A lover of Israel

By Gideon Levy

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_{Last update - 15:54 26/02/2010}

A lover of Israel

_{By Gideon Levy}

It isn't Purim every day, so I'll allow myself this madness: to dress up as a lover of Israel. Not the kind I consider myself to be in any case - that is, no less a lover of Israel than my readers - but the sort that is the total opposite of a traitor and an Israel hater. When I was a child, my mother dressed me up as a girl, an Indian and a cowboy, all opposites of the little boy I was. Now I'll be - if only today, if only in memory of my mother - an Israel lover.

Cry, the beloved country. For one day, I'll take pleasure in all my country does. I'll wax enthusiastic over the assassination in Dubai, hang a giant picture of Mossad chief Meir Dagan in my study, paint horns on New Israel Fund president Naomi Chazan, worship Avigdor Lieberman and his ministry of terror and rage. I'll admire his deputy minister, Danny Ayalon, for how he showed the Turks who's the boss.

I'll shed a tear with Israel Defense Forces soldiers being sworn in at the Western Wall, and the blue-haired Hadassah ladies at Masada. I'll go wild with emotion over our field hospital in Haiti, and count the number of Jews who died in the earthquake, as well as how many there are in Hollywood. I'll take pride in the salutation "Good evening, Tel Aviv" by any aging visiting singer who loves us. I'll join public sing-alongs with Einat Sarouf and Yair Lapid at the Ganki Club - what could be more Israeli than that? - and I'll support the Jewish right of return to homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the shooting of Arab demonstrators and the citizenship law the prevents Palestinians from living with their Israeli spouses in Israel proper.

I'll take every foreign visitor straight to Sderot to see the collection of rusty pipe bombs, and from there to Yad Vashem. Of course I won't let him enter Gaza; that goes without saying. I'll convince him that the entire world is against us and that we are in constant existential danger.

I'll shake with fear from swine flu, bird flu, the Iranian nuclear bomb, the Pakistani nuclear bomb, weapons smuggled through tunnels from Egypt, the dropping water level of the Kinneret, Hezbollah, Nasrallah and Allah the Great. I'll believe that the yellow phosphorus bomb smoke that rose over Gaza was from fireworks to entertain children, imagine that efforts to warn Gaza residents that their homes are about to be bombed is a humanitarian gesture by the National Association for the Mentally Handicapped, and that "clearing" olive trees is an Environmental Protection Ministry campaign to improve the Gaza landscape.

I'll hungrily accept every response by the IDF spokesman, believe every politician and Channel 2 military reporter Roni Daniel, and be convinced beyond doubt that the Israeli army is the most ethical in the world - not third or second but No. 1.

In general, I'll believe we're No. 1 in everything, except for soccer. Tel Aviv is New York, the Galilee is Tuscany, and the People of the Book are truly the People of the Book. We are David and they are Goliath, we are Zion and they are Amalek; after all, we among all the nations were chosen.

I'll count how many Nobel Prizes Jews have produced for humanity. I'll talk about the Jewish brain, Jewish genius and of course, Jewish ethics. I'll cry out every time a Jew in Europe is robbed, and shout "anti-Semitism!" I'll compare Ahmadinejad to Hitler, Arafat to Eichmann, the 1967 borders to Auschwitz - just don't make any comparisons between IDF soldiers' behavior and the Holocaust. I'll believe that the Arabs fled on their own free will in 1948, that the 416 ruined villages never existed, that there was no ethnic cleansing here, no Nakba - all of that is just Arab propaganda.

I'll think we are forbidden to forgive Arabs for having forced us to kill their children, that now after the Holocaust, Jews may do whatever they like, that all the wars were imposed on us from above, and if there were no terror, there would be no occupation, and that all Israel wants is peace and two states. I'm even ready to believe there are no pre-conditions to negotiations: Let's build in the territories, oppose the Arab right of return, keep Jerusalem united forever, annex the Golan Heights, demilitarize the Palestinian state, keep Jewish settlement blocs, Ariel and the Bekaa.

What's wrong with that, just for one day?

I'll support turning every high school into a pre-army training center, with generals in the teachers' rooms and master sergeants instead of janitors. I'll paste a "Combat is coolest, Bro" sticker on my car. I'll click with disapproval when shoes are thrown at the Supreme Court president, but not comment when the army and the Jerusalem Municipality insult her. I'll believe that there's only one Gilad Shalit and not 11,000, and that values and good citizenship mean an ultra-light plane flyover with a banner in support of his release.

I'll cry at every memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin, and believe that if he hadn't been murdered we'd have peace. I'll spit on Goldstone, boycott J Street, call Rahm Emanuel a self-hating Jew, censure Norway and threaten Sweden for anti-Semitism; of course it's anti-Semitism. I'll be proud of pilotless drones, Cast Lead and Iron Domes. And of course, of Bar Refaeli - she's so ours.

Ultimately, every day is Purim.

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In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles,
1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

Swing Riots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

The Swing Riots perform an irreverent gumbo of Gypsy & Creole Jazz, Klezmer & Romanian Horas, Parisian Musette & the occasional wild card thrown in for good measure. The SwingRiots are comprised of 6 core members who have played for decades in everything from Balkan dance bands to traditionalSwing groups including: Bill Marks: Guitar & Voice; Pat Mac Swyney: Mando-Guitar, Tenor Banjo, Mandolin, Cornet, Ney, Harmonica & Voice; Linda Kodaira: Violin; Nick Casillas: Clarinet & Soprano Sax;Ben Getting: Upright Bass.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present Swing Riots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime Swing Riots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it!
--Ross Altman

Ed Pearl

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Gideon Levy: A lover of Israel

A lover of Israel

A lover of Israel

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