Myth – “A popular belief or story that has become associated with an … institution or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal.”

The following is a collection of short stories about my own myths and those of others I’ve encountered; those of Jews and those of Arabs; and finally, their causes and their consequences.

Norman Finkelstein speaks of justice for Palestinians and bemoans Israeli aggression in a packed, tense and confrontational auditorium. Outside, Jewish Defense League protestors walk about in yellow reflective gear. With both hands stretched out in front of them, they hold Israeli flags almost as a shield. The attendees largely ignore them, filing by quietly. Inside, a few presumably Jewish hecklers interrupt Finkelstein with shouts of “traitor!!” while the hostile crowd shouts them down. I am uncomfortable and tense as I take a seat near the back with some friends. A young Arab man sits down beside me.

“I’m saving the seat for a friend,” I tell him.

“Sure you are.”

“No really I am. His name is Ibrahim.”

“Okay.”

That was all – he wouldn’t talk, respond or move after that. The man settles into his chair wearing a kind of stony smirk with one side of his lips permanently curled up. Did he really think I was lying? Was it that I was selfishly hoarding space? Or is it that I just don’t like Arabs? Did his cold smirk represent some kind of satisfaction at standing his ground in the face of the supposed racist-who-doesn’t-want-to-sit-beside-Arabs?

The Palestinian narrative. My construction of that narrative is based on limited and peripheral exposures – one or two Palestinian scholars, some books, one or two Palestinian friends or acquaintances, the vitriol printed on the internet (especially Facebook), a few movies, the documentaries showing hate-filled Palestinian television shows and finally, the University of Toronto’s annual Israeli Apartheid Week. In these ways you are made aware of the narrative’s lexicon: al naqba, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, prison, shame, uprising, resistance, jihad, shahada (martyrdom). I hear these words and it makes me apprehensive – like I’m alternately being told that my myth is violent and that the best way to defeat it is through violence.

The other day I watched an Israeli commercial where, to the tune of YMCA, an Orthodox rabbi leads his flock in song and dance decrying the coming of Hi-Defintion on the Israeli satellite network: “H-D-TV…where the shiksas look well, you will all go to hell, or in Hebrew, Yishmor Ha’el (God save us)…” It was funny and while no one likes to be at the butt end of a joke, especially in this case by the Israeli secular world, I was incredulous to read one Orthodox corner comparing it to Hitler’s portrayal of Jews. But what do I think of these self-contained communities, of the men walking in 18^th century garb who probably couldn’t identify me as Jewish on the street? Is their Israel also my Israel? Is their religion also my religion? And who decides what that religion encompasses? The rituals of day-to-day? Spirituality? Politics? And yet, there is something warm and safe about the Jewish community. I feel that it is more than a shared educational experience or a common set of traditions, something intangible. Where does that come from? Do we still feel Hitler’s comprehensive permanent labeling, like the tattooed numbers on Auschwitz prisoners – you couldn’t convert to escape? Maybe, but I think it’s more than that. And there’s something spiritual I just haven’t accessed.

I leaf through Palestinian texts in the library while researching for a paper. Some of them are devoted to precisely determining the total losses inflicted upon the Palestinian people during the ’48 and ’67 exoduses. Including emotional trauma, one book assesses the monetary value at over 1 billion. The story is so different from the one I grew up with. For the longest time, I was taught and sincerely believed that the Palestinians fled on orders from the Arab governments, fully expecting to return to their homes.  Ibrahim says, “750,000 Palestinians were kicked out of Palestine and they can’t return home because it is now a Jewish state.  I would have to describe ’48 as ethnic cleansing.” I want to be sensitive to Ibrahim’s position, as well as to the truth, but the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ makes my stomach turn.

In a crowded room in the isolation and wilderness of my Jewish high-school retreat, we watch video clips of Palestinian children training for jihad, encouraged by Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Mickey Mouse, spliced between shots of human remains after suicide bombings in Israeli cities. “Occupation 101” (i.e. the Israeli occupation), which I saw years later, is uncannily similar in tone and style to the documentary from that night in the retreat – complete with the montage of innocent laughing children denied their innocence by the evil Other. The shock from the documentary is followed by a spontaneous emotional appeal for unity and we defiantly sing “Am Yisrael Chai!” as we dance around the campfire, arm in arm. The Hebrew phrase “Am Yisrael Chai” literally means “the nation of Israel lives”, but it is hard to convey in English the whole meaning. It is a defiant statement, as if to say that in spite of History, in spite of You, whoever You are today, we endure. That day it was Yasir Arafat, Islamic Jihad and Hamas. In my history classes, it was the Romans or the Greeks, or the Crusaders. Later that year, when we sang that song in Polish towns made judenrein during the Holocaust, it was the Nazis.

We went into a hookah bar in Brooklyn late one Saturday night. The place was empty except for the guy behind the counter, the owner, a man in his late 20s. We order the pipe and before long he sits down and engages us in conversation. Turns out he’s a Palestinian history teacher. My (Jewish) friend seems intent on making a connection. The bar owner tells us he doesn’t think much of Yasir Arafat. Or Ariel Sharon.

“But what of the Gaza disengagement?” my friend asks. “Some people argue that it takes a strongman, like Sharon, to make peace.”

“Well, it’s probably like the way you think of Arafat. We just can’t ever think well of Sharon because of his past. Sharon, anyway, is part of the old-guard Israelis, like Netanyahu.”

“And what do you think of Olmert?”

“Well I liked Itzhak Rabin. Olmert, he isn’t part of that old-guard.”

It’s late, I’m tired and I begin to take a back-seat in the discussions, tuning in and out. The man’s grasp on history and politics, it’s similar but somehow also fundamentally different to my own. I wonder about his background and upbringing. Do we each live in our communal spheres of what-we-know, venturing out only occasionally? The talk shifts to the World Wars and its casualties. There is some confusion about how many people died and which country was involved in what war. My friend is arguing that the Allies weren’t quite perfectly moral, killing thousands of German civilians in bombings. My full attention is returned upon hearing the bar owner-history teacher say, “You know, I don’t want to offend anyone. But, I don’t think six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.” He pauses, “maybe six million total, of all kinds of people.” On the one hand, the statement means nothing – the ignorance of one man about the numbers murdered. On the other, it means everything, belittling the scale of your Other’s suffering – a denial of respect, of humanity.

My family gathers around the dinner table as talk turns to news of the recent bombing of a Tel Aviv bus. Anger and disgust washes back and forth though no one says very much. Someone says “it’s because we’re Jewish. They’ll always hate us.” While the sentiment certainly resonates, I can’t help but feel that it’s another moment turned into myth.