Political Life: Shopping for a Hero

Eight years later, his brewery is in deep trouble. Since the start of the second intifada, in the fall of 2000, business has plummeted, he said. He's had to let most of his employees go. He used to sell to 73 hotels in Jerusalem; now he sells to six. He used to do almost three-quarters of his business with Israelis — even settlers would buy beer from him, so he brought in a rabbi to certify that the beer was kosher. But the settlers stopped coming and he hasn't bothered to renew his kosher license. The few Israeli businesses that do still buy his beer make him cover the name on the kegs with black tape, so their customers won't know they're drinking Palestinian beer.

Khoury did everything right. He's the kind of guy President Bush would put in the audience during his State of the Union speech to make a point about what can happen when a person has the freedom and gumption to make their dream happen. But the political reform that was supposed to free him stalled, which led to violence, which killed tourism — both in Israel and in the territories — and that, combined with 24-hour curfews, roadblocks, and an exponential rise in ill will between Israelis and Palestinians, is strangling his business.

"We thought we came to the right place at the right time," Khoury said.

"Until we came crashing to earth."

Khoury, meanwhile, is better off than most Palestinians: He's not part of the 60 percent the World Bank now estimates are living on less than $2 a day. Note to future Iraqis: good luck.

—Nancy Updike

We Have Our Issues

LOOKING BACK AT 25 YEARS
OF L.A. WEEKLY

Many who are "against" a war can also be possessed by the war energy. It can be very exciting, having a war to protest. Your small personal life takes on cosmic historical significance. It feels like you're gaining stature, but actually you're at risk of losing your identity. As a protester, you, like the soldier, are not quite yourself. You are yourself plus the war. If you lean too heavily on that role of protester, when your movement has no more war to protest, you too will feel diminished, lost, less. War is dangerous to everyone, on all sides of the issues. Being against a war doesn't insulate you from its demonic properties.

—Michael Ventura,
from "Letters to the War," January 18, 1991