And No Religion Too

An Islamic History Seminar field trip to the Old City of Jerusalem inspired many reflections on the nature of human history. The way empires, kingdoms, dynasties, peoples and the different institutions that humans create pile up one on top of another with little concern for what came before. King Herod, the Romans, the Umayyads, the Mamluks, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British, the Israelis, the Palestinians. The intuitive desire to leave a mark, to persist and to survive, all the more so when those efforts are challenged.

I remember my first visit to Israel. The year was 1993, I was 11 and a half years old. Our tour guide, Joe Gilboa, said to us, "Right where you are standing, there is at least 5,000 years of human history, layer after layer, civilization on top of civilization right under your feet."

Fifteen years later, those words have more significance for me than when I heard them standing under the hot Jerusalem sun, somewhere near the Mount of Olives a decade and a half ago.

Unfortunately, so it feels sometimes, I cannot help but get very involved and very emotional about what transpires on the ground here. My identities start arguing with each other and debates in seminars or among friends and colleagues take on very personal dimensions for me. A Jew, an American, a woman, a Catholic-Sicilian family background, a yoga background, seven years in the San Francisco Bay Area, girlfriend of an I.D.F Army Captain, employee of the Palestine-Israel Journal, a human rights activist, a Zionist. Give me a conflict or a situation and my opinion and thoughts and interpretation of the facts will be colored by all of these identities in my life. And I do not always know how to reconcile my conflicting emotions and identities, for example, how I feel when hearing the history of the Temple Mount, its glorious Jewish past and its inaccessibility to me now as a non-Muslim.

I can never simply have an opinion that designates a good and bad side and then formulate a point of view from there. So I live in this limbic state of semi-dread that I will not live to see any resolution to the conflict of peoples and places to which I feel so connected and so hopeful that a breakthrough could actually turn the wheel of human consciousness.

Tens of rockets have fallen on Sderot and Ashkelon since the tahadiyeh (calm) with Hamas ended. There are photographs of mothers and children in these Israeli cities with looks of terror and tears marring their features. There are also images of overflowing cesspools in Gaza, reports of continued fuel and food shortages as well. (Along with reporters such as Israeli Gaza correspondent, Amira Hass, reporting deliveries of pistachios from Tehran and Damascus via tunnels leading from Egypt to Gaza.)

On both sides, there is a palpable sense of defeat, surrender to violence, continued rockets that will be matched by an I.D.F. air and land incursion. I am afraid that a lot of people are about to suffer a lot more when the winter storm that has brought much needed rain upon these lands moves past us and the skies become clear. Perhaps I feel even more downcast because I fear and I am beginning to feel that there is no solution available for Gaza aside from military action. (I could be convinced otherwise with a compelling argument, however.)

My professor of Selected Topics in Modern Middle Eastern History succinctly described the challenge that Hamas poses to a peaceful future in the Middle East. They have an agenda for which they believe time is on their side. A divine-sanctioned mission to reconquer these lands in the name of Islam and 200 years is nothing in comparison to an eternity of paradise under the auspices of Allah. On the other side of the coin, I read in Haaretz this morning that Israeli religious parliament party Shas is calling for the reassembling of settlements in the West Bank that were dismantled concurrently with the disengagement from Gaza. The Shas Party, too, operates on a time scale that synchronizes with this idea of eternity. An attitude and view toward the struggle that bears no concern or compassion for those of us who would prefer to see a better today instead of a questionably, arguably, very subjectively constructed conception of a God-given, messianic future. Today, today, today, I want all of this to end today. And I want to believe and see with my own eyes that it is possible to stop killing each other and hating each other and ruining each other's right to human dignity.

We can have it differently, I just don't understand why we can't take the responsibility upon ourselves to see through the lies and deceit, to stop trusting what the "people in charge" say and do, and instead listen to our gut that it doesn't have to be so hard. But I am beginning to understand that in order to have that, we'd have to create a John Lennon "Imagine" world, with no religion, just start there.

I wonder if we tried...

Moongazing and Cats that Kill

If you are borderline depressed, have schizophrenia or any other personality disorders in your gene pool, it is best not to move to Israel.

Forget the politics, forget the conflict, forget accusations of apartheid, the reality of occupation or the threat of Iran's pursuit of a cache of nuclear weapons. These are nothing compared to trying to hold onto your sanity while living one week in Tel Aviv.

The highs are followed by such frightening lows, that it's best not to get too attached to those moments of homeostasis, erase the notion of euphoria from your mind.

Last night, on a walk through Kikar Rabin, the site of the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the gathering place for demonstrations, national celebrations and various other festivals and fairs throughout the year, four men brought their telescopes to provide a view of the moon to passersby. Telescopes magnifying the wonder that is the moon from the viewpoint of Earth, 95 times. I gazed upon a three-quarter's full moon, a flat silver disc made three dimensional, spherical, pocked by meteors the size of basketballs, leaving craters 200 kilometers in diameter.

Each view of the moon from the four telescopes brought such a sense of joy to my person. I felt a wide smile stretch my face from side to side, like a child presented with a lollipop, a treat to be savored.

The moon, pearly-grey, hardly smooth, yet so very peaceful. For a few seconds of gazing I felt all of my senses drawn into the silence and stillness of the moon. And there was something so humbling about seeing this member of space up close, when it is in actuality so far away. To see the excitement of the amateur astronomers sharing their knowledge of moon and to admire the craftsmanship of the men who built the telescopes, which they brought to share with the community.

Nearly everyone who looked through the sight of the telescope responded in delight, "Eizeh yofi," how pretty, "magniv," and so on. Everyone was impressed with this simple opportunity to see the moon up close.

Eitan and I continued on our walk, we were heading to Blockbuster. A Saturday night movie rental to make for an easy passage into a new week.

Before crossing the street to reach the store, suddenly, a vehicle between a vespa and a motorcycle screeched shortly, turned sideways, throwing the male driver off into the street, leaving the woman rider to fall under the bike. Ten people rushed to help. Fortunately there were no cars coming from the opposite direction and a near catastrophe remained but a minor, yet unsettling accident.

I tried to remember the stillness of the moon but my heart was jumping. I decided to focus upon the fact that so many people came to help the girl out from under the bike and felt back to normal after a couple of blocks.

There are many days, where, if I can avoid it, I leave home as infrequently as possible. It's dangerous out there. Unfortunately, I discovered that even my own home is not impervious to the treacheries of the outside.

Until today, my apartment in Tel Aviv offered refuge from a pretty hectic world. However, as daylight surrendered to dusk, a perhaps semi-crazy, French woman prowled outside my window, desirous of killing the cat, which came with this apartment. My protective bubble burst. I should have known that in Israel, there is no place immune to disorder and disruption.


This year, Rosh HaShanah and Eid al-Fitr (the festival at the end of Ramadan) coincided with one another. The moon calendars aligned on September 29th and thus, for nearly two whole days a majority of the population, both in Israel and the Occupied Territories, were celebrating important and joyous holidays of the calendar of Judaism and Islam, respectively.

Ten days later, Yom Kippur descended upon the land, sending shops, restaurants, cafes and businesses into a state-mandated closure, along with various checkpoints leading to and from the West Bank. A time of reflection, fasting, with only ambulances and police cars patrolling the streets to attend to the yearly bicycle accidents and injuries incurred by stone throwing in certain neighborhoods where cars dare to drive on this holy of holy days.

In fact, on the eve of Yom Kippur, riots broke out in the city of Acre (Acco), incited by Jewish youths throwing stones at an Arab driver, who the Jews alleged had been blasting the radio and smoking a water pipe through the neighborhood as Yom Kippur began. (How one drives and smokes a hookah simultaneously is beyond my comprehension and this particular testimony remains of a dubious nature.)

The driver and passenger were wounded and the repercussions of this encounter are ongoing.

Journalists are comparing this situation to Bosnia, I think of similar conflict, communal violence, in India between Hindus and Muslims. Whatever you call it, it's bad. A theater festival, that many Arab-Israelis rely on for a business boost in Acre, has been canceled. The racial slurs are flying and so are the stones and shattered glass.

In Israel, I feel like the reverberations of all activity throughout find their way to each and every other city and community in the country. Maybe, the tension of these riots contributed to what happened outside of my kitchen window today.


To honor this holiday season and to allow for a graceful move into the fall and winter, during which I imagine I will be spending much time inside (especially because I am hoping and praying for biblical, torrential rain this season to alleviate the frightening drought that is threatening this country), I have been on a mission to clean and beautify the living space that I share with Eitan.

Bathroom, bedroom, living room -- cleaned. I repotted houseplants, vacuumed the corners and removed cobwebs. Finally, when I finished and sat down to write some e-mails, I saw the silhouette of the French woman who lives in the adjacent building, lurking, looming.

She feeds about a dozen cats that linger about the building, mangy creatures that I am convinced are one day going to unite and fight us all out of our apartments and then take over the rest of the city, they are that aggressive.

Anyhow, suddenly she appears at my window, screaming at me.

"My cat, your cat! Your cat, why do you feed that cat! Your cat has killed my cat! I cannot find my cat, why don't you do something about that cat!"

Then she walked away.

I remained seated, somewhat shocked and a little confused as to whether or not she meant to yell at me. In the near distance I hear, "Salot! Putin!!"

Not so nice French words, directed at the cat, which, as previously mentioned, came with the apartment.

The woman came back to my window, yelling at me.

To which I replied, "why are you yelling at me?"

And again the same accusations of this bad cat, "Your cat killed another cat four months ago and now she has killed mine, I cannot find my pet."

I am alone in the apartment and feeling rather uncomfortable, vulnerable, and debated whether or not I should cry, that trigger point of insult and burnt pride when I feel that someone thinks I am a bad person when I didn't even have anything to do with the situation. Maybe if I started to cry she would leave me alone.

She walked away again.

She came back. I explained to her that the cat is here, was here before I was. She kept saying that she was looking for Valerie, the cat's owner. Valerie used to live here, I explained. She is not here anymore, she left the cat behind.

She came at me again, "You kill people in the streets! You kill children!"

"Huh?"

That was my internal reaction, coupled with, "now what the hell am I supposed to do? Is she nuts?"

I called Eitan. I needed someone to be on the phone in the event that suddenly I was assaulted by this woman. For the second time in my stay in this apartment, I appreciated the bars on the window, potential for damage or bodily harm --- minimized.

The woman informed me that I needed to kill the cat and if I will not, she will. To which I responded, "please, be my guest." (Animal lovers forgive me, I felt a little threatened myself, like maybe she was going to fling something at me from outside, or poison my water supply.)

In the midst of this insanity, I received a last-minute babysitting plea from a neighbor up the street, mother-in-law stuck in traffic, could I come for an hour or so? I jumped at the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge. Fortunately, this phone call came during a break in the killer cat episode, which resumed shortly thereafter.

It is very challenging to "keep my cool" here. I yelled back, I didn't know how else to stop this woman from screaming at me. She moved on. Her shrieks of "Salot! Putin!" continuing into the early evening.


Riots in Acre.
Moongazing in Tel Aviv.
Killer cats on Smolanskin.

And it's only Sunday.

Middle East News Digest

In the Middle East, there is a lot of talk of peace and war. War is always a possibility, peacemaking is laboriously frustrating. Living in Israel, I live in a semi-state of denial, knowing that catastrophe is always both a minute and an eternity from the present. There is simply no knowing what will be the breaking point or the turning point and for the media, every day is a heyday to rile up the public around one glaring issue or another -- Iran's nuclear tests, Bedouin youth convicted of Al-Qaeda connections, Israeli soldier shoots rubber bullets at blind-folded Palestinian at close range, for example.

Acts of aggression that could lead to escalation in the conflict are public information, always. Acts of reconciliation, however, are hard to find and take up little space in newspapers and mainstream websites, if reported on at all.

The irony in the whole situation is that while the newspapers are plastered with foreboding news of destruction, corruption, deficit and injustice, making it seem as though that is all that goes on around here, I have absolutely no personal encounter with any of these things.

If I were to write my own weekly digest, the headlines would include: "Attended Peace Cafe to Brainstorm Online Facilitated Dialogue Opportunities Between Israelis, Palestinians and Internationals." Another one would read: "Participated in Women Only Yoga Class at the Sulha Peace Gathering."

The content of this digest would be filled with pleasant interactions and exciting connections between myself and other people who are hoping for a better future for the people of Israel and Palestine.

I would include another section, a weekly column: The Office in East Jerusalem. This week's title would read, "Date Juice and Damascus Shawarma, Hummus Next Week."

The inches of this publication's columns would be replete with reports on the myriad peace organizations each vying for dates on calendars to promote demonstrations, lectures, commemorations, movie screenings, how to apply for a visa from the West Bank successfully, and various other opportunities for recognizing the innumerable ways in which alleged enemies already do coexist, and the efforts to draw more and more people into that reality.

Some of the serious issues that I would report include the language barrier, getting Israelis to learn more Arabic and English, and more Palestinians and Arabs to learn more Hebrew or English. Additionally, I would include ongoing abuse at checkpoints, discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israeli schools, Holocaust survivors starving and struggling in their old age because the government has broken its promise time and again to provide a stipend to these people. However, at the end of these dismal reports, I would list the MANY organizations advocating for these marginalized groups and individuals, listing how it is that you can help in the efforts to improve the situation. And just for encouragement, I would include a list of goals achieved by each of these organizations.

The thing that I'm getting at is how media, popular, mainstream media really works to make the population hopeless and paralyzed. And if I can't speak for the population, then I can at least speak for myself.

For the past three weeks, I have been receiving the International Herald Tribune and Haaretz (in English) at my doorstep each morning. For the ten minutes I walk to the bus, I read the paper -- trying not to step on steaming piles of dog shit or bump into the elderly couple I pass by each morning, or the street sweeper who has also become familiar. While waiting for my Cafe Aroma, I sit down, in hopes that the sweat will stop rolling of my back and behind my legs and read the paper, I continue this while on the 15 minute bus ride en route to Tel Aviv University. I arrive at Hebrew class, tuck the paper away into my bag, and try to pull myself out of the rage, sadness, disbelief and fear that I voluntary expose myself to during the hour or so morning commute. True, after that hour every morning I am a more informed citizen both internationally and domestically, but I am also a more apathetic citizen who can only shrug her shoulders and make snide remarks about the end of the world and its impending arrival.

Thankfully however, I counterbalance this reading business with a little bit of activism. I practice yoga under the guidance of my newest teacher, the wise and real Ernessa. I learn a little bit of Kabbalah (yes the Madonna kind) and I attend these peace gatherings. At the end of the day, the end of the week, I realize that there is a bigger picture of the world that is painted as catastrophic, myopic, a ticking bomb with a detonator held in the hands of many -- speculators, dictators, typhoons and hurricanes, to name but a few.

But I am beginning to ask myself how I can let that dictated reality be so much stronger that the reality that I experience through touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing every day? How can I feel that the world is coming to an end when I somehow manage to find myself surrounded by people engaged in dialogue, arguing productively, creating art, music, dance and prayer, willing to share with me their personal life stories and struggles, to listen to those of my own? The last thing I would want to do is dishonor or undermine the significance and the progress and the unending dedication to these causes that people self and soulfully give to each other and their efforts. Yet I do that day after day after day.

As a planet full of people, our actions and their repercussions generate so much power, so much energy. We are pulled into our dramas, our successes, our failures, our hopes, our disappointments. Atoms and electricity flying every which way. We create such a hum, buzz and bang with nearly every move we make, each of which emit different qualities and flavors -- creating, destroying, sustaining, to broadly categorize (thank you to Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu for the vocabulary to explain this thought). And then, we have a choice about what to do with these outcomes, these facts on the ground. Sometimes I choose apathy and I feel like I am waiting out the end. Sometimes I choose joy and I radiate light to my friends and loved ones, instilling hope and rejuvenation in my surroundings. Sometimes my vision narrows and I find myself contributing more to the darkness that seems to always loom over the future.

In this moment of clear seeing, I am relieved to recognize these tendencies, to see them for what they are. Unfortunately, I cannot ignore the injustices, the murders, the hatred, the bigotry, the racism, the hunger, the suffering, and I find that these aspects of existence cast a very tall, long and wide shadow over the predominantly beautiful, effortless world that I inhabit day-to-day. But if I cannot make space for recognizing the good as well as the bad and the ugly, then I find that I am not much use to anyone at all. And that would be one of the greatest tragedies ever to befall humankind. I am not exaggerating my own importance, as it is equally shared by every other being on the planet.

As Nelson Mandela shared in his 1994 inaugural speech, words written by author Marianne Williamson, "...as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I would like to be liberated from my own fears that the world cannot change, that people cannot recognize their power to light up the darkness in the world. At least for now, and if only for this second and a few after that, my eyes are open to those who know their power and use it for the purpose of bringing light.

The Frailty of Tolerance for Others

On a sherut, shared taxi van, en route to Jerusalem, I found myself in a situation in which the driver accused me of not having paid the 22 shekel fare, which was given to him via the gentleman sitting in front of me to the right of the ten passenger vehicle. Two men vouched for me, the one recounting that he handled the money and the other who witnessed the transaction. Still, the driver insisted that I had not paid, “Anahnu mehakim la bahura, yihihey zman.” We are waiting for the woman, there will be time, he said, in an accented Hebrew that I assumed was Arabic.

I repeated myself, again, “Shilamti!” – I paid.

I could feel my insides start to rumble and fire up with anger, frustration and insult. How dare this man accuse me of not paying my fare, how dare he continue his indictment despite the testimonies of two men, including the one who took the money from me and gave it to the driver.

Irate, my heart pounding, my eyes making all sorts of signals of disgust and pissed-offness at the people around me for this affront to my person, I had images of walking up to this driver, insisting that he apologize to me and if he refused, as I descended from the shared taxi, in one swoop I would pull the lever that would send all of the coins to the floor, rolling out of the van and onto the street, and thus, feel my good name avenged.

Returning to the world outside of my mind and its satisfying images of retribution, I continued to feel offended, looking up from time to time from my book, titled Interpretation of Cultures, hoping to make eye contact with maliciousness in my stare at the driver.

Between my book, the girl who spoke French and Italian who was sitting behind me and kept switching languages to communicate with her two friends, the man next to me who spoke a mixture of Persian and Hebrew on his cell phone and the thoughts stewing in my mind, I had that sensation that I so often feel here that the actual organ of my brain would explode with too much stimulation if it could. Seemingly involuntarily trying to understand the alternating languages, read and not think about the uncomfortable situation I just couldn't seem to get over, I was feeling rather flustered.

The gentleman who handed him the money earlier looked at me after I continued to make noises and faces with a look of, “what can you do?” and the hand/shoulder shrug gesture skyward, that usually accompanies such a look. I took no comfort from this offering and continued to fume inwardly. Just as luck would have it, an extreme accident blocked the road to Jerusalem, making a sometimes quick 50 minute commute drag out into the infamous hour and a half trek up the Jerusalem hills before finally reaching the center.

As we waited in standstill traffic, the driver turned on the radio. A Russian-language station. He was Russian. Immediately, my mind’s preoccupation with anger, disgust, insult and humiliation turned another corner in my mind to find a memory from Independence Day.

The Tel Aviv Boardwalk, the Tayelet, was filled with thousands of attendees for the 60th anniversary of Israel’s Independence and the Israel Defense Forces’ air show extravaganza to commemorate the occasion. Cafes, restaurants, booths, kiosks and popsicle vendors were overwhelmed by the number of people. No one seemed to be prepared for the onslaught of crowds this event drew to the shores of the Mediterranean between Gordon Beach and the border with Jaffa.

In search of a cup of coffee after a fun-filled night of drinking and celebrating in the streets of Tel Aviv, I found myself at a café/bar where I could get a coffee to go. As with most places in Israel, there was a security guard at the entrance. I discussed with the hostess if I may pass through to the bar to order a cup of coffee “lekahat,” to take. With her consent I proceeded to walk past the entrance of the restaurant when suddenly a sharp pain burst through my right hip bone.

The security guard, oblivious to my discussion with the hostess, barely able to speak Hebrew (a Russian) put up his baton and whacked me in the hip to keep me from going forward. Unable to process the painful sensation and why I was feeling it, all I could do was look at him in horror and then the hostess with pleading eyes. There was no Hebrew in my mind at that moment, I felt helpless and able only to produce wicked stares and feel that, becoming all-too-familiar feeling of cursory hatred, disgust and humility. The hostess explained to this brute (I still feel this way about him) that I was getting a coffee to go. I walked through, ordering and thinking of all the things I would like to say to this incompetent nincompoop who so quickly assumed I intended harm and who was willing to use force -- against ME!!! When all I wanted was a cup of coffee.

Back to the sherut, here I put two stories side by side and found a common villain – the Russian -- accusing me of something I did not do, presuming me guilty without finding out whether or not there were any grounds for such accusations. Suddenly I was a mass of hatred against all the “Russians” in Israel, all the miserable experiences I have endured with Russian clerks at the Ministry of Absorption, I relived all of those feelings in my emotional body in that taxi. My insides felt overflowing with that best described as, oozing black goopy bitterness that swims inside of me when I feel like I have found a scapegoat for my problem(s), decide to completely castigate an entire people for all of my time on this earth, and having done so, allow myself the darkest, most inhuman, undignified thoughts of which a human being is capable. (Confessional: I deal with bouts of this on a weekly basis, sad to say. At least I’m not discriminating – I feel this for Israelis, Arabs, Hasidic Jews and a few other “groups” on an alternating basis.)

Then my better senses returned. We arrived in Jerusalem. I stepped off the sherut, refused to thank the driver for the safe arrival, and began to wonder what was THAT all about? Then it came to me.

Last Saturday, Eitan and I saw a movie by the name of Ma asalama, Jamil. A film about honor killings between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Denmark, although the film could have taken place anywhere in the world. Leaving the theater I asked Eitan, “what is this thing about honor? How could you kill someone for honor?”

I couldn’t understand, this concept of honor being offended, the repercussions of perceived “disrespect,” so prevalent in Pakistani, Afghani, Pashtun, Sicilian, Albanian and many other cultures of which I am not aware, that require such drastic measures, to be regained.

While this incident on the sherut did not involve murder of a loved one who needed to be avenged, I felt as though something had been taken from me that I had not given permission to be removed from my possession, and I was ANGRY. I acknowledged, perhaps for the first time in my life, how I feel and what my mind says and imagines doing when my honor is offended.

In that moment of powerlessness, humiliation, misunderstanding and shock, my mind dispelled all of its practice of tolerance, of not stereotyping, not categorizing, not demonizing and not clumping together “other.” This suspension of higher consciousness paved the way to making generalizations, condemnations of another, distinctively different from myself, so that I could eventually feel better, feel that I had reclaimed something taken from me.

Over such a simple, silly, stupid thing as 22 shekels for a ride to Jerusalem.

The driver miscounted, which he realized after the man who gave him my money told him, “hee shilmah, lispor et ha kesef,” – she paid, count the money.

I claim to want to peace, to work for peace, to understand how to come to peace. But every day that I am here, my experiences only prove that this endeavor is interminably challenging. Having peace within myself and the ability to keep composure in the face of ridiculous, meaningless accusations and interactions in which I feel offended by other people, proves to me that before I have any applicable strategies, I have quite a lot of work to do inside of myself.

I begin to understand how people can act "irrationally." If the conditions are right, meaning tense enough, and the person does not have the capability to get some perspective, the range of behaviors that humans exhibit and act upon in order to satiate that anger, or merely to resume that sense of homeostasis, temporary as it apparently can be, are, in some cases, frighteningly dramatic.

Better Late Than Never

Most importantly, thank you to everyone who responded and took the time to think with me on the last entry having to do with Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba. I have looked forward to responding to your thoughts for weeks and I regret the long delay.

Yesterday I finally had the opportunity and felt in the frame of mind to sit down and respond to the comments that I received both on the blog and personally, for which I am quite grateful. However, an unforeseen obstacle arose to my Thursday morning departure to the States, which rendered me useless to do anything but worry incessantly until this morning.

In the afternoon on Sunday, I discovered that unless I have in my possession a "Teudat Maavar" to present at border control at Ben Gurion Airport along with my U.S. passport, I will be unable to leave Israel to go to my own country because I am now also an Israeli citizen; and regardless of whether or not I have a valid U.S. passport, the Israeli government determines whether or not I can leave this country, so they say. I have my suspicions that I would have no problem leaving the country but getting back in may be cumbersome.

So as to avoid any possibility of going through the infamous, grueling, interrogation sessions at the airport, I rushed myself to the Misrad Hapnim (Ministry of the Interior) this morning ready with fifteen sob stories revolving around family emergencies that would win the sensitive hearts, hidden beneath the gruff and cruel exterior, of the clerks at the Ministry of the Interior, so that I may have the Teudat Maavar sooner than the standard seven business days for processing. And, as I've discovered, as with most things in Israel, everything is up for negotiation. I will have the damn temporary travel document at 8am Tuesday morning, less than 48 hours before my plane is scheduled to depart.

The point of sharing this story is that while my intention was to finally revisit the topic of Jews commemorating the Nakba yesterday afternoon, I was hardly in a mood to ponder and pontificate and felt like, in fact, every Israeli and Palestinian and their problems could "shove it," because my small life and the important plans in it were about to be affected in a tremendous way. How quickly my activism is thrown out the window when my freedoms are impinged upon...(The next obstacle is to get Eitan through immigration at LAX. Did anyone read that New York Times article about the Italian-citizen lawyer who came to visit his girlfriend in Virginia and was detained for ten days without access to counsel only to be deported back to Italy??!!!)

But, now that I have had my citizen’s right to international movement, as conferred upon me by my holding of a current and valid U.S. passport, restored -- I am ready to discuss.

In the weeks since Israel's Independence Day celebrations and Nakba commemorations, much has happened. President Bush visited to celebrate 60 years of Israel and expressed his vision that when Israel celebrates 120 years of Independence it will do so with a Palestinian state next to it. Also, a conference of presidents and world leaders convened in Jerusalem to discuss Israel's role and capabilities in many important global issues -- technology, industry, the environment and economics. Gorbachev even showed up, which excited many Russians in Israel, which I know because I overheard conversations in the w.c. at ulpan and in the streets of Tel Aviv.

On May 21, just on the other side of the separation wall six miles south of Jerusalem, the Palestine Investment Conference took place in Bethlehem with nearly 1,000 businesspeople from the United States, Europe, the UK, Russia, several Arab countries, Israel and 100 businessmen from Gaza received special permits to travel to the West Bank with over $1billion worth of contracts up for grabs. For more information and some criticism on this conference, please visit: http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/palestine-investment-conference-opens-in-bethlehem-20080522.html and
http://www.economy.ae/English/AboutUs/NewsAndEvents/Pages/economy23.aspx.

Since then, business is as usual in Israel. Rocket attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon, daily military incursions into Gaza with casualties suffered by men, women, children and militants, and a disturbing Israeli police-incited riot at a nonviolent Palestinian Nakba commemoration demonstration in which Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs came together to protest the forced expulsions and denial of these acts during and in the aftermath of Israel's War of Independence in 1948. Please read: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668678396&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.


All of which, in addition to the comments themselves, have contributed to the following thoughts.

As far as this blog goes, I use this public forum as a way to process and filter what I read, see and hear in this country. It is overwhelming most of the time. I cannot contain everything I observe without inflicting psychological damage upon myself unless I write. Therefore, this is not an officially published/sponsored writing forum. It is of my own doing, independent of any news source and so on. That being said, I could be writing 24 hours every day and still not feel that my sentiments and reactions are properly dealt with, or adequately disseminated to readers, for the sake of having witnesses to my experiences and the information that I come across and choose to share.

In truth, none of these incidents matter in and of themselves. One letter signed off on by a group of U.K. Jews and U.S. Jews who are against Israel's military occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, that decries Israel for its crimes against humanity and calls for worldwide boycotts of the Jewish State, as mentioned by a few commentators, does not make a noticeable impact or difference in decision making regarding Israel. I do believe it influences public discourse on the topic to a certain extent, but only among some circles while others may ignore such a petition, or may never even come across it.

In fact, this letter doesn't change anything at all in the immediate sense of time. AIPAC still has millions and millions more dollars than J-Street, the new Jewish political action committee, to "educate" voters, indirectly influencing campaigns and candidates about U.S. relations with Israel. Thus, AIPAC’s role in the U.S. government won't be challenged any time soon. As long as AIPAC-produced policy is adopted by the United States, nothing much at all will change on the ground in Israel or in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

However, when I received the e-mail asking me to sign this letter and another petition written in a similar vein, it mattered to me to understand why I didn't believe that what the signees were calling for provided any constructive solutions to the tension and the situation here in Israel. And, I felt, that if those words represented the progressive Jewish political public of the Diaspora, then there isn't much hope for the Jewish international community to work within Jewish communities to convey to Jews who support Israel blindly, that Israel cannot sustain its existence as it is -- surviving -- in a hostile environment that requires the dehumanization of an indigenous population that has been largely displaced; that continues to seek international aide to improve its plight by defaming Israel as well as highlighting breaches of international law and international humanitarian law; that has factions that consort with Iran to resist occupation; that is allegedly the key to normalized relations with the 22 nations of the Arab League, as outlined in the revised 2007 Arab Peace Initiative. Quite simply, I felt bummed out, big time.

I'm looking for solutions and perhaps stubbornly clinging to the naiveté that they exist.

I think the solutions are going to be found when there is good, honest, open communication about the problems. Something like Conflict Resolution 101. However, as of right now, a universal language to discuss Israel, and therefore Palestine, does not exist. Different populations require different vocabulary. It is such a heated, loaded subject. Israel bears the weight of thousands of years of Jewish persecution and ongoing anti-Semitism. Israel and the threat to its existence is one catalyst in the spreading of Islamophobia. Also, in the Muslim and Arab world, Israel’s existence is the fundamentalists’ linchpin that sustains anti-Western sentiment and acts of violence, also known as terrorism. These are the favorite topics of the media today and what a confusing, bungling, endless body of information we the public receive every day!

The letter doesn't really affect me. Neither did the rocket that fell on the Supersal grocery store in Sderot two days after I went shopping there for challah, orange juice, yogurt and hummus. But I worry about the day that these things do affect me. Maybe they will always be just worries. I don't really know.

I would like to think, however, than in the thousands of words I will have written over the course of my life, at some point, I'll figure out something to do that will affect me and the people around me to live differently, to find that common language even in the midst of purportedly intractable conflict. Obstinately, something tells me it's possible and if not, then I'll just keep working towards it. I don't really know what there is that is better for me to fill my days with instead.

I need to create an example of what I want to accomplish, to paraphrase another commentator. The problem is that I still don't know exactly what kind of example I want to set. Maybe one day, I’ll just come to peace with war, with humankind’s proclivity for self-destruction. As of now, I am still collecting information.

Diaspora Jews Commemorating the Nakba

Certainly, choosing not to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary of independence is a personal choice. In fact, many Israelis have criticized the Israeli government for spending too much money on 60th anniversary celebrations and not enough on education and elder care, which, in fact, forced the government to reallocate a proportion of the millions of shekels originally earmarked for Independence Day to improving schools and public spaces such as parks.

However, I have some issue with the group of diaspora Jews who published a letter on April 30, 2008, in the UK’s Guardian about not celebrating Israel’s Independence Day because it is also the anniversary Nakba, or the catastrophe, which is what the Palestinians call the eve of Israel’s independence and the ensuing war: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/israelandthepalestinians.

And additionally, with those Diaspora Jews in the United States who are now sending around a letter to be published in the Jewish Advocate, The Nation, and The New York Review of Books come Thursday, Israel’s Independence Day. Below are the statements with which the signatories of this letter agree to assist, support and encourage, some of which I strongly disagree. After listing them, I will explain why or why not.

Taken from the letter:

“…we refuse to celebrate ‘Israel 60.’ We will take action to make our shared position clear and visible. In cities across the U.S. and Canada this year, we pledge to participate in or to support:
- Refusal to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities;
- Peaceful disruption of these events;
- Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement;
- Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover seders;
- The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;
- Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba, about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance.”

http://notimetocelebrate.wordpress.com/

As mentioned in the beginning of this article, choosing not to participate in Israeli Independence Day activities is not something with which I have a problem. This is a personal choice and not even necessary to list as there is no mandate that all Jews must rejoice on this occasion.

Peaceful disruption of these events – I wholeheartedly believe in the right to freedom of speech, thought and assembly. I too support the right to disrupt Israeli Indepenence Day events on the basis of the right to dissent and opinion. My only hope is that these disruptions are constructive, informative and awareness-building and approach the situation as an opportunity to spark dialogue, not to cause further polarization and alienation between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian camps. My wish is that disruption of these events is in the name of promoting a pro-peace platform that envisions a win-win outcome for both sides, which is what the peace movements in Israeli and Palestinian societies are promoting and hoping for.

Nakba commemoration events and actions organized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement- I support this statement as well. It is important that history include all narratives of all peoples. In every war there is a winner and a loser, this is the miserable nature of battle and its outcome. Customarily it is the victor that tells the story and it is a wonderful human development that increasingly oral history and general efforts to document the history of the “other” are becoming more and more popular and funded in academia and in the non-governmental organizations of the world. It is especially necessary for Diasporic Jews to be aware of the fact that in 1948, not every indigenous Arab of Palestine attacked the Jewish population. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were razed to the ground, people were forcibly transferred to the far reaches of the West Bank and Gaza, never to return to their homes, and if they did, to find that new residents had taken up the space and called it home.

It is necessary to educate about the Nakba to understand the humiliation that every day Palestinians have endured and continue to endure under the brutality of a military occupation that assumes all are guilty or have potential to be guilty of wishing harm against the Israeli people and the State of Israel. Then, to further understand the damage this does to a society of people, and how it perpetuates a self-fulfilling prophecy of ill-will, hatred and violence.

Incorporation of Nakba remembrance into our Passover seders- I believe in this statement merely because as far as I have been taught, on Passover we remember and acknowledge the continued suffering of all people. And perhaps most importantly the Nakba because as long as the Paelstinians continue to suffer without reprieve, Israel will suffer and the stakes only grow higher every year this oppression continues.

The movement for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions of Israel- This is where I begin to part ways with this letter. Boycotts, divestment, sanctions of Israel, whether or not they ever happen, simply as a message from the outside Jewish community to the inside Israeli society creates an incredible chasm between those criticizing and those being criticized. If the criticizers want to be taken seriously and contribute to bettering the State of Israel, another approach would be more constructive and therefore actually useful.

Telling the Israeli people we support your financial ruin for the sake of the Palestinians creates a “who needs you anyway” attitude that allows Israelis to become further spiteful toward the outside world, and even more supportive of a sustained existence based on military might and NOT diplomacy, negotiation or coexistence, let alone creating foundations of trust necessary to establish a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

For Jews in the Diaspora to promote divestment projects and boycotts of Israel, but not to call attention or for divestment and boycotts of the United States and the U.S. government in the same letter (especially since President Bush is flying here for the celebration) for its lack of real action when Israel makes a breach of its own policy, for example, continued settlement expansion, is ridiculous and a mistake in approach to this situation, by the Jews in the Diaspora.

Other efforts to challenge the perceived Zionist consensus among American Jews through education of Jewish and broader communities about the Nakba, about the colonial nature of Zionism, and about the history of Jewish dissent and Palestinian resistance- Challenging the “perceived Zionist consensus” about the State of Israel among American Jews strikes me as off-target for managing and ameliorating a rather uncomfortable, desperate and time-bomb ticking world issue as that which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It ignores the fact that Israel isn’t simply the Jewish State, it is Israel, a nation-state in the global community. It ignores the fact that there are generations of Israelis who live here, who identify as Israeli first, and as Jewish second. This is their only home.

Zionism as colonialism? All nations are guilty of this transgression. It is no excuse, but it is hardly something to dwell on when those who are turning Zionism into a bad word by calling it colonialism are members of previous or current colonializing societies and therefore direct beneficiaries of colonialism over other nations whether in the form of traditional colonialism, or more modern forms of colonialism like globalization, its best friend outsourcing and outsourcing’s progeny—sweatshops and democracies supporting dictator-regimes to keep oil flowing.

If anything, today colonialism and the struggle to decolonize serve to catalyze independence movements, giving fuel to a people’s call for their own nation-state so that they do not have to live under another people’s self-serving, discriminating rule. (They can then create their own self-serving rule that will eventually discriminate against another people and the cycle will continue until once again we are a world of tribes and clans as opposed to nations, perhaps organized into confederations.)

When the United Nations created the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine, two states were created: Israel and Palestine. When the War of Independence and the initial phases of the Nakba were finished, did the West Bank and Gaza become a split state of Palestine as did Pakistan and East Pakistan, but with their independence intact no less? No. The West Bank and East Jerusalem fell under martial law of TransJordan, and Gaza belonged to Egypt.

I wonder if the State of Israel hadn’t survived, how do we know that the Palestinian statehood movement would have formed and persisted? Would Egypt and Jordan have duked it out over the “Holy Land” if the Zionist dream had never come true?
What example of successful democratic struggle do we have in the Middle East? Jordan- a kingdom, Egypt- practically a dictatorship, Lebanon- overwhelmed by Syria, Syria- practically a dictatorship, Morocco- a kingdom, Libya- a dictatorship, not so many examples of democratically-elected governments representing the will of the people.

The point is, with Israel it’s complicated. It’s not apartheid South Africa and it’s not Communist China. To illustrate this point it is worthwhile mentioning the more than 5,000 African refugees in Israel right now, who have fled Eritrea, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and of course Darfur. These people have come to Israel in search of a better life, which they hear is possible even for them. And, because the Israeli people are making a big and welcomed-stink about the plight of these bonafide refugees, more and more receive work visas because Israeli individuals are demanding action from the Israeli government, and because Israelis, tourists and international volunteers are coming together to organize shelters and education and work opportunities for refugees (illegal and at the risk of being fined by government authorities) and language classes, these refugees have a chance at regaining -- and in some cases for the first time -- creating a life with dignity.

This is not a Jewish community thing protecting these refugees, this is an Israeli thing -- Israeli people and other international residents of Israel accepting Muslim, Arabic speaking African refugees. Is it frustrating that this same recognition of shared humanity cannot be extended to the Palestinians, indubitably, YES! And so, it does not make up for racist and dehumanizing behavior toward Palestinians, but before writing off the entire country to boycott, sanctions and divestment, try looking into the situation a little more deeply and seeing how there needs to be another answer to end the injustice.

Personally, I will celebrate Israel’s Independence. I will celebrate it in part in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the hell of Nazi Europe and also the nearly seven million others who were slaughtered by Hitler's forces for not fitting into the Aryan race, who did not have a safe haven to which they could flee.

I will celebrate Israel’s Independence Day as a reminder of the realization of a dream come true, a dream that all oppressed peoples of the world wish and fight and die for, at this very second as I write this sentence.

I will celebrate Israel’s Independence as a symbol of hope and possibility that because of the Palestinian Nakba, one day there will be a free Palestine and it will exist in independent imperfection, side-by-side to its equally imperfect neighbor, Israel.

Friday Shopping in Sderot

In the car ride south from Tel Aviv toward Sderot, the neighboring Israeli city to Gaza which is one of the populated places that the rocket launchers in Gaza have determined they can hit with unsophisticated Kassam rockets, each week, launched from the Strip, I started to make a list of things I wouldn't do if I lived in Sderot. Get my eyebrows waxed, go to a movie, go to a yoga class, make a dentist appointment or get a cavity filled, be in a crowded place, sleep.

When the red alert sounds throughout the streets of the relatively small City of Sderot, the people have approximately 15 seconds to take cover before the rocket explodes upon impact to the ground. So, I thought, I'd never want to be in a situation where I didn't have freedom of movement or to be in a situation where my mind would be less than alert, in the event that I would be in a spot where a rocket would land bringing indescribable pain to my life, or an end to it, for that matter.

A few miles before our first stop, the driver turned down the radio and Eitan recited the Tefillat HaDerech, the prayer of the traveler. We were, after all, about to enter some shady territory. Afterward, the radio was turned up and we continued to hum along to Neil Young's, "Harvest Moon."

Then, at Yad Morecai, a few kilometers outside of Sderot, we pulled to what may be the only gas station/rest stop/cafe/sundries store still open for business down that way, to use the toilet and apparently to join a convoy of other cars headed to Sderot to show solidarity with the people there, and to do our Friday shopping. About 30 other cars were in the parking lot of this rest station, a couple of news cameras filming people attaching Israeli flags to car antennas, bumpers, rear windows and side mirrors. Some were Israeli, a few tour buses with American and British Jews were also milling about the parking lot waiting for the convoy to head to Sderot.

The driver of the car I was in also connected a flag to his rear window with Eitan's assistance.

I thought to myself, "we are moving targets, maybe I should have brought a extra pair of underwear, a tooth brush, a sweater, more water??"

Soon enough, we headed out onto the highway toward Sderot, took our place in the line of cars, and began to drive. To my right there were signs for Erez Crossing, Nahal Oz-- the "front lines," as Eitan's friend explained to me, of the border between Israel and Gaza.

After a few miles of slow, parade-style cruising, we arrived at the sign welcoming us to Sderot. What struck me about the entrance to the city were the two get-your-teeth-cleaned billboards advertising dentist services. Snickering to myself, I thought how certainly teeth cleaning is one of the main concerns for the residents of Sderot.

Along with the rest of the cars, the driver of the vehicle in which I rode, joined the honking of horns in excitement and encouragement that we were among the few Israelis who have not forgotten the people of Sderot, and that we were willing to show our support for them with our cars and grocery monies. Meanwhile, I was in the back seat breaking out in a cold sweat because the radio was too loud and I have read that people in Sderot don't ride with loud radios for fear of missing the red alert. Also, I was advised to remove my seatbelt in the event that we had to evacuate the car quickly.

I then added to my list of things that I wouldn't want to do in Sderot: be sitting in the backseat of a small, two-door sports car, moving slowly, through traffic, with a loud radio blasting.

On the driving tour through the center, I noticed the combination bus stop/bomb shelters that serve to provide shade and also shelter from falling rockets. I also observed groups of old men sitting on benches with sun hats and canes upon which old hands rested, smiling and waving at us as we slowly drove by. Store vendors had their wares out on the street and outside a candy and alcohol store, a dj was (loudly) spinning his music. Children were collecting wood for the upcoming holiday Lag B'Omer in which big bonfires are made throughout the country and children compete to collect the most wood for the biggest fire.

In fact, it felt like a city-wide block party. Finally, our driver determined we'd done enough parading and committed to a parking spot. We went in search of food and decided on a shawarma spot with big bowls of pickled vegetables and fried eggplant, which are what sold me on the place. After which we did our shopping for things like hummus, challah, orange juice, lemons and yogurt.

While walking around Sderot, we received many smiles and "kol hakavod lahem" -- which translates literally as all the respect/honor to you. People were pleased that we joined them on this Friday, in some ways risking our lives to prove the point, for Eitan-- we shouldn't be afraid to go anywhere in Israel, for his friend -- I want to show the people that I care about them, and for the rest of the convoy -- as a demonstration against the government's inactivity for the ongoing situation befalling Sderot.

I had a few things going through my mind to which I attach no final say or judgment, just thoughts. First, orginially Sderot was something along the lines of desert wasteland where the Israeli government sent Arab-Jewish immigrants from North AFrica, where they lived in tents for a time until they were able to build a more permanent residence. Later, the Russians and the Georgians were sent there. Common thread among the Sderot populations, in Israel, "Israelis" discriminated against these new immigrants and didn't want to see, let absorb and take care of them in the more established parts of the State like the Center -- the surrounds of Tel Aviv. Second, if it weren't for the rockets and protest of the situation, why would anyone go to Sderot in the first place? Like many other towns and cities, that's just what it is, another town in Israel and thus, how nice for the businesses here to enjoy some extra traffic in this time of undeclared war. Third, war always succeeds in creating opportunity for ingenuity in money-making. The "I love Sderot" t-shirts and magnets are some examples of the war being good for economy theory. Fourth, not so many miles away, the streets of cities in Gaza were and are overflowing with sewage, and diarrhea epidemics are predicted to break out amongst the old and the young. Fifth, the people of Sderot live in constant anxiety and possiblity of terror and destruction, and sometimes the anxiety is reality. The Gazans, they live in terror and destruction constantly.

I wouldn't want to live in either situation.

The Nobility of War

As I was being led through a sun salutation this afternoon in a yoga class, my mind's focus wandered from simple breath and movement into the outside world where I am living. Stepping one foot from my hands and then another into a plank position, lowering down, hovering above the ground and into and upward dog and then a downward dog, I began to think about the sun salutation in terms of preparation for the warrior pose series. I began to think about the duty, function and form of a warrior. A warrior or fighter or soldier.

I'm living in a country that is constantly at war. War with itself, war with its neighbors and war with the world. In this land there are many warriors, noble warriors. Each day they don their uniforms whether of the I.D.F. or the Hamas, or the Fatah or the men in black coats and hats and women in wigs and head coverings.

There are other warriors here as well, less obvious to the world outside of here. They wear fashionable boots, tight jeans, highlight their hair, grease their hair, run on the beach, frequent cafes, bars and malls. They sit on buses and ride in taxis, they board trains and they walk the streets during all of hours of the day. Some of these warriors speak Hebrew, some speak Arabic, other Amharic, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, French or English.

A warrior is one who is designated to fight on behalf of his or her people for the purpose of perpetuating the existence of that people. In Israel, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in the de facto lines between East and West Jerusalem, there is no delineation between those who choose to fight and those who don't. We who live here are, either because we came by choice or because we were born here are forced to fight the battle for survival without any compassion from the outside world. Because there are those who sit in judgment of Israelis or Palestinians who try to envision a future in which people will coexist if not happily, than at least without bloodshed. I say these people have no right to continue the rhetoric of a fight for survival when they are not the noble warriors fighting, by choice or by circumstance, in this land.

Human history is replete with war. War history is a great source of the human being's hubris and dignity. The ability to look back at one's ancestors and feel full of pride that when a threat to survival arose, the warriors of one's people overcame the odds to continue the race, the population, the tribe, the nation.

Today in Israel and the lands of a future Palestine, we meet and read about warrior heroes every day. We are told of the warriors who uncover the tunnels from Egypt to Gaza, built to smuggle in weapons of destruction, weapons of resistance into Israel. These noble warriors collapse these tunnels, they root out the villainous diggers of these passages from their homes in Khan Younis, Gaza City, the noble warriors bring these men to a quick justice. When these noble warriors are finished with their job, they leave the homes of tunnel diggers in a shambles of tears and blood, ruin and despair.

When the noble warriors of Palestine penetrate the sovereign lands of the State of Israel and shoot the plainclothes soldiers of this place, they look heavenward in surrender of their life that has been sacrificed for the survival of the Palestinian people. When the soul of that warrior leaves its body, in its wake there are sirens, television crews, and horrified millions throughout the world mourning more loss and avowing revenge.

What I think is not understood by the Palestinian people and the rest of the non-Jewish international community is the warrior mentality of the Jew and particularly that of the Jewish-Israeli. Truly, all people throughout time have had to struggle for their survival. At different junctures in human time different people have been victims of scarcity -- material or spiritual. But the Jewish people have documented this aspect of its history and since the Holocaust have promised to itself, at all costs, even the cost of betraying its own noble principles, to survive. This is of course a generalization but it helps to explain to me the intention of the forces supporting and sustaining Israel today both here and outside. This is a people who has refused to be like everyone else. Refused to convert to Islam, to Christianity, to Communism, to Americanism, and so on. Yes, there are Jewish converts to other faiths, Jewish Communists, assimilated inter-married American Jews, but embodied in the force and tenacious clinging to the symbol of the Jewish State is the Jewish people who no longer bow down to any invitation of kindness. History has taught this people that there is no moral equivalency, the moral highground is the ground upon which the State of Israel is secure and strong, again, at all costs necessary.

The noble warriors of Israel are engaged in a battle in a very challenging time, a globalized time. In a time where technology claims to break down all barriers, a time where equality is allegedly available to each and every individual. A time where financially stable white people fly to Africa, to Central America, to Eastern Europe, to Asia, to help uplift the plight of those warriors not so well-equipped to fight their battle for survival. It is a time where it is not fashionable to fight for your own people at the cost of the well being of another. But the Jewish people who author and enforce the policy of Israel today, on the ground, are not being swayed, and I am not convinced that the outcome will be fortuitous for anyone at all.

There are warriors here who are all fighting for the same goal, the future of Israel. But their battle tactics are worlds, universes apart. And these camps of warriors attract different mercenaries from far off lands like the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.


Soon we discover that we do not know our true enemy and we start to call each other enemy, Jew against Jew. Israeli against Israeli. Right versus Left. One state versus two state versus no state. If we cannot see that goal of the war's outcome is the same on all sides then we have condemned ourselves, we have condemned our warriors to a perpetual battle, which we have the power to end.

It is the life purpose of the warrior to fight but at some point in evolution, I'd like to believe that the battle for physical survival ceases and the battle for the return of the interconnected but ever so fragmented soul will begin.

Dichotomous Living

I work for the Palestine-Israel Journal as the online content editor. This job involves trying to increase our online reach to a global audience and I had hoped, a more local audience in the West Bank and Gaza. Unfortunately, copies of the print journal are unable to reach the Territories because the mail going to and from is highly censored and often delivery is interfered. Weekly, we receive calls from Gazans and West Bank residents about their desire to receive and read the Palestine-Israel Journal and couldn't we find a way to help?

Over the past few months I've been researching and trying to implement the idea of the online subscription for the PIJ, but many obstacles have arisen. At present, the main block to accomplishing this task is that we are out of funding. The end of March 2008 signals the second month that my colleagues at the Journal will go home without pay.

Everyone except for me is going to the office as they live in or near Jerusalem, even though they are not receiving compensation for their work. At this time I cannot afford to make the commute back and forth without pay so I work primarily from home and I also have part time work at a preschool that offers me hours with pay. I have to take the job that pays.

This means that since the Jerusalem yeshiva shooting, I have not traveled to Jerusalem. I exist solely in Tel Aviv. I study Hebrew at cafes with rich chocolatey cafe mochas, walk to work in the afternoons, jog on the seashore and spend several hours cooking creative dishes from the weekly organic vegetable from a local farm that I pick up at a nearby Gan (preschool). I sit at my computer, I follow the news in Israel, in Tibet, in the States, return and write e-mails, practice yoga, enjoy the evenings with Eitan and relish the time I spend with two of my close friends here -- Clare and Anne-Sophie (fellow Israeli residents due to having an Israeli boyfriend).

In Tel Aviv, there is no indication of any conflict, injustice, difficulty or anything even hinting that Israel isn't anything but a thriving country with malls, restaurants, young, old, dogs, cats, too much pollution, tourism and a falafel stand on every block which reminds me that I am in fact in the Middle East.

In Tel Aviv, life is...normal. Sixty kilometers east, in Jerusalem, life has changed for a certain population.

Working from home means that any changes to the PIJ website or final edits and drafts of the PIJ newsletter must be executed from my living room in Tel Aviv via e-mail and telephone. I speak to my webmaster, Nidal, and we communicate about the appearance, content and the never-ending battle between my Mac and the PIJ PC computers that for some reason, do not receive files from me, that can be opened.

Nidal's first language is Arabic, his second is Hebrew, his third is English. At times, there are miscommunications. But we are friends and we laugh on the phone about our love lives, whether or not we've found the "one to give my heart to for all my life" and the frustration we have with our zany bosses. If something goes amiss with the website, we fix it and eventually the job gets done.

Nidal doesn't tell me that since the shooting in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva that he has trouble returning to his own home in the Old City when he goes home from work because there are heightened restrictions on the age and number of men allowed to enter the Old City on Fridays.

He doesn't complain or curse the State of Israel because the woman he mentions he'd like to marry cannot live here as she is a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship (and if he marries her and goes to Jordan he will have great difficulty coming home and may have his identity card revoked).

Instead, he is more concerned with whether or not I'm looking for a new job and how my love life is going and when we will see each other again.

However, my dear Najat, who challenges and loves me with each interaction we have, does share with me her life, post-yeshiva shooting. But not until this week.

Last week, she didn't want to talk to me, she was too angry, too scared and too upset to be living a reality she tries to forget, but which always forces itself into her face.

Yesterday I asked her how she was doing. She replied with a cheerful voice happy to hear from me and asked when I'd be coming to the office. Again, I asked her how she was doing and what was happening in Jerusalem. I heard her voice drop from sunny yellow to twilight purple. The laughter left her voice as she told me she did not sleep well the night before.

She lives near the neighborhood, Jabel Mukaber, where the yeshiva shooter was born and raised. Since then, helicopters are constantly hovering overhead searching for suspects. Najat's neighborhood is near to a settlement. Right now, each day and night, Najat, her family and neighbors are careful when they step outside as settlers are throwing stones at them and their homes.

Najat usually drives to work. The checkpoints between her home and the office (which are all inside of Jerusalem-- not in the West Bank) are too much hassle. She does not want to be harassed or stopped or questioned about something she has nothing to do with. She's taking the bus, it's safer and easier. She is tired and upset and completely unable to do anything about the situation.

We talk about these things after I've returned from a lovely jog with the sea breeze blowing in my face, while I wait for the boiler to heat up the water for my shower.

Jerusalem Shooting

The news about the shooting which killed 8 students at the Rav HaCook Yeshiva in Jerusalem spread throughout Israel quickly. The first rumors I heard were that the perpetrator of the killings was actually a suicide bomber from East Jerusalem that blew himself up. The man who opened fire in the yeshiva library was in fact from East Jerusalem, but he had a rifle and not a bomb apparatus.

There are a few things about the incident to which I have an ongoing reaction.

In every article from "peace" or "alternative" news sources, I find an effort to contextualize the situation, to allow the reader to understand how and why it is that a man could go into a library in which students are studying Torah and murder them in cold blood, knowing full well that his own life was at stake. Before the contextualization however, comes several sentences iterating the horrific, inexcusable nature of the crime. I believe Barak Obama called it a "cowardly" act and others called it heinous, some British media labeled the incident as the moment the peace process died. Condemn the act strongly before offering analysis that seeks to educate the public before it is slammed back into the black and white comprehension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Is it necessary to lend adjectives to the shooting that reassure the reader that in fact, this media source is not justifying the incident in order to keep them reading?
Are not the facts of the event shocking enough-- a Palestinian East Jerusalemite who drove to the yeshiva, got out of his car, shut the door, cocked his gun, went into the library and sprayed bullets at students whose blood filled the floor of the library, the books they were carrying and, as some news sources showed pictures of Jewish prayer shawls soaked in the blood of the victims?

Why is it necessary to condemn an act of terror in so many words, in order to be allowed a platform, or rather, hope for listeners to a platform that explains the between-the-lines of a story?

How about we swallow the facts, as bitter, huge and nasty a pill or pill-cocktail as they may be? One people's villains are another's heroes and vice versa. I believe this is a fact both the people here and those involved internationally have to understand and really integrate into their approach to life here, living in conflict and hoping for an end to it.

What would happen if a news article read something like -- brave Palestinian citizen sought justice by single-handedly attacking a yeshiva today, sacrificing his own life to draw attention to the continued control of the Palestinian people by Israel. Families, teachers, friends and the people of Israel are shocked and bereaved by this incident. Hopes are low for a continued peace process as the event illustrates once again how superficial the Middle East peace process really is in the consciousness of the people -- Israelis and Palestinians.

And what if the story continued to relay more facts -- the young Palestinian man found hope and sustenance in the teachings of Hizbollah and Hamas whose cry for a free Palestine from oppression of the Zionists and America allowed him to find a purpose for his short life. In an act of selflessness he took matters into his own hands in what he must have believed was his contribution to the struggle for nationhood and an end to the oppression about which he has learned and lived since his birth.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem are becoming more and more difficult. Palestinian residents of the Old City are not being allowed into their homes as a result of the security restriction keeping men younger than 45 from going to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Delays at the checkpoints have been increased and general harassment of Palestinians is continuing at heightened levels.

Meanwhile, back at the yeshiva and the massive funeral processions to bury the teenage victims of the shooting, rabbis and community leaders are declaring the just cause of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. One mother of the victims demanded that eight new settlements be built in memory of the eight youngsters killed while studying in the yeshiva. The stereotypes are proven true-- they want to kill us and they do and we want them to be pushed out, so we will.

Nearly a week later, news of Prime Minister Olmert's consent to continue settlement building in the West Bank is surfacing. Defense Minister Ehud Barak snubs a joint meeting with a Lieutenant of Defense from the United States and Mohammed Abbas' Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Jerusalem as part of the ongoing peace talks agreed to at Annapolis in November 2007.

On Facebook I'm receiving requests to join the "Remember the 8 Who Died at the Yeshiva".

I speak to my co-workers in East Jerusalem and I hear heaviness and an unwillingness to talk in their voices.

Events such as this polarize the publics both near and far. Any moment of clarity that accepts that a drastic change on the ground must occur and quickly becomes fogged over in the re-experiencing of a story line lived too many times before.

In these situations everyone is losing, no one is safe, the well-being of all parties are at stake.

A crime was committed against children in a yeshiva and I'm not even willing to call them innocent because at this yeshiva they are taught of their god-given right to the land of Israel and therefore their right to remove Palestinians from the land.

Conversely, an act of terror was committed to upturn any sense of stability and to reinforce the fragility of the safety of the Israeli public, by a Palestinian.

The action and the reaction perpetuate the violence cycle here and if you take a side, you too -- I also -- perpetuate the cycle. In the end we all lose-- our sense of security for the Jewish State, our hope for a free Palestine, our dream of coexistence, our dream of dominance, our dream of justice.

The only thing that endures is the fighting.

Being Human is Enough

Different Israelis have different opinions about being Israeli. Naturally.
There are those with immense national pride. There are those with great guilt and shame. There are Israelis with resentment of a condemning world. There are Israelis whose lives are not affected by that upon which the world is focused in this region but rather, and simply, their own lives.

But what most fascinates me, or gets thinking sometimes is the generation of Israelis that are my peers. Young, educated, pursuing professions in medicine, law, engineering, product design, journalism, linguistics and so on and so forth, who are not interested in being Jewish. They know the stories of Purim and Hanukah, the traditions of Yom Kippur and Rosh HaShanah. They are aware of the customs and practices and rigid, manipulated rules of the religious community. They do not keep kosher. They shake their heads at the aspects of Judaism that may sound strange to someone on "the outside."

They are not concerned whether or not their partners are also Jewish or whether or not they will raise families and grow old in Israel. They are not concerned with the Zionist dream, and definitely not with the more religious Zionism that is prevalent today.

But they are Jewish and most of them are Israeli because their Jewish families fled from Eastern Europe before or during or after World War II. Certainly, particularly among the families of European descent, reasons for coming to Israel stemmed from too long a history of anti-Semitism. Different rules for the Jewish people. Different opportunities for learning, discrimination in schools. State and local government organized sabotage of businesses, talent, revoking of property and other rights of ownership.

These Israelis are the descendants of families who created the modern State of Israel. Perhaps their grandparents were religious in that they kept kosher and attended synagogue, married only other Jewish people and envisioned a future for the Jewish heritage, in the land of Israel. Perhaps they weren't. Perhaps they were the cultural Zionists who wanted to revive Hebrew as a modern language and simply create a haven for the Jewish People because no matter where or what era, there always seems to be a problem for being who they are.

A voice inside of my head speaks when I meet Israelis not interested in being Jewish. It says something along the lines of, what a shame it is that the parents and grandparents of some of my Israeli contemporaries sacrificed and chanced their lives to come here where they could be Jewish. What a shame that one, two generations later that which they held so dear and that which was the cause of ostracization from other nation-states is so easily tossed aside for a secular existence.

The voice asks, doesn't the ancient Jewish heritage of which you are a part mean anything to you?

Then another voice makes itself heard. It asks, is it their humanity or their Judaism that was and is more valuable?

In the Jewish community-at-large there is, at some level and in some communities more than others, an underlying message of the fear of extinction. That through intermarriage and rapidly reproducing Arabs, as examples, the Jewish People, the Jewish Race will gradually decrease and threaten to disappear. But, is that why the Jewish People had and have a right to a land of their own?

It's a strange stream of thoughts that I am having in which the reason there are Israelis today, the ones whose families came here before World War II and because of World War II, is because their families were fleeing persecution for being Jewish. Human but Jewish. Now, these young Israelis, who are also Jews are eschewing their heritage because it no longer, in most of the world, is a hindrance to the pursuit of their dreams and aspirations. The very thing contributing, literally, to some of my peers (Israeli) existence is something they very adamantly wish not to make as a part of their lives today.

I wonder how this plays into the conflict. The humanity of today's "other" (in this region at least) the Palestinians. People who deserve a land not in my mind because they are Palestinian but because they are people with human rights that the majority of the global community, at least on paper, has agreed to work to promote and uphold.But apparently we don't see each other as simply but most importantly human. We "deserve" independence because "we" are Palestinians, because "they" are Jews or Tibetans or East Timorese or Kurdish or Kosovar and histories of each other's inhumanities to one another are what merit a people's right to sovereignty, when enough other people who have power manage to influence more people to take action to get the deprived and persecuted people some safety and respect on territory upon which they can create or rebuild the present and therefore the future.

And all these clashing aspects of identity -- that fill the newspapers, academic journals, books, seminars, think tanks, policy groups with material for critical analysis and evaluation, as the causes of the conflict, the obstacles to explore and negotiate in order to get beyond impasse become less salient and precious once that goal of self-rule is attained. That people fight with everything they have, their survival instinct, to be "who" they are as a "people", only to achieve that goal of self-determination as a Jewish people, for instance, so as to have the choice to simply let it go.


I don't quite understand what I am getting at except maybe I'm tired of finding reasons translated through the language of history, religion, politics to express why I believe there should be an Israel, why I believe there should be a Palestine. Isn't it enough that we are human and expect to have the same rights to life as those of our neighbors?

Living the Ugly Truths

I arrived here last February to start an internship that I knew would challenge my faith and my opinion of the Jewish State of Israel and consequently force me to scrutinize my people, the Jewish People and its management of the much-longed for State of Israel. I knew that coming across unlimited volumes, websites, books, journals, magazines, newspapers and people dedicated to exposing the injustices that occur here both against Palesitians and Israeli citizens as well, would shatter any romantic notion that I retained about Israel as a place where people came together to create something different from the rest of the world-- and that I wanted to be a part of it as a Jew.

In spite of the fact that I had prepared myself for accepting ugly truths, I don't think I understood what it meant to continue to live among the ugly truths.

I found a diary that I wrote in when I was ten years old. In it there are short paragraphs describing my desire to be helpful to the world, to make it better. To do good-- perhaps I even used the words human rights, I can't remember specifically now. I mention this because sometimes I think I'm a great fool to continue trying to do what I said I wanted to do when I was ten. Sometimes I wish I was in computer software or engineering or fashion or bookkeeping, something that would allow me to do my job 40 hours a week and be content with going to the mall, watching television programs on the weekends and the occasional opportunity to travel.

If I were pursuing any one of the professions mentioned above, I would find a decent paying job in Israel. I would live in Tel Aviv, as I do now, unabashedly throw myself into continuing to fall in love,and thus be able to ignore the constant state of violence being carried out only a few hours drive from where I am. Perhaps I would be able to see the conflict in black and white and I would fall asleep at night, trusting that the army and the government of Israel are acting in the best interest of the people and what they are doing is in the interest of my security and those of my neighbors. And when I read in the newspapers of arrests of Palestinians in the night, and young children killed in the soccer fields of Gaza because their people launch rockets from them and the children become casualties when the Israeli army retaliates, I would maybe accept that this is how it is, and no matter what the world says in condemnation or concern, Israel has to defend itself.

But every day, I read several news sources, each one more illuminating but simultaneously confusing in their descriptions and analysis of how and why decisions are made to manage the occupation or to defend the nation.

I get really worked up about all of this each day because I'm used to doing good and feeling good about it. In the States, when I helped Tibetan Buddhist nuns, or made a donation to the Heifer Foundation, planned a screening of documentary about Tibet for Students for a Free Tibet, it felt very satisfying to plan and execute a project. To receive the acknowledgment for the efforts and to be assured by employers, executive directors, peers and professors that my work has made a difference.

Here, I can work and work and work at "doing good" well, but at the end of the day, when I put my head on the pillow at night, another soldier is barging into the home of a Palestinian family, another alarm goes off in Sderot, giving the residents 15 seconds to take cover before the rocket explodes on the ground. For all the "good" work that I attempt to do and that of my colleagues in other organizations of peace making, we don't make the decisions for military incursions or high alerts at the checkpoints. We are not the commanders that set the examples of dehumanizing Palestinians, we do not teach lessons of tolerance in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms. Even though hundreds, perhaps thousands of people are working for peace in Israel and the Occupied Territories, it is one rocket, one suicide bomber, one assassination that can transform the tentative stability of today into chaos.

And the people here are so accustomed to this cycle of violence, the imagination for something different, something better that a return to bomb shelters and self-fulfilling prophecies is unbearably absent.

And there isn't much that I can do about it.

I can make my home beautiful. I can light Shabbat candles, eat sweet challah, put flowers all around and buy vibrant rugs from Egypt from a vendor on Dizengoff, but, unfortunately, it doesn't satisfy this persistent desire to witness a change, to be here for the reconciliation of two peoples that the world seems to thrive upon their misfortune.

The Lesson in the Daffodils

Last Friday I bought a bunch of narcissus flowers, miniature daffodils, that perhaps I'm not naming correctly. I gave the woman at the flower shack,which is open only on Fridays in the hours leading up to Shabbat, 20 shekels. She wrapped the long green stems and golden to pale yellow flower cups in brown paper and handed them to me. I took them home and split the bouquet in two, one for the kitchen and a smaller bunch for the bathroom.

For the past few days, as I sit and write at my computer-- the earthy-strange fragrance of the bulbs wafts my way. It is both a pleasant and unnerving smell. At first I think something has rotted in the vegetable basket not too far from my makeshift work station. Then I catch sight of the flowers and I'm mezmerized by their beauty and recall that the scent is derived from their bulb origins, their relatives include the onion and the shallot, so I presume.

Over the week I've seen buds come into blossom, emerging green from the stem, moving into golden yellow petals in teardrop shapes, reaching higher out from their base of the tall glass in which they sit.

Just yesterday, as I contemplated these flowers, I decided that I was, in fact, witnessing their moment of full blossom, full bloom. Each flower pushing into the next, the scent fuming from the center of the flower, captivating me from a moment of otherwise intense thoughts. As I reveled in the gorgeous wonder of these bits of nature, I realized that having reached the zenith of their growth, the flowers had served their purpose, and soon they would begin to wither, dry, fade and decay into brown paper like leaves, stripped of their strange and intoxicating scent and their exterior breathtaking beauty.

Later in the day I walked to Dizengoff Center. At long last, I entered the twice-weekly flea market filled with artifacts from British Palestine, Yemen breastplates, Judaica silver and other bits and pieces of history and human accessories.

At a Yemeni woman's table, I found a stack of postcards. Postcards from "Beautiful Palestine," images depicting the Zionists of the 1930s and early 1940s -- muscular, bronzed men digging up the fields, preparing the soil for abundant production of vegetables; radiant, ruddy-cheeked women plucking oranges from trees; a community in the hills of Gilboa dancing a Hora.

These were images of Israel, of the Zionist dream before it became a reality in the eyes of the world. But for the people living in the dream state, the actual state had already been created by their purpose to inhabit the land and make it ripe with possibility of a people's fecund future. Israel, still green in the stem, some buds moving into blossom, while other aspects of the to-be-born nation only just revealing its character to the world. There is a purity of strength, of beauty in these postcards, an innocence in being, much like that of the cut flowers in the tall glass in my kitchen.

But that sly moment has arrived in which the brown appears at the edges. The petals, the people are losing their luster. There are wrinkles and creases where once complexions were smooth. Like the flower cut from the field at the base of the stem, where the State of Israel stands now, in shallow water, shallow opportunity to improve what is, the image of great beauty ingrained in the memory, in the knowing-- that's once what we were... But the reality is much deflated, much drained of the vibrancy that once it possessed.

Reflecting on the Crisis in Gaza

Reflecting on the Crisis in Gaza
by Heidi Basch

If you've been following the news reported from Israel in the past two weeks, aside from the now-released Winograd Report determining the culpability for the Israeli Defense Forces’ failure in the Second Lebanon War of Summer 2006, the biggest story is the ongoing crisis in Gaza.

This week, Israel finally went through with its threat to drastically reduce fuel supplies in response to ongoing rocket attacks on Sderot, sending most of Gaza into an electricity emergency in which hospitals had to close down most wards save for intensive care.

Again, coming to the rescue of the people, Hamas blasted several holes in the border wall separating Gaza and Egypt, allowing a reported 500,000 Gazans to pour into Egypt in search of basic items, like food, drinking water, and cigarettes (for resale).

A border was blasted, and partially obliterated between the country of Egypt and the Gaza Strip. How interesting.

Mark Palmer, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary when Communism collapsed, wrote a book in 2005, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators. In his book, and in his speaking appearance to my colleagues at the New England College in the Winter of 2006, Palmer claimed that to overthrow any regime, any dictator, or simply to cause the change desired, half a million people need to hit the streets and maximize the media's coverage of the event.

A group of human beings of that size simply can't go unnoticed or unaddressed if the world is watching.

Considering the aftermath of the blast of the Egypt-Gaza border wall, I'm thinking his hypothesis is exciting but hardly accurate. In Gaza, I'm pretty sure not a whole heck of a lot has changed.

Today, Israel's Supreme Court rejected an appeal made by the Israeli peace movement to lift restrictions on Gaza that are causing undue harm to civilians. And, moreover, the Court declared that according to the evidence presented, Israel is acting only on behalf of its defense from a militant force in Gaza that is purposefully targeting innocent Israelis, and that Israel may continue to cut fuel supplies as it sees needed so as to eliminate this threat to security.

What else? Israel isn't going to fix the blasted wall because, officially, it no longer occupies Gaza, but it appears that the Egyptians aren't in any particular rush to patch the holes. President Hosni Mubarak knows that if he hurts the Palestinians or makes a move that could upset the opposition forces in his own country led by the Muslim Brotherhood, he may be faced by more than a half a million citizens only too ready to kick him out of his post by force. In this case, possibly Mr. Palmer's formula may prove successful. It hasn't happened yet (emphasis on the yet), so we can't make any conclusions at this point in time.

Returning to the topic of the Gazans and their success in gathering Mr. Palmer’s critical mass number for change, in fact, slowly, they will no longer be able to visit the promised land of water and food, Egypt. The Egyptian government is forcing the small towns near the border to shut their shops and demanding that owners not resupply to meet the needs of the day-travelers from the Strip.

Fascinating, that the Palestinian historical narrative will one day recall this event as something of a miraculous incident in which the fighters of Hamas managed to overcome the obstacles to survival, allowing the people of Palestine to be saved from starvation, as they fled into the land of Egypt-- as opposed to from the land of Egypt.

Meanwhile, Israel's worst nightmare is coming true as tens upon tens of Palestinians are going from Gaza to Egypt and back with weapons that they usually have to transport in underground tunnels. How convenient.

Just Saturday, Egyptian forces intercepted 20 Palestinian men trying to enter Israel through the Sinai. They were carrying explosive devices for use in suicide bombings.

Still, I'm wondering if Hamas set a precedent this week for all the struggling peoples of the world. If you've got the explosives, you can explode your way into a better life, or at least some relief for the time being. Is world order or the semblance of it that we have today really so precarious?

Could I do something like that? Get the explosive power to enable 500,000 people or more somewhere to acquire the basic needs that I need only a few Israeli shekels and my two legs to walk me to the store to get?


Winograd Report http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/middleeast/31mideast.html?th&emc=th

500,000 Gazans http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1201465090913



Israel’s Supreme Court
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/middleeast/31gaza.html?ref=world

Muslim Brotherhood
http://i-cias.com/e.o/mus_br_egypt.htm


20 Palestinian Men
http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-17035-israelnews-egyptian-security-forces-nab-20-armed-palestinians-explosives-sinai