Credit: Reuters/Nir Elias
I arrived at my local cafe, Ginbzurg, at five minutes before 11.00 this Memorial Day morning. Miri, the bartender, greeted me and said, "Do you want your coffee before or after the siren?"
"Oh after," I answered. "Otherwise it'll get cold."
At exactly 11 o'clock the siren began to moan. The truck passing in front of the cafe screeched to a halt; its passengers climbed down and stood with their heads bowed, along with nearly everyone else on the street.
Except for the boys at the Belz yeshiva, who were kept indoors. And except for the Arab men who were renovating an apartment building; they stopped hammering and withdrew from view. And except for three ordinary-looking 30-something Jewish Israeli women who were sitting at the cafe; they did not stand, nor did they cease their conversation.
I had never seen (non ultra-Orthodox) Israeli Jews who did not stand silently during the two-minute siren on Memorial Day. I stared at them, they ignored me, and all sorts of thoughts went through my head. Were they making a political statement? If so, why had they chosen this place and this manner of expression? And what was the meaning of their refusal to join in this communal two-minute remembrance of the dead? Was it a sort of anarchist statement of refusal to participate in a communal activity? A political statement against war? A pro-Palestinian statement?
After the last echo of the siren had faded away, I returned to my stool at the bar and Miri began frothing the milk for my coffee. One of the waitresses leaned across the counter and whispered fiercely, "Did you see that?! That was disgusting! I've never seen anything like that in my life! I feel like spilling their food in their laps!"
Miri shrugged her shoulders and said, "Oh, there are always one or two 'anti' types who refuse to stand. It happens every year."
"Well I think it's outrageous!" responded the waitress, in a near-shout.
I thought about the time I was sitting in the living room of my old apartment on Mazeh Street, chatting with Ilanit on the evening before Memorial Day, when the one-minute siren wailed at 8.00 pm. And even though we were sitting alone in our own home, we immediately stopped talking and stood in silence. The custom is that ingrained - it never occured to either of us simply to sit and continue talking.
Israel is a small country, with a population of less than 7 million. Since 1948, around 21,000 Israelis have been killed in wars and terrorist attacks. That means that nearly everyone has a relative, a friend or an acquaintance who died violently. So the mourning is very immediate and very personal.
Israel is also a democracy, which means that we have freedom of expression.
When I told a friend about the three women in the cafe, I said, "I don't know, it seemed sort of like walking around Mecca during Ramadan while eating a ham sandwich."
To which my friend responded, "A person eating a ham sandwich in Mecca during Ramadan would probably be stoned to death."
I thought about the Arab Israeli workmen's choice to withdraw from public view during the siren, versus the Jewish Israeli women's choice to abstain publicly from standing. Were the Arab men being respectful, or just avoiding conflict? Were the Jewish women being disrespectful and inappropriately provocative, or simply exercising their rights as citizens of a democracy?
I was left wondering about the tension between preserving the individual's right to freedom of expression in a democracy, and the responsibility to be sensible of one's fellow citizens' feelings.
And I'm still wondering.
