The power of Elvis, it never ceases to amaze journalists. The Memphis based news paper Commercial Appeal just published a story on how Elvis unites people from all ages and (religious/politic) backgrounds in Israel. He even has his own statue in The Promised Land. Bottom line of the article: "If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. He'd try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today." The full story is available below. Enjoy!


Elvis offers common ground in tense land

Eran Levron is wearing his special outfit -- a white, rhinestone-studded, high-collared suit that fits taut across his slight paunch. Three dozen people sit at tables in the '50s-themed diner whose walls are covered with 1,720 photos of Elvis Presley. Most depict the singer during his younger, thinner years.

"I said a big wheel keeps on turnin'," Levron sings, shaking his hips next to a 7-foot bronze statue of the King of Rock and Roll. "Proud Mary keeps on burnin', rollin', rollin'..."

A 29-year-old with olive skin and a strong chin, Levron is one of a dozen Presley impersonators who've traveled from across Israel to Neve Ilan, where for 35 years the Elvis Inn has stood as a gasoline-pouring, hamburger-schlepping shrine to Memphis' most enduring cultural export.

"This happens twice a year -- Jan. 8 and Aug. 16," says 61-year-old restaurateur Uri Yoeli, referring to the day Presley was born in Tupelo, Miss., and the day he died at Graceland 42 years later.

The Elvis Inn is outlandish, a kind of Elvis World, sans "Hound Dog"-themed roller coaster, 6,000 miles from Memphis. In front of the restaurant, near the gas pumps, is a 15-foot-tall statue of Elvis pointing a finger toward heaven and holding an Israeli flag. About 20 yards away, next to a small convenience store called the Elvis Express, is another 15-foot-tall statue, this one with a guitar slung behind its back. Inside the restaurant, patrons can order an "Elvis Burger," "The King's Wings," or the "All Shook Up Breakfast."

Media coverage of the restaurant/gas station always focuses on the absurd. "Israelis all shook up over Elvis," a 1992 St. Petersburg Times headline reads. An article a decade later in American Jewish Life magazine carried the title "Blue Suede Jews." In fact, so incongruous is the notion of Elvis Presley in the Holy Land that Israeli journalist and historian Tom Segev referred to the restaurant in the title of his book about the Americanization of Israel: "Elvis in Jerusalem." On the book's cover is an image of a camel squatting in front of the Presley murals that gild the Elvis Inn.

Yoeli, whose love of Elvis comes a distant second to his business acumen, adores the attention. A slender, bald man who wears khakis and leather loafers without socks, Yoeli will do whatever he can do to play the perfect story subject. After all, he says, more media coverage means additional buses of American and European tourists. Those stories filled with not-as-clever-as-the-writers-think Elvis yuks and Presley puns -- Yoeli has heard them all -- are precious to the Israeli restaurateur.

In 31/2 decades, Yoeli has turned his love of Presley into a roadside cash cow that has allowed him to build a mansion on a posh Jerusalem hillside, seed his children's various startup ventures, and invest in companies selling everything from coffee to nanotechnology.

"People who are running the world now, all the big people, are of the Elvis generation," Yoeli says. "When they come here, everyone has a story about Elvis. Elvis is not only a singer; Elvis is memories. Elvis brings you back to the nice days, back to the magic. Elvis is something."

But so are Yoeli and his restaurant. An Israel Defense Forces tank driver in the Six-Day War of 1967, Yoeli has lived a life surrounded by conflict. His business is no different. Located near the border of the West Bank, the Elvis Inn employs both Israelis and Palestinians and serves Jews and Muslims alike. Elvis Presley brings everyone together in peace, Yoeli says in all seriousness.

"Everybody loves --" Yoeli says, stopping himself. "Just about everybody loves Elvis."

He's reminded of a small pyramid-shaped memorial located near the edge of his property. It commemorates a bombing here 27 years ago in which three people were killed and the Elvis statue damaged.

"What are you going to do?" Yoeli says matter-of-factly. "This is life in Israel. This is life at the Elvis Inn."

* * *

For Yoeli, the Elvis Inn's back story is well rehearsed. Every reporter buzzing through Neve Ilan on the way from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem wants to hear it. Yoeli has told it hundreds of times, to writers scribbling in notebooks and to television crews holding cameras and microphones. The story angle is always the same: Gee whiz -- Elvis in Israel?

"It all starts when I'm 16 years old," Yoeli always explains. His girlfriend brought him a picture of Elvis Presley dressed in a white suit.

"He is very famous in the United States," Yoeli's girlfriend told him.

Yoeli found a copy of Presley's "One Night" at a record store in Tel Aviv. "Suddenly, I became the expert in Jerusalem on Elvis, only because of one picture and one record," Yoeli says.

He remained a Presley fan throughout his military conscription and the bloody Six-Day War. After Israel's borders were redrawn to include former Palestinian lands and an uneasy respite was established, Yoeli saved enough money to go to America in 1972. His stops: Graceland and Salt Lake City, where Yoeli had his only opportunity to see Presley in concert.

"I just remember I had an open mouth for two hours, but I don't remember anything," he says of the concert. "Every now and then, I have flashbacks."

Returning to Israel, Yoeli married and purchased a small hotel outside Jerusalem called the Mountain Inn and turned the establishment into a restaurant/gas station. Yoeli's wife, tired of the various Presley photographs in their home, told her husband to take the memorabilia to work. He placed a picture of Presley behind the cash register and a few others throughout the restaurant. Customers, in turn, began to bring him Presley pictures or newspaper articles they'd clipped. The collection accumulated, and one day in Tel Aviv, Yoeli overheard a taxi driver taking a call for a passenger near Jerusalem.

"Pick up the passenger in the Elvis place -- you know, the one with the picture of Elvis," the taxi service manager told his cabbie.

Yoeli soon changed the name of the Mountain Inn to the Elvis Inn. He covered the restaurant's walls with images of Presley, and eventually put aside a month's revenue to erect a white, 15-foot-tall statue of the singer. And that's as far as the gee whiz stories go.

But Yoeli is a forthright man. Spend time with him and he'll stray from his normal media conversations, the ones that generate light-hearted stories catered to travelers on tour buses. Instead, Yoeli will talk about his friend Naim, who lived in the neighboring West Bank village of Katana. As with other Palestinians who lived in West Bank towns near Jerusalem, Naim worked in Israel; he was a taxi driver. Every day he would stop at the Elvis Inn, for gas, cigarettes, coffee or conversation.

"We became very friendly," Yoeli remembers. Naim would take Yoeli's oldest son for rides in his cab. He would come to Yoeli's house for dinner. He became a part of the family.

On Aug. 24, 1980, Yoeli didn't see Naim at the Elvis Inn, as he normally did. That morning, Yoeli was expecting a big crowd. At about 9 a.m., right on schedule, a group of American tourists pulled up in buses. "They came from Haifa to tour in Jerusalem," Yoeli remembers.

A few minutes later, as the Americans stepped off the buses, Yoeli heard the blast.

"It was a bomb like I never heard in my life," he says. "I was in the army, and I know what a bomb sounds like. It was unbelievable. All the Elvis Inn was in the air and glass and smoke, terrible, terrible things. I go out and I see people with blood."

The bomb, placed near the gas pumps, had left the station on fire. Yoeli panicked, knowing what was beneath the concrete: a 10,000-gallon pool of gasoline that could fuel an earth-shaking explosion. "If it blows up, half of Jerusalem will go," Yoeli recalls thinking.

He and another man doused the gas pumps with a fire extinguisher, smothering the flames before they could reach the gasoline beneath. The ambulances arrived. Three people were found dead. Forty-five were injured, 10 of them seriously. The white Presley statue was charred.

The next day, as Yoeli and his family began to clean up, Naim arrived.

"What kind of people can do this?" Naim said to Yoeli. "What kind of animal, to kill tourists?"

That day, Israeli investigators arrived. Naim disappeared. He came the next day, for a few minutes, and Yoeli never saw him again.

One month later, an agent for Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, paid a visit to the restaurateur. Naim was the bomber, the agent told Yoeli.

Yoeli crosses his legs as he sits on a couch in his opulent Jerusalem home and remembers what happened to his old friend.

"After two years, Mossad caught him in Amman and" -- Yoeli rubs his hands together, as if wiping them clean -- "no more Naim."

A commemorative stone rests on the ground near the road that leads to the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway. It marks the day of the bombing: Aug. 24, 1980. Yoeli rebuilt the restaurant, and he had the charred Elvis statue repainted in a glossy gold.

Yoeli wonders if Naim was forced to bomb the Elvis Inn. It's the only explanation that has ever made sense to the Israeli man.

"Maybe the Jihad came to him and put a gun to his head and said, 'Listen, we'll kill you unless you place the bomb,' " Yoeli says.

"Who knows? Who knows?"

* * *

As Eran Levron steps off the makeshift stage on Death Day at the Elvis Inn, a woman in the audience calls out to him. Levron struts toward her.

"You imitate him great," she tells him.

Levron grimaces.

"It's not imitating," he says.

"But it's not you," she replies.

"It's natural," Levron answers.

"Natural? It's imitation."

"No, it's natural."

Levron doesn't consider himself a Presley impersonator. Levron's inspiration is rather divine, he says. Born on Jan. 8, 1978, on the first birthday Presley missed following his death, Levron talks about Presley as if he's somehow been infected with the rock star's spirit. As Presley had with his mother Gladys, Levron has an odd relationship with his mother Ester, his most devout fan. He still lives with Ester -- most Elvis impersonators in Israel live with their mothers, peculiarly -- and for years Ester bolstered a belief in her son that he is the second coming of Presley.

"Look at him," she says, pointing to Levron. "He is Elvis."

"I would like to believe that I am a reincarnation of Elvis," Levron says. "I just don't want to sound crazy, so I just believe in myself that Elvis' spirit is in me. ... When I perform, it's like it's not me. It's like I'm possessed."

As outlandish as Levron's beliefs are, they fit with those of other Presley fans in Israel, where fandom blends with religion. Even Yoeli, a straight-laced businessman, sees miracles in the name of Elvis Presley.

When he erected the Presley statue out front, he and others noticed a hawk hover 4 feet above it. After a while, the bird flew off and now returns twice a year, Yoeli says. "He flies over the statue and then he disappears," the businessman says. "I don't know how to explain it."

In the late '80s, a wildfire rushed across the hills outside Jerusalem, near the Elvis Inn. "All the mountains around us were on fire," Yoeli remembers.

Yoeli feared nature might accomplish what Naim failed to do: detonate the underground gas tanks. But somehow the Elvis Inn was spared. The fire leaped over the Elvis Inn to the next mountain. "We were like an island of green," Yoeli says, adding: "Maybe it's because we have so many pictures of Elvis --"

"The holy man," Yoeli's daughter, Yaffit, interjects half-jokingly.

"It's a miracle," Yoeli continues. "It's strange to talk about it, but it happened."

For most of Israel's Elvis fans, the King of Rock and Roll's popularity in the Holy Land isn't coincidental. Presley was Jewish, they say proudly. After The Wall Street Journal in 1998 published an article that revealed Presley's heritage -- the singer's maternal great-great-grandmother was reportedly Jewish -- Israeli Elvis fans adopted him as a member of the tribe.

"Elvis wanted to be Jewish," Levron says, as if to explain why the singer's soul would have picked an Israeli to haunt.

Nabel Abdalteef, 14, pedals past the separation wall in Jerusalem. His best friend, a Palestinian, lives on the other side of the wall, and they often use cell phones to call each other from opposite sides. They have not ridden their bikes together since the wall was erected. The wall has decreased the frequency of terrorist bombings in Israel.

Jenny Dror, who runs a Presley fan club in Israel, laughs off claims of a Jewish Elvis. "The Jews in Israel like to find that every famous guy, every celebrity, has connections to Judaism," she says.

But not everything is light-hearted here. Beneath the cheery facade of the Elvis Inn is a difficult life for one of Yoeli's longest-serving employees.

* * *

Jamal Fakya lives on the divide.

As he looks out from a small bluff in the West Bank, the 50-year-old Palestinian points west to a compound of three small cement-block houses where he and 25 of his relatives live. Twelve feet behind the houses, a 20-foot fence topped with electrified barbed wire runs through the middle of Fakya's property, separating Israel and Palestine. The Israeli government built the barrier to halt the deadly bombings, such as the one that killed three at the Elvis Inn in 1980.

"Before the fence, it was nice to live here," Fakya says. "I understand their reasons for building the wall. I just don't agree with those reasons."

Until four years ago, half of Katana's 11,000 residents commuted to nearby Jerusalem for work. It was a thriving bedroom community of Palestinians who took the jobs Israelis didn't want. Now, Katana is destitute, a place where unemployment and crime are widespread and security officials are known to maintain order with munitions. The animosity toward Israel is palpable in Katana. On graffiti-strewn walls throughout the town are images of the Star of David, a bloody knife stabbing its center.

A tall, silver-haired man whose well-built physique belies his age, Fakya is among the lucky ones here. He and a handful of others have permits to work in Israel, and for that reason, Fakya has been able to keep his job as a cook at the Elvis Inn. His salary of about $900 per month is more than twice what he could hope to earn in the West Bank.

Before Israeli soldiers built the separation wall over sometimes-violent Palestinian protests, Fakya enjoyed a 20-minute walk from his home to the Elvis Inn. He made that walk for decades. Now, owing to the separation wall, Fakya's commute can be as much as two hours by car, longer if the Jerusalem checkpoint is closed and he's forced to travel through Ramallah.

Just as the wall separates Israelis from Palestinians, it separates Fakya from his wife and 12 children. His long, unpredictable commute causes him to spend five nights a week in Israel, going home to the West Bank only when he has at least two days off. He spends his other nights in a room in the basement of the Elvis Inn, watching Israeli news and TV shows from a single mattress in the corner.

On an August afternoon, Fakya is visiting with his children and grandchildren at his brother's house in the outskirts of Katana. Tensions have become so combustible in the town, Fakya wouldn't take a Commercial Appeal reporter and photographer to his house, near the separation wall, for fear he would be attacked after being seen consorting with Americans.

The separation wall is divisive in many ways. Liberal politicians in Israel and international organizations such as Amnesty International have publicly opposed the government's construction of the wall, since it economically strangles the Palestinian areas and creates ghettos not unlike the European ones Jews were herded into in the mid-20th century. Nonetheless, the wall has been effective: Bombings have all but stopped throughout Israel. In fact, Jerusalem is finishing the construction of a citywide trolley system -- something that would have been unthinkable when bombings weren't uncommon in crowded public spaces.

The universal language: Tel Aviv taxi driver Twiggy Itzik can't speak English, but he can lipsync every Elvis song. Fellow fan Eran Levron said, "If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. I think he'd make a song of it."

Fakya, among a dwindling number of people who live life on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, believes the separation wall is pushing Jews and Muslims in the Middle East further apart. The growing division isn't sustainable, he says.

"Someday, the wall will come down," he says, showing his undying patience.

"Enchallah."

God willing.

* * *

At 4 p.m. on Death Day, Eran Levron rushes downstairs, past the dozens of Presley photographs, and into the men's room at the Elvis Inn.

The restaurant is as busy as it ever becomes, with a crowd of about 50 people at tables scattered throughout the Elvis Inn. Behind the lunch counter, Yoeli is taking orders and working the register. Fakya is in the kitchen making hamburgers and falafel. Despite differences, everyone works side by side at the Elvis Inn.

Downstairs, Levron slips off his white suit and carefully folds it into his travel bag. He can't afford wrinkles, not tonight.

Upstairs, his biggest fan -- Mom -- is waiting. She'll escort Levron to his second Death Day act, a Presley tribute show in Ashdod, on the Mediterranean south of Tel Aviv. Part drama, part musical, the show will chronicle the King of Rock 'n' Roll's life in the United States. The dialogue will be in Hebrew -- the music in Presley's deep, twangy Southern English.

For Levron, Presley's music has the answer to all of life's problems and emotions: love, loss, hope, sadness. The Middle East would be a better place, Levron says, if Presley were in more of it, in more places like the Elvis Inn.

"If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew," Levron says. "I think he'd make a song of it, of the whole situation, and perform in a lot of Arab countries and of course in Israel. He'd try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today."

Source: The Commercial Appeal 

Posted:  4th. December 2007