Amir Ben-David, editor of Time Out Tel Aviv.
Ramsay Short, editor of Time Out Beirut.
This is the July 20 cover of Time Out Tel Aviv, published one week after the current conflict began. It is based on a famous 1970's New Yorker cover, A View of New York from Ninth Avenue. But whereas the world beyond New York's Hudson River is portrayed as a quiet, peaceful place, the world beyond Tel Aviv's Yarkon River is one of turmoil and violence. To the right are Baghdad and Tehran; on the left are Haifa, Tiberias, Carmiel, Acre and Kiryat Shmona - areas that have been under constant bombardment since July 12. The cluster of buildings at the top is Beirut.
As Amir Ben-David explained, the three brown boulders bridging the body of water that separates Tel Aviv from "the rest of the world" illustrate that, for all our ironic references to living in a bubble, it is impossible to ignore what is going on around us. We are all connected and the country is very small - we all have friends or family who live up north (just an hour or two away by car), or we know people who have fled the bombardment and become refugees, or we have relatives who are being called up for emergency army reserve service. We are all glued to the television and internet, constantly looking for news updates. 'And we are all worried.
This is the cover of the July issue of Time Out Beirut. It is all about Lebanon's summer festivals, like the renowned Baalbeck Festival. They've been cancelled, for obvious reasons. Publication of Time Out Beirut has also been suspended; Ramsay is still in Beirut, but half his staff has fled. And anyway, a magazine about entertainment would seem rather inappropriate just now, even though there are still some Beirutis who are managing to continue living in their own bubble.
The main story in the July 20 issue of Time Out Tel Aviv is about the connection between Ramsay and Amir - how they met and became friends, and how their relationship was affected by the fighting that broke out between their countries on July 12. The article opens with Amir's explanatory introduction, which I translated below:
Ramsay and I
By Amir Ben-David
We met in May at a world conference for editors and publishers of Time Out that was held, so symbolically, in Cyprus - the island that overlooks Lebanon and Israel from a safe spot in the heart of the Mediterranean.
The click between us was instant. Perhaps it was due to the Levantine temperament, the similar spark in the eyes. Very quickly it became apparent to all the participants at the conference that the people of Time Out Tel Aviv and the people of Time Out Beirut got along extremely well: during meals, during trips, with a frozen glass of vodka on the beach.
Ramsay Short, the editor of Time Out Beirut – the first edition was published just a few days before the conference – proved to be relaxed, friendly, and easygoing. The guy who wrote The Hedonist’s Guide to Beirut and enjoys being a DJ of electro music in bars during his spare time would have fit easily into Tel Aviv.
Now he is hiding in his house near the Beirut port, terrified of the Israeli bombs. You will be able to read about his depressing experiences and his even more depressing conclusions in this article. His words are full of rage, unfiltered and uncensored. It is not easy for an Israeli to read them. Even someone who supports “Israel’s strong response” to Hizbollah’s provocation should ask himself if hurting hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens and pursuers of peace like Ramsay Short and making them into sworn haters of Israel is the right thing to do under these circumstances.
In Cyprus in May we all expressed the belief that the past belongs to violent fundamentalists and the future belongs to us: Israelis and Lebanese who want peace and prosperity. Together with the publishers of Time out Beirut – Nehameh Abu and his wife, Naomi Sargent – we solved all the problems of the region in five minutes and turned to thinking about the coming years. When we parted at the airport in Nicosia we agreed that as soon as we returned home we would start to plan together a Time Out Festival of Mediterranean Culture: Three days of music, films, dance and theatre from Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus and Turkey.
On Monday afternoon I received an email from Naomi. Nehameh was in London. She and the children were relatively protected, in a Christian village outside Beirut that was not supposed to be a target of the Israeli Air Force. In the morning she was forced to go to the office in order to take care of some urgent work matters. A bomb fell close to her. She ran outside and got into her car in order to return to the village, and then another bomb landed right near her. “Civilians are being killed here,” she writes, “And this must be stopped.”
The Time Out Festival of Mediterranean Culture will be held some other time.
The rest of the article is a Hebrew tranlsation of excerpts taken from Ramsay's blog, Beirut Live, in which he chronicles his thoughts and experiences together with two other contributors. It is not, as Amir points out, an easy blog for Israelis to read. It is full of rage, accusations against Israel that are often false, paranoid or unjust. I could not bring myself to read all the entries, partly because I have read or heard it all before in different forums and I didn't see any reason to subject myself to the same litany once again.I try very hard not to attach too much significance to what I call "the rants," just as I try not to judge the residents of northern Israel who, after nearly three weeks of cowering in filthy, steaming public bomb shelters, are expressing unfiltered rage and despair to the media. People say terrible things, sometimes, when they are under emotional stress. Sometimes you just have to step back and let the bile flow, until it dries up of its own accord and reason re-asserts itself.
I know I'm lucky to be in Tel Aviv, lucky that my life remains intact. My own despair is more of the existential angst variety - watching as the tourists empty out of Tel Aviv just as we were experiencing our first "normal" summer since the intifada began in 2000, worrying about friends who are called up to the army, worrying about the future of this country.... (sigh). Well, that's all for another post.
I called Amir Ben-David the day I read the article. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will understand why I identified so strongly with him. At the time, I was planning to help put together an article about this story for a newspaper, but publication has been delayed indefinitely. So instead, I get to be self-indulgent and ramble on as much as I please in this forum. Tant mieux.
Amir grew up in nothern Israel. He has family in areas that are under bombardment and relatives who have been called up for emergency combat duty. "The way I see it," he said, "I have friends in the north and I have friends further north, in Beirut. Ramsay is not just someone I met on the internet. He is someone I know personally and I see him as a real friend." Then he continued, "When Ramsay and I met in Cyprus, we connected in two seconds. We talked only about peace and a hopeful future, about all the things our countries had in common. Ramsay's hatred toward Israel has become very personal for me. I do not see the Lebanese as my enemy, and it hurts to know that my country's army is hurting them."
Amir stresses that he believes an Israeli military response to the Hezbollah attack was justified. "I am not a pacifist or naïve," he said. " I know what neighbourhood we live in. But still, it is possible to question the way we have reacted, and what we have done to the Lebanese people."
There is also a pragmatic consideration: Is it wise to make the entire Lebanese nation - not just Hezbollah and its supporters - into our enemy?
"There is a saying in Israel - 'when the missiles fall, the debate stops.' So when will it be the right time to talk? When it's too late? When the damage is already done?"
Ehud Barak was elected prime minister in 2000 largely on his promise to withdraw the IDF from southern Lebanon after an 18 year occupation. For many Israelis, Lebanon was our Vietnam. Those who were against the withdrawal based their opposition on the belief that, without an Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah would be free to build itself up militarily to the point of posing a threat to Israel's security. The response of Barak and those who supported the withdrawal was to promise that if Hezbollah did attack, Israel would respond with full military force.
That is why there is a wide Israeli consensus in support of the current IDF operations in Lebanon, even amongst most of the prominent supporters of the centre-left position - despite their great discomfort with the reports of the civilian deaths and destruction of infrastructure. There is a sense that Israel simply had no choice. Amir wonders if we are failing to ask the right questions, and I think that is fair enough. Israelis are proud of their strong democracy and of their ability to engage in self-examination; I don't see any contradiction between loving and supporting one's country and maintaining one's ability to ask difficult questions even during a time of crisis. Quite the contrary, in fact. Especially after what happened yesterday in Qana.
Ramsay and Amir have been interviewed by Time Out New York (Ramsay's interview is here, Amir's is here) and written about in Time Out Chicago, here, where their very powerful email exchange is reproduced.
They are still in contact via email. During the first couple of days of the Israeli bombardment, their friendship was little affected. But now it has become very strained - as Amir describes, with great sorrow, in a follow up article for this week's edition of Time Out Tel Aviv. I'll write more about that in my next post.
