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

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.

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.

The angels descending
and ascending.
Soldiers walking on water.

January: To be a Jew and an American, to be so egregious to say: when I left the United States and came to Israel, I left one diaspora and entered another. I am a diaspora Jew, a landless, people-of-the-book Jew. Homelands make me nervous. But here I am in Israel. Looking up the Hebrew word “galut,” meaning diaspora, in an English-Hebrew dictionary, I see that the adjective “galuti” is translated as “ghetto-like.” I suppose that’s how Israelis like to remember the diaspora.

I can’t remember when I became Jewish.

It could have happened when God’s divine handiwork gave my parents their third child. It technically happened when my dear foreskin was stolen from me just eight days into my existence. It even might have occurred when I stepped up to become a man, albeit a barely pubescent man, at my Bar Mitzvah when I was 13.

Growing up, the subject of my heritage seemed taboo and shameful. Not because being Palestinian is any of these things, but because the prevalent sense in the schoolyard was to belong, not to be different. People did not understand Palestine; where is that, why have I never heard of it?

On September 18, 2005, the Palestine House had a cultural picnic in Mississauga and celebrated it as a fundraiser for Palestinian children. It was a time for getting together with family and friends. I invited an Italian friend and a Barbadian friend to come along and, as I realized later, to “watch.” There were two underlying themes to this event.