The neighbourhood bully

The neighbourhood bully just lives to survive,

Bob Dylan, from the album Infidels (1983)

I write this as a non-Jewish South African, a free and silent observer living in Tel Aviv in the midst of post-war and pre-what-next.

On July 19, my Israeli husband wrote a calming e-mail to my very concerned family back in South Africa stating that “the worst thing that happened here in Tel Aviv is that we had a terrible jellyfish problem and for three weeks we couldn’t swim in the sea”. He continued: “We are also very concerned that they will cancel the Depeche Mode concert next month.”

Well, the jellyfish crisis cleared within a few days. Depeche Mode cancelled five days before the concert, and my colleagues’ son was killed in Lebanon. Benjy Hillman, 27 years old, had been married only three weeks. At his funeral, his younger brother spoke about what their lives would have been like had their parents not decided to move to Israel from England. “You could have been a carefree student, but you were so grateful to be living in the Jewish homeland, so glad that we had the chance to appreciate the importance of the land, the Torah and defending the people of Israel.”

As far removed from the danger as I have been, living in cushy Tel Aviv and all, the war has simmered and bubbled over into a tragedy for me, opening discussions and wounds of friends and colleagues that I never knew existed, and I have since been wrapped up in a time of disturbance and sadness as friends have been called up, boyfriends of friends, cousins, sons and husbands.

At one stage at the office, most of our men were gone. The ones who were not called up, volunteered. And when they were sent back, they volunteered again. And some are still not back. I have witnessed an incredible sense of unity in a tragic time of crisis; people in the south are housing refugees from the north. Food parcels are flying around the country in preparation for the soldiers returning from war today. My colleagues still come to work with swollen eyes and the radio plays songs of mourning for a war that is nowhere nearly over.

We have stopped watching international news. I am a traitor at the gym when I flick over to an international broadcast, even if it is only to stare in disbelief at misguided media with a strong sense of injustice. My colleagues (mostly South African) and friends can barely muster the energy to question it. They are asking what would any other country have done in a similar situation, and recognise that Israel’s only choice is to fight its own battles: survival depends not on opinions expressed by people watching the news a million miles away.

Did it not look dodgy to the media that Hezbollah was operating within densely populated areas, setting up missile bunkers beneath the homes of innocent civilians? Did the media stop to judge the credibility of the news that streamed through the wires from Hezbollah?

The children of Lebanon could now be sleeping peacefully in their beds had Hezbollah not deviously sacrificed the lives of whoever was in the way as part of its frantic dream to destroy Israel.

And why then is Israel perceived as the only bastard? Is it because it absolutely sucks at one of the most important dimensions of war: public relations (something that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah excels at)?. This war presented Hezbollah with a propaganda opportunity that fell into the open arms of Nasrallah’s festering public-relations orgy … and, what’s more, took the world by storm.

Ben Caspit, a journalist writing for Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper, expressed his viewpoint in the form of a suggested speech for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: “Ehud Barak’s peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1 000 citizens, men, women and children. I don’t remember you being so enraged then.

“Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park hotel in Netanya? What can you do — that’s the way we are. We don’t wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.”

Amid the turmoil of the past month, Tel Aviv has offered us a cosy, comfortable place of refuge. Yes, we know that we are living and breathing in a bubble, and thank you very much, this bubble has a river flowing through it, the most gorgeous Mediterranean white beaches, coffee shops that outnumber pubs in London and a nightlife that literally never sleeps. We go to free yoga or movies on the beach and opera in the park, and I don’t think twice about my safety when I go for a run long after dark.

We wake up every Saturday morning to the most beautiful sounds of prayers being sung at the synagogue down our road, and the crowds on the beaches put their hands together when another army helicopter flies overhead, heading for their base just south of Tel Aviv. We counted 15 last Saturday evening while watching the sunset.

Our little bubble was only slightly dented the night we had planned to go jolling in the centre of Tel Aviv and got the call from a friend to say, “Did you hear the news?” A missile had landed in Hadera, 40 minutes north of Tel Aviv. We decided it was best to change our plans and opted to hang out at friends with the deluxe bomb shelter.

My father, a dairy farmer in KwaZulu-Natal, phoned me after watching a potentially scary broadcast last week, to ask if he should be worried for my safety. The irony of it is that I feel safer here in war-torn times than I ever did living in Jo’burg. Here I observe with sadness but I am not part of the cause of the problem and I do not carry with me overbearing feelings of guilt. I miss South Africa and I long to return, but in the interim, I am safe here. I love this Mediterranean world and the passion with which Israel, looking you straight in the eye, fights to be free.