Having had some time I thought I would write some further comments on my time in Israel, specifically on two matters. The first is political; the second is Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum.
As you may or may not have heard, during the time which I was in Israel, and still at present, there were large groups of protestors living in campsites in the centres of every major city and many of the smaller ones. There have also been some of the biggest marches and demonstrations in the history of the country. The majority of those protesting are under 30, students or workers in a variety of sectors and their complaint is that they simply do not receive enough money to get to the end of the month.
The protests started, funnily enough, over cottage cheese. To Israelis this is a staple food; on the table every breakfast and to many the taste of home. When the price of a small tub rose to over 7 shekels (around £1.40) a Facebook campaign, which rapidly gained popularity, instigated a boycott of the product. Soon after the price was dropped.
The underlying problems however did not go away. The cost of housing is incredibly prohibitive. Even having rented in central London I was shocked at how much the people we met were spending on rent. Food was also incredibly expensive, and the cost of going out was ridiculous (22-28 shekels for a half litre of beer, between £4.40 and £5.60, was standard). Bills I was also assured were equally high.
The demonstrations have come as a shock to both politicians and people alike and are currently quite unfocussed, with those involved having an idea of what they want (i.e.: cheaper rent, better pay etc.) but the demonstrators lack any clear demands. And for the situation to change there would have to be a massive shift in the status quo. A handful of companies control each market, a couple for food, a couple for gas etc. On top of that, there are also a select number of influential families within the country, many of whom go back to some of the first Zionist pioneers to colonise the country, who have a stake in many of these sectors. It is not in their interest for prices to drop and, as in any other country, it is they who have the ear of the government.
In any case, those who we spoke to were passionate about trying to effect some kind of change and, whatever the outcome, there has been a definite shift in a country where the government does not expect hundreds of thousands of its citizens to be taking to the streets.
And on to Yad Vashem. Meaning “A memorial and a name”, a quotation from the book of Elijah, the Yad Vashem institute was set up in Israel after the war to commemorate the dead, study the Holocaust and research the lives and communities of the Jewry of Europe who had been slaughtered by the Nazis. It has collected videos from a huge number of the survivors of the Holocaust telling their experiences and clips from these make up a large part of the museum. This I found to be its main asset, above any other museum or memorial to this event I have ever seen; the living testimony of those who experienced it.
There were however many uncomfortable moments whilst going through the museum, not just because of its subject matter, but because of the political undertones which could be felt through many of the exhibits. The museum begins with a room about anti-Semitism, historical and modern. This, without flinching, drew a direct line between Christianity, the blood libels of the Middle-Ages and Hitler. A board game produced by the Nazis was displayed next to an image of a painting of Jews killing children, painted in the middle ages. Immediately the founding idea of Zionism, that Jewish life outside of the land of Israel is impossible, was laid out to the visitors.
In a later exhibit the spectre of Zionism looms even stronger. The museum devotes almost as much space to the Jewish partisans and members of the resistance as it does to the concentration camps, despite the fact that the numbers of those involved was small and their influence minimal. And so, further Zionist tenets of resistance and strength when put in a position of danger are thrust forward.
These points would be minimal were it not for the architecture and position of the building. The museum is a long triangular tunnel set into the mountain with exhibit rooms to either side. The visitor moves slowly forward, snaking from side to side, until the end, reaching the literal light at the end of the tunnel, which is a platform with a panorama of Jerusalem. Thus, Jerusalem and the land of Israel are inextricably linked in the mind of the visitor to the horrors of the Holocaust.
The museum is also positioned directly next to Har HaZikaron, the mountain of memory. Recently the two have been connected by a path built by Zionist youth groups. On this mountain are Israel’s military cemetery, the graves of past presidents and prime ministers, monuments to victims of terrorism and even the grave of Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism. So, on leaving the museum one can follow this path up and celebrate the existence of the state of Israel.
For the most part Yad Vashem was a moving memorial to those who were murdered in Europe in the 1940s and the testimonies of those who survived provide a living witness to the events.
I just don’t think politics and museums should go together.
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