15 Seconds at Sunset

I went for Shabbat dinner last night at an Israeli friend's house. She had recently returned from a month-long visit in Israel. She told of watching a magnificent sunset one evening with her two kids. They were within 10 miles of the zone. The zone that gets 100 missiles a day from Gaza. That's more than 4 every hour according to my math. As they were engrossed in the divinely inspired canvass, two fighter jets flew overhead. She and her family watched the bombs regurgitate from the steel mouths of the planes. Then the ground rumbled, like an earthquake. Consequently, they saw 2 missiles leaving Gaza towards Israel.

A friend of hers heard the sirens screaming over the loud speakers "Red Alert, Red Alert, Red Alert." Her friend knew she then had 15 seconds to get to the safe room. She grabbed her 2 year old child and ran to the "Safe room", their bathroom, with it's concrete walls and no windows. As she closed the doors, a missile hit, sucking out all the windows in the rest of the house.

This mother told me friend, "I couldn't take it anymore, so we hightailed it to a northern Kibbutz". Unfortunately, that kibbutz has been constantly bombed with the newer, further reaching missiles.
I asked my friend how she was able to not get confused in the mayhem? How could she continue to resist the actions that Israel is taking while being surrounded by so much devastation?
She told me that the continued bombing and killing on both sides have gotten the peace process no where. It has strenghtened the Hamas radicals. For the last three years, Israel's mission was to suffocate Gaza and weaken Hamas by placing an embargo on food and medicine and cutting off water and electricity. In their desperation, People have been more than willing to give their wasting away bodies to the cause that will grant them martyrdom.
What might be the solution to this massive spiritual, physical and emotional crisis? She said she didn't know. Maybe Israel should start flooding the area with financial assistance. It seems that when people are in better economic standing, when their families have sustenance and do not fear for their lives, they tend to be less willing to join radical factions.
What will it be then? A newer, better, far-reaching bomb or truckloads of food and medicine? Which would your child rather eat?

Backstab, Backlash and Back to Basics

I was ousted yesterday out of the Tribe of Israel. I apparently am no longer a Jew, not a good Jew anyway, but this is not the first time. I've been disowned before for other reasons. It was no fun then either. It was downright demoralizing.
My parents' vehement adherence to supporting Israel's actions at any cost has fractured the earth between us. Now there is a chasm widening exponentially as moral obligations are cast out the window, like six-pack holders in a sea of otters. I am at a loss as how to stop the Earth from splitting, as I look to a barren landscape for any material with which to build a bridge.
The sad thing is that I understand this mentality. It is the mentality of War. It is the mentality of a people who have suffered tremendously out of ignorance, greed, hate and exclusion and who have not yet, figured out how to heal from all those traumas in the face of more trauma. It is a life lived in a visceral contingency in which there is always an enemy lurking, waiting for the "weak" link in the fence in order to attack.
The odd thing is that I thought I came in peace. I truly believed that I was advocating for all people, and that this was the right thing to do. I prayed for everyone to stop fighting, insisted that all children be safe, begged that all blood to remain inside intact bodies and believed that all of us ought to have those basic human rights. For that, my own kin, unable to break from a divisive dual thinking, labeled me Anti-Semitic, Anti-Jewish and An Arab Lover. Haven't we been here before?
I look at history and think of other struggles between members of the same family and remember the discord and dissonance, the ripping of relationships, the battlegrounds soaked with loss from Florida to Maine. How did they ever come together? Did they? The Yanks vs. The confederates.
I still hear the scarred language pepper the Northerners' stereotypes of the Southern folk. I am certain the latter has a few misconceptions about the Yanks. Many of us still have some pretty confused ideas about the peoples that were here before we even landed on this continent. Are we bound in patterned chains that will continue to keep us from freeing ourselves from repeated injuries?
So what now? How do I reach to the baffled, appalled, angry family members who feel I am no longer one of their own? How does one stand for what one believes in when one's community is at stake? How far does one go in her convictions when the choice is not very choiceful? I take comfort that I am not the first or last in this dilemma.
Once again, I ask you all to take the hands of all whom you love, and all whom you feel that you don't (that's just confusion), and let us start with one thing we have in common- Let's begin with a single breath.

Gaza Cousin, You are my Kin!

This morning, once again, my heart is exploding, breaking, shards flying throughout my body and brain. Shrapnel has lodged itself in my head, another in my neck, a third in my back. Yet, many in this world cannot see the internal fragmentation of the spiritual collapse. I keep trying to dodge the bullets, the torrents of fear, the hate that is spewed on the email pages from people I love. My parents and friends, colleagues and the various organizations to which I belong, are sending a myriad of opines about Gaza. I am furious. I am appalled. I understand and I am confused. I ache spiritually, emotionally, physically and I am not, technically, in a war zone at all.

I make my Peet’s French Roast coffee, while my “cousin”, (as we Israelis refer to our brethren Arabs), on the other side of this imploding planet, eats the visions of carnage for her dinner.

I am a Jew, an Israeli who fights daily to remember that we are all human, in need of connection. I must choose minute by minute mantras that support love, compassion and trust - All those feelings and actions I have been taught to walk away from in order for my people to attempt to survive in a world that does often blame us for anything and everything.

That does not mean we, an oppressed people, are not culpable of wrongdoing at times.

Blame is passé. It’s futile and stunting. All of us are doing our best with the tools that we have. Some of us have very little tools. But, to me, it is unacceptable to point the finger at another, waiting for them to change, so that my own life can change.

What is my role as my cousin loses her home, her children or her desperate, trapped, Jew-hating brother? Do I wait for his hate to subside? Do I support the killing of his body spurring his spirit in a hundred others like him? Do I let understandable, yet inhumane, patterns of exclusion, fear and loathing be the swords of perceived justice in my name?

Absolutely not.

How can I bury my Palestinian cousin with a bloody hand and plant with the other an olive tree on her grave?

This is not a choice. We are all on the same side. The human side.

To call my cousins by any other name is to sign an endless war pact. It is short sighted. It is anti-human. It is an abomination.

I have been called naive. I have been told that I have been “Americanized”, an immigrant who has lived in the safety and ignorance of the American media sheltered from what Israelis face daily. It’s true. I left Israel when I was ten, but at the age of seven, I was in the bomb shelter, wondering if my parents would return from the front. Particular sirens heard today still make me hold my breath and feel as if an attack is imminent. The talons of war are deeply embedded and tear across the years, oceans and cultures.

I am confused often by the clashes of “information” from the left or the right. I experience anti-Semitism from the most loving of people and find allies in the most unlikely of communities. I may not be the most knowledgeable Israeli. I may be the most gullible of Jews. But for me, to live in the black or white, the “choose a side”, the “us “vs. “them”, the trust-no-one-because-they-will-knife-you-when-you-turn-around, is not only a way in which I choose not to live, it is detrimental to my hopes for all people. It is contradictory to my living fully as a human, not separated from any other. It is a way that I refuse to teach my children who would be bound to repeat this cycle of violence, apathy, terror and hopelessness.

No, I must reach, no matter what, to my grieving cousin. I must look in the mirror and ask myself: What will I do today to stop the destruction of the temples which we all inhabit?