Well, here we are again. Conflict with Gaza. Three thousand rockets in nine days. Because a fleeting taste of normal life, with in-person school, synagogue, and group exercise classes as we emerged from coronavirus anxiety, was too much to handle.
Moreso than the rocket fire, which is mildly annoying where I live but crushing (15 seconds to get to shelter, nearly constant bombardment) to cities and towns to my south – “How do they get groceries?” I demanded of Taxman, “How do they go to the dentist?” – a few things have been different and worse this time, versus what I remember from 2014 and 2012. The racial strife within Israel has turned violent and is terrible. This will take a long time to recover from and needs a huge reckoning. The leadership vacuum is enormous here. I hope someone is willing to step in and try.
Also worse is how demoralizing social media is. It seems like many people cannot separate Israel from Netanyahu, Gaza from Hamas, citizens from combatants. History (50, 100, or 1000 years ago) from the present. Nobody wants to hear that Jews are also indigenous to exactly the land that Israel sits on. We have an archaeological record nonpareil, but it is inconvenient, so ignored or denied. Nobody wants to hear that the Palestinians got a raw deal from Israel but also from Jordan (anybody know they role they played in Sheikh Jarrah?), from Syria, from Lebanon. What a pickle, right?
That picture from Anas Baba for AFP is going to win a Pulitzer, I am sure of it, but now we have the liberal papers (Washington Post!) in America and the UK saying that the Iron Dome is doing too much heaving lifting. Saving too many Israeli civilians. Making the conflict longer. (If MORE buses had blown up in the Second Intifada this could have been resolved already, tsk, tsk.) I mean, really, it would be easier if 7 million Jews from here just up and vanished, but then how many journalists from the huge Jerusalem bureaurs of said newspapers would be unemployed? That would surely be a crisis of its own.
Speaking of up and vanishing, I have a theory. A lot of people are disgusted by the courting of evangelical Christians to support Israel. After all, they want us here so we can die in their Armageddon or whatever. But here’s the thing: we, Jews, don’t believe in that. So we can have their support and they can think what they want; we aren’t obligated to manifest it for them. It’s like if your toddler decides they are a puppy and have to eat under the table. YOU know they are not a puppy, but you would like them to eat dinner, and if they floor gets a little messy, you just ride it out. So again, we have the evangelicals hoping we “die” (at some future point) but a lot of liberals seem like they would be ok with us dying like today or tomorrow or fairly imminently — this is what free Palestine from the river to the sea means — so it doesn’t seem like that hard of a choice?
It’s looking very scary out there in the world for Jews right now. The videos rolling in from London, Paris, the US. At least here I have a safe room, where I will be holed up with my aging dog, my husband, and my kids, who are barely hanging on (one has seen some shit on Tumblr; the other one has been returned to zoom school, for his safety, and is surprisingly unhappy about it).
I am so full of rage and full of sadness, and I don’t know what to do. And I am tired.
Anyway, in closing, I don’t think I am the worst person you know? I might be, though. I haven’t justified my existence enough, I haven’t personally removed Netanyahu from office; I haven’t disarmed Hamas; I haven’t solved the conflict; and I haven’t been willing to die. Not for this.
* In case you do not follow me on Twitter, I need to state:
– I want the Palestinians to have their own state.
– I want Israel to take better care of its minorities, and I want loads more minority-majority interactions.
– Civilians should not be in danger at all, never mind dying. It’s awful. I hate it.
– Going from one trauma to another is a terrible way to live, no matter what the trauma is, who you are, where you live, and how you pray, or don’t.
Leave a comment