Until recently, Israelis could ignore the Occupation. People led normal lives: they drank their coffee and ate breakfast in the mornings, drove their kids to school, worked from 8-5, and went hiking on weekends. People did reserve duty, and some had relatives or friends who were killed in the line of duty or in terror attacks. But a majority, it seems, was able to keep the “conflict” neatly tucked away.

In recent years, something deep inside the Israeli consciousness has begun to rumble. Life is hard, really hard, now. Not because of suicide bombers (because they’re being stopped), and not because of the fighting in Gaza (unless you live in Sderot or one of the communities surrounding the Strip). But because every day Israelis from the lower and middle classes are finding it difficult to live regular lives.

We may be safe militarily, but we can’t pay rent and we don’t have enough food to feed our kids and keep them healthy.

Leftists in Israel tend to blame everything on the Occupation. It annoys me. It’s a convenient flick-of-the-wrist, a nice little scapegoat for all of life’s problems. But the longer I’ve lived in Israel, the more I believe it. It’s obvious, staring at me in the face every day.

If Israel were to withdraw from the Territories, it could provide its citizens with a decent standard of living: better education, promising jobs, and worthwhile lives. The Occupation always usurped funds that could have been used to better ends, but the difference now is that it’s not only affecting the poor – middle-class Israelis are feeling it too.

But the Occupation doesn’t act alone. It has a trusty ally.

With the same fervency Israel looks to the military for salvation, it has adopted capitalism – not just regular capitalism, but a freakish form of neo-liberalism on speed.

Starting in the 1990s, the government started chipping away at the social security net at an unprecedented rate. Israel now has an astonishingly wide income gap. The poor are VERY poor, and they are mostly minorities such as Arab Israelis, Druze, and immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. A majority of lower and middle class Israelis are caving under soaring housing costs, declining education, and higher health fees.

For about a year now, certain neighborhoods of Jerusalem have been referred to as “ghost towns.” When the second intifada petered out, foreign buyers snatched up the city’s prime real estate, but now only live there about one month of the year – during the Jewish holidays. Glossy ads beckon the world’s good Zionist Jews to invest in real estate in the center of our eternal capital.

A sardonic article in a Jerusalem Weekly recently described a scenario in the year 2027 wherein Hebrew University student from Tel Aviv got stranded in the central Rehavia neighborhood, after making a wrong turn. It was after dark, and she started to panic because the neighborhood was completely deserted: no residents, no corner stores, and no restaurants. Just empty luxury apartments.

Besides the eerie quiet, the most painful result of this trend has been a sharp increase in rental and housing costs. The price of an apartment in Jerusalem has doubled in some cases in just a few years, and renting an apartment in central Jerusalem is nearly impossible because demand is so high. Those of us who have succeeded in finding a place live in relatively poor conditions. Landlords don’t paint, fix minor to moderate problems because they know there are 20 people behind us ready to take our place, who won’t complain about the leaks in the faucets or cracks in the windows. In Tel Aviv, the scenario isn’t much different. That’s the price of living in the city.

As for education, the teachers’ strike in Israel is at once alarming and a ray of hope. Forty-five days and going strong, maybe this strike will be the one that reforms the dilapidated education system once and for all. But probably not. The state will likely raise meager salaries somewhat, and the teachers will strike again next year.

Either way, students have been out of school since mid-October. Parents are annoyed, students are bored, and Israel’s education standards continue to shoot downward, according to international measures.

The state of higher education, too, is bleak. University students and their professors also strike fairly regularly. “Olmert, education is not real estate” is their clever slogan, referring to our prime minister’s favorite – and only – form of investment.

It’s hard for students to pay for higher education, but once they’ve graduated it’s even harder. Teaching positions in academia are rare, and it’s virtually impossible in many fields for a PhD to find a university job because budget cuts limit spaces.

Israel’s graduates, disenfranchised, emigrate in droves in search of ANY opportunity, leaving the country short on intellectual prowess. The lucky ones who do get a position in Israel will end up striking for a good part of the academic year anyway. If brain drain isn’t enough to make a country insecure, I don’t know what is.

When it comes to health, we’re quickly approaching what Canadians call a “two-tiered” system: quality care for the rich only. Human rights groups are fighting the state’s attempts to provide incentives for health funds to operate as for-profit organizations. It plans to introduce a fifth health fund shortly to increase competition.

The result: the sick get sicker, and the poor hope not to get sick. Israel’s most marginalized populations – such as residents of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev – do not have access to ambulance service and the nearest clinics are not connected to a regular electricity supply. That means they can’t get the medications and proper tests; their health care dates back at least a century.

What’s more is that Israel has one of the world’s most enlightened body of labor law, but enforcement is nearly non-existent. So not only is our pay the pits, most of us are exploited. And despite all the increases in the standard of living, our salaries remain the same.

I’m not the first to say this. Members of Israel’s Labor Party elected Amir Peretz, a former union leader, to lead them on a social platform in 2005. Peretz promised an increase in minimum wage and a plethora of social reforms.

The “social revolution” was quickly shot down in July 2006 by Hizbullah’s Katyusha rockets on the North. During the Second Lebanon War, we were all focused on the welfare of our husbands, brothers, and sons, and that of the residents of the North and the kidnapped soldiers.

When it was over, we realized that nothing had changed. The cost of living was still too high, the education system hadn’t improved, and investigative reporters on TV told us that our hospitals were unprepared for the last war and would be for the next.

Even bomb shelters were not adequate in most towns. Some Arab communities didn’t have any shelters.

The transformation from a welfare state to a free market economy is never easy. The poorest and weakest are inevitably left behind.

But here in Israel we have the Occupation, too.

Most countries don’t earmark a large chuck of their budgets to Occupying: to sending reservists and soldiers to guard groups of caravans on hilltops, to patrol Palestinian homes and markets, and to subsidize businesses and communities solely because they are beyond the Green Line, at the expense of the rest of Israelis.

If the state would funnel a fraction of the funds spent building homes and improving conditions for Israelis living beyond the Green Line on better salaries for teachers or medications, life would be better. Many of us could get by a little easier.

The Occupation coupled with unbridled capitalism has efficiently whittled Israeli society down to a brittle skeleton. We’re a nation of poor, exploited, traumatized, sick, and uneducated people. The “security above all” mantra won’t hold much longer. Something has got to give.

Israel must withdraw from the Territories for the sake of its own citizens, if anything.

Not because there will be peace, but because the Israeli government could do what all states should do: maintain law and order and ensure the welfare of its citizens within its borders.

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This piece was originally published in Yalla’s First Edition in 2004.

From our makeshift office in the garage of a large house, we have a commanding view of Irsal Street, one of the main streets coming off the central Manara and heading straight toward the Muqa’ta (Arafat’s compound). APC’s (armoured personnel carriers) are stationed right below us, preventing people from going down the street to protest by the Muqa’ta. There are maybe ten or twelve soldiers. Not one can be older than 25. There is some stone-throwing in the Manara and five of the soldiers walk toward it with imposing presence to frighten the young men into submission. It works, not that the resistance was particularly aggressive in the first place.

One of my colleagues and I stand above this scene and watch. There is a group of young children all huddled up near the soldiers. No stonethrowing, no yelling. All is quiet as the sun beats relentlessly down. The kids approach cautiously, perhaps dazzled by the power of guns and machines. The Israelis let them be. Perhaps out of boredom, perhaps out of a desire to be seen as something other than an occupier.

The kids make a huge advance which elicits a loud “Khalas!” from one of the soldiers, and the kids slow down their pace. Two soldiers go up to them now and all of a sudden, they are actually talking. Some young men approach and join in. As if they are all human. And it is almost possible for Anita and me to forget what the military uniforms and guns mean and to see only young people talking to each other. The normal here is so extraordinary that it keeps you hostage to its intensity. Ahmad joins us as we watch this scene being played out, this interaction between occupier and occupied, between young soldiers and those who resist them, this moment where—perhaps—everyone has decided to live outside the conflict that has shaped their lives.

The Israeli soldiers, sensing the kids’ desire to approach and touch the APC, decide on a more organized method. They take the kids, two-by-two, and show them the inside of the APC, talking to them all the while, probably explaining certain things. There is nothing we can say. What is this that we are seeing? It goes on and once all the kids have seen the APC a cart with fresh bread comes by and the kids pull the soldiers so that they can buy some. And the soldiers do.

They bring the fresh bread back to their APC, but on the way one of them takes a piece and offers it to a Palestinian child. The little hand reaches out, perhaps out of hunger only, but is quickly stopped by the volley of “No!” that rises up from the crowd. And that is the limit. Talking, yes. For a moment interacting, yes. Seeing soldiers as young men and laughing with them, ok. But taking food from their hands—no. That cannot be done. And all the kids agree on this.

And for a split second, I think I can see sadness on the face of that young Israeli soldier. As if his place in the larger scheme of things has just come back to him violently. As if he understands that he cannot be both occupier and friend in one. He walks back to his comrades.

And that exchange of friendship will have been in vain.

Teargas is shot from further down the road and finally makes its way up to us with the wind. Our eyes well with tears as we make a dash back to the office. Later on in the day, we find out that a young boy has been shot dead. Maybe killed by one of those soldiers. Maybe not.

And those moments outside conflict will have been in vain.

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From the moment my plane touched down at Ben Gurion and I felt the blaze of the Middle East sun for the first time, I knew I was at the onset of 30 days I would never forget. My memories of Israel are indeed great ones – the cosmopolitan intrigue of Tel Aviv, the rolling hillsides of Jerusalem, the majestic seascape of Haifa. But within the broader mental pictures are smaller, and in a way, more meaningful moments – the lights of Emek Refaim Street dimming at Sabbath, crowded public buses careening down narrow streets with reckless abandon, the cleansing sting of the Dead Sea. If the whole equals the sum of its parts, my 30 days of fragmented experiences piece together to form something remarkable.

But, there is an outlier, a flaw in the picture. Perhaps “fragmented” is an appropriate descriptor of it all.

Traveling independently, with my own funds and free of scheduling obligations, I ventured where Birthright would never take me: the West Bank. Standing at a bus stop, the bricks of the Old City hovering on the horizon and a deadly heat radiating off the highway pavement, I boarded a minibus that 20 minutes later had me face to face with the wall – yes, that wall – on the edge of Bethlehem. Disembarking the vehicle and walking (tentatively) toward the massive structure, complete with rusted barbed wire and ominous towers, I passed through the series of indoor turnstiles and ramps that landed me in a queue line. I knew these places existed, and equally knew the vitriol-strapped arguments surrounding them: security fence, separation barrier, land grab, open-air prison. Call it what you will because in this moment, standing in the stark reality of a hot-button issue, I’m not thinking about semantics.

Letting my eyes wander, I immediately take notice of several faded posters tacked to the walls – posters produced by a travel organization advertising tourism in Israel. The pictures are familiar – a beach with the Tel Aviv skyline in the backdrop, an eagle-eye view of Jerusalem highlighted by the Dome of the Rock, blissful vacationers thwarting gravity in the Dead Sea. Nothing I can argue with, seeing as so far I have loved all of these things. Who wouldn’t?

The obvious issue here is we are not in the lobby of the King David Hotel. We are in a checkpoint, and while I find it somewhat humorous, some undoubtedly find it infuriating.

Looking past the shoulders of those ahead of me, I see what looks like an airport customs station – an agent sitting behind glass with a computer, having the passers-by flash their passports or IDs, then sending them through. I feel nervous, but with a glance at my passport, I am reminded of an important distinction: I’m American, I’m Jewish, and I’m in Israel. There is nothing to worry about.

But I’m not in Israel. Not here, not in this line.

As we inch forward, I notice other Western tourists and I, perhaps arrogantly, assume that up until now, they were unaware they would have to cross into Palestinian territory to see their Christian holy sites. Or at least, even if they did know beforehand, they were not expecting the military presence.

The line continues to progress and I get a better look at the guard sitting behind the glass. He looks to be about my age, maybe a little younger, and if he wasn’t wearing an IDF uniform I would probably guess he was actually Arab. He looks kind enough – wide eyes, bright smile, making quaint jokes with people, tourists and Palestinians alike. I’m starting to feel more at ease.

Now it’s time for the woman directly ahead of me to pass through. I estimate she is middle-aged, maybe in her forties, and is returning from a day of work in Jerusalem. Her shoulders are slightly hunched forward, weight shifting back and forth from one leg to the other, dark under her eyes, exhausted, like she has been awake for 24-hours straight and worked every minute of it. The daily grind of passing in and out of this checkpoint seems like the last thing she can tolerate.

The young soldier motions to see her ID. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small plastic card and presses it on the glass, her eyes sending a signal of, “How do you not recognize me by now?” Before he has given her the go-ahead, she starts to put the card away when he bluntly snaps something at her in Hebrew. She freezes and looks at him perplexed, uttering a timid question back. He returns with the same harsh tone, pointing at a finger-scanner in front of her. She looks down at it, pauses, then looks back at him and says something, this time with annoyance. Without blinking, he repeats himself in a raised voice, pointing sharply to the finger scanner. My Hebrew is not advanced enough to understand the conversation, but I know what is happening.

Defying his orders, she doesn’t move. He stares coldly at her, daring her to delay even another minute. After a tense moment, she glances at me, her tired eyes meeting mine. I look back at her, frozen, unsure of what to do as I watch her embarrassment.

She breaks eye contact with me, looks down to the finger scanner and with a quiet sigh, presses her thumb on it. The machine makes a beeping noise and the soldier is satisfied. Shooting him one last glare, she passes through the final turnstile and to the other side.

Now it’s my turn. I hold up my passport, he sees the letters “USA” printed loudly next to my picture, and gives me a cheerful thumbs-up, complete with a Cheshire cat grin, followed by a heavily-accented, “Have fun!”

30 days in another world and the most vivid memory is that of a woman, old enough to be my mother, looking back at me, the tourist, the outsider, the hapless voyeur, witnessing a brief but palpable moment of humiliation as I pass freely into her country.

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Dipping bread, fresh from the oven
Olives, from our garden, pressed to oil
Biting goat cheese
And chilled watermelon
Red, White, Green, and Black
Palestinian evening
On the balcony
Watching the sun set
As the minaret’s azan fills the air
Calling people to prayer

Jerusalem is so close
Yet so far

We can see
We can hear
We can taste
When can we touch?

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I thought I knew this city. Countless times in past years I have walked through its narrow alleyways on tired feet, on anxious feet, on feet crowded by the presence of many others. I have walked here, past these thick limestone blocks on my way to buy a book from the silver-haired clerk, on my way to pray at a wall currently a hopeful remnant of something greater, on my way to read in a quiet corner, unifying text with its origin. I thought I knew all the joys these ancient streets had to offer and what rooftops were ideal for city-gazing at the aerial boundaries between us and them. I thought the whispers heard escaping from the cracks between the stones were all that was to be heard.

But I was mistaken. Because walking through these alleyways with you is like walking through a city I have never seen before; a city, that is slowly becoming our own. I never saw that playground on the lower right side of the parking lot—empty at the time of day we pass it together—a resting playground, tired after its hot day in the sun. I have sat in this corner illuminated by bright yellow-tinged lights, the one overlooking that looming beige wall promising to one day be something greater; a corner with a clear view of the black and white anarchy below. I’ve been here, of course I’ve been here. But sitting on this black, porous bench with you transforms this place into something excitingly unfamiliar; as if the hours I spent sitting in the corner across the way, is from another lifetime altogether. A lifetime before you.

We pass by the young yeshiva students, sitting there for what seems like years on end. They sit by the orange telephone booth that’s surprisingly still in use, on slabs of concrete I once sat on in the center of the square. They are making jokes and playfully pushing one another. The clothes have changed with the passing fads, but the jokes and conversations are the same, hovering in a spiral above the entire square. The conversations, the singsong rhythm of the familiar voices, now feel distant, for I have left my makeshift concrete stool for a bench with room for two.

You say there’s something incomplete about that sweet-faced young girl in a baby blue Bnei Akiva shirt. People are meant to walk with a partner, you say. See? That couple looks different. You can sense the difference in their postures, their joint posture. They, are a team, you say looking directly into my eyes, stopping our stride in the middle of the pathway. Just like us.

Tonight, the stones tenderly whisper words in my ear that I’ve never heard before. So accustomed to listening intently to these voices, I am surprised because their tone has changed completely. Once they spoke of idealism and religious fervor, but tonight they speak of love and devotion to a place and a person I never want to lose. Perhaps the whispers are yours, traveling from your lips to my waiting ears, for I can no longer tell the difference between the collective voice of the stones and our own. But I think they’re praying with us, also hoping this will work. They’re hoping that the spell this city has placed on us isn’t limited to a specific time and place, but that we will stay in this place forever.

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I am caked and soaked
In the debris of the Diaspora
Its banality hangs off me
Like rusting anchors underwater
Like heavy clothing rack hangars

Monotony lulls and deceives
Ennui engenders apathy
Here in this idyllic paradise
Knowing only the peacetime season
Ticking according to civilization’s clock

Hooray! for tedium in all its dreariness
Bravo bravissimo! for its sheer boredom
A tiresome land slumbers softly
Blissfully ignorant of offshore concerns
Indifferent to homeland dreams shipwrecked at sea

Drunk on dullness
I twitch open crusty eyes
Apprising motherland happenings
Disrupting kinsmen oceans away
Lacking the luxury of languor

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She will walk on somewhere
to breathe onto this new flag,
she will bet for a glimpse of your eyes
for this land of senile sensation,
she will turn her back, cover her tracks
to forget her nude body,
she will ask her heart for a moment
for a scene of this walled time,
she will burn slow foreshadow
of the auction of a broken welcome,
she will envy this inbred nation
to embrace her chained son.

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When an Israeli travels abroad there are two questions that are certain to await him upon his return; the classic “did you get me my Marlboro lights from the duty-free?” and the more ominous “So do they hate us there?” No matter the vacation destination, a sense of paranoia lingers with Israelis that nobody likes us. In France they’re anti-Semites, in Germany they’re closet anti-Semites and in Sweden they’re blond anti-Semites. Regardless, they all hate us.

The recent nomination of the Israeli movie “Waltz with Bashir” for an academy award has sparked much debate about how it depicts Israel to “the goys”. The movie is an animated journey into the director, Ari Folman’s recovered memory of his experiences as a soldier in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The film portrays the absurdity of the war and culminates in his witnessing of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian civilians perpetuated by Christian militants.

But public debate in Israel, for the most part, does not treat the film as a mirror of our reality, then or now. It seems that what pre-occupies most Israelis is what those French and German “anti-Semites” must be thinking about us now. Beyond the tough façade, just like a teenager who’s rejected by his popular peers in high school, there is nothing more that the common Israeli wants then being let into the cool gang.

There is no doubt that “Waltz with Bashir” is cinematically impressive and if it were to win an Oscar, all Israelis would have taken pride. The point of argument regards what outsiders would think of this. There is a popular syndrome among Israeli travelers that, regardless of their opinions, once they step outside their small nation they are transformed into unofficial ambassadors. This film poked peepholes for foreigners into the collective experiences of many Israelis, and some don’t like that.

Many critics have attacked Folman for portraying the massacre out of historical context, neglecting the fact that the atrocity was the seventh of such retaliatory actions between the communities. Others have expressed resent that the film frames the devastation wrought upon Lebanon with the backdrop of Holocaust trauma. However, the most prevalent criticism of the film is that it stirs up more anger against Israel and Jews in general.

Those adopting this position would prefer that we don’t hang our soiled underpants for the neighbors to see. Such a critique is fundamentally flawed, since it implies we are aware of our wrong-doing and are more concerned with concealing it, then fixing it. There is a disturbing fringe expression being thrown towards Ari Folman and others who criticize Israel publicly – a self-hating Israeli. Paralleling criticism to self-hatred is a dangerous path, especially in a democracy facing as many challenges as Israel.

But let’s forget all that, the movie made us popular with the cool kids for a while, so let’s party with the French and Germans filmmakers and pretend we’re one of the cool kids … until reality calls us up again.

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As a child, I grew up very religious. I discovered my faith at a fairly early age, and at 15, I reached a level of piety that makes me quiver now that I look back at it. I never missed a prayer, not even the discretionary ones. Every day, I woke up at dawn, performed the cleansing ritual and then scampered to the half-empty mosque next to my house to do my fajr prayer.

It was at that mosque where I grappled with a bitter cognitive dissonance: On the one hand, as a universalist raised in a secular home, I saw people of all races, religions and nationalities as equal; but as a devout Muslim, I was convinced that Islam, for some reason, transcended all other religions. “God, please aid us to victory against the Nasara and the Jews”[1] the imam harped every Friday.

Luckily though, one of the key skills I was taught in school – a cornerstone of the systemic religio-nationalist brainwashing all Egyptians are subjected to as children – was the Orwellian art of Doublethink: the ability to relieve myself of any internal conflicts by simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs.

However, as time passed, logic caught up with me. I could no longer escape the obvious, so at 17 I banished religion and nationalist politics from my life[2]. I had finally become disillusioned with the congenital dogmatism that infects Arab culture – a rigid, stubborn mentality etched into the brains of all Arabs that breeds unquestioning loyalty to authority figures and an absolute uniformity on all worldly subjects.

In the years that followed, I made some attempts to get into politics again (encouraged by my mother, who worked indirectly with the government at the time[3]) but I couldn’t muster the interest.

One day, just 2 weeks after arriving in Canada, with no friends and little to do, I decided to buy a book on the infamous six-day war, the Naksa – not to be confused with Nakba which was in 1948[4]. It was a topic that, unlike the 1973 war in which Sinai was recaptured from Israel, never made it to the Egyptian history textbooks, so I knew very little about it except that it was a national embarrassment that belongs in the dustbin of history.

As I sifted through the pages, blatant distortions aside, I realized that if I were an Egyptian publisher I wouldn’t touch the topic with a ten foot clown pole either.

After all, who would want their children to learn that Egypt couldn’t stave off an invasion by a country 1/70th its size with an army half the size of its own?

By the end of the book, I was finally able to grasp the emotional trauma that Egyptians must’ve felt at the end of the war (especially considering that all during the war, they were being told we were on the verge of victory). Concomitantly, I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy, if not admiration for Israel. And that made me very uncomfortable.

At the time, I knew that the author of the book, Michael Oren, is a well-known right-wing lobbyist for Israel, so I thought it fair to look into Egyptian accounts of the war, and so I read Mohammad Hassanain Haikal’s Al Infigar[5], which unfortunately did little to alleviate the shame. Aside from that, I found that his account of the Yom Kippur war later in the book deviated wildly from the school history textbooks which seemed to suggest that Egypt spared Israel out of mercy.

As the disappointments mounted, I felt it was time to recoil again into apathy. And so, for about 2 months I stopped reading or talking about politics altogether. That was until January 2008 when Gazans breached the Rafah border crossing and flooded into Egypt to escape the prison they call home.

Having been in Egypt at the time, I saw for myself the public reaction (a slew of hateful xenophobia), which left me stunned and disgusting. For a country that lists the “Palestinian cause” high on its list of priorities – it’s actually the only uniting Arab cause – it sure was enlightening to see how hostile people were toward the fleeing Gazans. The whole debacle brought back memories of the Sudanese refugees who set up camp in one of Egypt’s biggest squares to ask for clemency only to get gassed and deported under horrendous conditions by security forces, all to Egyptians’ content.

It was at that time that I finally truly became aware of the tragedy of Palestine.

And so I dove into the subject and started reading furiously about it. The more I did, the more outraged I got. In the first couple of months, it consumed me. I watched tens of hours of documentaries, followed blogs, attended seminars, and wrote about it in my university paper. Essentially, I became an activist, something I never imagined myself to be in a million years.

Two years have passed since then, and I have toned down my rhetoric (for security reasons), but an indelible mark has been imprinted upon my ideology. I can never find it in me to accept the names Ashkelon, Bersheeba or Ashdod. I still refer to them by their Arab names: Asqalan, Beir al sab’ and Isdud. And however hard I try, I can’t find it in me to feel much sympathy for the civilians who live in these towns.To me, Palestine doesn’t symbolize anything, since I don’t identify with it religiously or ethnically as do most Arabs. But it represents one of the greatest injustices in modern history, not unlike the holocaust.

Some Jews might admonish me for that statement, thinking perhaps I’m equating the plight of Palestinians to the Holocaust, which I’m not[6]…but so what if I am? The words “Holocaust” and the name “Hitler” are a fundamental part of every right-wing Israeli politician’s vocabulary, using them constantly to draw comparisons with Iran’s nuclear ambitions or to refer to Muslim leaders.

In my view, one crime against humanity, regardless of its scale, does not warrant another.

Nevertheless, I have come to accept Israel, on pragmatic grounds. It’s not a difficult conclusion to reach once you brush off the religious zeal that impairs logical judgment. However, in the Arab world, where the word ‘Jew’ is a pejorative and the mention of Israel sends a shudder up people’s spines, there’s much to be done on the grassroots scale before diplomacy should even be considered, and that burden falls on our[7] shoulders.

For that, we will need two things that are in short supply in the Arab world: Free speech and common sense. The first will inevitably be available in the years to come. As for the second…well…only time will tell.

__________
[1] In Arabic: “اللهم انصرنا على النصارى و اليهود” is a common ‘prayer’ that is said near the end of every Friday khotba (sermon) in some mosques; it is followed by “amen” from the crowd
[2] That doesn’t make me atheist
[3] My mother is not an active supporter of the ruling party. She’s only a civil servant.
[4] Both words mean the same thing: disaster
[5] الإنفجار: حرب الثلاثين سنة for those who are curious
[6] I don’t rank crimes, especially on this scale
[7] Meaning Arab youth

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Yalla Journal is a forum for creative reflection on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yalla Journal neither endorses nor opposes the opinions expressed on this site.

As the old adage goes, honesty is the best policy. The reader should know that this piece is as honest as I, the author, could make it. These are my honest opinions, subject to change, and every word is written without any intention of appeasement towards any party.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is an emotional issue for me. This fact undoubtedly shades my judgment. My attempts to reconcile my reason with my sentiments have left me confused. I should start by describing my primary feeling when concerned with Israel. If one were to ask me what it is like to be in Israel, or what Israel means to me, the only appropriate answer I could give would be a smile. Israel gives me a feeling that I cannot verbally describe; it is simply a smile.

I am frustrated. In Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men, the author seeks to explain Israel’s behaviour against Palestinians by comparing Israel to an abused child who grows up to abuse others. I do not believe this is correct. I think the Israeli psyche is better understood when one considers that the nation was born in a posture of self-defence. This posture has traumatized its development. I am in disbelief when I see Israeli government policy become blatantly heinous. Recognizing the government’s odious actions is especially frustrating for somebody that wishes to advocate for Israel. However, not to necessarily condone or defend all actions, but perhaps certain actions are more easily understood when one considers that the government is in a state of ceaseless paranoia.

I used to think I was completely unbiased towards Israel and its affairs. After all, I have lived my whole life in Canada. Although I have been raised as a Jew and a Zionist, my parents are well educated and have taught me to believe that clarity and politics never coexist. I now realize that not only am I not an impartial third party, but I was (am) naive. Israel is a country like any other. Its government has made mistakes, both internally and externally, and it will continue to do so. It is a common misconception that Israeli society is homogeneous. It is not all Jewish and Israeli Jews are not one big happy family. There are tensions between the secular and the orthodox, between the Ashkenazi (European Jewry) and Sephardic (North African/Middle Eastern Jewry), between the sabras (native Israelis) and recent immigrants, and between the Ethiopians and whites. There are Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Palestinians, Druze, and Bedouins, to name a few, and there are degrees of tensions between all parties. It is said that every Israeli can hold his/her own in a political argument. Every Israeli government has been a coalition, meaning no single political party has ever had a majority in the Knesset. Israeli government policy is rarely unopposed by the Israeli citizenry.

There is little doubt in my mind that there should be a Palestinian state. There is no doubt that every new Israeli settlement in the West Bank serves only to aggravate the situation. There is no doubt that the wall, which, if reasonably built, may have been a viable security option, has otherwise served only to demonstrate the Israeli government’s greed. The Israeli government shares the responsibility for the deplorable living situation of most Palestinians. I am frustrated.

Why do many consider the Israeli camp as being fluid, being completely responsible, its leadership (or change therein) being that which makes or breaks every accord? Why is Palestinian representation so static? In the early nineties, Israel recognized the PLO as the Palestinian ruling body. Aid was given to Palestinians as well as the ability to self-govern, yet little changed. In fact much of the aid money either went to fund military training camps for children or into certain people’s bank accounts. There still exists a whole system of propaganda in Palestinian schools, where hate towards Jews is part of the curriculum. Clearly there has always been a lack of infrastructure in the West Bank, and it was irresponsible of those who provided aid (namely the United States and Israel) to not insist on accountability for pecuniary allocations.

In short, it is everybody’s fault. But the blame lies mostly on the respective governments and their inability to have a certain degree of foresight and priority.

It all seems very damning. Sometimes I feel guilty for loving Israel. Sometimes I feel I am putting a selfish need for a Jewish homeland ahead of humanity. The justification for a Jewish state (that is, a place of sanctuary for Jews everywhere) perhaps takes a cynical mind, even more cynical than that of the protester. It is not prudent to think that Jews are safe everywhere in the world. Though I think it unlikely that anything of Nazi proportions would ever happen towards the Jews in western countries, anti-Semitism will never fade and Jews are still openly persecuted in many nations. Israel is tiny and the world is large. I know it is convoluted and confused; there are so many factors involved, many that are not addressed, and many that are too subtle to change with such grand implements as accords and treaties and documents of all sorts.

I am for humanity. I am for justice. I am for Israel.

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Yalla Journal is a forum for creative reflection on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yalla Journal neither endorses nor opposes the opinions expressed on this site