In Israel, concert security is serious business. Uniformed officers stand at the ready at every show, Uzis in hand. Their presence is just another fact of life in a country in which men, women, and heavy weaponry are enmeshed in deeply symbiotic relationships.
Things are a bit different on the underground punk scene. One night on Ahad Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv, an inconspicuous brownstone hosts a homegrown punk show, complete with five shekel beers, Lenin posters, and coffee tables littered with DiY Hebrew punk zines. Needless to say, there’s no one at the door to search your bag.
It may be hard to fly the Israeli flag upside down, but that hasn’t discouraged the growth of a small but vibrant anarchist punk subculture among Israel’s secular youth. From squatters in South Tel Aviv to Jerusalem-based graffiti artists, these young men and women are dedicated counterculturalists in a country built on assimilation. They are anarchists, pacifists, anti-nationalists, and vegans, and they have launched a counter-revolution against the status-quo of the Zionist state.
At the heart of the anarchist and punk communities in Israel lies Salon Mazal, an activist hangout in downtown Tel Aviv. It houses a small library, a store, and vegan bar, and is the center of the scene’s social and political life. Most of the produce at the restaurant comes from the Palestinian Territories, and a full vegan meal will only set you back 20 shekels. The shop is a meat-free zone as well as a weapon-free zone. Soldiers are welcome to visit, but they must leave their guns at home.
The creed of the anarchists is simple, brutal, and essentially incompatible with life in the Jewish state. “Anarchism is no gods and no rules,?”\xc2\x9d says Tali Lerner, a Salon Mazal regular. Driven by this dissonance, many anarchists participate in active resistance. Some take regular field trips to the West Bank to protest Israel’s occupation of the disputed territory. The anarchist protesters say that getting into the West Bank from Israel is easy. All you have to do is to claim to be going to an Israeli settlement. Of course, the IDF checkpoint attendant may make you place a call to the settlement to prove your identity. Then things can get tricky. “We play hide and seek,” says Salon Mazal regular Tali Lerner, who has resorted to walking through valleys to get around checkpoints and in to the West Bank.
Other protests take place closer to home. Instead of going to nightclubs every Friday, as is the norm among secular youth in Tel Aviv, one group of approximately one hundred activists gathers at Rabin Square to ride their bikes through Tel Aviv as part of the worldwide Critical Mass pro-biking movement.
Mandatory military conscription presents a problem for the anarchists. “Society expects you to be part of a national consensus in a deeply violent way,” says Omer, 20. Some receive deferments as conscientious objectors, others arrange to be declared psychologically unfit for duty. “The only sane people are the insane,” laughs Yala, a volunteer at Salon Mazal.
Of course, this Zionist heresy only goes so far. “I don’t support the Palestinian government any more than I support the Israeli government,” says Michal, 19, a Salon Mazal regular. In some ways, she’s happy that she lives in Israel. After all, it would be hard to be an anarchist in Gaza. Anarchists, you see, do not wear hijabs.
