WHITE CITY, BLACK CITY: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa: Ramona Wadi / Review (22 September 2015, MEMO Middle East Monitor)

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Ramona Wadi / Review (22 September 2015, MEMO Middle East Monitor)

The interlinked histories of Jaffa and Tel Aviv are dissected and analysed diligently in Sharon Rotbard’s White City Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (Pluto Press 2015). Colonial narratives have stipulated the supremacy of Tel Aviv’s recent history, demonstrating how geography can be altered by history, namely through both conservation and demolition. The process also encourages a cycle of oblivion and selective historiography, thus attempting to diminish the narrative of the colonised.
“The relationship between the history of the city and its geography is a direct and necessary one,” states Rotbard. “The geography of the city will always tend to conserve the stories to be remembered and to erase the stories to be forgotten.”
In 2004, UNESCO affirmed the recognition and endorsement of the “White City” myth by awarding Tel Aviv inclusion in the list of World Heritage Sites. Disregarding the colonial violence that culminated in the Nakba of 1948, UNESCO’s recognition of the Israeli architectural and historical narrative provided additional means of obscuring Jaffa’s history and existence. When Zionist paramilitaries ethnically cleansed Jaffa of its Palestinian population, its heritage was annihilated, reducing the city to an ostracised enclave.
In the first part of the book, Rotbard shows how the White City narrative was dependent upon several factors, notably the dependence upon myths in the same way that the Zionist historical narrative was created and maintained. In Tel Aviv’s official narrative, which was also endorsed by UNESCO, the city’s architecture was attributed to Bauhaus-trained architects, rather than a manifestation of European architecture erected upon the ruins of colonised territory.
It is clear that Tel Aviv’s architectural narrative reflects that of the colonisers, based upon a false premise that also shows how colonialism is dependent upon an entire structure of roles within the social spectrum. Not only does the name Tel Aviv date back to literature by Theodor Herzl, but the city’s narrative is also built upon the obliteration of Palestinian architecture; hence, the elimination of an essential part of the Palestinian narrative. Rotbard shows clearly how the Zionist shaping of the physical environment, compounded with militarisation and exclusion, has been reflected in Tel Aviv’s architecture and, in turn, the means which Israel used to colonise the indigenous population, despite claiming otherwise. The selective history utilised by Israel serves to strengthen the colonial narrative; it should also be interpreted as evidence of the destruction wrought upon Palestinian territory, upon which the fabricated narrative has been created.
Rotbard points out that the major flaw of the White City narrative consists of its obliteration of other accounts. Restriction and exclusion being fundamental to writing an alternative (mis-)representation of history, the destruction of Jaffa was inherent to Israel’s plans. Rotbard’s discussion of Black City details the omission of Jaffa from Israel’s official narrative. The myth that Tel Aviv was born out of the sand dunes conceals the fact that the history is incomplete without an acknowledgement of how Israel robbed Jaffa of its heritage to construct its colonial structures. Between the British Mandate, early Jewish settler communities and, later, the Nakba in 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Jaffa paved the way for further “urbicide”, providing evidence of how architecture can be used as a tool to alter both history and geography. “Jaffa did not only lose its inhabitants in 1948,” states the author. “For the first time in 5,000 years, it ceased to exist as an urban and cultural entity.”
The colonisation of Jaffa and its enforced separation from the Palestinian cause was severe, with Israel imposing its own structures and interpretations on history upon a city that suffered both the ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Palestinian population, as well as the burden of Zionist settlers. Jaffa constitutes a prime example of the entire concept of Israeli violence as regards loss of identity. Indeed, Rotbard declares that the ethnic cleansing of Jaffa and replacement of the population rendered it “a non-existent city, an invented city, a city whose past, present and future have all been sculpted and manipulated time and time again, until no one is really sure where the real city begins and the imagined one ends.”
Rotbard not only explains the architectural history of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, but also provides insight into the violent narrative away from the establishment of Israel upon colonised Palestinian territory. Throughout the book, one can easily discern Israel’s underlying motives politically and architecturally. The concept of White City might resonate as an ambitious project. However, the reality is that of colonialism hastening to obliterate evidence of the destruction it has imposed upon Palestine.
Architecture was also used to consolidate concepts into ideology within the Zionist narrative; the veneer provided by buildings concealed the dynamics of militarisation and power, primarily for the benefit of the colonising power which, through its emphasis upon Tel Aviv, manages to obliterate the history of Jaffa. “The Israeli architect who plans and builds in Jaffa cannot ignore the looting of Arab property, as by virtue of his work he is forced to hold evidences of this in his hands,” writes Rotbard. “The architect, in his actions and his works, is the one who finalises the occupation, making it irreversible.”
At an international level, the endorsement of both the architecture and Zionist narrative by UNESCO is proof of how division, colonisation, ethnic cleansing and oblivion are rewarded. Not only does complicity in asserting the fabricated narrative stand out, but so too does the acceptance by UN organisations of Israel’s colonial project as an ongoing reality. UNESCO’s approval for Tel Aviv to be included among World Heritage Sites was based upon the false premise that the architecture “adapted to the cultural and climatic conditions of the place, as well as being integrated with local traditions.” Throughout the book, Rotbard not only destroys very skilfully the historiography imposed by Zionism, but also expounds upon the intertwining narratives which the international community has ignored intentionally, notably the fact that Tel Aviv’s story is incomplete without a thorough knowledge and recognition of Jaffa’s destruction.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/media-review/book-review/21230-book-review-white-city-black-city-architecture-and-war-in-tel-aviv-and-jaffa

"The history of Tel Aviv, presented for a moment as an architectural history, can be seen as a part of a wider process in which the physical shaping of Tel Aviv and its political and cultural construction are intertwined, and plays a decisive role in the construction of the case, the alibi, and the apologetics of the Jewish settlement across the country."
—White City, Black City

In 2004, the city of Tel Aviv was declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site, an exemplar of modernism in architecture and town planning. Today, the Hebrew city of Tel Aviv gleams white against the desert sky, its Bauhaus-inspired architecture betraying few traces of what came before it: the Arab city of Jaffa.

In White City, Black City, the Israeli architect and author Sharon Rotbard offers two intertwining narratives, that of colonized and colonizer. It is also a story of a decades-long campaign of architectural and cultural historical revision that cast Tel Aviv as a modernist “white city” emerging fully formed from the dunes while ignoring its real foundation—the obliteration of Jaffa.

Rotbard shows that Tel Aviv was not, as a famous poem has it, built “from sea foam and clouds” but born in Jaffa and shaped according to its relation to Jaffa.
His account is not only about architecture but also about war, destruction, Zionist agendas, erasure, and the erasure of the erasure.

Rotbard tells how Tel Aviv has seen Jaffa as an inverted reflection of itself—not shining and white but nocturnal, criminal, dirty: a “black city.” Jaffa lost its language, its history, and its architecture; Tel Aviv constructed its creation myth. White City, Black City—hailed upon its publication in Israel as ”path-breaking,” “brilliant,” and “a masterpiece”—promises to become the central text on Tel Aviv.

Praises

"This is an important and fascinating expose through architecture, geography and history, of the rise of the Jewish city of Tel Aviv, the fabled ‘white city,’ and the degradation of its Arab neighbor, Jaffa, once the bride of the sea, into a chaotic, degenerated urban backwater. A sad but revealing history of how myths are forged and histories corrupted."

(Raja Shehadeh, author of Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape and winner of the Orwell Prize)

"Mr Rotbard chips away at the façade of his birthplace. He describes how Tel Aviv supplanted Jaffa’s Arab-owned orange groves, and goes on to explain how, in the violent birth of Israel in 1947-48, Jewish paramilitary fighters overpowered and subsequently largely levelled the city from which it had sprung. His tale of Tel Aviv’s growth from a Jaffa suburb founded in 1909 to a metropolis whose population grew 20-fold in the 1920s is gripping."

(The Economist)

"A superbly researched and exemplary architectural study ... If you want an explanation of the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict – and of just how deep they go, right into the very foundations of the buildings – this book gives one of the most unusual and convincing accounts."

(Owen Hatherley, Guardian)

"Rotbard, ultimately, is neither impartial observer nor objective researcher. His writing is impassioned and emotive. He makes no secret of the fact that he is deeply invested in the subjects he writes about, particularly the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv, where he lives. 'Whoever wants to change a city must first change its story,' he writes. And that is precisely what White City, Black City sets out to do."

(Jesse Fox, Haaretz)

"a path breaking and brilliant analysis that combines architecture, urban design, military strategy and general culture into an exhilarating war of streets and homes. If every city should have a book – one book -- this should be that of Tel Aviv, sitting on the same shelve as Koolhaas’ Delirious New York, Patrick kieller’s London and AbdouMaliq Simone’s Duala."

(Eyal Weizman, author of A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, FORENSIS)

"a challenging book that deserves to be read and argued over… Rotbard here slaughters an especially sacred cow: Tel Avivness… There are many books on architecture and even more books about history and politics: this book intertwines the two; it is well written"

(Tom Segev, Haaretz)

"a fundamental, fascinating and clever book on architecture in the service of politics".

(Adam Baruch, Maariv)

"White City, Black City is not a book about architecture. It is a political text written in a beautiful clear language, under the cover of a book on architecture… one of the most radical texts published in Hebrew in recent years."

(Joanna Gonen, Time Out)

"a responsible, sharp, critical project, in which Rotbard reads the Zionist representations of Tel Aviv… written with a political and esthetical responsibility: not only in relation to his discoveries, but also in relation to the censored political story of the Tel Avivian landscape, that its false signs are freedom, secularism and progress. Rotbard demonstrates how the cultural imagination marks its narrative on the place, and more important from this, he draws a straight line between the fiction of 'the flourishing of wilderness' and the actual contemporary violence that is supported upon it."

(Omri Herzog, Haaretz)

"Rotbard writes counterhistory, subversive history, which contradicts the official story of the White City that grew and flourished among the sand dunes. As Benjamin puts it, 'he brushes history against the grain'.”

(Michael Feige, Journal of Israeli History)

"Rotbard’s book is a masterpiece of critical essay writing. The book analyses the 'White City' discourse that has attended the city since the 1980s shaping both the city and its local and international image. Rotbard examines the political, urban, cultural and social contexts that gave rise to this image, and exposes its removal from reality.

Rotbard’s fascinating move transcends the narrow architectural discourse, offering a comprehensive cultural analysis of the ways in which communities produce a likeness of their city. Rotbard uncovers the various ‘black’ layers that Tel Aviv arose from, virtually all of which contradict the image of the white city rising from the sands. He deconstructs the conventional local cultural dichotomies regarding the Primitive Arab style vs the Modernist Judeo-European, and general cultural dichotomies between the Establishment and the counterculture."

(Ariella Azoulay, author of Death's Showcase: the power of image in contemporary democracy, The Civil Contract of Photography, From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography)

"It is very easy to live somewhere and to assume that what one sees is what had always been. Especially in a place which so to speak lacks apparent history like Tel Aviv (in opposed to Jerusalem for example). Sharon Rotbard's book White City, Black City, looks at the white paint of Tel Aviv's buildings not as an esthetic artefact but as a covering and a concealing layer. One may compare this book to the scratch of a nail upon a white wall. It is spine-tingling as it may sound. What is exposed is a Pandora box of expropriation, expulsion, blackening of a city, urbicide. The dissapearance of Jaffa in Nahum Gutman's drawings; propaganda pop songs about Jaffa’s "the big zone"; architectural conservation projects; a museum which is half an Arabic house, half a modernist glass box; the "empty" dunes enabling to imagine a clean start; open lawns once a Jewish-Arabic neighborhood; the book slowly unveils a mosaic of stories that so many Tel Avivians would not want to hear but are so interesting to know. It is hard to imagine a home in Tel Aviv in which this book is not to be found, even if its mere existence would shake a bit its walls."

(Dror Burstein, Novelist, Ynet)