An Extra Pair of Eyes: Hebrew Poetry Under Occupation

Vol. 2, No. 2. 1987.

i came upon the following lines in a recent poem by the Israeli poet Uzi Bahar:

A land where you need an extra pair of eyes To see beyond this everyday.

Writing about Hebrew poetry within the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip demands that one find an extra pair of eyes able to see beyond the concealing blur of daily routine to the deeper structures of an occupying culture. The experience of the occupation, its terminology and symbols, have become part of the Israeli landscape, not only for those who, like Meron Benvenisti, see it as an irreversible process, but even for those who still hope for the day when Israeli society will free itself from the burden of the occupation.

The closing of a college, the imposition of Draconian punishments on children for the crime of rock-throwing, … the banning of hundreds of books in the occupied territories, the arrest of an artist for using the forbidden colors of the Palestinian flag: such everyday news items, if they appear at all, are reported under the separate category of “news from the territories” and buried in the inside pages of the newspaper. If one steps out of the flow of events to look at daily life in Israel from a more distant perspective, one discovers that the ideology of occupation has almost completely penetrated Israeli society. …

There is a central dividing line in this poetry, demarcating the possibilities from the limitations inherent in Hebrew poetry written during the occupation. This line delineates a dual picture, where hope alternates with condemnation. To the extent that hope is forthcoming at all, it derives for the most part from a dispassionate awareness of the poet’s own limitations in his capacity as conqueror. The striving for undistorted insight into reality, coupled with the willingness to pay the price for such insight, can itself constitute a seductive option for a literature caught in the kind of complex and oppressive situation typified by the occupation. There are Hebrew poets who come to terms with these limitations by making their poems into metapoetry, examining the hidden assumptions implicit in the discourse within which and for which they are being written. …

One of the most sophisticated expressions of the struggle between moral empathy and responsibility can be found in the poem “While Hovering at Low Altitudes,” by Dalia Ravikovitch. She describes a small shepherd girl who dies cruelly in “wild and terrible mountain ranges/To the East.” The speaker’s fixed, measured distance from the horror of the event evoked the following remarks from the critic Nissim Kalderon: “For she writes, over and over again, ‘I am not here.’ All of her is there, beside the victims. But not together with them. Near them; but not treading the same ground as they, with no expectation of the evils which befell them.” She is not there; but in fact she is also here, in her Israeli homeland. Dalia Ravikovitch has crafted a poetic voice which, suspended between heaven and earth, is both intimate and remote, thus mirroring the multifaceted ambiguity of daily life in Israel. …

Ravikovitch’s poem includes closeness as much as distance. Through the insistent and troubled refrain, “I am not here,” the speaker in the poem reveals her closeness to the “here” she denies so strongly. A similar effect is achieved in the poem through litotes, in the descriptions of the shepherd girl: She does not turn to God for help in Jewish formulaic language, she does not have the cosmetic beauty of the women of Jerusalem condemned by the Prophets. As a litotes, this formulation of the central opposition between here and there gives at least as much weight to the familiar Israeli homeland as to the distant danger zone “to the East”:

And the little girl awakened thus, to go out to the pastureHer neck is not outstretchedHer eyes are not painted with mascara, they do not flirtShe does not ask, Whence cometh my help.I am not here...