22
Apr
2007
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Sirens of Remembrance

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As Israeli Independence Day approaches with all its tensions and contradictions, I sit in sunny New York and think back to what a strange/ugly/beautiful time this was last year. Spring in the Galilee warmed to summer and I learned from my friends, both Palestinian and Jewish, what being a citizen in the Israeli state is all about.

Independence Day in Israel is preceded by two important memorial days, Holocaust Remembrance Day and The Day of Remembrance for honoring those soldiers who died defending their country. For most of the time I was growing up, for myself and the majority of Americans Memorial Day equaled barbeques and a welcome long weekend. Now that so many US soldiers have fallen in the Bush Administration’s war on Iraq, perhaps we can begin to appreciate the solemnity of such a day for a nation like Israel which has a citizen army and compulsory draft for every 18-year-old. In a country where almost every Jewish Israeli citizen is, has been, or will be part of the Israeli Defense Forces, honoring the lives lost for the sake of the nation precedes any thought of celebration.

Holocaust Remembrance Day similarly honors those who lost their lives during WWII and enacts the famous edict “Yizkor,” remember. Remember what it is like to be powerless, to be reviled and hated, and remember so you never find yourself in the shoes of victim, or oppressor. At its best, Holocaust Remembrance Day is an exhortation to the Jewish people and the peoples of the world to remember they are first and foremost human, and therefore have an obligation to uphold the humanity of others.

On both Holocaust Day and Memorial Day at 10:00am all over Israel, sirens are rung and for a minute each citizen stops what they are doing to pay tribute to the dead. Last year, I was preparing an English lesson in the offices of Women Against Violence, an NGO that serves Palestinian women in Israel, when I realized it was time for the siren, or tzfirah.

“Hey everyone, isn’t it time for the siren?” I asked my friends in the office. The secretary barely looked up from her work.

“We don’t observe this tradition,” she told me.

“But it’s for all citizens,” I said.

“Why don’t you go out to the balcony, Mimi,” another coworker told me. “See if you can hear it.”

At 10:00am sharp I was out on our balcony, watching the woman who lives in the house next door hanging her laundry. I waited, and waited. It seemed that there was a clothes-washer running as well, because I could hear a faint buzzing. Finally, I went back into the office.

“Maybe the sirens are late?” I asked. The secretary stepped outside with me.

“That’s it. I hear it, can’t you?” she said. We listened. And I realized that the faint hum of the “clothes-dryer” was actually the sirens.

Now, every town in Israel has sirens hooked up in case of an emergency. The running of the sirens on the two commemorative holidays leading up to Independence Day also serve as test-runs for this critical PA system…a system that is all but non-existent in non-Jewish areas. This seemed odd to me on that day, but I thought nothing of it.

That is, until the war with Hezbollah began two months later. I was substitute-house-mother at the halfway house for Palestinian teenage girls one of the first nights that there was shelling near Nazareth. We listened anxiously for the “booms” of katyusha missiles landing, wondering where they were, and how far. There were no sirens.

http://3asl.blogspot.com/2006/07/long-night-indeed.html

In the office of Women Against Violence, we developed an alternative way to find out if we might be in danger. The mother of one of the coordinators had a house on the border of Nazareth (al-Nasireh) and the Jewish neighborhood of Upper Nazareth (Natzeret Illit). Whenever she heard the sirens in the Jewish area, we’d get a call at the office letting us know that we should stay in the rooms with the fewest windows.

But this system wasn’t foolproof. On July 19th, I was alone in the office when a series of missiles hit Nazareth, killing several children and throwing the city into panic. And there were no sirens. That day marked the last time anyone in Nazareth would use the phrase “binaqu adas” (sorting lentils) to describe the way that Hezbollah’s missiles “knew” where the Arabs were living in Israel and would not harm them.

http://3asl.blogspot.com/2006/07/refugee.html

I wonder, after Israeli Channel 2 newscaster Oded Ben Ami’s expose of the state of sirens and shelters in Palestinian areas of Israel, if there were sirens ringing loudly through those streets on this year’s Holocaust and Memorial Days. I wonder how people reacted in Nazareth and other Palestinian towns, what they did to reconcile their own identity with that of a self-proclaimed Jewish state when that call to stand up and be counted rang in their ears.

PS: For a documentary look at how mixed communities negotiate Independence Day, the film “First Lesson In Peace” focuses on how the Arab-Jewish school in Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam deals with Yom Ha’atzmaut/Yawm al-Nakba. Another related piece of recommended reading is the short story “Ha-Tzfirah” (The Siren) by Etgar Keret.