Death in a time of genocide

April 9, 2024. I arrive in Israel, alone after hasty arrangements. Rafi, my father, crashed his car and punctured one of his emphysemic lungs four days ago. And although he survived, we prepare for the worst.

He is in ICU in a hospital in Holon, a city just south of Tel Aviv. There has been so much death in Israel/Palestine recently such that one struggles not to think about it all the time. Most of those deaths have occurred in the Gaza ghetto under a media blackout. I witnessed it from afar and was reluctant to visit Israel, as my position resonates with so few others: only those considered to be the radical Left, although people have been protesting across the political spectrum.

In my sadness and shock, I decide that my mission is threefold: accompany my father at his end of life; avoid adding fuel to the various fires with futile arguments; and document the state of things, as I always do whenever I choose to go back to my birthplace. I have already had a taste of what’s to come with the people next to me on the plane. Loud Israelis, some peacocking. Only a few spoke in Arabic. They have been living with heightened conflict normalisation and dysregulation. I know from polling that most Israelis still support the war. But what is happening on the ground, and in the margins?

I glide through Ben-Gurion airport’s checkpoints and collect my luggage undisturbed. There is no heightened security or military presence. Passengers are regurgitated out of transit into the arrival hall. Heavy after the flight, I walk out of the airport ungreeted: a strange new luxury of detachment. Everywhere are flags and posters of the hostages. We must devise a new metric: flags per square metre.

The hostage posters are in tatters. Some are covered with signatures and handwritten messages. Airport cafes are still open at midnight. Together with the fighters is the text of a sticker pasted behind the croissants. I roll a cigarette and look at the chaos on the curb, immediately jolted by the putrid air and density of all things. Together we will win.

Home

The roads seem empty on the short taxi ride to Holon, where I will be staying at Rafi’s old apartment — where my sister now lives with her son and partner. Holon is one of Israel’s largest cities, but not as wealthy as Tel Aviv. Holon stands with the hostages. Last October, several relatives rebuked my sister and I for posting about civilian deaths in Gaza. They were so outraged they had called each other to discuss. This got back to our father, who as usual got terribly upset and felt personally attacked, instantly defending the IDF. “What you are saying is killing him,” a relative told me. Conversations about this with my father had become increasingly tense after the Hamas attack. He would repeat over and over, “We’re being slaughtered, Keren! They’re burning babies in ovens!” Only very few in Israel know the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank or within the 1948 borders, although they should. Jewish Land. Love God and love thy neighbour.

When they had arrived in Palestine, in 1933, Rafi’s parents wrote to their relatives in Transylvania, urging them to leave by any means possible, and join them. But none were able to escape Nazi persecution, except for Rafi’s aunt, arriving alone over a decade later, having survived Auschwitz. At the end of each Passover, she would recite the painful events: being starved. Being forcibly sterilised without anaesthetic. Watching men, women, and children being marched to the ovens. Such stories remained alive in all of us and were now resurrected. The October incursion seemingly catapulted many people back there, confirming that they were still the victims, and now the whole world had turned against them for what they regard as self defence. There is no safety anywhere, they realised. It was all a façade. We will defeat our enemy through unity.

Hospital

My father is receiving constant care and sedation. He is kept as comfortable as medicine allows, but his systems are shutting down. The man who had pulled him out of his car in the dark as it started going up in flames had said, “I help everyone, doesn’t matter if they’re Jewish or Arab, I don’t care.” He is a Palestinian Arab — likely an Israeli citizen — and came to the hospital along with the other witnesses who saw my father’s collision. He shows such kindness and care. The relative who accused me of killing my father is also there. They apologise. We hug.

The hospital staff are diverse: Palestinians, Russian-speakers, Orthodox Jewish girls, Ethiopian cleaning staff with old facial tattoos. When a Muslim patient is admitted, the whole village seems to turn up, setting up camp in the stairwell, enjoying specially extended visiting hours, drinking soft drinks and eating chocolates. Jewish Israelis sit in pairs or alone on their phones, shrivelled into themselves with uncertainty and sadness.

Flag with the slogan “With god’s help, we will win” (image by the author)

I walk back to the apartment from the hospital along Combatants Boulevard. There are flags on every light pole, also a picture of an old man in a hat saying The Messiah is Coming. Huge bougainvillea straddles a roadside hardware store. Even late into the evening, the shops are open, the cafes full, the restaurants booked. A shopping area where old people play backgammon now hosts a display of women in wartime as imagined by contemporary graphic artists. Together we will win stickers and posters everywhere. One bus stop sign tells me that mothers must fight at the front as well, but I am unsure whether they mean literally or by snitching on their children, should they be shirking the military service. Bakeries are fully stocked. Kids ride on scooters. I stop to buy tobacco and wine at a kiosk called His Blessed Glory and Bounty. Near the chaotic Weizmann roundabout, an electronic banner flashes the faces of two residents of Holon, now hostages in Gaza. The next ad in the reel is for a theme park, Park Extreme. The ad reassures parents it is open for entertainment over the Passover holidays.

All around me, dense blocks of low-rise apartment buildings, crowded with cars and infinite roadworks. Temporary fences around works for the new light rail, roads dug up and traffic diverted. Abandoned infrastructural developments everywhere. You cannot really follow a footpath. Beware or you may get down a dead end of temporary separation walls and be forced to walk all the way back. Aggressive careless drivers zip by. Litter collects like fallen leaves or fruit. Piles of clothes left out on the streets and rummaged through. With its cartoons museum, theatres and parks, Holon is known as The City of Children.

Every ten minutes, a child dies in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports on my phone on the bus. It is hell on earth. And every 60 seconds an announcement sounds in formal Hebrew: Even in such times we ask that you validate your travel pass. Together we are strong. “That’s true,” a woman mumbles behind me. I don’t look because I can tell she’s elderly. But no one has mentioned starvation in Gaza, or incursions in the West Bank, or the arrests and shootings of Arab citizens. Not in the open, not in Holon.

My sister’s apartment is in a condemned building. They will eventually be evacuated to temporary housing while a new building is erected. In the meantime, it fills up with tenants, pets, art and books, Russians and Ukrainians, their kids, elderly people needing care, and fresh flags to hang on the balcony. On the streets you are flanked by balconies and flags, some in festive chains, some with a slogan in biblical font, or the emblem of a certain military unit. Some dilapidated buildings have a flag with the picture of the new mayor, who has recently won in a landslide. A hawkish conservative who claimed the war will strengthen Holon. Holon strengthens the nation of Israel, IDF soldiers, and security forces.

My sister’s new neighbour in the next building has been texting her ever since moving in, complaining that the cypress tree on my sister’s side of the fence has been causing germs and disease as well as dirt and clogged drains in her rental. Cypress, the benevolent king of graveyards, docile and unarguing. Threats abound even from nature. Am Yisra’el Chai. Having established my identity, one elderly neighbour tells me that hard rubbish should not be put under the building but out on the street. Because of the war, you know. She mutters something about terrorists and moves off to walk her dog.

Van covered with religious and nationalist slogans (image by the author)

I say hello each day to a homeless man living by the hospital in a tunnel. Behind him, a peeling poster proclaims God will bring them back. He promises our dad will be okay. He asks my sister and I if we have any “nice” — the latest cheap high. I give him a cigarette instead. The mall at the ground floor of the hospital has an overflowing fruit and vegetable shop. The strong smell of guavas and traffic gives way to the terrible smell in my father’s hospital room. He is deteriorating rapidly. Our entire relationship is being condensed like his final, warm breaths in those plastic tubes. My sister and I weep and hold him as much as we can. We play his favourite songs as we are told he can still hear us. In the elevator, an Arab family arrives with balloons and gets off at the maternity ward. “Mazal tov,” I say. They smile and reply, “Toda.”

There is one swarthy nurse, greying, severe and attractive. He discusses my father’s condition with the next nurse on shift in Arabic, which I try and fail to follow. Behind the diverse crew is a big Star of David. I engage with that nurse as much as one can with staff in an ICU where one’s father is dying. I write “Shukran” in Arabic on the whiteboard in my father’s room. I add Thank Yous in Hebrew and English and love hearts. I wish I could walk around saying: I object to this war! But there is a silent consensus here. Instead, I channel that feeling into eye contact and other overtures of kindness. It feels important that they know I am on their side. The side of the everyday regular people who are all hostages here, in a way.

A long vertical version of the Israeli flag drapes the outside of the hospital building: “a bit like the Nazi flags,” my nephew says. Standing with the fighters. My nephew is the only one in my family not to enlist as a soldier after school, and neither has his girlfriend. They are the only ones in my family to make this refusal, in their quietly political and apolitical way. Neither of them are recorded as conscientious objectors, so they won’t face a jail term.

I always believed that with the right information, nobody would support military occupation. That people are not born to hate and fight, but rather are taught to do so. My father and I never agreed on politics, but our discussions were limited. I always tried to minimise conflict. He had served in the IDF and formed his most intense relationships as a soldier, and later as an electrician and project manager. In the end, he drove his private tank into a concrete barrier on the freeway. Maybe he wished, at least in part, to die in a self-made ball of fire.

The night of his accident, Rafi embraced my nephew’s decision not to serve in the military but to help disabled children instead. “As long as you’re happy,” he said.

Five nights into my stay, Iran announces it is launching drones and missiles at Israel for assassinating one of its own top generals in Syria. From Australia I get urgent calls to immediately leave Israel. I panic. Just the day before, I was explaining with the confidence of someone from Melbourne’s inner West that Israel and the US are the only ones launching countless bombs, and that Iran is not a threat. Now I am hysterically waiting for the sirens and the impending destruction.

My sister and the others console me, calm veterans of air-borne attacks. It’s nothing. Not like missiles from Gaza, they tell me. I drink some more wine and fall asleep.

After a couple of hours, I wake to calls of, “It’s here, come outside! You can see it!” In a haze, we run to the street to see missiles intercepted by the Iron Dome high up in the sky, like fireworks. The neighbour who has taken issue with my sister’s cypress is calling out, “Look look look! It’s going down!” The penthouse family is having some kind of watch party. But it is quiet. There are no sirens, and no one heads to the bomb shelter. We go back to bed shortly after.

Turkey breast is absent from the butcher’s the next day. Overnight in the West Bank, the Wall was partly dismantled by protesters following months of military harassment, illegal arrests of Palestinians by Israeli authorities, and pogroms carried out by illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Elsewhere, relatives of Israeli hostages protest against their government, as they have been doing for months. But in Holon, Passover, the festival of freedom, is closing in on us. It is a kind of lockdown, like the shabbat curfew. Make sure you have all the supplies because the shops close. There will be no bread for a week; all products will be flour-free until the end of the holyday! Only of course, all is available at the Russians’, who are always open and sell all the forbidden pork and non-kosher goods, as do Arab vendors. No worries. We can always go there.

Having fetched twenty extra pita breads, I hear a man buying a lottery card say, “I’m extremely Right wing, and I will never ever vote for him again.” Holiday plans change due to the overnight incursion. Struggling mothers on a single income lose another day’s wages because of cancelled shifts or cancelled school camp.

My sister and I guzzle wine downstairs, eulogising our father, crying, smoking, laughing, and loving each other. Hibiscus blooms, street cats fight. Maybe we’ll go for a swim tomorrow.

When we do swim it is the best refreshment, and the sunny shoreline fills up quickly, although I wonder whether the smoke visible to the south is Gaza burning.

The night I plan to pack my things to return to Australia is the last night with my father. His body gives up moments after we leave the room at the end of visiting hours. We rush back to kiss him one last time as he sails off into oblivion. Finally, his room is quiet. No more beeping machines and struggles to breathe, no more agonising non-communicability. He is freed of arguments and irritations, of pain and regret. We hold him and speak to him again, crying and holding each other, grateful for the patient nursing staff, and fortunate to be able to be there together, in that moment of painful separation.

And then it is straight to business: the head nurse explains that because it was the eve of Passover, we must immediately organise the “chevra kadisha” (authorised religious undertakers) before they close for the day, “So, you can bury him tonight or tomorrow, then it’s forbidden until after Passover.”

“It’s his parting gift to you,” said the receptionist downstairs. “now you don’t have to sit shiva.” We discuss what to do as we sign forms, surrounded by people waiting to be admitted. “But how can we have the funeral at the same time as Passover? What about people’s Seder plans?” “For fuck’s sake, it is just a dinner,” I finally lose it. “They can make it.”

A messianic Jewish sticker adorns the receptionist’s workstation: Come home, father. She wears an Israeli map pendant and tells us that not only was she the one who admitted our father two weeks prior into emergency, but that her father also died on Passover, and so they were rid of the duty to sit shiva. “You’re lucky,” she says.

Driving to the cemetery the next day, we see people burning food in large bonfires in preparation for Passover. “It’s paganism, disgusting,” says my father’s friend at the cemetery. It is the same cemetery where my grandfather had worked as an undertaker, and where he, too, was buried, along with his wife and eldest son. Also buried here are Rafi’s aunt and her husband, the only family that survived the Holocaust, their perished relatives’ names etched on my grandparents’ gravestone.

Funerals in Israel are basic, direct, tactile. Your body is put in the ground almost immediately following death, wrapped in a white sheet. Still human. It is overwhelming to see our entire family, and all his friends and former colleagues there at a day’s notice to farewell him. Three young men are in uniform, carrying loaded M16 rifles. No one mentions those online arguments about the IDF’s war crimes, or how I endanger national security by voicing dissent. “Shema Yisrael …” the rabbi chants at the grave, adding in, “and may our fighters and hostages be safely returned to us.” “Amen,” they all say. That night, Passover songs echo down the streets as families gather for the annual commemoration of their emancipation.

Though released from the obligation to sit shiva we sit shiva anyway; and we still mourn. And what of all those people? They continue to live together and apart, entwined as one body with a pervasive illness. Yet even in death, the final equaliser, there are clear privileges to be had and pervasive inequalities loom large. Back in the airport, I line up amidst the heterogeneous, anxious collective. I reluctantly farewell my family once again, and fly back to Melbourne, where I cry harder than I ever have before.

From here I can see the sick national body I left behind more clearly. I hope and wish it would pursue a path of recovery by way of recognition of its privileges, even as it suffers losses. And for Israelis to acknowledge and reject their role as oppressors, even as they are dizzy with victim blindness. This will only occur once pervasive state violence against Palestinians is identified as the poison that is making everyone sick.

Image: Flickr

Overland literary journal

Keren Rubinstein

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