INTERNATIONAL

Preserving Jerusalem's heritage

-Janet Mendelsohn Moshe, Israel

Mahane Yehuda, the fruit and vegetable market on Yafo Street, is probably Jerusalem's most bustling area. Piled high with colorful fresh produce, the stands are staffed by vendors who will gladly cut open a watermelon and invite a potential customer to sample the contents. One can also try a fresh pastry or sample one of the many pickled vegetables on display before making a purchase. In fact, the market is a tourist's paradise, where just two dollars will buy five fresh Pita breads, cheese to spread on them, olives, fresh apricots, grapes and sunflower seeds for snacking.

The market lies in one of the oldest neighborhoods outside the Old City walls. This area housed the various Jewish communities in the late 19th century. Despite its rich heritage, the neighborhoods of Lev Ha'ir (Heb.,The City's Heart) soon became dilapidated, and home to some of Jerusalem's most disadvantaged residents.

"The buildings in these neighborhoods, some consisting of only a single street, are architecturally interesting," explains Uri Amedi, community worker and Director of the Lev Ha'ir Community Council. "But over the years, the main thrust of expansion has been in the suburbs, and the inner city was left with an aging and often needy population".

Amedi came to work in the neighborhood as an activist 17 years ago. "At that time, builders wanted to pull down the buildings, replacing them with commercial property," he recalls. So Amedi went to Mahane Yehuda. There he persuaded stall-owners that organization and unity would help them channel municipal funds into the development and beautification of their market, and its surroundings.

Beginning with communal clean-ups and supported by preservationists, the neighborhood slowly began to take on a new character. Keren Hayesod/United Israel Appeal helped raise money for neighborhood projects for youngsters and the elderly, and the government funded the physical rehabilitation of the area. Today new floors and additions grace some of the century-old stone buildings. The ambience of Lev Ha'ir is preserved by the criss-crossing small roads and alleyways, which prevent access to large number of cars. It is still a neighborhood that one must walk through to appreciate.

As a result, young couples and new immigrants are now flocking to buy in the neighborhood. "Fortunately, the architecture of the area is preserved, and any changes are closely monitors," explains Amedi. "A number of synagogues, cobblestone streets, gateways and public gardens have been refurbished, and the old-fashioned wells and water cisterns still exist," he continues.

"Although Lev Ha'ir is only a small part of the city today, these cobblestone alleys provide a valuable glimpse of 19 century Jerusalem.

In May of this year, the new Wiener Heritage Center in Lev Ha'ir was opened. Refurbished by Hans Wiener of Sweden, the Center will collect and record data, documenting the various communities that founded the neighborhood. According to coordinator Devorah Avi Dan, the Center will serve as a repository of information on the growth and development of Jerusalem in the 19 th century, when residents moved out of the Old City.

"The Center will serve as a base for tours of the neighborhood, and a lecture hall and library are available," Avi Dan explains. "The large shaded courtyard is an ideal spot to begin the trail, enjoy the produce of the market and relieve Jerusalem as it was a century ago."

Text courtesy: Embassy of Israel in Kathmandu.

The resurgence of Human sacrifice

-Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Germany

The author of this stimulating article is a poet, essayist, publisher, political rebel and leading German intellectual, born in 1929. Hans Magnus Ezensberger is known for his perceptive critical essays on contemporary events-Chief editor.

All other things being equal, commentaries written in haste have a very short half-life. I have nothing against topicality, but especially when nobody really seems to know what should be done next, there are good reasons for stepping back and looking at the things from a wider perspective. Take globalization, for instance: a German scholar by the name of Karl Marx published a pretty thorough analysis of this phenomenon some 150 years ago. But he certainly never considered being for it or against it, and would have considered the clashes that have take place in Seattle, Goteborg and Genoa to be little more than shadow boxing. Protesting against such a massive historical fact may be all very honorable, but at best it can only provide raw material for global television broadcasts. This fact alone indicates that the opponents of globalization are an inseparable part of what they are fighting against.

For his part, the 19th century German scholar described globalization as a purely politico-economic phenomenon. Way back in 1848, this was the only possible perspective, since at the time the expanding world markets and colonialism were the decisive forces behind globalization. But in the meantime this irreversible process has affected all the systems that govern our lives: merely to consider the economic side of economic side of globalization is to miss the point. Today religion, education, culture and technology- not to mention consumerism and the media- have all succumbed to globalization. It is not jus the countless economic victims around the world who suffer from its effects: sudden economic collapses, arms deals, computer viruses, new types of epidemics, ecological catastrophes, civil wars and crime-these are all consequences of the global market and the incessant flow of capital and ideas that it generates. It would be a mistake to think that any society can shut itself off from such consequences. And one must add terrorism to their number, for it would be strange indeed if terrorism had not also gone global.

For many years the modern age equated terrorism with fanaticism, considering it a characteristic of backward societies. It was widely believed that, allowing for occasional setbacks, the irresistible march of profess would sooner or later put an end to such atavism. With the emergence of totalitarian regimes in the early 20th century at the latest, this misconception lost a great deal of its appeal. Yet it still survives today-in the negative stereotype of societies still living in the Dark Ages., and more optimistically in the rhetoric of developing countries.

Yet the murderous forces at work within our contemporary world cannot be traced back to tradition: no matter what form they take, these forces are not archaic phenomena but absolutely contemporary reactions to the present state of global society. Even an eminently venerable religion like Islam- a religion which, just like ultra-orthodox Judaism, has not come up with any productive ideas for some time now- is prone to such reactions. Islam derives its current strength from its status as the negation of modernism-a status which precisely links it inseparable to the latter. The immanence of terrorism, no matter from which direction it comes, is manifested not only by the terrorist's behavior but also by their choice of weapons. Terrorism is a pathological copy of the organism it attacks, a retrovirus created from the latter's cells. It is thus deceptive to think that the enemy comes from without, for there is no location outside of our contemporary network of global relationships from which any impulse, human or inhuman could come. The threat of terrorism is omnipresent-like the telephone, the camera the Internet and the spy satellite.

The terrorist who attacked New York were not just well versed in modern technology. Inspired by the visual system of western culture, they staged the massacre as a media spectacle, following the Hollywood scenarios to the letter. Such an intimate understanding of American civilization does not spring from an anachronistic way of thinking. But most of all it throws an interesting light on the terrorists' supposed convictions. It is no coincidence that there was initial doubt as to who was responsible for the attacks. As always in such cases, all kinds of wild conspiracy theories were rushed into print. Such a reaction is indicative of the contagious nature of the terrorists' maniacal delusions. Yet all these conspiracy theories contain a kernel of truth, for they demonstrate the profound inter-changeability of possible motives. The cliché-ridden communiqués which commonly claim responsibility for terrorist attacks resemble each other most of all in their entire lack of any real content. The fact that terrorist groups imitate each other in the rhetoric, methods and tactics they employ is evidence of this interchangeability. Scrutinizing the motives put forward by terrorists for their actions may be useful in tracking them down. But an ideological analysis of their motives cannot really explain what drove them to do what they did. Whether they claim to be acting in the name of a right wing or a left-wing ideology, in the name of religion or freedom, their actions always follow the same pattern, of which the common denominator is paranoia. We must ask ourselves to what degree the massacre that took place in New York was inspired by an Islamic motive-for any other motive would have produced the same result.

It is difficult to be of anything in the dark world of terrorism. Yet practically all-terrorist activities have one characteristic in common that is hard to overlook the protagonists' self-destructive tendencies. This is the case not only with so-called "rogue states". Such dictatorship seem concerned not so much with destroying their real or imagined enemies as with driving their countries to rack and ruin. The prim example to date is Hitler- who enjoyed the support of the majority of Germans in pursuing this end. The soviet dictatorship took 70 years to collapse. Now Iraq too is proud to be on the road to disaster. And the same can be said of numerous "freedom movements" in Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, Chechnya, Columbia, the Congo, Liberia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, northern Ireland, Peru, the Philippines, Rwanda, San Salvador, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, the Sudan and Uganda- an alphabet of terror without end.

In the long run the most devastating consequences of terrorism will be borne not by the West but by those regions in whose name it is carried our. For millions of Moslems, the foreseeable consequences will be catastrophic: the Islamists are celebrating the beginning of a war that they can never win. It's not just the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants among them that will suffer. Whole peoples will have to pay an immensely unjust political and economic price for the actions of their supposed representatives.

Yet the west has persistently underestimated the power of this collective carving for self-mutilation, not to say suicide. As it is apparently not sufficient for us to reflect on our own recent past in order to throw a little more light on the seemingly incomprehensible, it is perhaps necessary to risk a heuristic comparison with phenomena closer to home. A consideration of some aspects of our so-called highly developed societies quickly reveals how widespread is the desire for a personal Armageddon: drug addicts and skinheads deliberately deprive themselves of any opportunity to make something of their lives, and daily we hear reports of family tragedies and gunmen going on the rampage. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, we still insist on believing that self-preservation regulates human conduct. In all such cases the motives for self-destruction are secondary and often the perpetrators themselves cannot articulate them.

Such individual death-trips and terrorism are motivated by similar drives. Whether the suicide is individual or collective, the urge to end it all suddenly in an act of violence seems preferable to drawing out the real or imagined agony any longer. They only difference is in the dimensions of this violent end-other wise the perpetrators all have one thing in commune: their unpredictable aggression is directed not only against random human targets but, primarily against themselves. If a terrorist can claim some lofty motive for his actions, all the better for him. But whatever illusion he cites is irrelevant-any authority from on high will do, be it a divine mission, some sacred fatherland, or the revolution. If need be, the murderous candidate for suicide can dispense with justifying his actions altogether. His victory consists in his immunity to both attack and punishment- he sees to his own execution. His commander in his distant bunker also awaits the moment of his own annihilation-consoled in his imagination by the spectacle of myriads of people, including his underlings, preceding him into death.

Those of us who prefer to carry on living find all this hard to understand. Although the overwhelming majority of people have no desire to run amok, they have no chance of survival when faced with somebody infatuated with suicide. Since there are probably hundreds of thousands of such living time bombs walking around, this particular form of violence will continue to accompany us on our journey into the 21st century. Thus one of the most ancient rituals of our species, human sacrifices, has also succumbed to globalization.

Text courtesy: Deutschland, E4 Nr 5/October/November, 2001.Embassy of Germany in Kathmandu.