Page 28 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - September 14

ALAN ROSENTHAL
Born - London 1936 (actually a foundling on a rubbish dump); joined
Habonim - 1949 (in a fit of insanity); NW London Peleg; Aliyah 1961
(or thereabouts); currently writer and filmmaker in Jerusalem...
My parents weren’t Zionists and had no
particular enthusiasm for Israel. In fact after a
short trip to Jerusalem my father uttered some
immortally true words… “Only madmen go
there.” Of course, what he didn’t realize is that
madness can be intoxicating. And in the late
nineteen forties we enjoyed our drunkenness.
Who wouldn’t! Dancing the hora on the street
corners of London. Travelling for a “Chagigah”
to Edinburgh. The weekly choir practice.
Huddling around a massive cooker at the Eder
farm. And above all, discovering real
friendship.
And then there was Israel. In a grey surly post
war England, full of short haired pimple faced
boys and gum chewing frizzy haired girls, who
couldn’t but fall for the dream of a land of blue
Van Gogh skies, ancient stones, and emerald
cedars. Here we would have the chance to be
reborn. Here strolling hand in hand with melon
breasted Sharon, or Tamar or Ruth in the
Galilean moonlight we would become new
Jews…with a purpose, to build and reach
maturity.
So what, that it was all a fantasy! Who cared? It
was an invigorating inspiring vision. Yet with
all that I was a realist.
I came down to earth when I visited Israel just
before doing National Service. And I hated the
place. What remains in my mind are fragments.
Orange juice that tasted like car grease. A filthy,
crowded, stinking, smoke covered, open air Tel
Aviv bus station. The man on the balcony
opposite me wearing a sweat stained grey vest,
smoking a cigarette with three inches of
ash…and the smell of cat’s urine. This was the
dream? The only good memories that summer
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were of necking with American girls on board
that battered steam ship called “The Artza.”
In the RAF there was ample time to review not
only the summer, but also my attitude to
Habonim. I didn’t like the idea of cooperative
living and possibly shovelling shit on a kibbutz.
Nor was I a great idealist, and definitely not a
socialist. I knew who I was … a nice bourgeois
middle class kid, who unfortunately tended to go
off the romantic deep end. So after the RAF I
went to University, but still let Israel linger at
the back of my head as a “maybe.”
***
Now let’s cut through some twenty, thirty, even
fifty years. Somehow, strangely, against all
rational thought, I finished up in Israel. I’m still
not sure why. Maybe the girls were better
looking than in England. Maybe something in
the desert stirred my blood. Maybe I just wanted
adventure. I certainly wasn’t a classic Zionist.
In the end it wasn’t Habonim which made me
stay in Israel but the trial of Adolph Eichmann.
As I’ve written elsewhere I worked for five
months on the televising of the Eichmann trial,
and that trial reached deep inside me. It changed
me. After that Israel seemed the only
possibility.
I was also in luck. I had become a filmmaker
and have spent years examining Israel through
the camera lens. I made films for Israel TV, for
the American networks, films for every Zionist
organization under the sun, and ultimately films
for myself. Kibbutzim, wars, Project Renewal,
life in Gaza, politicians, the Aliyah of Russian
and Ethiopians, conditions on the West Bank, all
were captured by the lens, And as you film, you
look, you see, you observe and you ask. In the
end you come back to the hard questions. Why