Kafka In Palestine 2

"Sabbar Kashur wanted to be a person, a person like everybody else. But as luck would have it, he was born Palestinian. It happens. His chances of being accepted as a human being in Israel are nil. Married and a father of two, he wanted to work in Jerusalem, his city, and maybe also have an affair or a quickie on the side. That happens too.

"He knew that he had no chance with the Jews, so he adopted another name for himself, Dudu. He didn't have curly hair, but he went by Dudu just the same. That's how everyone knew him. That's how you know a few other Arabs too: the car-wash guy you call Rafi, the stairwell cleaner who goes by Yossi, the supermarket deliveryman you know as Moshe.

"What's wrong? Is it only fearsome Shin Bet interrogators like 'Capt. George' and 'Abu Faraj' who are allowed to adopt names from other peoples? Are only Israelis who emigrate allowed to invent new identities? Only the Yossi from Hadera who became Joe in Miami, the Avraham from Bat Yam who became Abe in Los Angeles?

"No longer a youth, Sabbar/Dudu worked as a deliveryman for a lawyer's office, rode his scooter around Jerusalem and delivered documents, affidavits and sworn testimonies, swearing to everyone that he was Dudu. Two years ago he met a woman by chance. Nice to meet you, my name is Dudu. He claims that she came on to him, but let's leave the details aside. Soon enough they went where they went and what happened happened, all by consent of the parties concerned. One fine day, a month and a half after an afternoon quickie, he was summoned to the police on suspicion of rape.

"His temporary lover discovered that her Dudu wasn't a Dudu after all, that the Jew is (gasp!) an Arab, and so she filed a complaint against the imposter. Her body was violated by an Arab. From then on Kashur was placed under house arrest for two years, an electronic cuff on his ankle. This week his sentence was pronounced: 18 months in jail.

"Judge Zvi Segal waxed dramatic to the point of absurdity: 'It is incumbent on the court to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth, sweet-talking offenders who can mislead naive victims into paying an unbearable price: the sanctity of their bodies and souls'. Sophisticated offenders? It is doubtful that Dudu even knew he was one. Sweet talk? He says that even his wife calls him Dudu.

"The court relied, as usual, on precedents: the man who posed as a senior Housing Ministry official and promised his lover an apartment and an increased National Insurance pension, and the man who posed as a wealthy neurosurgeon who promised free medical care and other perks. Dudu had nothing to offer but his good name, Dudu, and still his fate was sealed, just like those who promise apartments and perks. Not only fraud, but rape, almost like the convicted serial rapist Benny Sela.

"Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubenstein had, after all, defined the test of conviction for rape on 'fale pretenses': 'if in the view of an ordinary person this woman would have agreed to have sexual relations with a man who did not have the identity he invented'.

"In tune with the public, Kashur's judges assumed, rightly, that the woman would not have gotten into bed with Dudu were it not for the identity he invented. She also might not have gotten into bed with him if he had told her in vain that he was available, that he was younger than he really is or even that he is madly in love with her. But people are not prosecuted for that, certainly not on rape charges.

"Now the respected judges have to be asked: If the man was really Dudu posing as Sabbar, a Jew pretending to be an Arab so he could sleep with an Arab woman, would he then be convicted of rape? And do the eminent judges understand the social and racist meaning of their florid verdict? Don't they realize that their verdict has the uncomfortable smell of racial purity, of 'don't touch our daughters'? That it expresses the yearning of the extensive segments of society that would like to ban sexual relations between Arabs and Jews?

"It was no coincidence that this verdict attracted the attention of foreign correspondents in Israel, temporary visitors who see every blemish. Yes, in German or Afrikaans this disgraceful verdict would have sounded much worse." (He impersonated a human, Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 22/7/10)

Kafka In Palestine

One morning, after mouldering away in his grave for 86 years, Franz Kafka found himself transformed in his coffin into a... Zionist.

Israel's supreme court recently ordered the opening of 10 safety deposit boxes containing the papers of Czech writer, Franz Kafka, who died in 1924. The papers had been in the possession of Esther Hoffe, the secretary of Max Brod, Kafka's friend and biographer. On her death in 2007, Hoffe left the papers to her daughters, who wanted to sell them to the Archive of German Literature in Marbach. Hoffe's will, however, was challenged by the Israeli National Library, which claimed the collection on behalf of the state of Israel: "Kafka scholar Mark Gelber, a professor at Ben Gurion University told The New York Times that the writer's 'intimate connection to Zionism and Jews' was among the prime reasons his lost writings should remain in Israel. 'This material belongs in Jerusalem', he was quoted as saying. 'Brod became a Zionist before the First World War, lived and worked here and is buried here. Less well known is the fact that Kafka was a totally engaged Jewish personality and writer with many intimate connections to Zionists and Jews'... Gelber and other Kafka scholars say... that Kafka was not only devoted to Zionism and the study of Hebrew, but possessed a life-long dream to move to Israel." ('Kafka's life-long dream was to make aliyah': Remnants of Franz Kafka's estate found in Tel Aviv flat prompt speculation of writer's Zionism, Haaretz, 18/8/08)

That's it then. Kafka, author of those nightmarish classics, The Trial and Metamorphosis, was a card-carrying Zionist. Not!: "But in his new book, 'The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay', Louis Begley posits that despite the writer's preoccupation with his Jewish identity, he was neither a Zionist nor an active member of the Jewish community. 'I admire Zionism and am nauseated by it', Mr Begley quotes from Kafka." (ibid)

A curiously ambiguous verdict indeed. But if Kafka had lived to see the fruits of Zionism for himself, I feel sure that his verdict would have been far less nuanced. And, were he alive today, who would be better qualified than the man who gave us the adjective Kafkaesque to sum up the experience of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation:

"[T]he particular nightmare of the Palestinians is best described in the pages of Franz Kafka. In Kafka's world the prevailing theme is uncertainty and unpredictability. There are no set rules for behavior and the orders given by authorities seem arbitrary and even contradictory. You do not know what the laws are. The 'authorities' in Kafka's work sit in their fortresses and periodically intrude upon the lives of the confused and apparently helpless protagonists. This Kafkaesque situation describes life in Occupied Palestine. Israeli authorities suddenly intrude themselves into the lives of the Palestinian population, and do so in an unpredictable and arbitrary manner. They also destroy in an arbitrary manner. Israel's message to the Palestinians reflects one of Kafka's more depressing maxims: Why build knowing destruction is inevitable? A Palestinian might be safe one moment and in danger the next. You cannot predict if you will make it to work, the grocer, or school, or for that matter back again. As a result many Palestinians could identify with Kafka's character Joseph K in the novel The Trial who, 'without having done anything wrong was arrested one fine day'." (Orwell & Kafka in Israel/Palestine, Lawrence Davidson, counterpunch.org, 3/4/04)

The opening sentence of Metamorphosis might read today, for example: One morning, after a night of consensual sex with a Jewish woman, Sabbar Kashur, a non-Jewish man, woke to find he'd been sentenced to 18 months in prison for rape...

And how exquisitely Kafkaesque the words of the Israeli judge who sentenced Kashur: "The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price - the sanctity of their bodies and souls." (Palestinian man jailed for rape over Jewish lie, Jason Koutsoukis, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/7/10)

Their souls for Jehovallah's sake!