Ronit Matalon - The Sound of Our Steps

I TOOK THE last El Al plane to Israel from Paris.… I remember that returning on the same flight with me were Mr. David Horowitz, governor of the Bank of Israel, and Mr. Shimon Peres, director of the Ministry of Defense. On my way back to the country, after an exile of six years, fate brought me face-to-face with one of the pillars of Ben-Gurionism and also with the man who pulled the strings of our country’s economy.

I had no time to rest and contemplate what was happening around me in the country after such a long absence. The Suhba were eager to know what my plans were. They organized a big party to which they invited friends and comrades from all over the country. The party was held in a house in the Hatikva quarter. When I arrived there it seemed to me that I saw a lot of new comrades. However, it soon transpired that they knew me from before my journey and were well informed about me and about our struggle. In truth I saw a public that had kept its faith and dedication to our friendship and our cause and remained faithful to this day. After all the salamat and polite words, the people wanted to hear my impressions from my journeys abroad .

After stressing in my opening remarks my joy in being once again among the Suhba, and after pointing out the fact that during the entire period of my absence I had never abandoned my thought and concern for everything happening at home, and especially my concern for the situation of all our brothers in the cause … after this, I explained the activities I had undertaken abroad in order to get across the idea of a peaceful solution to our problems. I spoke about the personal meetings on both a narrow and a broad basis that I held on the subject with people of social, academic, and political standing in Europe. I stressed my meetings with the former secretary of the United Nations, Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld, and other personalities.

Members of the audience and I myself well remember that my remarks at the party gave rise to a long and lively argument, the gist of which was that the Suhba were not prepared to sit idly by and do nothing, the comrades having interpreted my words as evading responsibility and shirking the struggle for our rights.…

I have never contemplated evading my responsibility for the people I belong to and for the Suhba. And accordingly I vigorously rejected the opinions of the comrades about my future activities and as vigorously set forth my reasons for refusing to renew our publication, pointing out the obstacles that would stand in our way. I reminded them of the existence of an entire Israeli doctrine around which our policy is formulated. This doctrine, which I call Ben-Gurionism, is neither bourgeois capitalism nor working-class socialism, neither right nor left. It is not centrist or extremist, but conformist, faithful to the opinions of a single individual. This person was defined by Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz as follows: “David Ben-Gurion is the greatest catastrophe visited on the Jewish people and the State of Israel from the day of its establishment.” We know that this doctrine is anti-Sephardic in fact and in theory. And therefore it is neo-racist, neo-anti-Semitic in spirit and purpose. Since it dominates the ruling institutions almost exclusively, it guides and directs our lives here and also the life of a considerable part of Diaspora Jewry. It employs the terminology of Zionism and also rejects Zionism in favor of a messianic vision. It receives the encouragement and support of organizations, institutions, and Jewish personalities such as the Rothschilds.… It is well known that it also receives support and encouragement from non-Jewish elements in ruling circles in the United States, West Germany, and other countries .

To the extent that there are those who extol the form of democracy practiced in Israel, they are pulling the wool over the eyes of our public. How can they explain the fact that in our “democracy” the power lies exclusively in the hands of 40 percent of the Jewish population of the country, while the majority — in other words, 60 percent — does not have the right or the ability to determine any aspect of the political, economic, and educational lives of themselves and their children. This kind of democracy, to the extent that it exists in any other country, is a false democracy, racist and antisocial. If we wish to analyze the actions and consequences of the Ben-Gurionist democracy, one or even many articles will clearly not suffice. And therefore bringing out a bimonthly publication that would occasionally deal with this or that issue would lead nowhere.

I could see one way to tackle the problem, which was to conduct a thorough research into the situation and write up the conclusions in a book. With these words I concluded my first appearance before the Suhba, at that party in the Hatikva quarter. I was ready and willing to devote myself to the writing of a book that would go into all the aspects of the problem and its solution.… I suggested that the book be written in French and called The Solution? The question mark would hint that while we were bringing our views and suggestions regarding the situation to the attention of the public, the solution remained in its hands … in your hands … and in ours. And thus I began to write the book The Solution?

From the day I undertook the writing of The Solution? I decided to grow a beard and not to shave it until completing the task I had undertaken to carry out. How strange and amusing it was to see all the questions, reactions, and remarks to which something as small and common as growing a beard could give rise. For my part I took care that the Suhba would not make the true reason for my growing a beard public. I was amused by the questions and remarks addressed to me on every side and at every opportunity. I changed my answers according to the nature of the questioner, and the direction and intention of the question. This innocent amusement did not prevent me from devoting most of my time (from ten to eighteen hours a day) to my work on the draft of the book The Solution?

I worked on the book for a whole year, and completed the task only in October 1965.

NONA SAID, SOME time not on the calendar, that there never was and never would be in elaalam a love like that of Maurice and the mother, never, never, never, said Nona, staring at the photograph of the Piazza San Marco and seeing what she usually saw in photographs: a square of darkness, hearsay evidence of an event that may have taken place. She told the child to keep it as a memento. “So you’ll have a memento that you were in Italy as a child,” she said. The child looked and then turned the photograph over, held it between her fingertips again, looked and turned it over: there were those pigeons.

They gathered from all corners of the photograph, came closer, crowded together, advancing in a threatening mass, surrounding them on all sides; soon they would push the three people in the photograph to the wide steps behind them.

Maurice was friends with the pigeons, or at least he pretended to be: he held out his hand to them with seeds of something, whatever you give to pigeons. But the mother didn’t hold out her hand to them. She held on to the child so she wouldn’t collapse onto them and onto the square, held her tight and looked at her as if she wanted to encourage her to hold herself up, not to collapse, to help her in the holding. And the fog. The fog licking at the edges of the photograph and settling on the pigeons.

For years she looked from time to time and saw nothing but pigeons and fog, fog and pigeons. The photograph canceled itself out, erased its details, like the title of something, a perfunctory confirmation of something: “Oh yes, that’s in Italy,” the mother said whenever she came across it. “Oh yes, that’s in Italy.”