Interview with Halevi & B-Roll pt 2
Interview with Yossi Halevi as he drives his car and discusses his new book about a paratrooper in the Israeli army.,3:47:24 to 3:58:08>>>Halevi by his desk in-front of his computer, at times talking on the phone . shots of the view from Halevi's terrace. Halevi's home study. Halevi talking with his wife.,3:58:08 to 4:04:41>>>Halevi talking with his wife in the kitchen. Halevi in his home office on the computer. Shots of the view from Halevi's terrace. Halevi's children enter the house. Halevi and his children.,4:04:41 to 4:16:58>>>Halevi walking down the stairs from his apartment. Halevi in the car driving. Shots of the city streets from the car.,4:16:58 to 4:29:25>>>Halevi walking in the street. Halevi walking by the wall then into the old city. Halevi walking in the old city. Halevi explaining a map that is posted on the street.,4:05:48>>>,Halevi:,There is an event I need to cover for my book, I hope to catch it ..I'm doing a book about the paratroopers who fought in Jerusalem in1967. And one of the paratroopers is head of the movement to rebuild the temple.,Interviewer:,What's his name? ,Halevi:,Ariel, he's not from the Temple Mount faithful, hes from Machon Hamikdash. Machon Hamikdash is the organization that is recreating the ritual objects from the temple. And hes having an event today where they are going to be circling the temple mount. ,Interviewer:,When's that?,04:06:50>>>,Halevi:,Should be at about 5 in the Kotel plaza. What's interesting about the paratroopers who fought in Jerusalem is that the full range of political responses is contained within this group. So you have on the far right, I would say far right to far left. You have of course the settlers and the peace movement but you also have on the far right someone like this Ariel who's head of the Machon Hamikdash of this temple mount institute. And on the far left you have someone who sat in jail for collaborating with the Palestinians. ,04:07:47>>>,So you have a fantastic range of characters. And they all fought together in Jerusalem, right at the wall. ,Interviewer:,Are they all still friendly?,04:08:08>>>,Halvei:,Mixed, mixed you know I'd say that most of them have managed to transcend the political differences. But you certainly have some people there who won't talk to each other for political reasons. ,04:08:36>>>,So I felt it would be very good for the book to , just like you need a scene of me, I need a scene of him,Interviewer:,When is the book coming out?,04:08:45>>>,Halevi:,Not for at least another two years, maybe another three,Interviewer:,In English:,Halevi:,it'll be in English ,For sale in the U.S. It'll be published in the States. And I hope it will be translated into Hebrew. I very much want it to be. This guy is having trouble here,04:09:16>>>,People would be surprised that in Jerusalem we have problems with our cars, we have daily scheduling issues, we have tax issues, not everything is the situation. ,Interviewer:,Just that CNN shows..,04:09:36>>>,Halevi:,Really here's a poor guy who's not at all thinking of a Palestinian state-got to get his car going.,Interviewer:,You knew Isidore from childhood?,04:10:20>>>,Halevi:,Yea we were apparently in camp together. I kinda remember him, I mean we were kids, not exactly the same age. But I do remember him. I should have remembered the name Isidore. It's a great name.,Interviewer:,Where are you from originally?,04:10:46>>>,Halevi:,I'm from Brooklyn, a place called, a little village called Bourgh Park.,Interviewer:,Eyal gives his life story, you've all heard it, no need to transcribe it,Halevi:,And what did you do in the army?,Interviewer:,Eyal talks about the army,Halevi knows areas in Gaza,04:12:20>>>,Halevi:,You know an Israel band called Shaygiz? Great band, really a terrific band. They have a song called Halom hazeh masrich meh new york vad orfiayach. ,Interviewer:,What kind of music?,Halevi:,Good solid rock band.,They have another song, chayil shel meah shearim. Recites lyrics in hebrew..Great band.,04:13:04>>>,This area here is a very important part of my book, This is where the paratroopers fought. One block in, where that mosque is, you have the American consulate across the street. That was the street where one of the toughest battles of the Six Day War happened. And there's a memorial for the paratroopers across the street. And one of the reasons that I was drawn to doing this book on the paratroopers is because my daily life runs along the route of their war experience. We are about to turn into the street that's called paratrooper avenue, that runs along, opposite the gates of the Old City. And I live in a very real sense, I live in the consequences of 1967. ,04:14:16>>>,So its been this great experience for me, rediscovering that period, looking up people who now are of course in their late 50s, 60s. This is now paratrooper avenue , there's going to be a monorail in Jerusalem-,Interviewer:,How long have you been doing the research for the book for,04:15:55>>>,Halevi:,For the last year on and off, not intensively. I hope to put in a lot more work this coming year.,Interviewer:,You write for the New Republic?,Halevi:,Yes the New Republic,Parks car, walking,Halevi:,So what do you want to talk about?,Interviewer:,The last 6 months, since Abu Mazen, how life has changed-,04:17:39>>>,Halevi:,Well at the moment we're having a happy hudna(?). Everybody feels a lot more relaxed. I don't think too many people believe this is going to last. Let's cross the street. I think most people realize that the hudna doesn't have the substance to endure. And I think the reason for that is that Abu Mazen who doesn't have basically right approach, the right intentions, is either unable or unwilling. He's not ready to do the only the move that will make the process work, and that is to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. Israelis are, ,Israelis are ready to make a big move to resolve this, to make the major and traumatic concessions. But on one condition, and that is that we have some guarantee that we're not creating a terrorist state five minutes away from here. The only way that I personally would be willing to make those kinds of concessions and see to the creation of the Palestinian State would be if I knew that the Palestinians were also sacrificing something for this peace. It's not only going to be me who has to uproot settlements and withdraw and subject my society to the possible threat of civil war. I want to see their society go through the same kind of trauma because otherwise there won't be peace. and if Abu Mazen thinks he can somehow make this segue to a Palestinian state and bribe Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Arafat's militias into joining the Palestinian Police, the Palestinian army which is what hes talking about. Then he's either a fool or a liar. Because that won't bring the necessary conditions for an agreement. ,Films him walking..,04:23:25>>>,Halevi:,I should say something about Tisha B'av, is that necessary?,Well you know this book that I'm doing about the paratroopers is very much related to this fast day. This is the of tisha ba'av, the day when the temple in Jerusalem , which the Palestinians say never existed, was destroyed. And the return of the paratroopers to the old city , to the Western wall, was seen by many Jews at that time in 1967 as an undoing of Tisha ba'av, of the destruction of the temple. And I remember the first time I came to Israel, I was a 14 year old tourist from Brooklyn, and I came at the end of June 1967, a couple weeks after the war, and the atmosphere was so charged here in Israel, there was such a feeling of redemption. That summer, that tisha ba'av , I was with my cousin, my Israeli cousin and he said we don't have to fast anymore because the Kotel,the wall, is in our hands. And we both went, we went downtown, we bought falafel and broke the fast. And it was this sense of unlimited possibility, that we no longer had to mourn, that we no longer had to worry about an existential threat to the Jewish people. ,That was the feeling in 1967. Suffice to say that I fast now on Tisha ba'av and that sense of dread for the survival of the Jewish people is more intense probably than in any time for Jews since the 1940s. , ,04:26:33>>>,So tisha ba'av has once again become very relevant, very central, emotionally to the Israeli calendar, religious Jews.,I'd be very happy to give up on Tisha Ba'av. It's one of the Jewish..It's one of the holidays that I'd be happy to stop observing. For their no longer to be a need for tisha ba'av. ,04:27:30>>>,This is the Armenian quarter here, the entrance to the Armenian quarter. And I spent time here for the previous book that I wrote, which was a journey that I took into Islam and Christianity. And the Armenians are of course a community that are focused on genocide and survival. You can see over here, they've put up these maps of Armenian Genocide. ,What you feel in Jerusalem. In the Armenian quarter, to the Jewish quarter, to the Muslin quarter, to the Christian quarter is just how deep the suffering and the trauma goes in this city, its impossible to experience Jerusalem without moving from one people's trauma to the other and that's the tragedy of Jerusalem and its also the power of Jerusalem. ,04:28:58>>>,I have a friend of mine who wrote an essay about the quarters of Jerusalem and he made a very interesting point that there is essentially three peoples living in the old city of Jerusalem. The Jews, the Armenians, and the Palestinians . And all three of those peoples have known exile.