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.
