WTF
I must have said it a million times on that day. Two years ago. The day that seems to have stretched October ’23 into a two-year-long month. It’s quite obviously not October 7, 2023. But I’m still finding myself with too many WTFs.
October 7 simply made it worse. I have been lamenting this decline for some years. I found a piece I wrote in 2014 that identified the moment I felt politically homeless. There was so much anger and finger pointing. This was just after the summer war with Hamas. It lasted fifty days, and we thought that that was a long time. It was the first round of violence between Israel and the terrorist group that led to a large number of Facebook friends getting unfriended and in some rare cases blocked. I never really used Facebook the same way after that war, either. Before, it had been something between a journal, microblog and billboard. But everything was off. The algorithm made itself apparent at every moment.
When I was in university, I used to read six newspapers online, every day. They were selected specifically in order to give me a broad geographical coverage. I was up to date on consensus fact reportage for basically the entire planet. I would read the whole of the BBC News, every day. The New York Times didn’t have a paywall yet… I don’t think. It was ’04-’08. Either McGill paid for it or my parents did. But I would read Le Figaro, The Guardian, El Diario, Corriere della Sera, Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronot and BBC Arabic—sometimes Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. I knew who all of the heads of state/government and ministers were for every country in Africa. The only place to which I didn’t pay particular attention was China, because in those years everyone was talking about how I absolutely had to learn Mandarin, and I am a contrarian.
I no longer have much confidence in “consensus” journalism.
I moved to Israel in February 2009, a week after fighting with Hamas had ended. There were elections shortly after my arrival.
Bibi was back. Avigdor Liberman was the “Far Right” hawk that Leftist papers insisted was the big “problem” in Israel. Liberman is still around. Ben Gvir makes that assessment from a decade and a half ago seem childish.
Junior Year Abroad, Jerusalem, ‘06-’07
In 2006, I had arrived to begin my Junior Year Abroad on the day the Second Lebanon War ended. It was an absurd situation to which I arrived. I had, for strange reasons, flown from Moscow to NYC, two days prior, spent one night and flown to Israel with massive luggage, backpack, carry-on and a pillow. Needless to say, I arrived at Ben Gurion Airport, exhausted.
The monit sherut (shared taxi) dropped me off at Har Hatzofim, the site of the Hebrew University campus. Only upon arrival did I realize that my acceptance letter had not indicated where the hell I was supposed to go when I showed up. The monit sherut dropped me off halfway up a mountain in front of an Aroma (a coffee chain). I schlepped my luggage up the mountain to the fortified university entrance. It took a long time, but eventually I managed to get all my stuff to the Rothberg International School office. The secretary looked at me like I was insane.
“What are you doing here with all of that?!”
I explained that I had arrived three days late because I was in Russia and… she stopped me there.
“This is the campus. We’ll have to find out what dorm you’re in, but they’re… you see the peak of that mountain over there? That’s French Hill. You’re going all the way down and halfway back up to there.”
There were dorms behind the Aroma where I had been dropped off. It was not these. The secretary was right. I schlepped it all down and half way back up a mountain, past Hadassah Hospital and the British WWI cemetery. It was 39˚C (103˚F). I got to the office of these dorms and they had closed five minutes earlier. It was 13:05. The office would reopen at 18:00.
I put my head on my pillow, on top of my largest suitcase, and started to cry.
“What the fuck?!”
Those first six weeks were revealing. I had spent the previous year in Montreal doing intensive introductory Arabic, five days a week. I had several Lebanese and Palestinian friends with whom I eagerly practiced Arabic and who were very happy to help me improve. I had just received an A in the course titled “History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” taught by an Oxford educated professor who had just been poached from Harvard, Layla Parsons. Her father was an Arabist—or an Orientalist, as Said would call him.
She had taught the conflict through the lens of the “two narratives”. This was my first introduction to this element of the conflict. Until then, I had been a typical pro-Israel, Zionist Jew who grew up in a Democratic party that was unabashedly pro-Israel, as well. I knew about Hebrew, the kibbutzim, Bazooka bubble gum, the kova tembel, the Uzi and the Mossad. I knew about the Intifada, suicide bombing, Hamas and the Dome of the Rock. I had never heard of the Nakba, the Husseinis and Nashashibis, the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv, the White Paper, the Peel Commission, the Millet system, the Hovevei Tzion… there was a lot I didn’t understand.
I was so impressed with her ability to teach the two narratives, without having revealed “which side she was on”. I later learned, somewhat unsurprisingly, that she was partial to the “other” side.
I came out of that year at McGill feeling like I was going to be the bridge between Israelis and Palestinians. I was going to learn both languages to native fluency (I did), and that was going to give me what I needed to get the two sides to see the humanity in each other (it did not).
I started in Kita Bet (Second Grade). I was offended. I thought my Hebrew was much better than that. There were four Palestinians in the class—three men and one woman—one of whom came in dressed the first day (my first day) in a red track suit, with “PALESTINE” in black on white stripes along the sides, hemmed with black stitching. It was a lot of red, black and white, and it was a lot of “PALESTINE”. His name was Jihad.
None of the four were interested in being friends with me. They found it amusing that I could speak literary Arabic quite well and didn’t understand anything of what they said. A different Palestinian student, Firas, let me know to stop trying at one point. It was one day after the Second Lebanon War had ended, two years since the Second Intifada.
“Inte yehudi. Khallas!” (You’re a Jew. Enough!)
My naïveté from the previous year was shattered in an instant. What the fuck?! It was crushing but it was also profoundly informative. The shattering was at once a blow and an epiphany. I understood what it meant to have an enemy. I understood what it meant to have an enemy with whom you are at war. When it came down to it, if I were to be saved or killed, this one was not going to save me.
The second most important epiphany I had that year took place in the course on Conflict Resolution. There were two during that course, actually. The first took place in class. The professors devoted a lecture to the process of dehumanization—both the rhetoric and propaganda sell it and the psychological impact on those who internalize it. This is how they do it. There was a formula.
The second took place at Lifta, the only Palestinian village abandoned in ’48 that was left untouched in the environs of Jerusalem—so it remains, today as a nature preserve with a ma’ayan (spring) used as a mikveh (baptismal pool). It sits below Route 1, at the entrance to Jerusalem. There were 410 houses of which 300 had been built during the Mandate period (between 1917-48). Many had been built just before the village was abandoned; it made me realize that the Nakba had frozen in time a memory of a very specific “Palestine”. The Jews weren’t the only newcomers.
Climbing back up to the highway where our bus was waiting, I heard the driver cursing. Ethiopian immigrants were engaged in some kind of protest that was blocking the road. Our Moroccan driver was pissed.
“Don’t they know it’s their turn?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“When we arrived, we were on the bottom rung. Now it’s their turn. Don’t they know it’s their turn?!”
What the fuck?! I thought. Because you suffered, they have to go through the same thing? Veys mir.
Gay Palestinians
All of the gay Palestinian men I know, who live in Israel, have Jewish boyfriends or husbands. All of them.
That year at Hebrew U, there was one other openly gay student studying abroad. His name was Michael. His boyfriend’s name was Anas. Anas was gorgeous. I mean really gorgeous. He was on the Palestinian national swim team. In Hebrew, his name is somewhat problematic. In Arabic, “Anas” is the analog of “Enosh” which means human. In Hebrew, “Anas” means “rapist”.
Cairo, 2006
After the six weeks of intensive Hebrew, I met my dad in Cairo. I left Jerusalem on October 5, traveled by bus to Eilat where we were dropped off at the border crossing to Taba in Egypt. It was Ramadan. We waited approx. 6 hours for our Egyptian ride to show up. We drove ten hours to Cairo, stopping at a gas station oasis in the middle of barren, empty Sinai (not the beautiful part with the mountains and the Red Sea) where they let me know, upon asking for toilet paper, to use the one-pound notes (they were worth approximately $0.20) and to wash the notes afterwards. I had difficulty handling money in Egypt thereafter, and I waited the full ten hours to take a shit.
It was early morning on October 6th when we arrived at the Cairo Sheraton. Egypt was celebrating 33 years since the “October War”, which in Israel is known as the Yom Kippur War, which they viewed as a victory. They had caught us off guard while we were at shul on the holiest day of the year.
I smoked a cigarette, waiting for my dad to show up with our family friend, Aaron, who lived in Cairo. An attendant came up and chatted with me. I was eager to practice Arabic at any opportunity, so it was no bother and I wasn’t suspicious.
“What religion are you?” was his third question.
“Jewish.”
“Wallah…” and then he walked away.
I informed Aaron of this over lunch. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that I should never reveal that information in Egypt again.
“You didn’t tell him that you’re a Zionist, did you?” Aaron prodded.
“No,” I said. “I learned that lesson last year at McGill. I looked up the word for Zionist in the dictionary. We had a lecture on politics. I said, ‘I am a Zionist’, and the Palestinian and Lebanese teachers (we had three instructors, the professor was Egyptian) looked as if I had just announced that I was the Devil incarnate.
Mina, a Lebanese Maronite Christian, pulled me aside after class to explain that I should never call myself that in the Arab world. It could have deadly, immediate consequences.
WTF?!?!?!
Nearly stabbed…
In 2018, I was guiding a small private tour through the Old City of Jerusalem. The group consisted of a few Microsoft low-level execs and their NFL-player-turned-pastor, whose biceps were about three times the size of my head. Everyone was wearing a totally synthetic outfit à la Lululemon. I was in sun faded cotton, of course.
After exiting the Western Wall Plaza through the northern exit, we proceeded about 40 meters down Shar’a al-Wad/Rehov HaGai, toward the Damascus Gate. We stopped in front of an ablutionary fountain opposite a Palestinian tourist shop, which I had barely noticed since we passed many dozens of these throughout the day. I began to explain that the fountain is the product of spolia—the Latin term for building out of repurposed stones, rather than quarrying new ones—and that this fountain contained distinct elements from the Hasmonean/Herodian, Crusader, Mamluk, and finally Ottoman periods. I never got past the Herodian.
“This basin of this fountain is a two thousand year old Jewish sarcophagus which we can see…”
A man that had been drinking coffee in the aforementioned shop sprung up holding a 4” knife in his hand which he was waving around violently. My gaze quickly left the fountain—alert and preternaturally calm.
“Not Jewish! Not Jewish! Muslim!!!!! Muslim!!!!! Not Jewish!!!!”
I did not think that this was the appropriate time to bring up the fact that the sarcophagus predated Islam by more than six hundred years. Instead, I said “hey. I’m at work. You’re at work. Let’s go back to work,” in Arabic.
The man continued to wave this knife around over his head and some inches too close to my face.
“Not Jewish! Muslim!” He kept repeating himself.
“Listen,” I continued in Arabic, “there are police all over the area. If I scream for help, they are going to shoot you dead. Do you understand that? Do you want me to call for the police?”
All of a sudden, four Palestinian men in their 40’s and 50’s that had been drinking coffee and smoking a hookah at a table in the shop next door to my assailant’s, stood up and restrained the ostensible stabber.
“You’re at work. He’s at work. Why doesn’t everybody go back to work?!”
Oh… they had heard me. Interesting. They were waiting to see how the show was going to play out. Maybe they’d get to see a Jew bleed out and die today.
“Mashi,” fine, I said.
We went about five minutes further down the road, when the pastor with his giant arms stopped us.
“First of all,” he said, “you were not alone. You didn’t see me, but I was behind you,” he flexed a bicep. “That was amazing. That was unbelievable. I have just born witness to an encounter between true good and true evil.”* Pure good, am I?* which sounded like Yoda in my head.
We continued on our way to the Garden Tomb (which Protestants identify as Calvary/Golgotha). I kept stopping where appropriate to point out and explain this and that. But for the rest of the day, and perhaps the rest of the week, my brain kept repeating the same thing.
What the actual fuck?!
A week earlier, I had guided a group through Jaffa when someone asked about Taylor Force, who was stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist in Jaffa, in March 2016.
“Oh, that was right over there.” I point to a spot about 200 meters from us, within our line of sight.
“What the fuck?!” he blurted out.
What the fuck, indeed, I thought.
Greece, 2017
I was meeting my Greek ex’s mother for the first time, in 2017. She asked me two questions. Well… the first wasn’t really a question.
“You don’t look rich,” she accused, in a way that sounded like there was an embedded question to the effect of, “my son told me that you are rich. Why aren’t you wearing Versace?”
I really did not know how to respond to that. Her English was seriously limited, as was my Greek at the time, so she didn’t expect much. Her second question… her second question. Ahhh.
“Why did you kill the poor baby Jesus?!”
I decided that now was not the time to explain that we didn’t kill him, the Romans did, and that he wasn’t a baby, he was 33. I just sort of opened my eyes wide, pondered for a second, gave myself a facepalm, then watched her as she continued to clean the marble countertops (The marbles! Careful with the marbles!) with bleach.
What the fuck?! Is she for real? Did she really just ask me that? She really just asked me that… WTF?!?!?
Dunning-Kruger
Do you know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is? I find it the most painful phenomenon in existence.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes the overconfidence of the ignorant, whose belief that the world consists of one hundred parts deludes them into the conviction that they have mastered all one hundred parts. Meanwhile, the expert, who knows that the world consists of approximated 7.26 x 10^23 parts (I made that figure up, it’s big though) has epistemic humility. So much epistemic humility that despite her expertise, she doubts herself because there must be some that she’s missing.
Thus, the morons walk around (and vote) with endlessly confident stupidity and no whiff of hesitation, while those with knowledge and wisdom doubt themselves, stumble, stammer and prevaricate.
“Really, Avi?! I thought you were better than that.”
So replied a friend of mine, Rashed, to my defense of Israel after October 7, 2023. Rashed got blocked.
Did you?! I thought. Better?! Better than what? Better than defending my people, my homeland and my country?
The following months would force me to encounter so many fucking instantiations of Dunning-Kruger confidence. Did I not belong to the righteous masses? Why had I not conformed my views to their exceedingly confident worldview? Didn’t I know that there was a genocide taking place in Gaza?! Didn’t I know that Israel was to blame?!
What the fuck?! Just… I’m getting tired here.
Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir decide that the hostages are a lost cause but that this is an excellent opportunity for ethnic cleansing, the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza and… a great time to explore the Greater Israel project, conquered lands promised to us in the Bible that happen, today, to be in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Ok. WTF, people?! Am I losing my mind or has everyone else?
Two years on…
There is still so much to process. The chapter is not yet closed. I look around at the world and have spent so much time asking WTF? that I have already moved beyond that exasperation in many ways. The essays I write here are testament to that organization and clarity.
But on October 7, all of that seems lofty. I return to the same feeling that has accompanied so many sharp moments that I’ve experienced in this conflict. What the actual fuck is happening… or perhaps, more precisely, what has already happened to make this feel so endless? How can the hate be this visceral?
On other days, I’ll continue to let the clarity born of this period guide me. On October 7, as I reflect on that horrific day and what it has meant for me in this conflict, I hold the cascade of WTF moments at the fore.