waking-lions.md (17873B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Waking the Public to Waking Lions" 3 date = 2024-12-14T13:53:42-08:00 4 updated = 2024-12-14T15:48:19-08:00 5 [extra] 6 book = "Waking Lions" 7 author = "Ayelet Gundar-Goshen" 8 finished = 2024-11-28 9 rating = "★★★★☆" 10 +++ 11 12 **Author's Note:** This review is an adaptation of the final paper I 13 wrote for Russell Berman's wonderful [Zionism and the Novel]. For 14 another artifact of my work in the class, check out my review of [The 15 Illusion of Return]. 16 17 ## Abstract 18 This paper seeks to investigate Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s novel Waking 19 Lions as a work of engaged literature. A thorough analysis of her 20 writing is conducted to extract the specific political positions she 21 advocates. The analysis of the political commentary contained in her 22 fiction is then paired and contrasted with contemporary anthropological 23 scholarship on the issue of Eritrean migrants in Israel to build a 24 deeper understanding of the context in which the book was created and 25 where it now stands, approaching a decade after publication. The paper 26 ultimately claims that Gundar-Goshen’s writing opens a wide view into 27 the everyday strife and overlapping conflicts and harms of Israel’s 28 myriad communities and urges a remediation of the Eritrean migrant 29 crisis in Israel through integration and acceptance. The novel’s framing 30 places the issues at the core of the text beyond the scope of the 31 question of Zionism: rather, the continued implementation of Zionism is 32 what has given rise to the status quo, thus necessitating Gundar-Goshen 33 look beyond the philosophy—toward human values and compassion—to find 34 the source of the mandate to aid the Eritreans. 35 36 This dissection of Waking Lions is important precisely because the book 37 has been treated as an unimportant work by the scholarly community. The 38 text doesn’t touch the question of the Palestinians, and thus is 39 sidelined. But just as is seen with the communities in the book, nothing 40 is black and white: Israel is more than its conflict with the 41 Palestinians. Waking Lions’ unflinching spotlighting of the myriad 42 internal issues faced by the diverse Israeli polity make it one of the 43 most important texts to come out of the country in recent years. 44 45 ## The Text as an Engaged Work 46 Waking Lions is not only engaged literature insofar as all texts are 47 engaged literature, dealing with subjects that are covered by the broad 48 tent of political opinion, but instead goes above and beyond in 49 provoking a political conversation around, and interrogating the 50 political ramifications and engagements of, the Eritrean refugee issue 51 in Israel. This is by design. Gundar-Goshen’s intention in creating this 52 work of fiction was to make her political lamentations appear more 53 compelling to a broader audience by disguising them in the contours of 54 characters with depth and dimension and emotion that readers can 55 recognize from their own lives. A political diatribe with specific 56 policy criticisms and recommendations will only be consumed by a very 57 specific subset of people. A work that engages more directly with the 58 universal instinct of storytelling can better evangelize its message. 59 This is how Waking Lions was crafted from its inception. 60 61 An important component of Waking Lions’ political engagement is the 62 length to which Gundar-Goshen goes to impress upon the reader the 63 physical realities of Eritrean migrants in Israel, seeking to highlight 64 their suffering through its personification in the character of Sirkit. 65 Sirkit, the Eritrean woman at the center of the novel, is a complex 66 figure—at once despised for her manipulations of Dr. Eitan Green and yet 67 seemingly using her Machiavellian abuses for the betterment of the lives 68 of overlooked refugees. It is only after forming a relationship with 69 Sirkit that the reader is introduced to the details of her living 70 conditions: a caravan, one cramped room filled with 8 mattresses and 71 dirty dishes, parked behind the gas station where its residents 72 work.[^1] Sirkit herself scrubs floors during the day. None of the 73 Eritreans who cram themselves together into the caravan to sleep on the 74 floor night after night are paid the minimum wage nor given the 75 traditional benefits of employment. Additional emotionally difficult 76 information is held even further, with the reasons for Sirkit’s flight 77 from Eritrea hinted at only in the very last chapter of the novel. Here, 78 in her internal monologue, she refers to the African nation as “the land 79 of the dead children.”[^2] She reflects on a “well near the village that 80 one day, simply had no more water,” on soldiers that stole their flour, 81 on the trek over land to Egypt, on abusive Bedouin smugglers, and on 82 Israel, the place where “she stopped. From [which] she would not 83 move.”[^3] The strategic delay in the delivery of this information is 84 done to counter the jaded desensitization of the receiving audience. 85 There is the age-old adage: “one death is a tragedy, a million is a 86 statistic.” By giving the physical conditions of the Eritreans a 87 familiar face in the form of Sirkit, the theoretical plight of a people 88 is turned into the tangible plight of a person. 89 90 Beyond the individual suffering, the systemization of the Eritrean 91 struggle in the Jewish State is given an embodied form in the text 92 through Eitan’s visit to the Holot Detention Center. Having come to 93 visit Sirkit, Eitan looks out across the vast desert yard and observes: 94 “Any one of those people could be Sirkit.”[^4] This is an explicit 95 declaration of the above determination that Sirkit is a stand-in for the 96 plight of Eritreans in Israel more broadly—Gundar-Goshen states that 97 Sirkit is equivalent to the other Eritreans in Holot, and thus that all 98 the detainees are as human as the book has portrayed her to be. It is 99 also a further description of the dehumanization that Eritreans are 100 subjected to at the hands of the Israeli government. Eitan continues: 101 “They looked as alike as a herd of sheep. Of cows…. When he looked at 102 them together, a crowded collection of bodies, he felt that they had 103 lost every drop of selfhood, and all the small differences that made 104 each of them who they were had been eclipsed by that large mass of 105 identical flesh… the overcrowded space stripped them of their 106 personalities and made them a single entity—Eritrean women…. They were 107 Eritrean women waiting to be deported…”[^5] In his brief visit to the 108 Holot Detention Center, Eitan is used as a tool to convey the banal 109 brutality of the destruction of Eritrean individuality in the national 110 system. 111 112 The ultimate resolution of the book’s moral challenge through Sirkit and 113 Eitan’s deception reveals Gundar-Goshen’s preference for how to resolve 114 the political quandary of Eritrean migrants in Israel. The roiling truth 115 of the story behind the illegal hospital in the desert—Eitan’s initial 116 crime of vehicular manslaughter, Sirkit’s blackmail, the robbery of 117 hospital materials, peripheral involvement with the Bedouin criminal 118 underworld, hints of adultery, and everything else that ultimately 119 comprises the narrative of Waking Lions—is smoothed over. Sirkit does 120 this of her own initiative. Speaking with Eitan’s wife, Liat, she papers 121 over the reality of the situation that had brought his family and 122 marriage so close to collapse: “Before the Bedouins had surprised them, 123 Eitan had gone to treat her injuries. He’d left Yaheli’s bed and driven 124 two and a quarter hours to get there. Only an angel would do something 125 like that.”[^6] With the full context Gundar-Goshen provided during the 126 action, the additional layers are revealed. Eitan drove down to perform 127 the surgery in part because of his romantic feelings toward Sirkit as 128 well as her continued power over him due to the potential for her 129 testimony. But in the end this is resolved—his service to the Eritreans 130 is simplified: “He felt guilty about the silence she had imposed on him 131 concerning Zakai’s bribes. He wanted to atone…. It was illegal. And 132 dangerous…. And [Liat] realized suddenly why he had been so interested 133 in the investigation of that Eritrean’s death. Those people weren’t just 134 a newspaper article for him. He knew them. He was helping them.”[^7] 135 Gundar-Goshen does briefly broaden the scope to include some of the 136 other narratives in Israeli discourse, describing a café scene after 137 Eitan and Sirkit’s revisionist story hits the news: “Several people 138 began arguing. We can’t have all of Africa coming here. If those 139 bleeding hearts have their way, we’ll end up without a country.”[^8] But 140 this broadening is done primarily for the purpose of foregrounding the 141 opposite narrative—her narrative— as expressed by a woman who approaches 142 Eitan to say, “We need more people like you in this country.”[^9] 143 Through Liat’s acceptance of the morality of her husband’s actions and 144 the Israeli public’s endorsement, Gundar-Goshen lends her own voice to 145 the idea that Eritreans in Israel should be accepted, appeased, and 146 integrated. Her political preferences, expressed through these varied 147 characters, are paired with an additional pithy quip, a sort of 148 condemnation of the idea that the hard work her politics would mandate 149 can be ignored. It is the final line in the novel, and it comes from the 150 mind of Eitan Green, newly freed to return to his old life 151 and—apparently—bury his head in the sand: “How beautiful the earth is 152 when it moves properly. How pleasant to move with it. To forget that any 153 other movement ever existed. That a different movement is even 154 possible.”[^10] 155 156 ## Clashing Against Reality 157 Gundar-Goshen’s political commentary through Waking Lions of course 158 exists in the context of Israeli reality. This has continued to evolve 159 quite rapidly in the seven years since the publication of her work of 160 engaged literature. As recently as last year, there was violence in the 161 streets of Tel Aviv between different Eritrean factions resulting in the 162 injury of over 100 individuals as well as significant arrests. The 163 conditions in Eritrea that led so many to choose “liminality in Israel 164 over forced conscription (often until death) in Eritrea or ethnic 165 cleansing by Arab groups in Darfur” are the same or worse as they were 166 at the time Gundar-Goshen released her novel to the world.[^11] Migrants 167 largely remain in limbo, governed under the conflicting mandates of the 168 Prevention of Infiltration Law and the 1951 Refugee Convention. 169 170 Aspects of Gundar-Goshen’s humanitarian ideology have received broader 171 adoption. The Holot Detention Center, a location that played a 172 significant role in the psyche of the Eritreans of Waking Lions, was 173 shuttered in 2018.[^12] The Deposit Law, which mandated 20% of asylum 174 seekers’ salary be deposited in a bank account only accessible at the 175 airport when leaving the country, was struck down by the Israeli Supreme 176 Court in 2020.[^13] Eritreans have developed their own community 177 centers, educational structures, and institutions that “attest to the 178 agency of the… community in Israel.”[^14] Migrants are building lives in 179 the country, living on visas that need renewal every 2-3 months.[^15] 180 This itself is a massive political victory for Gundar-Goshen’s school of 181 thought: as Waking Lions conveys, the daily lives “of Eritreans in 182 Israel are not apolitical.”[^16] Their continued existence in Israel is 183 a testament to the political success of the ideology expressed in 184 Gundar-Goshen’s work of engaged literature. 185 186 In spite of these developments, Israeli society remains broadly hostile 187 to the presence of the Eritrean migrants in precisely the ways that 188 Gundar-Goshen opposed in Waking Lions. The country is governed by an 189 extreme right-wing coalition which harbors significant anti-Eritrean 190 sentiment, though internal and external factors have made continued 191 attempts to address the migrant crisis low on its list of priorities. 192 The anti-migrant position resulted in the Prime Minister reneging on a 193 negotiated settlement with the UN refugee agency to give permanent 194 status to around half of asylum seekers in Israel in exchange for 195 resettling the other half in other countries.[^17] Such a compromise was 196 perceived as too soft and harshly criticized. Integration of Eritrean 197 migrants as full members of the Israeli polity, as citizens, is 198 perceived as undesirable. Emigration is encouraged, and the mass 199 departure of Eritrean migrants remains the state’s preferred outcome. 200 201 The specific interplay of the international system in the Eritrean 202 refugee crisis in Israel is a particularly rich topic for dissection. In 203 many ways, the sovereign Israeli system is set up in direct opposition 204 to the presence of Eritrean migrants, but is countered by international 205 refugee law that exists “precisely because states are often inclined to 206 act differently than how the law prescribes.”[^18] The particularly 207 proactive role that international governance plays in the day-to-day 208 experience of Eritrean migrants in Israel is made greater by the 209 already-enhanced focus of the international community on the Jewish 210 nation—a fact which the community has at times used to its advantage. 211 Eritrean society is not traditionally organized around the concept of 212 race or color, but rather ethnolinguistic groups and tribal 213 affiliation.[^19] In most migratory scenarios, individuals who may be 214 racialized as Black “attempt to highlight their immigrant background or 215 national origin to escape negative stereotypes” associated with this new 216 identity.[^20] The Eritrean community in Israel has become an exception 217 to this trend, opting to make the strategic decision to self-identify as 218 “Black.” This particular language is intended to garner support from 219 abroad by contextualizing the experience of Eritrean migrants in Israel 220 in a foreign framework, so as to make it more intelligible in the 221 international arena and increase pressure on the Israeli state to halt 222 deportations. The role of nonnative forces in the Eritrean-Israeli 223 crisis goes largely undiscussed in Waking Lions, to its detriment. 224 225 ## Conclusions 226 Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s Waking Lions paints a colorful picture of a 227 pressing, contemporary Israeli issue, presenting the reader with a clear 228 call to action through its expert personification of the problem. The 229 narrative is thoroughly grounded in modern Israel, making the 230 intentional decision to place the question of Zionism squarely in the 231 past. The Jewish State already exists—Gundar-Goshen’s narrative 232 interprets the Eritrean migrant crisis within its borders as a question 233 to be answered by the generic State portion of the Zionist dream, not 234 the Jewish (and by extension Zionist) part. The novel implores its 235 audience to take action to embrace and integrate Eritreans into the 236 fabric of Israeli society. Its detailed description of the suffering of 237 the migrant community, in desperate poverty and constant fear of state 238 action, is gracefully described with its day-to-day complexities—its 239 members are not pure good, nor evil—while ensuring that it is clear that 240 such suffering is a moral failing of the state. Gundar-Goshen believes 241 this can be solved. 242 243 It is in turn a failing of the scholarly community that this is the 244 first paper to seriously engage with Waking Lions. The discussion of 245 international conflicts, and their portrayal in literature, is flashier. 246 Such analysis allows the author of a paper to connect with the oldest of 247 human traditions: myths of wars and conquests waged throughout the eons. 248 It is, bluntly, dramatic and fun. In the Israeli context in particular, 249 there is no shortage of conflicts and fictions about them to dissect; 250 the Palestinian issue in particular provides a sure and stable base for 251 study. It is, however, a poor academic that allows themselves to fall 252 prey to sampling bias. Israel is far more than its conflict with the 253 Palestinians. Indeed, for the Eritreans under constant threat of 254 deportation—and, for that matter, Dr. Eitan Green—the matters 255 highlighted in Waking Lions take precedence. The dialogue in this work 256 of engaged literature must be given space, instead of letting the 257 Palestinian issue take all the oxygen. With an opportunity to thrive, to 258 engage with and impact a large audience, Gundar-Goshen’s novel could 259 catalyze real progress on one of Israel’s most serious internal 260 conflicts. 261 262 --- 263 264 [^1]: Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, *Waking Lions* (London: Pushkin Press, 265 2017), pt. 2 chap. 3. 266 [^2]: Ibid., pt. 2 chap. 16. 267 [^3]: Ibid. 268 [^4]: Ibid. 269 [^5]: Ibid. 270 [^6]: Ibid., pt. 2 chap. 15. 271 [^7]: Ibid. 272 [^8]: Ibid., pt. 2 chap. 16. 273 [^9]: Ibid. 274 [^10]: Ibid. 275 [^11]: David Clinton Wills, "A Home at the End of the World: Eritrean 276 and Sudanese Asylum Seekers in Tel Aviv, Israel," *Sanglap: 277 Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry* 3, no. 2 (2017): 278 321-349, 279 [https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/223][sanglap]. 280 [^12]: Ibid. 281 [^13]: Itamar Dubinsky, "Digital Diaspora: Eritrean Asylum Seekers' 282 Cyberactivism in Israel," *African Diaspora* 12, no. 1-2 (2020): 283 89-116: 10.1163/18725465-bja10002 284 [^14]: Ibid. 285 [^15]: Clinton Wills, "A Home at the End of the World" 286 [^16]: Dubinsky, "Digital Diaspora" 287 [^17]: James Yap, Hilina Fessahaie, and Enbal Singer, "Populism's Global 288 Impact on Immigrants and Refugees: The Perspective of Eritrean 289 Refugees in Europe and Israel," *Maryland Journal of 290 International Law* 35 (2020): 189-201 291 [^18]: Dubinsky, "Digital Diaspora" 292 [^19]: Amanuel Isak Tewolde, "Becoming Black: Racial Formation of 293 Eritrean Migrants in Israel," *African Diaspora* 13, no. 1-2 294 (2021): 183-203, 10.1163/18725465-bja10006 295 [^20]: Ibid. 296 297 [Zionism and the Novel]: https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=COMPLIT37Q 298 [The Illusion of Return]: @/reading/illusion-of-return.md 299 [sanglap]: https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/223