Ezra Nawi: A Beacon for the Real Left
Nawi had much to teach by his life and example.
By Joshua Tartakovsky
January 10, 2020
Ezra Nawi recently passed away from brain cancer.
I was fortunate and blessed to spend time with him and know him, for a short but meaningful time. He gave me exact advise, not a man to waste time or talk around the issues in a round-about way.
On his refrigrator were pictures of his childhood. A normative Israeli one. Kindergarden. A letter from the president of Israel who resided nearby. A picture of his mother.
Nothing in his early record of his childhood to suggest that he would “turn against Israel.”
He never actually did. He wasn’t against anyone, he didn’t have hate in his heart. He just had truth and care for others. Sympathy.
Born in Jerusalem, he lived in the same neighborhood in which I grew up, the former Greek-Arab-Christian neighborhood of Qatamon, now the affluent Jewish Israeli neighborhood, after its residents were expelled in 1948 by the Palmach, a Zionist underground group associated with the Haganah, later to become the IDF.
His parents were Iraqi Jews.
He became an unusual figure that attracted much attention. A gay, Iraqi/Mizrahi Jewish man who visited the Occupied Territories on a regular basis, visiting Palestinian peasants in the South Hebron Hills, protecting them from attacks by the Israeli army or settlers, guiding them to walk with their flock of sheep. Much of Nawi’s formal work has been written about and covered rather extensively.
The organization he founded with others, Taayush, is an Arab-Jewish organization dedicated to working together and resisting the occupation in a non-violent way.
Nawi was a homosexual, but he didn’t make an issue about it. He didn’t engulf himself with identity politics and see himself as better than others because of the way and with whom he had sex.
He once had sex with an Arab minor, and had to serve time for it. Nawi wasn’t a man of conventions. Anthropologically speaking, people mature sexually in different countries in different ages. Nawi admitted that it was a mistake, but also said it was done with consent. It’s up for others to believe him or not. The Israeli media jumped on the case of course as did the Israeli justice system. Clearly, the Israeli justice system has the rights of Palestinian youth in mind on a regular basis. That is why until today it has not rendered Israel’s occupation of the West Bank illegal although Palestinians there live under military law and can be held in prison for days without having the right to see a judge or a lawyer. But the Israeli media is very attracted to these kind of stories.
Nawi was a simple man, a socialist, who worked all his life to help others who were in misery, be they Arabs or Jews. He saw that a big economic crisis was coming and that people would have no food to eat and no electricity. We are seeing just the beginning of that now.
Nawi was too much of a man of truth to be liked by either the Israeli public or the Israeli Left. The Israeli public could not stand him because he stood up for poor Arab peasants whose ways of life mimicked the lifestyle of Biblical figures. The Israeli left could not stand him because he allegedly turned over suspected collaborators who sold land on occupied territories to the Palestinian intelligence, who summarily executed them. I wrote on this issue in the past.
The global left liked him since he defied misconceptions but didn’t really understand his message. Nawi wasn’t an identity politics person who would use his sexual identity to draw attention to himself or claim that due to his background, he could speak on a certain issue. He was a socialist, he wanted a better society for everyone. He was a revolutionary, he believed that at times violence was necessary.
Nawi was a plumber by profession. His name Ezra means help in Hebrew. Indeed, he helped many people and much can be written about that. I would like to think that his name Nawi meant prophet, and that like the prophets before him he was hated by his people.
The Israeli liberal media woman Ilana Dayan did a hit piece on him several years before his death. It didn’t discuss the illegality and immorality of Israel’s depriving of peasants from land and water. It talked about how he informed on Palestinians who sold land to settlers and that they subsequently were beaten or killed. His public crucifiction caused a trial and an arrest. He was even arrested when trying to leave the country. Nawi spent many days in and out of prison but the last events were what caused his health to deterriorate more than anything else.
David Norris, a senator in Ireland, was very worried about Nawi’s health. A former partner of his, he wanted to visit Nawi before his death but could not due to Israel’s strict Covid laws that prevented foreigners from entering. There were no exceptions to be made to non-Jews, unless that non-Jew was a US diplomat.
When the police would arrive to inflict harm on Arab peasants, he would turn ruthless and would know how to talk to them in a sarcastic and mocking way. (In fact, many of the police, themselves underpaid Mizrahi Jews, had much respect for him, and identified with what he said. But they were confined by the limits of their profession and the structure created by the Zionist state.) Nawi was arrested many times from physically engaging with the police.
Nawi was always calm and smiling, spoke what was on his mind in a genuine manner that was touching and that could not but capture others around him. His care for others and compassion was like a burning flame inside him. He would not cease helping others and doing what needs to be done. He did not waste time, and he knew how to be quick.
A fighter, not a push-over, Nawi had no illusions about the kind of people he was facing. But he refused to take big dangers too seriously. He kept doing what he believed in and he did so with a smile on his face. He would make jokes all the time. He lived life as a celebration, dressing in his original style with a special hat on his head. He did not fall into the austere and serious mindset many activists or people on the left fall into.
When activists would write on social media that when they see what the Israeli occupation was doing that they want to throw up, Nawi would respond ‘what are you guys eating that you want to throw up all the time’?
May his memory and example be a blessing and an inspiration.
RIP.
