Book Review: Catch the truth

Bnei Brak-reared Tuvia Tenenbom returns to Israel as ‘Toby the German journalist,’ attempting to reveal the true story behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By MELANIE TAKEFMAN
Tuvia Tenenbom with Jibril Rajoub. (photo credit: GEFEN PUBLISHING)
Tuvia Tenenbom with Jibril Rajoub.
(photo credit: GEFEN PUBLISHING)
Israel is a land of many truths. The ongoing conflict with the Palestinians and the incessant attention we receive in the global arena has multiplied versions of the truth exponentially.
As such, Tuvia Tenenbom is not the first writer to attempt to reveal the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What sets him apart is that this former Israeli went undercover as a German to reveal the innermost thoughts of people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His premise was that people would speak truthfully about Jews to a non-Jew. The result is the best-selling book Catch the Jew! Tenenbom speaks many languages, including Hebrew, Arabic and German, and is therefore a fitting candidate to write such an exposé. He convinces many, especially Palestinians, that he is “Toby the German.” His interviewees include Knesset members, human rights activists, academics, authors and other public figures in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
As he sets off, he gives the impression that he is approaching his native country with good, almost naïve intentions and a clean slate. He is there to listen to everyone and reveal the truth to the world.
He has a propensity for penetrating inner circles, and people open up to him quickly and easily – which in itself demonstrates how desperate both Israelis and Palestinians are to get their stories out to the media. As a result, he succeeds in extracting some very controversial and unsettling truths.
The book’s most famous revelation comes from an interview he conducted with a Palestinian employee of B’Tselem – The Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, who denied the Holocaust – an affair that justifiably caused an uproar in Israel last year.
“Over and [over] again, as in so many other instances in Palestine, these Haifa refugees tell me how much they like Germany, the only country that knew how to deal with its Jews,” he writes in the last chapter.
When it comes to revealing such truths, he has done a service to international funders and critics of Israel. This is Tenenbom’s greatest achievement and a feat few journalists could accomplish.
Additionally he achieves some ironic and funny revelations, devoid of the political correctness that Israelis and Palestinians adopt to describe the foibles of their own societies.
One of the book’s finest episodes is when the author forges a genuine friendship with former Palestinian security chief Jibril Rajoub. It’s a rare moment when Tenenbom drops his agenda and pretenses to become a vulnerable person like the rest of us here.
THOUGH CATCH the Jew! contains some gems, it is uneven. Tenenbom alternates between childish, often sexist banter, and moments of clarity and insight. His writing is crisp and engaging, but his humor is off-putting.
What’s more, his objective stance quickly diminishes as his agenda emerges: He is out to challenge “self-hating” Jews and, even worse, Europeans who collude with the Palestinians in a vile anti-Semitic pact.
This pact includes massive funding to Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs with the goal of delegitimizing Israel and kicking Jews out of this land completely.
“This is the Middle East, and in the Middle East it’s all about the story. Nothing about reality,” he writes.
No one proves that better than he does.
What riles him more than European/ Palestinian anti-Semitism are the apologist Jews who have little confidence in their own value and birthright to the land, who pander instead to the Europeans who tried to exterminate them only a few short decades ago.
Tenenbom makes no distinction between “self-hating Jews” (such as one “ex- Jew” who actually resents his heritage) and people who have sympathy for their fellow citizens and the Palestinians under Israel’s control. Nor does he mention the dedicated, effective work done by the NGOs he defames, for the benefit of Israelis as well as Palestinians.
As such, the path to his conclusions is very short. We go from extreme sound bites to sweeping, loaded conclusions. There is no due diligence or in-depth research here.
Tenenbom’s claims remain at the surface, and he liberally formulates generalizations.
For example, “Toby” meets a Jewish supporter of Adalah, an organization that supports the rights of Israel’s Arab minority.
“If he is successful [in raising money], his beloved mama will become homeless,” he writes.
While Adalah has advocated for the right of return – a vague idea that is not likely to happen – the road from such a position to this particular woman losing her home is abstract at best.
Furthermore, at a demonstration against the West Bank security fence, Toby gets sprayed with tear gas after some of his Palestinian cohorts throw rocks at soldiers. He is treated in a Palestinian ambulance donated by the Swiss.
“I think of the ambulance I saw in Zfat [Safed], donated by American Jews, which aids in saving wounded Syrians, as compared with this ambulance, gift of the Swiss, which aids in shooting Israelis,” he writes.
How the ambulance aids in shooting Israelis is not explained.
The fact that his adventures take place in sovereign, strong, functional Israel detracts even more from his weak claims.
THAT SAID, it’s not surprising that Catch the Jew! became a quick best-seller here. It plays to Israelis’ deepest fears – that Israel is in existential danger, everyone hates us, the world is anti-Semitic.
While the intentions behind disproportionate European attention on this region raise some tough questions, they should be examined properly.
Too much is missing from Catch the Jew! for this to be considered a credible investigation. We rarely hear from regular, moderate Israelis and Palestinians (i.e., not public figures or extremists), who would add nuance and depth to this account of extremism.
While we hear plenty about the Palestinian riches the outside world doesn’t often see, we don’t hear about the Palestinians’ real suffering and the discrimination Israel’s Arab citizens face.
Nor do we hear about the massive foreign funding flowing into Israel from other parts of the world. This funding has a massive, tangible impact on our society, from our military might to virtually every nonprofit supporting the range of issues. In this respect, there is one brief (and weak) mention of Sheldon Adelson, and no mention of Evangelical Christians in the US.
Furthermore, Tenenbom presses many of his interviewees on unpleasant topics that they’d rather not discuss – a classic example being the International Committee of the Red Cross’s lack of transparency. Yet, here, too, the author proves he is a master of selective retention.
For example, Toby meets the staff of an organization called Regavim, which works to ensure equitable land planning, often in conflict with the Beduin. Its funding pales compared to the millions donated to other so-called pro-Palestinian or delegitimizing NGOs, according to Tenenbom. Yet he doesn’t blink when Regavim’s staff offers him an airplane ride to get a bird’s-eye view of the region. In contrast, he criticizes Rabbis for Human Rights for the exorbitant resources it spends on driving journalists like him around.
Tenenbom also doesn’t challenge others whose positions mesh more with his, such as Bayit Yehudi MK Ayelet Shaked, former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin and NGO Monitor director Gerald Steinberg.
To be fair, virtually all accounts of this troubled land are subjective and biased. The difference is that Tenenbom claims to be objective, when his agenda is crystal-clear.
Just as he criticizes his fellow European journalists for not seeking the truth behind the conflict – and specifically the European funding so widespread in the region – we must read his book with a grain of salt and a hyper-critical eye.
Catch the Jew!, then, is an exercise in catching the truth – distilling a moderate amount of valuable information from Tenenbom’s banter and poorly constructed conclusions.