Israel Palestine Infos
Uri Avnery
June 4, 2011
RACHEL
I HAD the unqualified
blessing of living with Rachel Avnery for 58 years. Last Saturday I took leave
of her body. She was as beautiful in death as she was in life. I could not take
my eyes off her face.
I am writing this to help
myself accept the unacceptable. I beg your indulgence.
IF A HUMAN BEING can be
summed up in one word, hers was: empathy.
She had an uncanny
ability to sense the emotions of others. A blessing and a curse. If someone was
unhappy, so was she. No one could hide their innermost feelings from her.
Her empathy touched
everyone she met. Even in her last months, her nurses were soon telling her
their life stories.
Once we went to see a
film set in a small Slovak town during the Holocaust. A solitary old woman did
not understand what was happening when the Jews were summoned for deportation to
the death camps; neighbors had to help her to the assembly point.
We arrived late and found
seats in the dark. When the lights came on at the end, Menachem Begin got up in
front of us. His eyes, red from weeping, locked with Rachel's. Oblivious to
everybody around, Begin walked straight up to her, took her head in his hands
and kissed her on the brow.
IN MANY respects we
complemented each other. I tend to abstract thought, she to emotional
intelligence. Her wisdom came from life. I am withdrawn, she reached out to
people, though she valued her privacy. I am an optimist, she was a pessimist. In
every situation, I sense the opportunities, she saw the dangers. I rise in the
morning happy, ready for another day’s adventures, she got up late, knowing the
day would be bad.
Our backgrounds were very
similar - born in
The first words Rachel
ever spoke, when her family had fled the Gestapo to
She never read nor wrote
German, but learned the language perfectly from speaking with her parents - she
even corrected my German grammar.
Rachel, alas, lacked
Prussian punctuality. It was a constant source of friction between us. I feel
physically ill if I am not on time, Rachel was always, but always, late.
THREE TIMES I met her for
the first time.
In 1945, I founded
a group to propagate the idea of a new Hebrew nation,
integral to the Semitic region like the Arabs. Too poor to rent an
office, we met at members' homes.
At
one such meeting, a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of the landlord, came in to
listen. I noticed fleetingly that she was beautiful.
Five years later I met
her again when I was running a popular magazine aimed at revolutionizing
everything, including advertising: girls instead of the usual dull text.
We needed a pretty girl
for an ad, but there were no professional models in the new state. One of our
editors ran a theater group. He
introduced me to a member called Rachel.
We took some pictures by
the sea, and I took her home on my motorcycle. We fell off in the sand and just
laughed.
The third time was at the
same experimental theater. There she appeared again, and at some point she tried
to guess my age, pledging a kiss for every year she was wrong. She guessed I was
five years younger than I was, and we made a date for settling the account.
We continued to date on
and off. Once I was to meet her at
midnight in a cafe. When I did not arrive, she went to look for me. She found a
crowd outside my office, and was told I was in hospital. Some soldiers had
attacked me and broken all my fingers.
I was helpless. Rachel
offered to help me out for a few days. They lasted 58 years.
We found that living
together suited us. Since we despised religious weddings (there being no civil
marriage), we lived happily in sin for five years. Then her father fell
seriously ill. To set his mind at rest, we married in a hurry, in the private
apartment of a rabbi. We borrowed the witnesses and the congregation from
another wedding, and the ring from the rabbi’s wife.
That was the last time
either of us wore a ring.
FOR 58 YEARS, she
inspected every word I published. That was not easy. Rachel had strict
principles, and stuck to them. She covered some of my pages in red ink.
Sometimes we had bitter arguments, but in the end, one of us usually conceded –
generally me. On the rare occasions
we could not agree, I wrote what I felt like (and more than once regretted it).
She struck out all
personal attacks she considered unjust. Exaggerations. Every weakness of logic -
she would spot contradictions that had escaped me. She improved my Hebrew. But
mostly she added the magic word “almost”.
I tend to generalize.
“All Israelis know…”, “Politicians are cynical…” – she would change that to
“Almost all Israelis …”, “Most politicians…” We joked that she was sprinkling
“almost”s on my articles as a cook sprinkles salt on food.
She never wrote an
article herself. Nor gave interviews. To such requests she would respond: “What
did I marry a spokesman for?”
BUT HER real talents lay
elsewhere. She was the ultimate teacher, a calling she pursued for 28 long
years.
This happened quite
unplanned, after she was sent on an army course for teachers.
Before the course
finished, she was practically kidnapped by an elementary school principal. Long
before she received her teacher’s certificate, she was a legend. Parents with
connections pulled strings to get their children into her class. There was a
joke that mothers planned their pregnancies so that the child would be 6 years
old when Rachel taught the first grade. (She agreed to teach only the first and
second grade, as the last chance of shaping a child’s character.)
Her pupils included the
children of illustrious artists and men of letters. Recently, a middle aged man
called to us in the street “Teacher Rachel, I was your pupil in first grade! I
owe you everything!”
How did she do it? By
treating children as human beings and nurturing their self-respect. If a boy
couldn’t read, she put him in charge of tidiness in the classroom. If a girl was
rejected by prettier classmates, she would be the good fairy in a play. She drew
satisfaction from seeing them open up like flowers in the sun. She spent hours
explaining to backward parents their children's needs.
During the school
holidays, her children were raring to get back to class.
SHE HAD a purpose: to
instill human values.
There was the story about
Abraham and the burial site for Sarah. Ephron the Hittite refuses money. Abraham
insists on paying. After a long and beautiful exchange, Ephron winds it up: “The
land is worth four hundred shekels of silver. What is that betwixt me and thee?”
(Genesis 23). Rachel told the children that this is still the Bedouin way of
doing business, leading up to the deal in a civilized manner.
After the lesson, Rachel
asked the teacher of the parallel class how she explained this episode to her
pupils. “I told them that this is
typical Arab hypocrisy! They are all born liars! If he wanted money, why didn’t
he say so directly?”
I like to think that all
of Rachel’s children – or almost all of them – have turned out as better
human beings.
I followed her
experiments in education closely, and she my journalistic and political
exploits. Basically we were attempting the same: she to educate individuals, I
the public at large.
AFTER 28 YEARS, Rachel
felt that she had lost her edge. She did not believe a teacher should continue
after their eagerness has been blunted.
The final push came when
I crossed the lines in
Without telling me, she
took a course in photography. Weeks later, pictures of an event were laid before
me. I chose the best – which just happened to be hers. The secret was out. She
became an enthusiastic photographer, with a remarkable creative talent – always
focused on people.
IN EARLY 1993, when
Yitzhak Rabin deported 215 Islamic activists across the Lebanese border, protest
tents were erected opposite his office. We camped out for 45 wintry days and
nights. Rachel, the only woman who was there the whole time, struck up a
beautiful friendship with the most extreme Islamic sheikh, Ra’ed Salah. He
really respected her. They joked together.
In these tents, we
founded Gush Shalom. For her, the injustice done to the Palestinians was
intolerable.
She was the photographer
at all our events. She took pictures of hundreds of demonstrations, rushing
around, taking shots in front and behind, sometimes in clouds of tear gas –
despite her doctor's warnings. Twice she collapsed in the burning sun, crossing
harsh terrain to protest against the Wall.
When the Gush needed a
financial manager, she volunteered. Although it was completely against her
nature, she became a meticulous administrator, with a Prussian sense of duty,
working on the kitchen table late into the night. She much preferred her
unofficial function – maintaining human contact with activists, listening to
their problems. She was the soul of the movement.
SHE COULD be very
abrasive, too. Far from being a starry-eyed do-gooder, she detested liars,
hypocrites and people who did wrong.
She never liked Ariel
Lili Sharon loved her,
Arik liked her too. There is a photo of him spoon-feeding her with his favorite
dish (food was unimportant for her). Rachel did not let me show anyone the
picture. After the 1982
Once, Sharon’s confidant,
Dov Weisglas, whom she could not forgive his nasty remarks about the
Palestinians, spotted me in a restaurant, came over and shook my hand.
But Rachel left his hand dangling in the air.
Embarrassing.
When she liked people,
she showed it. She liked Yasser Arafat, and he liked her. We went to see him
many times in
When we served as a human
shield for the besieged Palestinian President, Arafat kissed her on the brow and
led her by the hand to the entrance.
FEW PEOPLE knew that she
carried an incurable disease – Hepatitis C. It lay like a sleeping leopard at
her doorstep. She knew that it could wake up any minute and devour her.
The unexplained infection
was discovered more than 20 years ago.
Every doctor's appointment could have meant a death sentence. She
collapsed five months ago. There were many signs of this approaching, which I
ignored but she clearly saw.
During these five months,
I spent every minute with her. Every new day was like a precious gift for me,
though she was inexorably sinking.
We both knew, but pretended that everything was going to be alright.
She had no pains, but
increasing difficulty eating, remembering, and, towards the end, speaking. It
was heart-rending to see her struggling for
words. For two days she was in a coma, and then she slipped away
unconsciously and painlessly.
She had insisted that
nothing be done to prolong her life artificially. It was a terrible moment when
I asked the doctors to stop their efforts and let her die.
In accordance with her
wishes, her body was cremated, against Jewish tradition. Her ashes were
scattered on the Tel Aviv seashore, opposite the window where she had spent so
much time gazing out. So the words of William Wordsworth, which she loved and
often repeated, do not strictly apply:
“But she is in her grave,
and oh,
The difference to me.”
ONCE, in a moment of
weakness exploited by a film-maker, she complained that I had never said “I love
you”. True enough: I find these three words incurably banal, devalued by
When she was fading, I
whispered “I love you”. I don’t know if she heard.
After she died, I sat for
an hour with my eyes fixed on her face”. She was beautiful.
A GERMAN friend sent me a
saying which I find strangely comforting. It translates as:
“Don’t be sad that she
left you,
Be glad that she was with
you for so many years.”