Summer has been burning for days with heavy heat loads. He gasps and gasps as if he had sucked in the heat of the stormy winds between the camps, which until recently were one people. I put another book in the padded envelope, glue the tab carefully, and think: Here, it's happening again.
Once again, the people are separated into camps, imposed and decided unilaterally. Seal ears and heart and look in only one direction. Once again, an entire public is being tattooed. And here again old wounds are burning with pain. Why? Because no one bothered to cure these pains throughout the years of the state's existence.
In the past, it was mainly towards immigrants from Islamic countries, then towards the evacuees/expelled from the Gush settlements, and today it is towards anyone who protests against changing the face of the state. They opened old wounds, created camps, and incited them against the "anarchists" and the judges of Israel, who until yesterday were the people's servants and loyalists. The act is the same, and the result, of course, is the same.
When I researched my book House Moving in the Wind, one word resonated with me: gentrification, grounds. A word that expressed the historical events and journey of the heroine as she arrives in the city of Kilongia, Jerusalem.
It all began more than five decades ago, when Zionism and pioneering were a way of life. As waves of ascents swept through the young country. After the Six-Day War, new opportunities arose. Suddenly, what was a boundary line that people drew on a regular basis became a kind of new center. The planned and directed gentrification process in Jerusalem has begun, and to this day its results are evident among the evacuees, who are residents of Jerusalem's seam line neighborhoods – Mamilla, Musrara, Yemin Moshe and Shama in the Hinnom Valley.
The term gentrification – a process of population exchange – was first coined in 1964, about two years before the aggressive evacuation of the Yemin Moshe neighborhood began. Today, this word also has a positive connotation of urban renewal, at least in the eyes of free-market advocates. Despite this, the original residents of the neighborhood are still excluded in this process. They are being pushed out to a new periphery, instead of leaving them as part of the developing neighborhood. Instead of social justice and equality, we get a separation between strong and weak populations, those who are presented as weak in order to justify a process of evacuation and repression.
In contrast to neighborhoods that are undergoing gentrification, in Yemin Moshe the evacuation is carried out under the guise of preservation and out of disregard for the residents themselves, as if they were objects to be evacuated. Those who know the neighborhood in its early days and see the neighborhood today will not recognize any conservation in it. From an open and vibrant neighborhood, it became a closed and closed neighborhood. Maybe it's a picturesque neighborhood, but totally inauthentic.
Results? Musrara set in motion the Black Panther movement, which to this day bears the scars left by the struggle for their rights. The evacuation of the Mamilla neighborhood created a community of residents thirsty to this day to find a trace of the vibrant life that existed here. Perhaps they will find a cure in the Cave Museum, which is currently being built in the neighborhood, after decades of struggle. Here will be remembered the brave people, whose contribution to the area was forgotten and buried under the open mall and homes that most of us cannot afford. And the Yemin Moshe neighborhood? To this day, many residents of the neighborhood bear the pain of the eviction, which dismantled the diverse communities that lived here in brotherhood - Ashkenazim, Sephardic and Mizrahim, religious and secular. Although all the communities in the neighborhood were scattered everywhere, to this day worshippers come to Simcha Moshe Synagogue, which is the only one that remains original.
And what about the growing rift in the nation these days? It has nothing to do with the right, center, or left. It has to do with breaking values, with unilateralism, with delegitimizing people and communities, with ignoring deep pain. What will arise in the future from this bleeding wound? Nothing is likely to be good, based on history. Despite everything, I wish something good would come from here.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us