I should have known exactly who would be at the Hebron Fund gala last night in New York City, but it was worth going just to understand: orthodox Jews, mostly in their 50s, a lot of them overweight. We're talking about outer borough people. Religious people. Not sophisticates.
I stopped a few of them as they were going in. "It's important to me that Jews be able to settle in any part of Israel," a lady with a blonde wig said to me as she sat on a bench to change into her party pumps. Are you concerned about Barack Obama? "I'm concerned about America in general. We've been attacked on 9/11 and we have to keep our eyes open."
Why is this event important? A 30-year-old guy getting out of an SUV: "It's more of a nationalistic thing. As a Jew it's important."
A number of the settler-supporters told me about the passage in Genesis where Abraham buys a piece of land near Hebron for 400 shekels after Sarah dies. "Jews have been living there continuously from Abraham's time till 1929. Now they're moving back." "It is the only city in the world that has a deed to it in the oldest book, it was bought by a Jew named Abraham; and it is the only place in Israel where Jews are not allowed to live."
A tall handsome black-hat guy with a red beard said that to me. I said, "What about the two state solution?"
He said, "What about a two-state solution in the United States. Al Qaeda gets half. How would you like that?"
I said I wouldn't, and he said, "OK," and walked away.
There were 35 demonstrators representing 8 different anti-occupation groups in a holding pen out on 45th Street. "Viva Viva, Palestina!" they shouted. "Hebron Settlers Ku Klux Klan."
Some of the orthodox Jews went over to the holding pen to argue. The one who stayed the longest was small and young and showed no expression even when an Iranian-American was shouting at him repeatedly, "You're lying, you're lying, you're lying–" His girlfriend was with him. She didn't have a coat and stood there shivering in her black dress as he put his face up to the demonstrators. His kind of bland pugnacity reminded me of the character Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor's novel about religious zealotry, Wise Blood. His name was Ari Kahane (no relation).
Kahane was drawn to Aaron Levitt of Jews Against the Occupation. They got in an argument across the steel railing of the barricade. Levitt is tall and bearded, bundled against the cold. He tried to break thru Kahane's imperviousness, with his girlfriend there shivering. He told him about seeing settlers throw rocks at Arab girls as they tried to go to school.
Kahane said that was wrong but sometimes there were good reasons for it. "Little girls have a right to go to school but when their going to school interferes with other people's rights, whose land is there, it's another situation."
From there it went into the, Sometimes there is collateral damage in situations like this. In Dresden, the Allies killed 100,000 Germans. That was collateral damage.
"This week our Torah portion records our purchase of the land."
Levitt shouted at him: "No it doesn't. It records Abraham's purchase of the land. I'm familiar with Torah."
I don't know whether Kahane realized Levitt was Jewish till right then. He seemed to change his tactics. He murmured something in Hebrew, and said that Levitt was guilty of treason to the Jewish people. I asked Kahane to explain this. "There are times when you can disagree. But to stand out here with the enemy and disagree, there is no forgiveness."
By enemy he meant the Arabs wearing keffiyehs. It broke Kahane's heart to see there were Jews protesting. But I thought that was the best part of the protest: it was such a motley group, and everyone got along. A lot of Jews, a lot of Arabs, some Muslims, Brooklyn lefties, some regular old honkeys too. Levitt said to me that if you turned the situation around and a protester went up screaming to a group of orthodox Jews in Hebron, they'd stone him. But here the protesters were happy to talk to the settlers, or shout back and forth anyway, but not hurt them. Palestinians don't mind Jews in Hebron, Levitt said. But they don't want my-way-or-the-highway Jews. They want Jews who want to get along with Arabs, as they did for centuries, till the massacre in '29. And even in the massacre, many Arabs sheltered Jews.
It was cold. More settlers came out, and I kept moving from one argument to another. There were two girls in long dresses screaming about how Arabs would leave an injured child in the road, and only Jews would save the child. There was a Lubavitch couple, a guy with a white beard and glasses, the woman with a jetblack wig. Once again the guy was drawn to Levitt.
"Abraham bought it. It belongs to us. What's your Hebrew name?"
Levitt ignored him. He said everything they were doing in Hebron was a violation of Torah. "What does Halacha say about stoning school girls?"
"It's not allowed," the guy said, but he immediately went into Palestinian children blowing themselves up. Finally he got Levitt to tell him his Hebrew name. After that the guy wanted to jump for joy. His eyes lit up like a Chabadnik.
"Thank god. Be proud you're a Jew," he said. He stuck his hand out, but Levitt refused to shake it.
He said he had no respect for the guy's attitude.The guy was saying, Jews have a compact to be nice to each other. "But other people are just flesh."
The wife with the jet-black wig started shaking. She held her hand up near her face. "It's a tiny tiny piece of land. You want them to die in the sea? Oh oh oh, I'm too emotional."
Levitt tilted right at her. "No! You're not emotional enough."
That was the best thing I heard all night. I've been thinking about it since. You're supposed to stay cool in an argument. Levitt generally tries to stay cool when he's arguing with people. But when he's with people like this, he doesn't try to persuade them. He tries to wake them up.
I left with some despair about the two-state solution. What does it mean that these people get to have a big ball in New York for settlements that the whole world disapproves of and that violate international law and that our presidents all say they disapprove of? Why is this allowed by anyone? Why is my country allowing it? Where is J Street? How entrenched are these zealots in Israeli life, and what will it take to disabuse them of these expansionist fantasies? And why isn't there war inside American Jewish life over their activities?
