Good Night, Left Side

Photo Credit: Ha’aretz
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.605234

The four us sat submerged in a hellish type of heat, four stories below ground.  We were so far down that we could no longer make out the sound of the siren blaring over Tel-Aviv.  Hannah pulled her long hair back into a bun, and beads of sweat appeared on Jeremy’s brow.  Young Haredi children jumped and stomped around the underground parking lot as their mother wiped her wrinkled forehead.  She seemed worried, and tired.

The situation was eerie.  An hour before, the Israeli public had received a message that Hamas planned to hit central Israel with a barrage of rockets at exactly 9:00 PM.  I had been in Tel-Aviv trying to escape the tension of Jerusalem, and suddenly the evening had turned into a nightmare.  A sense of trepidation and quiet filled the air, as people pre-emptively dipped into bomb shelters waiting for the siren.  But the real eeriness was at Habima Theater.   A group of Israeli activists had set up a demonstration against the war in Gaza & against the occupation.  Despite the expectation of rockets, the protest continued, determined to raise its voice against the violence until the sirens screeched it out.  And still eerier, a group of right-wing counter-protesters had arrived to physically assault the Israeli activists.  One of Israel’s most famous rappers, Yoav Eliassi (“The Shadow”) had called on his people (“The Lions”) to join him for the beating.  There was a palpable feel of fear in the air.

As we sat in the underground parking lot, a pair of young men in black t-shirts made their way down the escalator.  One of them eyed us, dripping in sweat, and then eyed us again.  I knew that Jeremy was wearing his “Solidarity Sheikh Jarrah” t-shirt.  Shit.  I turned to Hannah.

“Look at these guys.  I think they’re looking at us.”

“Yup.”

Hannah turned to Jeremy.  Jeremy turned to Sam.  We all turned back to the young men in black t-shirts.  One shirt bore the words “Good Night Left Side” and a strange insignia.  It seemed ominous.

The guys eyed us for a while, talking amongst themselves, and finally approached us.  For the second time in my life, I worried that Jeremy might be attacked while sitting right next to me.  (I suppose this is a bizarre aspect of our friendship.)  I contemplated lunging in front of him if they tried to punch, thinking that maybe they would be too afraid to hit a girl.  But who am I kidding?

“Nice shirt.”

Silence.

“Who are you?  Where you from?”

More silence.

“You are a traitor.”

We all looked at the ground, not meeting their eyes, not speaking.

“Are you all with this person?”

Still silence.  I think we all shared the same instinct to be as quiet as possible, not to provoke them any further.  It reminded me of being surrounded by a group of men on Jerusalem day as they shouted at me and flicked cigarette sparks into my face.  It also reminded me of almost being chased by wild dogs.  We all maintained our silence.

 “You must all be traitors!”

They pointed to each of us in turn, angrily shouting in the depths of the parking garage.

“You’re a traitor.  And you’re traitor.  And you’re a traitor.  And you’re a traitor.”

My heart was racing but I was very quiet.  I looked at Hannah and back to the ground, back at Hannah and back to the ground.

After a few moments, the men walked away.

“I’m scared,” I whispered to Hannah.  “What if they come back?”

“It’s okay,” she responded.  “They won’t hurt us.  There are lots of people around.”

How could we have known that immediately above us, outside, The Shadow and his army of right-wing protesters were attacking Israeli left-wing activists and breaking chairs over their heads?  How could we have known that these violent men had raided a nearby coffee-shop, turning over tables and breaking coffee cup in search of their prey?  How could we have known that four left-wing activists would be injured and one hospitalized?

We were very, very lucky.  When the sirens died down, we ascended to ground level.  Jeremy turned his shirt inside out.

But what scares me most is what I found out the next day.  As I scoured the Internet, devouring stories of left-wing activists attacked in Tel-Aviv, I found an explanation for the odd “Good Night Left Side” t-shirt.  As it turns out, the slogan and insignia were adapted from neo-Nazi t-shirts in Europe.  These Israeli right-wingers had actually put in the effort to redesign the logo, replacing crosses with Stars of David.  Several of them, including our personal would-be attackers, had worn them to the demonstration.  As photograph after photograph circulated the Internet, I struggled to absorb what had happened.  The first time in my life that I had ever felt threatened by some form of Neo-Nazism had been in Tel-Aviv.

The first time in my life that I had ever felt threatened by some form of Neo-Nazism had been in Tel-Aviv.

It brought me back to a conversation I had had two years ago with a beautiful young man on the grassy quad of Hebrew University.  My Residential Advisor had called on him to comfort me after my first brush with an angry Israeli security guard calling me a traitor.  (I have since had many of these experiences…but back then it was a fresh wound.)  This young man was a Solidarity activist, an experienced left-wing activist in Israel, and had some validating words to say.  But what scared me about our  conversation was his certainty that fascism was taking hold in Israel.  As I forced myself to imagine it, I simultaneously recoiled from the idea, thinking it couldn’t be possible.  This is what I wrote on May 5, 2011.

“I looked at Shai*, and somehow, I imagined him disappearing into the air. And when he really was gone, off to class, I looked at the spot that his body had filled just moments ago, shocked that he had come into my life so quickly, changed it so drastically, and then just walked off. It felt surreal, almost as though he was some sort of angel. Although, to tell you the truth, it also had an eerie feel. We talked about the Holocaust, how personal it was to him. We talked about fascism, and the increasing fascist discourse in Israel. And he said, as long as we can still raise our voices together to work for this cause, we will. It was scary, terrifying, in the implication that we may be silenced. That we may do to ourselves what was done to us, what has been done to so many others. I imagined the death of the Left, the blowing of the wind, and him, sanitarily gone. All of us, missing from the natural beauty around us. When I look around me, I can imagine empty spaces. People who would be walking beside me had they not been placed in administrative prison. Had their grandparents not been murdered by Nazis. Had they not been shot for having a difference of opinion, or a difference of skin color. Could that happen to us? To Shai?”

Last weekend, a group of left-wing Israeli activists were attacked by right-wing Israeli thugs wearing neo-Nazi t-shirts.  The police ran away at the sound of the siren.  No arrests were made.

I’m afraid.

(Photo Credit: Ha’aretz, http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.605234)