The Sun Always Sets on Deir Yassin by Esti Rimmer
by Paul Eisen
Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Dr Esti Rimmer wrote this after attending the 2001 Deir Yassin commemoration at the Peacock theatre in London. I haven’t seen her since but I hope she won’t mind my publishing this piece.
Deir Yassin from Yad Vashem
The bodies of the victims are thought to be buried under the water cooler (top centre-left)
I may be one of the few Israelis who could never forget Deir Yassin for the simple reason that I could see the ruined village from my bedroom window, all through my childhood and growing up years. Every night before I went to bed I would witness one of those glorious spectacular sunsets over the Jerusalem hills and would see the red fire ball of the sun slowly descend over Deir Yassin. My window was facing west and our apartment block was on the eastern slope of the valley, opposite the village of Deir Yassin.
Our neighbourhood was made up of these new apartment blocks built in the 1950s to house new immigrants and second-generation children of immigrants or refugees of lower-middle class, hard working Israelis. Many teachers, civil servants and nurses lived on those little flats in this new and vibrant community, ironically named Yeffe Nof – “beautiful view”. The stunning view from the windows, which made up for the modesty of the flats and the lack of lifts and central heating in the cold and windy Jerusalem winters, was the view of Deir Yassin.
As children we used to roam those hills, jumping between the beautifully stoned terraces of cultivated land were almond trees, olive trees and apple trees would each year blossom and give their fruits freely to us delighted children. Such an idyllic setting our parents thought to bring us up in as a new generation of children who will fear no persecution and would be able to run around in the hot caressing sun, barefoot and carefree.
However, the questions remained unanswered, who planted the trees and cultivated the valley? Certainly not our parents who were busy building a new Jerusalem, civil and urban society. And why was this village left to ruin? And where were the people? There was no one to answer these questions, not a teacher, a parent, a youth leader, not a sign, a mark, a stone to tell the story.
From my window, if you stretched your neck further south, you could see the hills on your left. The lower one Mount Hertzel Military Cemetery, the higher one Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. As children we would visit, every year on Memorial Day – the day before Independence Day, the military cemetery. Dressed in blue and white we would carry flowers and blue and white flags to put on the brave soldiers’ graves. We would sing songs and hear prayers recited, we would see the parents of the these soldiers with vacant looks in their eyes, often dry of tears looking at us school children from the same school their sons and daughters went to before they were sent to war. Somehow, I could always spot the bereaved parents from the rest of the adults. The way they held their bodies, their gestures, awkward, stiff, frozen, as if they were there and not there. Later they would be the parents of my friends and classmates.
And on Holocaust Memorial days, our neat little group of blue and white school children carrying more flowers would march higher up the hill to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial. There we would come upon that nameless dread, the nightmares after seeing the children’s eyes in the photos in the museum, the silence the adults would hush into when someone mentioned the ‘camps’. My father’s inability to talk about his perished family drove him to an early grave. My mother used to tell me more about her family, her childhood, her parents’ house and wine shop, and the vineyards owned by her grandfather from which the wine was manufactured. All lost, never to be retrieved but not forgotten.
Yet, no one mentioned Deir Yassin to me. It was as if the village, so prominent in my view, never existed.
Later as a young psychology student, I would visit the mental hospital set up on the hill of Deir Yassin, Kfar Shaul, the village of Saul. Another naming irony, for which Israelis are so famous. Saul the mad, melancholic king who suffered from the bad spirits giving his name to a place set up to heal the tortured souls who survived the camps. I would walk along the small cabins of the hospital which housed the fortunate of unfortunate survivors whose souls had long ago been murdered and make feeble attempts at conversation, at some normality and at some possibility of rehabilitation. And I wondered, did those restless tormented souls know that the safe haven they had come to be healed in and freed from memories of massacres, had seen another massacre, the one that took place in the village around whose destroyed houses their rehabilitation hospital was set up? I have already come to learn of it from the little that slipped through the walls of silence and to mourn even the loss of the beautiful view of the ruined village, which was later covered up by petrol tanks.
So can anybody forget the view of their childhood, the scene outside their bedroom window, which is etched in their mind’s eye? My mother’s was fertile hills and grapevines of Transylvania, mine the charred and destroyedvillage of Deir Yassin.
I grew up in a country established by people who are so good at remembering. The Jewish faith is marked by days of remembrance. It is memory that keeps us as human beings superior to other species. Yet, my neighbourhood Yeffe-Noff was built on the denial of memory. “Look at the beautiful view” but don’t see and don’t accept that the children of the old and sick people in the hospital are the ones responsible for uprooting, expelling, exiling, killing, tormenting and humiliating other people’s children.
But can we allow ourselves not to open our eyes and see all there is to see in the valley between Yad Vashem, with its lists of names of victims and acknowledgments of responsibility by torturers, and Deir Yassin’s ruined stones with no list of names, no memorial services, no candles, no flowers and no children of survivors coming to see the horrors with their trusting and innocent eyes, and no acknowledgment of responsibility by the perpetrators? If not, the whole of the land of my childhood will be covered with Mount Hertzel like graveyards, the few survivors wondering with their lost souls in the corridors of hospitals. And the olive and almond and apple trees will give fruit to nobody’s children.
Posted by Paul Eisen
on July 21, 2012. Filed under Jewish Matters,Palestine.
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24 Responses to The Sun Always Sets on Deir Yassin by Esti Rimmer
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who_me
July 24, 2012 at 4:48 am
empowered by the jp stranglehold on much of the world, israel continues its genocide and ethnic cleansing of palestinians:
http://www.rt.com/news/israel-demolish-palestinian-west-860/
Israel orders demolition of eight Palestinian villages for IDF training sites
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 6:33 am
Why have you posted this link here?
who_me
July 24, 2012 at 11:48 am
the fate of those 8 villages sounds like it’s a continuation of the story.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 11:59 am
Yes, it’s a horrible ongoing story which, because it began at Deir Yassin, must end at Deir Yassin.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
July 24, 2012 at 12:35 pm
I cringed on reading this. So I went back and re-read it to identify the source of my unease. Here’s a summary first:
Although the essay is purportedly about Der Yassin, next to which the author grew up, she mentions it in the:
1st paragraph: only as a stunning sunset view over the ruins, as if she lived on Via Appia Antica and enjoyed the views over the beautiful 2,000-years-old remnants of Tomba di Cecilia Metttela.
2nd para: no mention at all; instead a description of the “vibrant” jewish community who lived there, “hard working” etc.
3rd para.: still no mention; instead a description of the same as place as “idyllic” and fit to raise children in by the jewish people who had “escaped persecution” [who can help but sympathize with them?]
4th para.: those same people were innocent of any knowledge and incurious about what the ruins represented: they were “busy building new Jerusalem and a civil and urban society [worthy and admirable endeavors, little time for idle thoughts]
5th para.: still nothing about Deir Yassin but plenty about Yad Vashem, the holocaust, the”nameless dread” Yad Vashem inspired
6th para.: more about the holocaust again, the “silence of the adults,” the military cemetery for Israeli soldiers, the pain of the parents visiting it; the mental hospital wheer holocaust survivors are treated for their incurable trauma; the losses of her parents’ landholdings in the old country.
The author mentions Deir Yassin as a decor piece by decrying the loss of the …. view of its ruins, now hidden by some petroleum tanks.
7th para.: the jewish faith, the author says, is great on remembrance but she feels Deir Yassin was skipped in the Jewish memory. She closes by wishing that the names of the dead of Deir Yassin were recorded just like those in Yad Vashem.
Perhaps one has to be Jewish to be moved by this essay. Perhaps I am missing something.
All I see in it is:
–a self-indulgent (but unsubstantiated here) view of herself as sensitive to the pain of the Palestinians who are in this piece only the ghosts of Deir Yassin;
– a self-involved inability to look at the suffering of others, especially when caused by one’s own people, without talking instead, exclusively about jewish suffering in a sort of exculpatory cheap sentimentality (the kids, the innocence, the trees…)
– placing in effect the Deir Yassin victims and their aggressors on the same plane as both victims.
Although she laments the
It is because of this hermetically closed judeocentric mentality and worldview that nakbah continues today, and with that in mind who_me’s link is eminently appropriate.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Or alternatively it’s the feelings and experiences of someone who isn’t you.
fool me once...
July 24, 2012 at 1:16 pm
@Paul
“I haven’t seen her since”
If this is the same person, she’s did a gig back in March at the Freud Museum in London. pdf flyer for event;
http://www.mlpc-uk.org/documents/MLPC%20Flyer%2019.12.11.pdf
fool me once...
July 24, 2012 at 1:46 pm
“I grew up in a country established by people who are so good at remembering. The Jewish faith is marked by days of remembrance. It is memory that keeps us as human beings superior to other species.”
I wonder if “as human beings” was an after thought.
Paul, why post an article supposedly about Deir Yassin by a jew, who then mainly talks about jew stuff? It’s another load of “listen to me listen to me I’m a jew” bs jew spiel.
The “I’m special” ego trippin’ started with the first line;
“I may be one of the few Israelis…” so what, who cares?
Ariadna Theokopoulos
July 24, 2012 at 2:02 pm
good point about the superior bit
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 2:09 pm
I posted it for the same reason I’d post anything – to offer a set of opinions, feelings experiences etc for readers to engage with.
As far as the “I must be one of the few Israelis…” bit, she’s saying that whereas most Israelis have blotted out Deir Yassin from their consciousnesses, she was unable to do that.
Sorry you didn’t like the piece.
fool me once...
July 24, 2012 at 3:12 pm
A few engaging questions Paul;
Did you like the piece?
Do you think her qualifications, namely;
“Dr Esti Rimmer is a consultant Clinical Psychologist and a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. After studying
Psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalam, she received her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the
University of Denver, Colorado.” adds gravitas, in your mind, to her opinion?
Do you think the piece is overly jewified considering the subject matter?
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Answers:
Yes
No
It’s written by a Jew – ‘overly Jewified’ Overly for who?
fool me once...
July 24, 2012 at 4:07 pm
What would it take Paul for you to turn your back on the whole jew thing? What is it about being a jew that you like so much? No matter what the jews get up to, you seem to feel that somehow being a jew is your lot in life and you have/want to carry that burden. It’s only a man-made construct, a gang that you were born into. Maybe if you rejected it thoroughly, after a few years the things you puzzle over would become clear.
Reading your articles and comments over these months leaves me thinking you’re like some tormented soul who puzzles over why his hair shirt is so itchy. Just take it off and bathe in the waters of…
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Well, I’ll just keep on banging away and who knows, one day I may be as liberated as you.
fool me once...
July 24, 2012 at 4:56 pm
What I wrote wasn’t meant to be an attack. It’s just that other people on here who were jews decided enough was enough and took the brave step, grasped the nettle and rejected the jew ghetto gaol. Do you remember on the “Transferring the “Right of Return” thread, that a number of the signers said they were ex-jews and that they signed with no quandary whether or not they were doing the right thing, except for Rich who after a short deliberation came round with, “Anyway, I’m going to sign this thing. -RS”.
Jonathon said “I am reminded of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory…” meaning I think – the Golden ticket to Wonkaville if things go tits up. I ask again, what is it about the jew thing that is so special to you? You’re contribution to the site just begs the question.
Sarah Gillespie
July 24, 2012 at 6:01 pm
@fool me once: I have no clue if Paul likes or dislikes being a Jew but he is uniquely conscious of the systems of knowledge that shaped him. Given this site deals primarily with issues surrounding the Middle East & the global impacts of ethnic/tribal identities, his reflexivity is hugely relevant & illuminating. Your comment implies that you imagine yourself to be impervious to whatever culture you were born into and/or rebelled against. Even anthropologists are encouraged to be mindful of their own particularities, including the conditions that gave rise to their compulsion to be an anthropologist.
Like Ariadna I initially baulked at the tone of this piece. I can’t quite imagine (an acceptable) description of Bergen Belsen in the ‘spectacular sunset’, amid rolling fields of sauerkraut and a list of injuries to the ‘tortured’ German soul. However, perhaps this is what we need.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Actually I can well imagine appreciating a piece about the contradictions between the beauty of Germany and German-ness and the brutality of the NS regime. In fact, in those days when I was affected by the narrative of German barbarity, I was very struck by the close proximity of Dachau to the beautiful city of Munich.
So I’m really baffled by what Ariadna, Fool Me Once and, to some extent, Sarah find so alarming.
The landscape around Deir Yassin is truly breathtaking and Esti Rimmer uses that as a metaphor to convey her own feelings of living so close in space, time and spirit to a terrible atrocity.
I think the real reason people don’t like it is because Esti is Jewish and any attempt to engage with any Jewish expression is somehow going soft in our taken-for-granted opposition to Jewish power.
That in itself is, to my mind, nonsense. But in any event, deLiberation is not bound to any particular opinion or ideology other than free, open and hopefully, meaningful thinking.
So what’s the problem?
Ariadna Theokopoulos
July 24, 2012 at 10:35 pm
“I can well imagine appreciating a piece about the contradictions between the beauty of Germany and German-ness and the brutality of the NS regime. In fact, in those days when I was affected by the narrative of German barbarity, I was very struck by the close proximity of Dachau to the beautiful city of Munich.”
Your comparison, Paul, is off by a good bit.
The Germans did not exactly invade Brobidjan, did not expulse and ethnic cleanse the local jewish population and then set about to create the beautiful city of Munchen on top of rqzed Jewish villages, claiming the tribes called Germani used to live there thousands of years ago.
Your comparison amazingly ignores no more no less than the whole Nakbah, reducing it to acts of “barbarity and brutality occuring in an anhistoric and amputated context.
Germans were creating beauty, art, science and philosophy long before the holocaust–centuries before. So you can safely admire their cultural products. Admiring Tel Aviv and Israeli architecture is another matter.
I have no problem with the author because she is Jewish. I think that jewishness is not a sentence to permanent blindness without appeal.
The fact that you find the objections expressed here baffling and alarming is a source of sadness and discouragement for me.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
July 24, 2012 at 10:22 pm
“Like Ariadna I initially baulked at the tone of this piece.”
And then? What happened after “initially”? Please explain what changed tour mind.
“However, perhaps this is what we need.”
What is the “this” that we need exactly, Sarah? Please clarify.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 6:02 pm
I don’t know the answer and any speculations I may have wouldn’t be appropriate here.
who_me
July 24, 2012 at 7:11 pm
looking at the photo, those buildings are quite ugly. the way they dominate the landscape reminds me of some of ugliest scenes of suburban sprawl in southern california. israelis sure know how to destroy beauty, i’ll give them their “specialness” in that regard.
Paul Eisen
July 24, 2012 at 7:34 pm
That’s very true. the buildings are a yeshiva (Jewish religious school) and they’re built like fortresses – just one of the striking contradictions.
Yes, a lot of what the Israelis have built is ugly but there are things I like very much. I love Tel-Aviv and in Jerusalem, as much as I dislike the politics of it, some of the modern ‘Jewish’ architecture is quite engaging.
Actually, I think the Israelis have quite an interesting ideological visual ‘eye’. And nowhere more so than in the views from Yad Vashem.
Unfortunately for them (unless they did it purposely, but I doubt that), it’s looking straight at Deir Yassin – an irony that they may one day come to appreciate.
fool me once...
July 24, 2012 at 9:16 pm
“I think the real reason people don’t like it is because Esti is Jewish and any attempt to engage with any Jewish expression is somehow going soft in our taken-for-granted opposition to Jewish power.
That in itself is, to my mind, nonsense.”
Don’t you think the fact that because Esti is jewish, it will have a bearing on how her opinion is received. It’s par for the course. If a gang unprovoked, murders and violates a village of innocent people, then any member or relative of that gang is going to be scrutinised intensely when offering their view of said events by anyone in true solidarity with the villagers. Deir Yassin was a jew crime, end of.
When you and Esti start reaching out to interface with goy grief, intertwining talk of beautiful sunsets, interesting jewish ideological visual ‘eye’s’, engaging modern jewish architecture etc, well your emotions just come across as insincere. Maybe that’s one of the many downsides to being a jew loving jew. If you appear not to have the basic humanistic qualities then don’t act all surprised if people don’t trust your motivations. All the flapping on about the holocaust for decades has seriously upset the jews sense of proportion and emotional perspective.
Remember the Carmel fire appeal? Watch this and feel the emotional tugging on your purse strings whilst they evoke the golden calf holocaust hustle.
The big laugh is at 1.15mins but see if you can watch the whole thing and still think these people are ever going to fit in anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l34FFErTTYE
.
“I love Tel-Aviv” speaking as a goy, there’s no doubt Paul you’re into Jewish power.
Sarah Gillespie
July 25, 2012 at 4:32 pm
@ Ariadna, I squirmed when I read the piece. The Nakba seems to be absorbed into the impressive mise-en-scène of Jewish suffering from the ‘grapevines of Transylvania’ to the ‘melancholic’ King Saul. I find her flowery style unctuous & have an allergy to the word ‘soul’ which she shoves in there 3 times: ‘tortured souls’, ‘tormented souls’ and ‘survivors whose souls had long ago been murdered.’ She invites us to count the metaphysical holocaust on top of the physical one – while allegedly championing the Palestinian plight. Then I read the piece again and was more forgiving. I think there is an absence of descriptions of Palestinian suffering precisely because Palestinian suffering was invisible to her. The writer is looking back at her childhood impressions. It’s not possible for her to describe something she couldn’t see. Instead she describes lashings of Jewish ‘torment’ because that is what she was involuntarily marinated in. The piece charts her transformation from an Israeli-born child gazing out of her bedroom window – to an accountable adult now living (I understand) in exile.She ends with:-
“Look at the beautiful view” but don’t see and don’t accept that the children of the old and sick people in the hospital are the ones responsible for uprooting, expelling, exiling, killing, tormenting and humiliating other people’s children.
Re my comment‘perhaps this is what we need’. I don’t know where you’re from or where you live, but German philosophy & culture is conspicuously lacking from British pedagogy. Instead of Heidegger & Nietzsche we are spoon-fed the French post war thinkers who receive a lot of credit for German concepts. In Britain there is a demonization of Germans that you internalise by osmosis (unlike France where they were occupied). Therefore, anything that humanises the German experience, albeit gushing descriptions of locally grown foodstuffs relished by children running in the ‘caressing sun, barefoot and free’ – - might help the British perceive Germans as people rather than Jew-killers.