The New Yorker Radio Hour - For a Palestinian Candidate, a Contested Election in Jerusalem

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

Ramadan Dabash is a civil engineer and a mukhtar—an Arab community leader—in his neighborhood of East Jerusalem. His run for a seat on the city council of Jerusalem has been making international headlines because the Palestinian community has long refused to participate in city politics, which they see as legitimizing Israeli rule. (Palestinians in Jerusalem can vote in municipal elections, but do not have representation in Israel’s national government.) But with no political solution in sight Dabash feels an imperative to engage in city politics in order to bargain for infrastructure and services for the people of East Jerusalem. In doing so, he could be courting attacks from Hamas, Fatah, or Israelis angered by his move into politics. But he also has unlikely allies, including a hard-right Likud member who supports the Israeli settlement movement and might have his own motives for supporting Palestinian engagement.  Bernard Avishai, a New Yorker contributor based in Jerusalem, interviewed Dabash at length, and he explains the complexities of his campaign to David Remnick.   The Jerusalem city-council election takes place on October 30th.  Plus, the acclaimed writer Calvin Trillin talks about another side of his career, as the screenwriter of movies performed by his children, grandchildren, and their friends.    New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Revnik. We're going to start off today with the election. But I don't mean the election, the midterm congressional election. The election we're going to talk about today is taking place on another continent altogether. It's a city council race in Jerusalem. A man named Ramadan DeBoshe, an Arab community leader, is running for a seat on a seat on a city council race. on the city council and he's been making international headlines for doing so. How come? Well, first of all, in the Arab community of East Jerusalem, there's a longstanding taboo on participating in city politics.

The Palestinians there see it as legitimizing Israeli rule. So Ramadan DeBosch is taking a huge risk in his own community. And he's doing so at a time when Israeli-Palestinian relationships are at an absolute low. Bernard Avishai is a New Yorker contributor who's a longtime resident of Jerusalem, and he recently met up with a candidate Ramadan de Basque. Bernie, who is Ramadan DeBash, and why is he such a big story? Ramadan is the Mukhtar of Surbacher, which is in the southern part of the city. As Muktar, he's really head of a council of influential families.

If this were a larger village, he'd be like the mayor. but it's not. So he's like head of the neighborhood council. The other thing about Dabash is that he's kind of a hybrid. On the one hand, he's a very traditional guy. He's a traditional Muslim. He has four wives. He brags about 12 children. On the other hand, he's pretty modern. He's an engineer. He's taken his degrees in Israel. And he teaches in Israeli colleges. Okay. So I met with Ramadan,

drove into Sur Bacher just very recently. Hi, Ramadan. Hi. Hi. Shalom, shalom. Hi. As you see here,

I interviewed him in English. Before that, I had talked with him in Hebrew, and I must say he's far more articulate in Hebrew than he is in English. But if he were speaking in Hebrew, you would see not only how much more trenchant his ideas are,

but also how much of a charisma that he has. We need cooperation here to be before. Cooperation to make peace before. And that's it. I think it's no problem for us. Let's step inside and talk about it. You like to drink coffee or tea? Bernie, what exactly is Ramadan campaigning on?

It's all about infrastructure. It's about social services. The kind of things that municipal governments deliver. What kind of services are you talking about? I talk the services for all, first of all, the buildings. They are destroyed many of buildings here and Arab places here because they don't have a license for it. Building permit. Building promise, yes.

This kind of service we need. The second thing, we need the education, service and schools. and we need roads we don't have. Also, we don't have pools. We don't have enough places for the old men and women and for the child. We don't have enough service because that we need to change our mind and to start in the first step here to be inside the municipality. Bernie, if he wins and he gets on the city council,

how effective can he be? how can he come across as a successful politician to his constituency? Well, he's already shown that he knows how to work the system. Just as the Mukhtar of his neighborhood, he successfully squeezed millions, really, out of the Jerusalem government for infrastructure, including the community center we were sitting in. The point is that that's hardly enough at this point.

We need three or four billion shekels here in the East. bank to be a good life here. That's billion with a B. Yes, that's the billion with a B. And what you managed to get for Tsur Bacher before was something like 300 million over how many years? Three, four years, yes. So there's a big gap there to close? Yes, a big cap to close because if it is 50 years until this day, nothing moved. interesting for us. You're a secular Jew who lives in a particular, particularly more or less secular neighborhood of West Jerusalem,

but the city is becoming more and more at Hasidic and the rest. What does that imply as a political challenge to him on the council? It seems that the Orthodox community is actually quite open to making deals on infrastructure projects, because in many ways they mirror his, problem. For the most part, these are fairly right-wing people who see the city as being annexed, see the Arab population as being inevitably part of Israel, and so are becoming more and more open to investing on that side of the line. I should say here that part of the reason why he's

running here, he's really trying to gain genuine political leverage. He's not just interested in counting on his ability to recruit goodwill on the other side. At the same time, ironically, he's taken as a political advisor, a Lykud activist, not at all a secular liberal, but an orthodox Jew who's extremely supportive of the settlement movement. So it was quite an eerie feeling to be sitting there, talking to Ramadan on the one hand, and listening to his advisor whisper to him and his advisor is sitting there with a knitted yarmaca and a clipboard full of data.

Ramadan, you're running with some political advisors. Yes, Mr. Gilad. He's giving me a service for advisors, my political advisors. Gilad, would you introduce yourself? Hi, I'm a... Gilad is ready. It's not usual that people wearing knitted yarmulchas are interested in helping to elect Palestinians to the Municipal Council of Jerusalem.

Tell me about yourself. I'm from the white wing of the political map in Israel. And I think in the recent years after the white, the white, wing in Israel established himself. People started to realize that you can't say we want Jerusalem united and Jerusalem belongs to Israel and ignore the people who live in Jerusalem. If you want Jerusalem united, Jerusalem is not just lands. Jerusalem is also people living in these lands. And you need to unite the people, the Arab people. and the Jewish people around the city, around the Israeli Jerusalem city.

I have to say, Bernie, this is a remarkable thing. Here's an orthodox right-wing Jewish-Israeli trying to get a Palestinian elected to the Jerusalem City Council. I don't quite get his motives. Well, I'd be lying if I said I did. But it's kind of incredible. On the one hand, you've got the Orthodox Jewish-Israeli whose vision of the future is that all of Jerusalem, to say nothing of the West Bank, be included in what we have long called to greater Israel. Whereas Ramadan is clinging to what we've called for now many, many years, the two-state solution in which there would be a Palestinian state formed out of what we call the West Bank. Gaza and East Jerusalem.

They're at such innate ideological loggerheads, and to see them sitting here together with you, to hear them together with you, in common political cause is mind-boggling. Well, naturally, I put the question to both of them. Can you see this as a model for Palestinian-Israeli relations in the future? I think the Jewish side is afraid to lose his majority.

That is why I don't think the Jews in Israel will want to make the Palestinians an equal citizens. However, there are some raising approaches that the Palestinians will have local authorities, vast local authorities to run their own lives with an Israeli authority, like in East Jerusalem today. So Gilad has a vision of the future where the Arabs are slowly brought in through municipal governments and are given a great deal of autonomy

within greater Israel. Is that your view as well? I don't want to be in the future in a big jail like Gaza Strip or like the Palestinian things. The problem here is the people, first of all, to be equal like the Jewish people, and also to be in the United Jerusalem and the Palestinian to be part of this united. So this is my idea. I think the people also need this idea. So the two of you may not necessarily have the same long-term vision, but you're willing to.

see the importance of the short-term cooperation? I want to be freedom, first of all, to be freedom, to be person, to be, I have, like the another side, like the, I am a human, like the Jewish people. Bernie, I must ask you, as somebody who's been in Israeli for a long time, you, you began life in Canada, and you live part of the year in America, but you're in Israeli, and you've been You wrote the tragedy of Zionism, I don't know how many years ago. Have you yourself given up on the notion of what has been a long call, the two-state solution? Oh, no, I haven't.

I mean, you can't give up on the two-state solution because you have two separate, distinct, national peoples. You have two languages, two different majority religions, to very different cultures. and at some level you have to imagine drawing a political boundary around these cultural facts. But I think what Ramadan is implying, what I certainly do believe today, is that to make the two-state solution real, both sides are going to have to start coming to terms with confederal ideas. They're going to have to figure out ways that the existing integration will find political expression. Bernie, where are you seeing signs of Confederation in that sense? Look, Jerusalem Arabs have ID cards. They work in the Israeli part of Jerusalem, the Israeli Jewish

part of Jerusalem, something like 50% of wage earners from East Jerusalem work in the West. And they've started to identify with the institutions of Israel, even if they're not identifying with the self-determination of the Jewish people. Ramadan, many people in Surbacher work in Israel, yes? All the people, all the people working in the Israel sites. What kind of jobs are they doing? Many of jobs. They are working teachers.

They are working at the engineering and a driver. And everything they are working, cleaning, everything they are working inside. We don't have jobs here. We don't have nothing to do in this area. All the jobs inside the Israel site. Construction? Also construction, many of people working in construction. Tourism?

Tourism also, they have a company of a bus service for tourism. A lot of people here in the Palestinian site. They are working inside or in the south and north Israel. But it also should be clear. that even though we're talking about construction, tourism, jobs, et cetera, it's not all meaning a labor. The joke in West Jerusalem is that if the Arabs struck the medical system in West Jerusalem would fall apart. That's how many doctors, anesthesiologists, nurses, and pharmacists there are coming from East Jerusalem to work in the West.

Bernie, recently the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. And how has that changed the status quo? How has that changed the picture? Well, I think it's had the perverse effect of mobilizing Jerusalem Arabs, recognizing that they have to start acting and not simply wait for the great powers or for PA Israeli negotiations to make decisions for them over their heads. I actually talked to Eliezer Iieri, a journalist, my friend, who introduced me to Ramadan. So, Aliezer, we're on your porch. Tell us what we're seeing from your porch here. If you look to the south, you see Kibbutz Ramat Rahel. Who lives in the very neighborhood that the embassy is.

The new embassy is right down the street from here. You find it ironic that it's there of all places. You want to say why? I wouldn't call it ironic. I think it's futuristic. In a way, from my point of view, the story of Arnaona, my neighborhood

and So Bacher is actually a microcosm of the entire conflict. And also a prospect of partnership and good neighbors, good relationship between the neighbors. It's funny when they moved

their embassy, actually they moved it to the neighborhood. They're very concerned about security. So they covered the fence which was open with some kind of

black plastic that now we cannot look at the new American embassy but if you stand in Sub Bacher it's right in front of you so the view of the new embassy is

blocked from us but it's open to the other side and the ambassador is not here anyways because he lives on ocean in Tel Aviv. I hope that when he comes and lives here, he will wake up in the morning together with me to the sound of the prayers and realize the new embassy is right at the heart of the conflict. Their job is also to help to find a just solution for all the partners

who actually are neighbors. given all the obstacles what do you think is Ramadan's definition of victory I don't want to be I don't want to sound cynical but first the first thing that he will physically survive it so his car could get blown up by Hamas because of his secular politics by Fatah because of his collaborationist reputation

by another family in Surbacher because of his presumption. And by Israel is because he's an Arab. So it's, when you speak of courage and surviving this election season, you literally mean the courage to survive. Almost, yes. Are you afraid for your life? Look, I am, yes, I afraid for my life,

but I don't afraid because I am now 50 years my age. so I don't think I will be more 50 years because I have to do something for my children, all the children from the Arab side to change the situation. We need roads, we need schools, we need everything, we don't have nothing. So I start, before four years,

to make just for service. So because that, I succeed. Bernie, what are the chances that Ramadan wins his seat And could his party hold real sway on the city council? If you're asking, you know, how many seats is he going to win? I really can't say because in many ways this is a test also for the Palestine authorities, moral prestige in East Jerusalem. And it's quite possible that there will be a very small turnout. But if there will be a big one, and if you look at the polls, only four,

14% of Arabs in East Jerusalem oppose running. 58% approve, according to the poll. So there's obviously a shift on the street. A lot of Palestinians are beginning to see that this is their fate, and they had better make the best of it. And they're making that decision out of a sense of resignation? Well, resignation, but it's merged with a sense that what do you lose? If in the end there's going to be a Palestine capital in East Jerusalem,

having seats on the city council will not preempt that. It does in a way imply resignation, but it doesn't really give away the game and in some ways prepares the ground for the only realistic kind of two-state solution which you will eventually have. Bernie Abyshe, thank you very much. Thank you, David. That was Bernard Avi Shai, a contributor to the New Yorker who spoke with Ramadan DeBash, who's running for city council in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem elections are on October 30th.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. Now, summer is officially, unofficially over this week, which is awful. Whatever the weather may be doing, the vacations are taken, and the kids are now back at school. And so we're going to bring you an end of summer kind of story from no lesser writer than the great Calvin Trillen. Trillen has been writing for the New Yorker for more than 50 years.

He's done crime reporting, memoir, loads and loads of humor, everything. And for nearly that long, Trillen and his family have been getting together in the summer, and he would show off a very different side of his work as a screenwriter and director of films that you might describe as, at best, niche. My name is Calvin Trillen. And our movies began, many years ago my girls who are now in their

40s were 3 and 6 and we had a super 8 silent camera and I don't know why or how we decided to make a movie with a plot the golden

once upon a once upon a what's about a time in a beautiful land there was a princess she had a stableman named Zolman. He was very loyal, hard-working stableman, although quite stupid.

Our first movie was about a golden egg stolen from a haughty princess by a robber with a fox-like grin. And my wife Alice was the camera person, or the cinematographer, I guess. and I guess I wrote the movies. I added a narration on a tape recorder, which sometimes was in sync with the action on the screen

and most often was not in sync with the action on the screen. We've never been complimented on our production values. One day, the loyal stableman came in a terrible excitement. He had something to give her. A golden egg. Even Princess Rosalie had ever seen. I started going in 1972 to Nova Scotia. I liked arriving on July 1st, which is Canada Day,

because I like the bands playing for us as we went down the South Shore. I perfected sort of a Prince Philip wave. It's in the wrist. We've gradually got a sound camera and kept making movies, and then we occasionally came back to the Golden Age. It was sort of like one of those franchises. in Hollywood where they keep going, where they need some money. Hanton's productions in conjunction with the Kishka King Trust

presents the return of the golden egg. My girls were typecast as two lovely little girls at the beginnings of the first movies. And the haughty princess was played by Josie Jocci Joel, our friend's daughter, she was pretty haughty. I mean, she did haughty very well. How many, hit me? Come on. So nice of you to have us for tea. Yes, isn't it? And do be, toddy. The robber with a fox-like grin was played by her little brother, Danny.

Where do we get the money? Why not try stealing? Hey, aren't you the robber with a fox like grin? The dumb stableman role was the robber with a fox-like grins. father who had an excellent chicken invitation because it turned out that he was the one laying the golden egg. The grown-ups had only bit parts and usually sort of embarrassing or humiliating parts. In the old days when we had film, we would have people to our barn the next summer to see the last summer's movie. Alice and the girls would make cookies and I got beer.

and had a sheet and we had a projector. We call the South Shore Film Festival. A trill in retrospective. Nobody else's movies would be shown in our barn. My girls sort of aged out. My older daughter was 15 when we quit. I mean, she didn't complain about it, but I think we all felt that it was about time to stop.

Before my younger daughter, Sarah, she got married just about a year before Abigail. We made like a short documentary on Sarah's career as a movie star. And we showed it the night before the wedding. And it's just an indication that parents will never run out of ways to embarrass their children. We thought with our grandchildren we would just start over again. My wife died just before the first grandchild arrived, but we did exactly that. We waited, I don't know how old they were, but only a few years before we started again. Passport, please. What is the purpose of your visit?

We're looking for a robber with a fox-like grin. She stole the egg from our princess. My younger daughter Sarah had an emergency appendectomy, and the kids, particularly her kids, were sort of worried about it. I guess we were all a little tense about it. So we did it partly just to take their minds off of it and to take our minds off of it. From there on out, we had regular movies, I think.

Isabelle, my older granddaughter, played the proprietor of a snooty inn. She does a good snooty. And my older grandson, Toby, pretty much had a lock on the robber with a fox-like grin roll. I think he had watched Danny play it many times in that movie. And my younger granddaughter often played the Marshall. who got to the dock just in time to see the robber with a fox light grin flee in a boat and always said, I love the way she said, particularly before she got,

her R is under control. It's the same escape route, but it's always in the boat from the dock. My grandchildren, fortunately, are very close, even though they live far away from each other. They see each other in Nova Scotia, and at Christmas and various times. And, yeah, it helps that, I think. It's great to have a kind of multi-generational summer place

and the satisfaction of gathering blueberries with your grandchildren in the same place you gathered them with your children. No one ever knows what he is designed. The Marshall and the boss are always way behind. You can always tell the chase is over when you hear. the marshal saying that she's foiled again. Will these people ever catch in? As they chase him all about...

We can't tell you, you must watch the sequel to find out. The summer of 2016, the kids were getting a little old. We were about done with the movies we made. So I think we all had the idea that maybe this was the last summer that we would do it, and that's why we did another golden egg. And finally, this evening, a mystery story from Nova with Scotia about the legendary golden egg whose whereabouts have captivated the world for years. Here reporting...

Isabel, who had often been the innkeeper this time, was a TV reporter. Where is the golden egg that was stolen from a haughty princess by a robber with a fox-like grin many years ago? And, uh, Toby played the robber with a fox-like grin. Yes, when I was 12, I found out I could do a fox-like grin. And you stole the golden egg? Yes, but I lost it in a poker game, so now I can't do the grin, so I've lost my identity. You must believe in yourself. I think you can do it. Just try. Another aspect that seemed sort of to put a punctuation mark on this, the original robber with a fox-like grin, Danny Joel, now Daniel S.S. Joel Q.C., a barrister in London, was coming to North America with his three kids and his wife.

And so we were putting back in the movie. He played Lord Chumley of Snarf. Lord Chumley, as you know, there have always been rumors that you were the original robber with the fox light grin, who stole the golden egg from Princess Rosalie. Rubbish. Rubbish. Absolute rubbish.

At the end of this movie, and this is a spoiler alert, the end of this movie, The egg actually gets scrambled and eaten. They insisted on that. The cast insisted that they got eaten, even though I always assumed it was solid gold and not edible. Delicious.

Maybe next time I'll try Sunnyside up. Just didn't know where that egg had been stashed by the rich guy who wouldn't say. Was it on the beach? One of my grandchildren, I think it was Toby, my older grandson, said the other day, what are we going to do next summer without a movie? And the kids are used to it, and they look forward to Nova Scotia.

My granddaughter Rebecca, who is interested in writing, has already decided that she'll be the screenwriter when they make them for their kids. And she's a little worried about the plot. She's a little concerned about how to bring the egg back if it's already been eaten and I told her she could actually start with some other franchise. She doesn't necessarily need the golden egg and she said

she might just do that. Eat the egg that's so groovy because this is our final movie and we no longer need that egg. Members of the Trillen family and friends singing a number that I believe is called Egg of Gold. You can find everything Calvin Trillen has written for The New Yorker for 50-plus years, including his essay, Final Cut, about their home movies at New Yorker.com. And that's it for us today. Thanks for joining us, and have a great week.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quar. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riann Corby, Jill Duboff, Calaliyah, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, Stephen Valentino, and Richard Yeh, with help from Zach Dyer, Eric Malinski, Michi Harmon, Michelle Moses, Emily Mann, and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.