kagablog

There’s this big guy in front of me. He’s about three or four years older than me and he’s going to win the cross-country race. So I cut across a field instead of running around it, which puts me in front. He screams at me: “Davey! Hey, Davey! You cheat! Davey!” but I ignore him and we enter the earthern oval which has the parents inside it with me gloriously in the lead. He pounds along behind me, catching up all the way, but I’m too far in front and win. He’s out of breath and gasping to the teachers that I cheated, but he’s one of those throwbacks who were kept in junior school forever because he kept failing (but he sure as hell boosts the rugby team) and no-one really like him or wants to believe him anyway, so I’m declared the winner of the race. It’s the last time I ever win anything, because straight after that I am pitted against the best cross-country racers from the other schools in the area, and I realize if I win the next race, which is unlikely since I won’t be able to cheat, I will have to compete in local, then provincial, and then who knows, at national level, all for the glory of the school, my parents, my country and everyone except, I reason, myself.

So I stopped competing and became the most useless teenagers any parent could not wish to have. I filled every available time period, be it break or before sport or after or between prep (I was at boarding school) or before going to bed with having cigarettes, reading Asterix and Obelix comics and later, smoking joints and that great Cape Coloured invention, the pipe, a broke-off neck of a bottle filled with marijuana, and occasionally with a ‘cream’ of Mandrax. Holiday times consisted of stealing cars, smashing post boxes, breaking off car aerials, stabbing tyres with knives, tossing stones through any window myself and my mates thought was too big, racing around on 50cc motorbikes stoned out of our heads, driving through stop streets when you couldn’t see who was coming across them, sniffing spray n cook, pursuing horrified straight teenage girls … and endless hours on empty plots getting wasted on whatever myself and my mates could afford or steal or bum.

Unsurprisingly, I did not obtain a university exemption in my finals and it was the army for me, but my call-up was only in June, so I had six months before I went to fight for white privileges, which I filled with ever more drug consumption between trying to hold down a job at a hospital. I was out every night getting high until three in the morning and had to be up at six to take the train to work. I was drawing and cutting and pasting on an artist’s easel which was stacked at 45 degrees, a very convenient angle to pass out on, which I did almost every day until I finally got fired by my totally disgusted boss.

It was somewhere in this foggy period that my drug buddy and I decided we should go and ‘score’ and ‘arm’ of weed from Crossroads township, because the tiny packets we were buying were just too expensive and didn’t last long enough. We divided this in half and I returned home and opened my stash upon my bed. I took out a bit and smoked it and went for a very satisfied walk. Meanwhile, my parents returned home and my mother, who never usually went into my bedroom, went in to put a shirt on my bed, which she had bought as a present for her errant son. Not knowing what the mass of green stuff was, which was about twice the size of a soccer ball, she called my father, an ex-cop, who identified it immediately as ‘drugs’. When I got home they were cramming my hard-won weed into the bin, which really pissed me off. I was so far from normalcy that I didn’t even think about how upset my folks were, I just wanted my weed back. Evidence of how fucked my mind was emerged clearly the next morning, when my sister raced into my bedroom to tell me that my father was having a heart-attack. I had gone out on my usual binge, smoking my buddy’s stash, the night before, and I could see no reason why I should get out of bed. My sister managed to get my father to hospital, where he underwent a double bypass. Half of his heart had died, but he was such a fit old bugger that the other half kept going. Later I went to visit him in hospital and he asked me if I knew what I was doing, so I wrote out a thesis on marijuana to prove that I did – how it cures glaucoma and reduces nausea for cancer patients and things like that – all the positives, as well as the negatives, such as that it can produce real psychosis.

My father has since died, bless his soul. It took me 30 years to give up cigarettes. I still smoke marijuana, but in really tiny, respectful amounts. I got three degrees when I finally got to university. Now my teenage son is struggling to find the required motivation to do his assignments, and I don’t know what to say to him; that it’s not for us that he must do them, its for himself?

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From now on I’m only buying cheap shoes, watches and cellphones. These are the first things thieves steal from you, and I seem to be their target right now. The latest robbery on the growing list took place on Tuesday night at my own home. Five guys, just out of their teens, one with a gun, and there is nothing you can do – even Bruce Lee can’t do much against a pistol. Myself being the only male in a group of four women, they made for me right off, but knowing the drill I kept my head down and lay on the floor as instructed. The mother of the four-month-old child gave them backchat, and for this she was pistol-whipped. My hands were tied behind my head with electric cable, and I lay on my stomach hoping nothing violent would happen. These were relatively ‘nice’ burglars, who did not stab or punch me, but they really took their time. They turned over my place and my friends completely, taking everything they thought that could possibly have value, eating, drinking, smoking – clearly not worried about being caught. I lay on my stomach for an hour, praying that the baby would not wake or that one my friends did something stupid. It was the longest hour of my life. I had just smoked a spliff prior to the arrival of the thieves. Music played for the first half hour before that appliance was carefully packed into a bag. I stared at a patch of carpet and recanted yoga mantras while my muscles shook with the strain of my un-natural position. Trying not be angry. There are no jobs out there for youngsters, after all.

Eventually they left and the whole process of reporting the matter to totally disinterested cops and replacing locks and contacting insurance companies and retrieving my cellphone number had to be done. What am I doing in this place where we have forgotten how to live with each other? It’s really easy to succumb to hatred and fear and racism as a means of coping. But I gotta keep that love channel open.

It’s becoming clear I have to leave my house: the only question is, how far do I move? Out of Joburg? Out of South Africa? Out of Africa entirely? I mean, fuck the programme Survivor. Why put yourself in danger deliberately when it’s right here already?.

Molepole folk singer Malefo Mokha, otherwise known as Stampore, has a completely authentic and unique style of playing guitar, with the left hand held above instead of below the neck, but still creating chord shapes. I saw him perform at the Maun Festival, held for the first time this year in Maun, the supply town for the Okovango Delta, Botswana. Stampore has released one CD but he does not survive off his music … and is often forced to beg or busk on the streets.

These days I wear my safety belt when I drive around Joburg. It’s a sign that I have grown up, I suppose. Like the way I am always fucking working. I used to do sweet fuckall, I’m not sure how. It would drive me nuts now. Anway, there was a time that I never wore safety belts, and one of those times was when I used to pick up street-walkers. It just didn’t seem appropriate to be buckled up when you knew that the makgosha was soon going to unbuckle your belt. It was somehow too lawful. In those days I also used to smoke, which made the whole interaction easier. I mean, have you ever heard of a prossie who doesn’t smoke? Like, they are worried about their health and complexion? And what would they do in between Johns – brush up on their literature? So I used to offer the makgosha a smoke after I had blown my wad, and it made the drive back to the pickup point just that much easier. Smokes are great for that – they ease the spaces up between and after things have happened, they mark the space with a little brown burn. You feel naked without one when you quit; you have to face the space all naked and alone. Life without filters and all that. So there was this makgosha who used to stand on a dimly lit stretch of road opposite the Brixton graveyard. Behind her was the old age home which was supposed to get a fence put up by council to keep out the night rabble, but that never happened. To get to this blonde, who was in her late twenties, one had to pass the flying squad headquarters. She would stand just a few meters down from where the squad cars emerged. I dunno why, I guess she felt safer knowing the cops were right there. She said they even knew her name, which I forget now, but I wouldn’t tell you anyhow. She said they knew her story, which was that she was raising a baby on her own. Well, not quite on her own, she apparently had her mum to help her, but no man. Her mother must have held the infant and fed it and shushed it up when it yelled, when its mother was out looking for Johns. I never knew if it was a girl or a boy, and I never asked. But I always gave her a little bonus, and a smoke on the way home, cause I felt sorry for her and her kid. If it was a true story. Somehow, I believed her. There were nights when I was bored and would drive past, just to see if she was there. If she was, it gave me a little thrill to know that I could have picked her up, but I hadn’t. If she wasn’t there, it was a relief to know that I wouldn’t have to make the decision. Either way, it made the trip home a bit more spicy. The blonde before her was a little bit shorter, and she had a great manner. She would make the whole transaction fun, which helps, because it’s always a bit nerve-wracking having sex behind someone’s house or in a park or a dark alley and not knowing who or what could disturb you. The little blonde was a crack addict. The faster she got you to give up your little bit of white semen, the faster she could score her little bit of white rock. She was really funny, and you felt really relaxed about all of the fifteen minute interaction, but she was a hectic racist. Anything black that drove past pulled a comment from her. The last time I saw her she was going to make a big score, one that would set her up for a while. Maybe something went wrong with the deal, because I never saw her opposite the graveyard again. Just the mother, who was a little taller, and always walked real slow and languid, turning to look at you as you drove past.

The following are words which have become accepted terms on the massively-selling tabloid known as the Daily Sun, through everyday usage, but which spellcheck has great difficulty in coming to terms with:

Bakkie: bake, bookie, bike, biddy, buddy, buggy, beakless, bookish, backless, bookcase, bakehouse, battle, beauty, beak, body, bogy (a bakkie is a car with a small cab at the front and an open section at the back (the ‘bak’, prounounced ‘buck’) for holding goods, also known as a pickup).

Bliksem: botulism, balkiest, bulkiest, blitzes, batsmen, blacksmith, blitzing, blitzed, botulisms, bulgiest, backslide, boldest, backslid, backside, bloodiest (to bliksem someone is to hit them, hard).

Condomise: condones, condoms, comedians, comedowns, condense, comediennes, continues, contemns, conjoins, Cantonese, contumides, condemning, condolence, Canadians (to comdomise is to wear a condom when having sex; it’s a term frequently used in campaigns combating HIV/Aids, as in A,B,C: Abstain, Be faithful, Condomise).

Gogo: go-go, gigo, gaga, gauge, toga, goody, good, dodo, dojo, gage, googly, agog, gigolo, gauge, Diego, Gouda. (a gogo is a grandmother).

Inyoka: inky, Yankee, innate, unity, annoyed, nook, unlike, India, ingot, into, enmity, inmate, amnity, noddy, unlock, Yank (inyoka literally means ‘snake’ but is the common term for people who cost the state millions by stealing copper electrical cables – plural izinyoka)

Malema: mammal, mama, Malayan, mélange, meanly, Manila, namely, manual, Miami, manly, menial, memo, malign, melon (Julius Malema is the vocal leader of the ANC Youth League. After he maligned Democratic Alliance Leader Helen Zille of being ‘racist, colonial and imperialist’ she countered by accusing him of being an un-manly ‘inkwenkwe’ – an uncircumcised boy, a deep insult for the Xhosa – and an academic melon, who failed his woodwork course at school, and should perhaps be involved in menial labour, rather than politics).

Mkhulu: meekly, muddle, mutual, module, moduli, milky, mutely, medulla, mulch, meddle, mettle, middle, multi, mould, moult. (an mkhulu is a grandfather).

Msholozi: mashies (Zulu nickname for Jacob Zuma, ANC president and soon-to-be president of South Africa. It means ‘you can’t sneak up on this guy’ or ‘be careful, this guy can sneak up on you’).

Muthi: mushy, mouths, mouth, maths, meths, moths, myths, mashie, moth, myth, mashy, meshy, muzzy, Meath, methyl, mush (muthi is medicine that witch-doctors use in their spell-casting and muthi (often made up of human body parts) is often buried in people’s yards, sometimes to invoke tokoloshes – see tokoloshe).

Sangoma: samoan, sanguine, snowman, sangria, seaming, synonym, slamming, salmon, seamanly, assuming, someone, summing. (a sangoma is a healer. Their primary task is to heal – if they use body parts for spells, or do harm to others, they are not sangomas but witch-doctors).

Takkies: takes, toadies, teddies, toddies, tykes, tackles, tickles, titties, tattles, tidies, tattoos, daddies, takeaways, teaches, attacks (takkies are canvas sneakers).

Tokoloshe – ticklish, toehold, touchholes (a tokoloshe is a small, evil gnome, often sent by jealous rivals or witch-doctors, which sometimes has sex with the unfortunate affected person and glows with a bluish or greenish light).

Venda: vend, veined, vandal, viand, vended, fined, veins, evened, find, fanned, vented, vent, fanged, fawned, finned (Venda is a small place in the North-Eastern corner of the Soutpansberg in Limpopo).

The innocence of a new psyche
Soon with scars is laced
The fresh pink skin grows stiff and tight
Wrinkled from a thousand fights

An old dog tethered in a yard
Snarls softly, yet it winces hard
Keeps it gaze upon the ground
As master’s blows come raining down

Once the scars joined up and met
There was no give between
Death was welcomed, even sought
The day was lost, the battle fought
The lesson that this soul was taught
Cannot be sold, should not be taught.

It’s an expensive business, getting mugged. Especially when you are stabbed, because for that you have to see a doctor or go to hospital, get stitches and pain-killers and antibiotics and anti-inflammatory pills.

But I have the means to finance all this, as well as being able to replace my stolen carkeys, shoes and various other small things like watches and bits of jewelry. Perhaps this is why I was treated the way I was, when these items were forcibly taken from my person, during the mugging of my girlfriend and I on Melville Koppies, central Joburg, by two so-called blacks, one of whom was wielding a pump-action shotgun.

I was clobbered with said gun on the back of the neck and punched and stabbed with my own penknife, although I handed over the above goods without argument – I just didn’t want to lie down on the ground in front of these two. So I was basically bludgeoned to the ground.

Much harder to replace than the material items is the hurt pride and the sense of optimism for Africa and South Africa which, as I have been robbed several times in the last few years, is becoming rather difficult to maintain.

And it’s really hard to believe that the cops care when you go report yet another crime to your person and goods and you are told that you shouldn’t be out walking in the open in the first place. The insinuation is that it’s your fault. If you would only stay in your home, or rather walk around a mall, then you will be safe, they insisted. But I don’t believe that either, having suffered several attempted break-ins at my own residence of late.

I was also told by the cops that I was “lucky” to have got away with relatively minor injuries. I guess it was my lucky day. It could have turned out much worse. They could have attacked my girlfriend, in which case, they would have had to kill me, or I them. I am truly thankful.
What is going on here, as part of the low-level war previously mentioned on the kagablog, is actually a turf war. I live on the ‘fringe,’ which is why I am getting hit. I like to walk in nature. I live next to a river. The underlying rule is becoming: live in a secure complex, not a house by the river, and don’t walk in unpatrolled areas.

The two men who have conducted their reign of terror on the koppies have become the rulers of this territory by default. It’s just too dangerous to walk there, and the cops can’t or won’t catch them, so it’s now their turf.

So far this pair have assaulted and robbed about 60 victims, and still nothing has been done. They bury the gun after hitting people with it and disappear until the heat dies down. Then they return, dig it up and wait for the next suckers.

There is a contingent of reservists who are determined to nail these guys. I was phoned by them soon after my ordeal and went to look at some identity photographs. Some of the people photographed were in the process of being fucked up, so they didn’t look too good. Others were just photographed because they looked suspicious, which isn’t exactly legal, but then again, this guy explained, a lot of what they do isn’t legal. The hands of the cops are tied, he said, but ours are not.

I’m not sure who is more nuts, the muggers or the reservists, who now send me sms messages about the ambushes they are setting.
Well, the break-ins at my house only stopped when the local community policing forum became involved. So this is what it’s boiled down to: vigilante groups, who are standing up to the thugs, because the cops won’t. Are they racists? Do they get a thrill out of beating possible thugs, or are they just trying to protect the community? I don’t know. At least these guys are trying to do something about the situation.
Perhaps I must accept the fact that I am likely to be an ongoing victim of crime, and violent crime at that, simply because for 500 years my white ancestors oppressed and robbed the black residents of this country. If I am going to stay here, I must be prepared to be a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. Perhaps I am already giving way to despair and resignation, as Ian Martin wrote …

Funny thing is, I felt no rage at the time. I felt absolutely no pain – that only came later, when the adrenalin wore off. It was more like, oh, here we go again. So I’m becoming used to being robbed. Does this mean I am becoming a victim?

I did notice as I drove the streets afterwards, that I was looking for my assailants. But I don’t know that if I see them, I will leap from my car with whatever weapon I can find and do serious bodily harm. My anger has been delayed, which is dangerous, but I know that to exact revenge won’t bring real satisfaction; it will just lower me to the level of my muggers.

It’s a complex thing to be the victim of what was at least in part a racial attack. I am a white heterosexual male, so I haven’t been the object of violence that women, so-called blacks or gays often are or were. On the other hand, I only weigh 60kg and I’m not nearly six foot tall and I am approaching 50 pretty fast. I have been fucked up many, many times, and there wasn’t much I could do in retaliation.

It’s actually quite laughable (if it wasn’t also tragic) how literal a racist/sexist attack, or any attack motivated by prejudice is. Being told to get on your knees, so that that the attacker feels taller and therefore superior. Your ancestors did this to mine, now the roles are reversed; see, I’m the baas now. The rapist puts his victim into a submissive pose, etc etc

There is also the dehumanizing of all involved in such scenarios. The perpetrator knows deep in his soul that he is actually proving how inferior he is by having to do such a debasing action, in order to feel superior. At the same time, in a Sartre-ian sense, there is moment of bad faith, where the perpetrator ignores this former knowledge and pretends that the violent action is worth it, for that temporary sensation of feeling superior.

This is why it’s best not to look the attacker in the eye while the attack is taking place, because you mirror the real inferiority back to the attacker as he does his attack – and he (or she) really doesn’t want to see that.

Both the attacker and the victim add to the collective pain body of the planet. For more reading on this topic, consult Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth.

One also has to see all this in context. South Africa is an extremely violent country, and most of the violence takes place between the working class, black inhabitants, who don’t have razor wire and security companies to rely on, or the resources to replace stolen goods with the relative ease that middle or upper class whites do. Hello, wake up Derek, welcome to the Africa of the 21st Century, now colonized by wars and crime.
And the suffering of the working class is far, far worse. I work on the Daily Sun and watch the flow of gore go past with unrelenting monotony, day after day, week after week. What is my little scratch compared to the father who had to watch his son’s door being kicked down - and his son shot to death - while he watched through a keyhole? Or the mother whose shack was burned down in inter-foreigner tensions, who could only rescue her baby, but not her six-year-old daughter, from the flames?

our “peace” is actually a thinly disguised low-level war which keeps the public happily producing because we have a “democracy” which is not in an all-out “war”.

We had six attempted break-ins two weeks ago at our house, and it felt a bit like the Gaza strip. The cops don’t give a fuck; we were lucky in that we are ADT members and could call for help; the landlord put razor wire on our fence and the break-ins stopped (touch wood). Life goes on …

No political, economic, social or environmental system can fulfill its purpose unless peoples´ lifestyles, and value-systems correspond to the sustained continuity of that system or state of affairs. The quality of any society or community is no better or worse than the personal qualities of its members, and to achieve economic growth and social development it is crucial to achieve personal growth. Without this the very building blocks of any ´new world order´ will themselves be the downfall of that order…

Sister Jayanti

By Tony Karon Thursday, Jan. 01, 2009

Avrum Burg is the scion of one of Israel’s founding families — his father was the deputy speaker of the first Knesset, and Burg himself later became speaker of the legislature, and a member of Israel’s cabinet. His position at the heart of the Israeli establishment makes all the more remarkable his critique of the Jewish State, which he claims has lost its sense of moral purpose. In his new book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes (Palgrave/MacMillan), he argues that an obsession with an exaggerated sense of threats to Jewish survival cultivated by Israel and its most fervent backers actually impedes the realization of Judaism’s higher goals. He discussed his ideas with TIME.com’s Tony Karon.

TIME: You argue that the Jewish people are in a state of crisis, partly because of the extent to which the Holocaust dominates contemporary Jewish identity. Can you explain?

Burg: I, like many others, believe that a day will come very soon when we will live in peace with our neighbors, and then, for the first time in our history, the vast majority of the Jewish people will be living without an immediate threat to their lives. Peaceful Israel and a secure Diaspora, all of us living the democratic hemisphere. And then the question facing our generation will be, can the Jewish people survive without an external enemy? Give me war, give me pogrom, give me disaster, and I know what to do; give me peace and tranquility, and I’m lost. The Holocaust was a hellish horror, but we often use it as an excuse to avoid looking around seeing how, existentially, 60 years later, in a miraculous way, are living in a much better situation.

In your book, you raise the question of the purpose of Jewish survival over thousands of years, insisting that Jews have not simply survived for the sake of survival. What is this higher purpose?

Both my parents were survivors — my father ran away from Berlin in September 1939; my mum survived the 1929 massacre in Hebron. So, my family knows something about trauma. Still, my siblings and I were brought up in a trauma-free atmosphere. We were brought up to believe that the Jewish people did not continue in order to continue, or survive in order to survive. A cat can survive — so it’s a circumcised cat, so what? It’s not about
survival; survival for what?

Look at the Exodus: After 400 years of very aggressive oppression and enslavement, all of a sudden the outcry was “Let my people go,” and that continues to resonate against slavery everywhere to this day. Then we come to the Sinai covenant, which is a key moment not just for Jewish theology, but for Christian belief as well: The Ten Commandments is the first human-to-human constitution, setting out the relations among humans on the basis of laws. And then you come to the Prophets, and its amazing that they’re calling so clearly for a just society. And then, in the Middle Ages, you listen to Maimonides say he’s waiting for redemption of the world without oppression between nations. So, in the Jewish story over so many centuries, there has always been a higher cause, not just for the Jews, but for all of humanity.

Even in the Holocaust, the lesson is “Never Again.” But this doesn’t mean just never again can genocide be allowed to happen to the Jews, but never again can genocide be allowed to happen to any human being. So, the Holocaust is not just mine; it belongs to all of humanity.

You suggest that there’s been a turning inward from the universal purpose and meaning of the Jewish experience…

Both the internal and the external hemispheres of the Jewish experience are essential. I cannot envisage my Judaism without the input I got from the external world, be it philosophy, aesthetics, even democracy, which was introduced to the Jews in the last 200 years because of our interface with the the world. On the other hand, I can’t imagine my Western civilization and Western culture without the Jewish input, without Jesus Christ, who was born, was crucified and passed away as a Mishnaic rabbinical Jew. I cannot image Christian Europe opening up to modernity without a Maimonides reintroducing Greek philosophy. I cannot imagine modern times without a Spinoza, and Mendelson. I cannot imagine the 20th century without Marx and Freud. So, this conversation between Jews and the world is not just a conversation of pogroms and slaughter and Holocaust; it’s also a couple of thousand years of a conversation that enriched me and enriched them, and I don’t want to give that up.

Your book argues that the centrality of the Holocaust in Israeli identity is dysfunctional…

The Holocaust is a very real trauma for many people in Israel, and nobody can argue with that. But … when I hear someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a very intelligent person, say of [Iran’s President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, “It’s 1938 all over again,” I say, is it?! Is this the reality? Did we have such an omnipotent army in 1938? Did we have an independent state in 1938? Did we have the unequivocal support in 1938 of all the important superpowers in the world? No, we did not. And when you compare Ahmadinejad to Hitler, don’t you diminish Hitler’s significance? The sad thing is that whenever a head of state begins a visit to Israel, he doesn’t go to a university or to the high-tech sector or the beautiful cultural places we have in Israel; first you should get molded into the Israeli reality at [the Holocaust memorial] Yad Vashem. And I do not think that Yad Vashem should be the showcase or the gateway through which everybody should first encounter Israel. Part of the program, yes; but the starting point? This is not the way to baptize people into an encounter with Judaism.

You argue that the purpose of the Yad Vashem visit is to silence criticism…

It’s an emotional blackmail that says to people, this is what we have experienced, so shut up and help us… When the sages created the national holiday of Tisha Be’av, they made it the single day on which we commemorate all the traumas of our history, from the destruction of the first temple to the Spanish expulsion. These events did not all happen on this exact date; the founders of Jewish civilization confined the memory of the traumas of our history to one day, to allow us the rest of the year to get on with being Jewish, rather than letting sorrow take over our entire existence…
Look where we were 100 years ago and look where we are today — no other people made this transformation. Imagine we did not keep the shadow of the trauma looming over ourselves daily, what could we have been? How come 25% of the Nobel laureates in certain fields are of Jewish origins, and 10% of the arms deals around the world are done by Israelis? Why is my brother or sister in America a great poet or composer or physician whose achievements raise up all of humanity, and I who live here on my sword became a world expert on arms and swords? Is that really my mission, or is that an outcome of the black water with which I water my flowers? To make our contribution to humanity, we have to free ourselves of the obsession with the trauma.

Many Jews, in Israel and in America, see Israel as surrounded by deadly threats, and would see the benign and peaceful world you describe as a dangerous fantasy. What do you say to your critics?

I have very low expectations of new thinking and insight emerging from the mainstream Israeli and Jewish establishment. Their role is to maintain the status quo. Israel is bereft of forward thinking. We are experts at managing the crisis rather than finding alternatives to the crisis. In Israel you have many tanks, but not many think tanks.

One of the reasons I left the Israeli politics was my growing feeling that Israel became a very efficient kingdom, but with no prophecy. Where is it going?

My idea of Judaism can be represented through a classic Talmudic dilemma: You are walking along by the river and there are two people drowning. One is Rabbi [Meir] Kahane, and the other is the Dalai Lama. You can only save one of them. For whom will you jump? If you jump for Rabbi Kahane because genetically he’s Jewish, you belong to a different camp than mine, because I would jump for the Dalai Lama. As much as he’s not genetically Jewish, he’s my Jewish brother when it comes to my value system. That’s the difference between me and the Jewish establishment in Israel and America.

But how can this new thinking you’re advocating help Israel solve its security problems?

Many people say to me, “What about Gaza? Don’t have so much compassion for them, don’t tell the Israelis to be nice there, tell [the Palestinians] to be nice there. And I say Gaza is a nightmare, and it’s a stain on my conscience. And I’m very troubled by the attitude of Israelis against Israeli Arabs. It’s a shame. It’s a black hole in my democracy. But I say sometimes that I’m too close to the reality; I don’t have the perspective; I don’t have the bigger picture. But if enough of my kids and enough of my youth will go to volunteer, be it in Darfur or be it Rwanda, or be it in the squatter camps of South Africa, they will sharpen their sensitivities. And they will come back and say, listen, if we can do so much good out there, let’s do something over here. And I see my own kids, when they come back from India and from Latin America, how changed they are as people. I see my son, after one and a half years in Latin American. He came home, and five days later, was called for 30 days “miluim” service [with his military unit] in the West Bank. And he was sitting in the worst junction in the West Bank. And he says, “When I look around me 360 degrees, nobody loves me. Settlers, Kahanes, rabbis, mullahs, Hamas, Palestinians, you name it — they all hate me. And he told me, “Here I was sitting on a corner one day; it was my break time, and I was drinking coffee with a friend of mine, and out of the valley climbed an old Arab. He was very bent forward and frail, and walked slowly to us and said ‘Here is my ID.’ And we told him, you don’t have to give us your ID; we didn’t ask for it. And he said ‘No, here it is, I want you to look at it. Look at it, I’m okay, I’m kosher, I’m kosher.’ I checked it and let him pass, and then I began crying and crying.”

So, I asked my son, why did you cry, what happened? And he said, “You don’t understand that for a year and a half, I was in Latin America, going to small villages and sitting with this kind of man, listening to their oral tradition, to the beauty of their history, to the wisdom of their culture. And they shared it with me. And now here I am, the policeman, here I am the bad guy, here I am the occupier. And I can’t talk to this man. You know how much he could tell me under different circumstances?” And I say, that’s an example for me.

What if my totem animal is not a bear, elk or eagle
But a hadida, slug or a simple dung-beetle?
What if the ancestor who looks over my shoulder
Is not a guru or Sufi or a wise American Indian
But an alcoholic, wheezing Welsh miner
Who finally died of black lung suffocation?
So what if I can’t find solace in the lotus position
Perhaps I Zen out more on music than meditation
Shoot me down Lord, pin me up for my sins
I’m a born-in-the-west-rootless-not-fit-in
Born left-handed, with webbed toes and dark skin
I inherited no traditions from my kith and kin
Those heartless hymns so weak and thin
So I cobbled up my own religion

An errant sixties doctor took me down to the river
Showed me just the tiniest little sliver
Of the worlds that exist beyond this apparent one
There are thousands upon thousands, man!
From here to kingdom come, you can’t even imagine

I came out of my body when I was sixteen
Saw my ‘self’ running around screaming
This was something no science could ever explain
Shoved reason and logic up the ass of my brain
Call it delusion, call it hallucination
But that was more real than all my experiences up till then

What was me, what was I?
What … were … those … beams … of … pure … blue … light …
that … came … out … of … my … niece’s … eyes?

What if I had followed the beckoning of the leering gnomes
Who tried to pull me into their gyrating patterned home
While I stood tripping, staring into a black lace curtain
Dick in hand … my longest piss ever, if I’m not mistaken.

What if the universe is just dancing particles?
What if I am just a hollow tube of cascading perceptions?

Earth, water, fire, air
From these I come, to these I return
May today not be wasted
On the illusions of fear.