A New Weavers' Song Why I protest Israeli pilicies
Gilbert, Ronnie
A New Weavers' Song Why I protest Israeli policies By Ronnie Gilbert IN 1949, I LOVED THE SHINING IDEAL OF the new State of Israel, a brand new democracy, a spark of hope in the developing...
...And yet I feel compelled to protest the policies of the State of Israel, even today, even after the withdrawal from Gaza...
...A civilized approach to peace-sharing music...
...I'm pretty slow these days...
...One doesn't want to give aid, even inadvertently, to xenophobes for whom the misdeeds of the State of Israel are an excuse to unleash Jew-hatred...
...My ghostly feeling of "disloyalty to Israel" faded as I read reports from European newspapers and Israeli peace groups about the hell that is the occupation: the use of U.S...
...Clearly, the combined strength of her surrounding Arab neighbors was as nothing before the military might of Israel...
...From jukebox to jukebox, people stamped their feet and clapped their hands...
...Just as I was about to go ahead and start dancing, a woman standing next to me whispered something my way...
...Five years ago, I helped start Bay Area Women in Black, following in the footsteps of two other local Women in Black groups...
...How would Arabic music relate...
...The Balkan women had banded together in brilliant opposition to their war-thirsty leaders and compatriots during the conflagration...
...Tzena, Tzena, Tzena...
...It hadn't been clear who actually started the fighting, but in six days it was over-the Egyptian air force decimated, the Syrians decisively defeated, the Jordanians surrendered...
...But how can it be racism...
...Awareness of the Israeli women's activism sent me to the Internet to educate myself about the occupation from the Palestinian point of view, rarely expressed in our TV and newspapers...
...The light of the moon and of the sun, the countries of the five continents are but a drop, a small drop in her oceanoh freedom, oh freedom...
...But this was 1950, and such sentiments were to have no place against the whipped-up hysteria of the Cold War...
...nobody gave a darn about Americas blacklist...
...You would never have known we were pariahs in our own country...
...One accused all of us of "doing the work of Hamas...
...A mothers' group devised a play for children about a fox who refuses to eat meat, and the group recorded a sweet little song...
...Ronnie Gilbert, one of the original Weavers, is writing her memoirs...
...Would Israel survive...
...Good for little Israel-she showed 'em...
...Anti-Semitism, shamed into dormancy for a time by the horrors of the Holocaust, is again on the rise in the world...
...I accepted what I was told...
...helicopter gunships and F-16 war planes in densely populated areas...
...Armfuls of flowers and love greeted us at the kibbutz amphitheaters...
...The public loved it...
...Three against one...
...She smiled, held out her hand, and introduced herself...
...Wonder about what...
...I'm Tina Naccache," she said...
...Who are your people...
...massive uprooting of farmers' olive and fruit orchards...
...We toured "from Dan to Beershe-va," Lee Hays, our bass, familiar with scripture, loved to say, in a caravan of three or four autos, carrying a crew and our own lights and sound systems...
...I learned it in a few weeks and sang it at a concert in Berkeley's Greek Theater, Pete Seeger accompanying on banjo: Sing with me, let's sing to her, call to her, and she will come...
...I jin-goed with the rest, despite my certain knowledge that won or lost, war is a disaster for humanity...
...Ha Orgim, the Weavers were called in Israel, the literal Hebrew translation of our name...
...We were told at one that our concert would be heard by soldiers in a Syrian military encampment just over the hill...
...A New Weavers' Song Why I protest Israeli policies By Ronnie Gilbert IN 1949, I LOVED THE SHINING IDEAL OF the new State of Israel, a brand new democracy, a spark of hope in the developing darkness of the Cold War...
...And so she did...
...You'd have to teach me-from scratch...
...Everywhere, we were welcomed with great excitement, the American recording stars who had introduced young Israel to the United States...
...David and Goliath...
...Nueva Canci?n, yes," she repeated, "but it makes me wonder...
...Camps...
...I didn't quite hear what you said...
...At these silent vigils, I have met the defenders of Israeli policy...
...And a man in a three-piece suit used his briefcase to smash a sign I was carrying...
...Sometime during our six-month stint at the Vanguard, the Weavers signed a contract with a major record company and recorded the Israeli song, fitted out with a set of appropriate English lyrics: Tzena, Tzena, Cant you hear the music playing in the city square?The recording was an explosion of fun onto a moribund popular music scene...
...The exuberant little Israeli dance tune was a highlight of our repertoire in 1949...
...It seemed that outside the U.S...
...When I raised the question once to a member of the crew, I was met with an impatient shrug and, "Oh, they're crazy, the Arabs...
...Everyone cheered...
...Although irate patriotic citizens threatened and insulted the Jerusalem women, the movement had spread throughout Israel...
...Serbian Women in Black were inspired by the Jerusalem organization, which had been coming out into the streets for three years to protest the Israeli Defense Forces' occupation of Palestinian territory...
...Tens of thousands of children had been living in abject poverty under Lebanon's reluctant sufferance, and, like their parents, dreamed of going home to Palestine...
...Indeed, sometimes it seems our whole species is sick with racism, anti-Semitism, tribalism...
...Drivers and crew leaped out...
...Come out, come out, girls, join the dancing, greet the soldiers...
...And where does it say that a crime is cancelled by a crime elsewhere...
...I bought a tape of Umm Kulthum, and I simply couldn't fathom where a song starts and where it ends . . ." Embarrassed, I could hear the racism squeezing out of me like toothpaste...
...For the occupation of the West Bank, which is actually expanding, continues, as does the denial of real statehood for Palestinians...
...the sudden arbitrary curfews...
...What can Arabic music, based on an entirely different set of harmonic and rhythmic principles have in common with the deliciously complex but familiar music of Latin America...
...Jews everywhere held their collective breath...
...Tzena, Tzena, join the celebration, there'll be people there from every nation...
...Why not...
...She also performs on tour with her latest show, "Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life with Songs...
...Once, driving between appearances, one of the cars had a flat...
...demolition of homes in the middle of the night by bulldozers designed and made in the U.S...
...With our songs of fellowship and international solidarity, the lefty, top-of-the-charts Weavers were fair game for the House Un-American Activities Committee and its minions...
...Yet somehow, with the help of persistent friends and fans, the Weavers managed to survive on a modest scale, and in the summer of 1959, we were booked for a concert tour in Israel...
...What could I do but smile-in a friendly manner, of course...
...OK," I gave in, "so why do you think there's no Arabic music in Nueva Canci?n...
...And that's how it began, a new friend, and a crack in my wall of ignorance about the Middle East...
...Children were born and grew up there and bore another generation...
...Wasn't that everyone's vision of peace, after the terrible war...
...A challenge...
...Our silent mode is a shout to ourselves and to the world to pay attention...
...The concert producer reached into the glove compartment and took out a pistol...
...Justice, justice," demands the Talmud...
...They'd like to drive us into the sea...
...At an outdoor Tel Aviv auditorium, mobs of young people who couldn't afford tickets climbed over walls to get in, causing a near riot...
...What else but racism...
...My answer is this: Can one call herself a Jew and not take action when she recognizes oppression and injustice...
...I didn't press our new friends for information, not wanting to reveal how ignorant I was...
...I certainly don't know how to listen to it...
...Didn't they each have their own territory...
...And more than once I've been called a "self-hating Jew," or an "internalized anti-Semite...
...The song Tina found for me was from a play written and performed for children in the Palestinian refugee camps, she said...
...I said, still trying to hold onto the feel of the music...
...Hadn't the Israelis been doing a fine job "modernizing the wasteland...
...Then, in 1967, Israel went to war against Syria, Egypt, and Jordan...
...As we roared away, the producer explained we had been caught in a narrow stretch of land between Israel and Syria, "a favorite spot for Arab infiltrators...
...Are Jews supposed to self-criticize only at Yom Kippur, and then forget about it...
...Yes," said one of our hosts wryly "also warning them that the flashlights coming up the road at night are concertgoers, not the Israeli army...
...Silly, was my first thought...
...Why don't the songs of my people have a place in the movement, if it's about musicians calling up their culture from under the heel of the oppressor...
...Uh, certainly, of course, absolutely, why not, uh . . . I mean, yes, if I could learn it...
...The camps Tina spoke of were meant to be temporary, too, but for decades they had been the inhospitable home for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, waiting to go back home to their villages and towns...
...I thought it was "only" about music...
...I was annoyed...
...Coming out publicly for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine is complicated, especially for American Jewish progressives, unlike, say, speaking out for gun control...
...His friend said, with more passion, "Don't you know...
...See www.ronniegilbert.com...
...My folksinging partners and I, the Weavers, sang the joy of the fledgling country in Hebrew: Tzena, Tzena, habanot urena...
...Driven from Palestine in 1948 and again in 1967, women and men grew old and died in the camps...
...Your people...
...The State of Israel was safe...
...OK, Ronnie, if I taught you an Arabic song, would you sing it in publican Arabic song...
...Meanwhile, inside the camps, life went on...
...She could have said "Outer Asturia" for all I knew about Lebanon...
...Look at these people...
...What kind of camps, I wanted to know...
...Like an all-too-typical tourist anywhere, I had only the vaguest idea about the violent history of this land, could not fathom the animosity of the Palestinians for the Jews...
...Racism...
...When we were hired for a short stint at the Village Vanguard, a popular club in downtown Manhattan, patrons more used to sophisticated jazz and comedy picked up on the rhythm and exhilaration and kept us there week after week...
...But Umm Kulthum...
...I'm Lebanese," she said...
...It made stars of us...
...That little speech stopped me cold...
...And Lebanon...
...More than once, I've been asked, "Why pick on Israel when there is so much other injustice in the world...
...I had never seen a tire changed so fast...
...Concert halls in Jerusalem and Haifa filled to overflowing...
...the cars stopped...
...And I know who you are, my dear...
...Horns honked...
...We stood in a half circle in a garden, forty or fifty people from the Berkeley folk community gathered together in celebration of Nueva Canci?n, the New Song movement that joins the musical genius of indigenous Latin America with the social awareness of its contemporary youth...
...children shot for throwing stones at armored tanks...
...The entertainment for the event was Lichi Fuentes's terrific band, and it was impossible to stand still to their bouncing, dimpling rhythms...
...Enraged, I turned to yell at him, but managed instead to take a couple of deep breaths, clamp my teeth, and hold back the expletive...
...the cruelty of the checkpoints-sick people, women in labor, refused transport to hospitals, women giving birth there in the open under the eyes of Israeli soldiers, a preemie dying for want of a hospital incubator less than six miles away...
...I'm sorry" I said to the attractive, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with the unfamiliar accent...
...Marvelous," I said...
...1982...
...Hers is the most difficult music, even for Arabs...
...My God, nonviolence asks a lot from us...
...Justice shall you pursue...
...Ugh, racism, everything is racism...
...In the kingdom of death," wrote Israeli peace activist Nurit Peled-Elhanan, whose thirteen-year-old daughter was killed in a suicide attack by a Palestinian youth, "Israeli children lie beside Palestinian children, soldiers of the occupying army beside suicide bombers, and no one remembers who was David and who was Goliath...
...Don't be afraid, don't talk in whispers...
...Dark-skinned, light-skinned, different kinds of hair, female, male . . ." "Yes, but never an Arab among them...
...Now wait a minute," I said...
...Like the interim Displaced Persons Camps at the end of World War II where thousands of refugee Jews had waited to be sent anywhere but back to Europe...
...In 2001, two women's groups, Jerusalem Women in Black, and Serbian Women in Black, were co-nominees for a Nobel Peace Prize...
...And then went on with my life of commitment to peace-in Vietnam...
...Jewish members of Women in Black hold with the centuries-old Judaic tradition of "bearing witness, railing against injustice, and foregoing silence," to quote an Israeli peace activist brought up by parents who survived the Holocaust...
...The vicious suicide bombings and the heartless occupation are equal partners in crime against both peoples and against any hope for peace...
...I didn't know it at the time...
...I cringe, for instance, at the sight of a placard in a peace demo showing the Nazi swastika superimposed on the Star of David of the Israeli flag, as if the evil is in the ancient Judaic symbol itself...
...In two years, via radio and TV blacklists, the McCarthyites wiped Tzena, Tzena and everything else by the Weavers from mainstream consciousness...
...Another spat at us...
Vol. 70 • February 2006 • No. 2
