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.