Of ‘freiers’ and cultural signifiers

There’s a tendency to use one’s pet prejudice as a tool to simplify complicated circumstances – such as the tent cities in Israel and the riots in London.

By AKIN AJAY
London Israel cartoon (photo credit: Pepe Fainberg)
London Israel cartoon
(photo credit: Pepe Fainberg)
E very so often, I’m faced with the somewhat intractable challenge of translating the peculiarities of one of the societies I have some connection with to members of the other.
How, for instance, does one begin to explain the quintessentially British humor of Monty Python to an Israeli? Or the Israeli concept of a freier (sucker) to a Brit? (Oddly, I’m rarely asked to explain Nigerians to anyone else. This may perhaps be something of a blessing.) Placing the cultural signifiers of English society within a framework that makes sense is a tough call, even at the best of times. Cricket, Marmite, the absence of mixer taps... that said, dissecting Israeli society for the benefit of my British friends is.... Well, Israel is Israel. Need I say more? Usually, I bamboozle my interlocutors with a load of nonsense – how would they know any better? – but events of the last few weeks have made this difficult. Friends from Britain have asked why so many in a nation of seven million have taken to sleeping in tents across the streets of their cities. I mumble something indistinct about “socioeconomic gaps” and “the periphery,” but this patchy analysis sounds a little shallow even to my ears.
Then I go to visit family in London, and what happens? I start to get e-mails from friends in Israel demanding my take on why so many in a city of seven million have taken to running riot across the streets of their city. Charming.
The sensible thing would be to say: “To be honest, I haven’t a clue.”
But that would be to admit to a lack of opinions. And that simply won’t do, not in this age of commentary and talkbacks, where everyone has a voice and an audience – of sorts – for their turn as a Monday morning quarterback.
Actually, I can provide a bit of context to the events in London. I happen to know Tottenham – the north London neighborhood where the riots ignited – quite well; for the better part of a decade, I worked in the community as a school social worker, alternating between coaxing and threatening recalcitrant youngsters back into school.
We worked with a rather limited palette, and our successes were few and far between – which may or may not have something to do with the societal disconnect evident over the last couple of weeks. Even so, my experiences do – I think – give a bit of perspective to the London Riots of 2011. If there was one thing I learned on the job, it was that there are possibly as many grains of sand in the ocean as there are reasons why young people might think that smashing up shops and burning police cars is okay.
Why does this matter? Because the tendency, whether from close up or afar, is to use one’s pet prejudice as a tool with which to simplify complicated circumstances. I think about this because I’ve seen numerous suggestions, both in personal communications from Israel and in various op-eds in the Israeli press, that propose London was all about “the failure of multiculturalism.” There’s a certain smugness to this analysis, I feel; a smugness that also encompasses a warning, a “lesson” against the possibility of the same happening at some point in the future in Israel. But this I feel is limiting, at best. London 2011 came about as a result of a range of complex factors, and to say otherwise is to willfully miss the point.
Back to Israel. As you might have noticed, I’m prone to a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking myself. I did as much here a few weeks ago, when I sneered – mildly, but sneering all the same – at the cottage cheese boycott. As events have since demonstrated, I got this wrong. It’s not just that I hate the taste of cottage cheese – I still do – but because the boycott turned out to be the thin end of the wedge that has since grown into the massive June 14 demonstrations.
Why, my British friends ask, this mass outpouring of dissatisfaction at the economic situation in Israel? It’s supposed to be an economically secure country, it rode out the worldwide recession, etc.
The truth is that I really don’t know all the answers. At least, that’s what I try to remember to say now. My personal pet prejudices – a discomfort with neo-liberal capitalism, for instance – perhaps constitutes part of the answer, but certainly not the whole.
And here, there’s a link of sorts between Britain and Israel. Israelis have – quite reasonably – long resented the simple explanations that are supposed to clarify the complex issues that have dogged the country for so long: about economics, about the occupation, about so many other things besides. And many Londoners, I’m sure of this, dislike the nice ’n’ tidy expositions that distill the complexity of the riots – racial disharmony, inexcusable criminal behavior, distrust of the organs of state, simple anarchy, systemic abuse of power, educational disadvantage, and more – into a one-size-fits-all explanation. It’s good to be interested in figuring out how the other country works; less so to extrapolate from a single reason a logic that applies to the whole. It’s something we’re all guilty of to some extent, I’d guess.
Anyway, back to the cultural signifiers of my favorite island race: Another “characteristic” trope is the taciturnity of the British.
Interestingly, I feel that Londoners have been much more open and friendly with one another in the days following the riots. Communal cleanups, smiles and politeness on the street, that sort of thing. Very strange.
Returning from a trip to the cinema last week, my son starts to recount the film to himself in Hebrew. Loudly.
A man sitting next to us asks what language the Small Noisy Child is speaking, and my answer triggers off a conversation about how an Anglo-Nigerian wound up in Tel Aviv. He asks – and this is incredibly forward for a Brit, mind – if my son is, or is considered, Jewish. I give my usual answer about how anything assumed on behalf of the child would no doubt be contradicted by him in due course. He remarks that my son must be rather unique in Israel, half-black, half-goy, bilingual, etc. On cue, said child starts to serenade the bus – loudly, out of tune – with a song from the film. “And very noisy,” I add. “It’s hard to miss him.”
The man grins. “Who knows, he could be the Messiah.” I smiled wanly.
“No, he’s just a very naughty boy.” You’d have to like Monty Python to get that.