and everyone stops, no matter where they are, to remember.

The first time I went through it, I was on a bus trip with March of the Living which I went on to get away from a bad breakup, and we were on our way to the Dead Sea.  Everyone got out of the tour bus and the siren overcame us as all of the feelings we felt the week before in Auschwitz and which we thought we wiped from our memories the minute our plane landed in Israel, came flooding out again.  The next day, Israel’s Independence Day, we ate tons of barbecue and got drunk on Golani wine near the Syrian border.  That’s how Israel rolls.

Happy Independence Day, Israel.  You’re not perfect. You’re hot, messy, crowded, and really, really complicated.  But I still love you.   Grow big and strong and (mentally) healthy and eat your vegetables.  I’ll be back soon.