Winter time seemed to have already started on Friday evening. The darkness cast a shadow over the days that followed, as the world watched black images with a large or enormous flash of light every few minutes. RTL and NOS recorded extra news on Saturday morning, but mainly to reiterate that it was still unclear what was happening in the strip of land by the sea. Telephone traffic had failed, no satellites worked anymore, contact was virtually impossible.
Journalists gathered at what VRT war reporter Rudi Vranckx attended on Sunday afternoon Outside court called the “hill of shame.” For safety reasons, reports on the bombing of Gaza were made from that hill in the Israeli town of Sderot. But the journalists from India and those from Portugal said the same as those from the Netherlands: “A lot is still unclear, we don’t know exactly.”
At the end of that weekend, late on Sunday evening, the EO had programmed the first episode of The road to Jerusalem. Natascha van Weezel, author and filmmaker, conducts four Sunday evenings “personal conversations about Judaism in the Netherlands”. Before I had even seen a second of it, I had all kinds of questions about it. Was this series conceived (and created) before or after October 7, the Saturday on which Hamas militants crossed all borders? There is an Israel before and after that day. If it was before then, I can assume that all conversations had to be had again? And if it was invented after October 7th – how should I view it? As support for the Jews in the Netherlands, as a counter-voice to growing anti-Semitism or as another voice, a bright spot after three weeks of darkness?
Mutual relationship
Every word in the spoken introduction of The road to Jerusalem suddenly sounded like a gong. The place of “a thousand dreams and disputes.” The “cradle of civilization.” And: “Those who are looking for meaning will end up in Jerusalem.” Phew, I just don’t know yet. But then the first guest came into the picture, Dieuwertje Blok, and with her the perspective, the lightness and yes, the bright spot. She is also Jewish, she tells Natascha van Weezel. “That sounds better to me. I am also Dutch, European, mother, daughter, friend, wife.” She is Jewish through history, just as her mother became Jewish through the war. “People are reduced to one facet of the versatile diamond that they are.”
In a corner of her house she keeps things from Israel. She has been there, but felt anything but at home. “There you are reduced to that one thing, that one identity.” She was and is critical of Israel. “Jews are not better people,” she says, trying to put into words a feeling she seems to share with Natascha van Weezel. She is not Israeli, she does not want to be one, but the country still feels “like family” and she is ashamed of what Van Weezel euphemistically calls “the recent events”.
Historian Simon Schama contributed on Saturday NRC in a similar way, two feelings that are difficult for many people to reconcile. Disgust at the behavior of one person can go hand in hand with mourning at the revenge of another – and vice versa. Schama says he notices that he now mainly visits his Jewish friends. “We don’t want to ghettoize ourselves again, but that togetherness, the feeling of being part of a big family, is very important now.” That was something sometimes The road to Jerusalem intended or attempted?
Dieuwertje Blok fished out the pendant on her necklace. An upside-down hand that offers protection to the wearer. Depending on the faith, the hand is of Fatima or Miriam. Jewish and Islamic. “Symbol of our mutual kinship.”