Cracking The Holocaust and Getting History Wrong - Holyland Update Pt 2
(Photo: Intel)
Read Part 1? Good. And so we came to Wednesday night, at 7:45ish PM Israel time, to the grand ceremony marking 70 years of "There's Cause For Pride!" (the official slogan of the festivities). Gotta admit the slogan sounded a bit less awful after they dropped the pubescently defiant "Yes,...!" that originally preceded it. One of the big "surprises" for the ceremony was teased in the morning news cycle by the Maitresse du Spectacle, Vulture Minister Miri Regev: "WE'VE CRACKED THE HOLOCAUST!" she announced, and I am making none of this up. See, she had planned this whole spectacle that was supposed to encompass 3300 years of Jewish history in a few short minutes. We'll get to the low-lights thereof, but the "teaser" was that since Her Culturedness felt that the Holocaust part went by too quickly in rehearsal and wasn't impactful enough, she cracked the essence of it, and added sounds of barking dogs and moving trains!!! Is she brilliant, or what?
Trains and Dogs, boss! Holocaust - Cracked! (Photo: Bob Worth, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
Spoiler: It was barely noticed. The whole Holocaust segment was barely noticed. At least by most of those watching on TV. Maybe it resonated more live. The entire history of the Jewish people according to this junior-high level pageant (with a multi-million dollar budget, audio-visuals and dancers galore), was as follows:
We get the Torah. (No patriarchs, no original divine promise, repeated to Abe's son and grandkid. It starts with the Tablets. Which is a legit starting point, but....)
Armed with this divine deed and title, we march into the Promised Land (who was there before? What happened to them? Never mind that! ... stop me if this sounds familiar). The Promised Land here includes, as per the bible, significant chunks of what is now our neighbor and partner, Jordan. Diplomatic incident brewing? (I kid. King Abdallah has better excuses for a fall-out, if he wants one.)
See that bit to the right? Yeah, that's in Jordan. (Photo: Yeshiva.org)
This brings us to the next questionable artistic decision. This whole "entering the Promised Land" bit is set to the famous "Songs of My Beloved Country," by great Israeli poet Leah Goldberg, whose visage justly graces the newly issued 100 shekel bill. The problem? That song is about LITHUANIA, her actual first homeland, where she was born and sometimes homesick for even after she came here and did her considerable part in reviving Hebrew in the name of Zionism. It talks about "Only seven days of sun all year round, and gloom and rain all the rest" for fuck's sake. Does that sound like Israel to you? No. There's a fucking reason for that. But in classic ignoramus fashion, the Minister who is clueless of Culture latched on to the soundbyte, the actual content be damned. So we got poetic flights of fancy about "Seven brides, seven mothers", which work fine in Leah Goldberg's pining for the Baltic, but caused many people to go "Huh? I coulda sworn we only had four mothers last time I checked" in the context of a paean to Jewish identity.
Liberal gal, loved two lands. Leah Goldberg (Photo: Shaar Zion Library, Tel Aviv)
Song of My Beloved Country. Lyrics: Leah Goldberg; Singing: Hava Alberstein; Great song about a beloved country. Just not this one.
From entering the land we skip straight to the destruction of the temple. Which one, you ask? Both! Rolled into one. The entire in between, when we, ya know, created the Old Testament? aka Book of Books? Fuggedaboutit!
Then come the mythical "2,000 years of exile" (more like 1,500 but why quibble, 2K is in all the songs). Everything from 70 AD to the mid 1850s? The entire period that created the Jewish People as we currently know it? from the Talmud, to the Geniuses of the early middle ages, the Golden Age in Spain (Maimonides), Hasidic thought, Jewish Enlightenment? Literally shoved into two vague lines, about how "whatever we did was on the road, no home, no country..." - And never mind that many diasporas housed Jewish communities that lasted centuries longer than any Jewish sovereignty ever did, and gave as much to the nation and the world. This here is about blood and soil, not spirit.
Who Dis? Maimonides? New phone, man...
Then we begin to return to OUR land (who was here in the meantime? Shhhhh.... Never mind. Not a peep about them in this entire extravaganza. Starts with an A... or is a P? It'll come to me.)
"Forgot about me, huh?... yeah, y'all tend to do that. Funny, though. I don't disappear."
The the Holocaust cracker. It's over real quick. It's actually somewhat understated on second viewing.
Then back to the Promised Land, making it bloom and all, including the fabled "Wall and Tower era" (in which we exploited an Ottoman-era legal loophole that was still on the books to create settlements despite British disapproval, then closed it once we took control so them pesky other folks couldn't use it on us...)
And... that's pretty much it. Some celebration of how much we rock since we took control, extolling of "pioneers" all over the country (including Hebron, but I think that was the only nod to the settlements, surprisingly).
The only really cool thing was a 300-drone aerial show, that drew all kindsa things (Herzl in silhouette, a house and tree, our national cartoon emblem of "Srulik" as seen at the top here...) against the sky. Nifty shit by Intel, first debuted at last year's Super Bowl, but that wasn't mentioned in the program.
Channel 1's broadcast was done by veterans Aryeh Golan and Dov Gilhar, who absolutely slayed. Golan delivered the "Aw, shit, he did NOT say that" lines with a pro's timing, while Gilhar played the consummate straight-man. Among Golan's greatest hits were one ragging on the wheat sheafs the dancers frolicked in - "Premium wheat, imported from China!" and a heartfelt comment somewhere along the line: "This show just isn't for me... I like.... more modest affairs, God and the Culture Minister forgive me." Amen to that, Brother. He won't be invited to do the show next year, but if I ever bump into the man, I'mma buy him a beer or three.
Aryeh Golan. Owe you a beer, OG. (Photo: Sigal Naftali Kessel, Ice.co.il)
After all this there were the speeches, where Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said mostly well-meaning words with the delivery of a deer in headlights, clocking in at 8.5 minutes – 2.5 above what he was supposed to. Bibi, not to be outdone, spoke at least 5 minutes past his allotment, in a far more partisan tone and capable delivery, that lacked only the formal announcement to be a campaign kick-off.
You can watch the entire 2:45:00ish ceremony here. The part I describe begins areound 22:00
The whole thing was a brazen usurpation of authority and any ethos of bipartisan dignity of the occasion by the Vulture Minister and the Prime Sinister, from the itinerary to the seating to the ads for the various celebrations and events, into which Ms. Regev insisted on inserting herself, thereby violating campaign laws prohibiting pols from getting personal exposure from public broadcast materials. Supreme Court Justice Hannan Meltzer, who wrote the opinion prohibiting the ads from running, also pretty much told the State it should recoup the cost of producing the ads - a cool $185K - from Ms. Regev personally. Oooooh, Meltzie Baby, I love it when you talk dirty to me.
YNET
And on that hopeful (if somewhat kinky) note, we'll end with a song. Thank you for reading and talk to me in the comments.
Yiddishke Hiphop w/a kleizmer touch. Coolooloosh - People Of The Street