i am certain this diary will slip right down the right hand side...and will garner little in the way of attention or comment.
nonetheless, as i - a jew - watch the middle east burn from half a world away, i can think only, as i have for 17 years, of one person.
he's a palestinian friend of mine, though i don't know a single thing about him.
flashback to 1989, my 17th year, and a trip to israel with the b'nai b'rith youth organization (a jewish youth group). i had no interest in israel, as i recall, but i had a particularly strong interest in girls, a lack of parental control, and a country in which i would already be of legal drinking age.
most of the trip is a blur. i can picture certain things: kibbutz gezer, the sound of muslims being called to prayer at 5:30 in the morning in east jerusalem, beer sheeba, eilat, the day when we got real scrambled eggs for breakfast (instead of vegetables, bread and nutella). still, i feel a connection to israel and am old enough now to know i always will. but i feel just as much a connection, even now, to a man who is living somewhere in the west bank. if he's even alive. and it's that man who permits me to ignore just about everything i hear, from either side, about the conflict and, in the words of joyce, fly right over the nets of history.
maybe it will do the same for someone out there. maybe it's progressive prattling. maybe it's naive. maybe it doesn't matter.
at some point during my trip, our bus stopped at a waterpark or oasis of some sort. i have no recollection of where it was, though i wonder if it wasn't in the west bank (some things aren't so important when you're young). we, the cream of jewish america's new crop, got out of the bus bright eyed, with our flip-flops, college t-shirts, and walkmans. as usual, i decided to take my soccer ball with me when we went into the park (only a 17 year old who had played soccer for all of 10 months would decide that he had to fill 10% of his packing quota with this object, but i digress).
once in the park, i noticed a group of palestinian boys playing soccer with a basketball. i eyed them for a half an hour and then just walked up and asked if i could play, too. they were happy to let me in, and even more happy to play with my umbro ball. i don't remember anything about the game.
after a while their parents called them over and i went back to my towel. within a few seconds, at the parents' urging, i was invited to join them for a meal. there was meat, i know that much, and it was good. but the language barrier was pretty high. and when the meal was over, i felt uncomfortable - not because i was unwelcome, but because i was 17 years old - and wanted to rejoin my friends.
as i got up, thanking them, one of the kids said something to me that i'll never, ever forget. he grabbed my arm gently and said that all he wanted to do was play soccer for the palestinian national team but there was no palestinian national team: israel wouldn't allow it.
he didn't scream. he wasn't angry. he just wanted to tell me that. he wanted me - i wasn't george bush, sr., but i was a hell of lot closer to him than anyone else this boy had ever met - to know that single fact before i flew back to my comfortable, privileged life in the states. it wasn't a message in a bottle, but it was damn close.
what does one say in response to that?
what does a 17 year old say in response to that?
i handed him my soccer ball. i told him - and i repeated this three or four times so he wouldn't forget (as if he needed any confirmation) - that it was a gift from an american jew.
and then i felt like crying. because i was 17, and i got to have such dreams, improbable (ok, impossible) as they were. and he did not. and only a 17 year old boy understands how important such dreams are.
since then, i've thought of him often. in times like these, i think of him every day.
is he now a member of hamas? did he blow himself up on a crowded bus in tel aviv? was he killed by an israeli tank? and every single time i wonder such things, i also wonder whether his life would have been different, whether the entire middle east would now be different, if he just could have had a national team to play for.
don't tell me how much the arabs hate.
don't tell me how much the israelis kill.
i don't care. i'll never care. the military and political future of the region is subject to the whims of those in power, on both sides, and i have no interest in playing armchair general. for those, on either side, who feel differently i only ask, politely, that you move back and do whatever you feel you must.
however, if you do go back, first please find him for me. and tell me that he is alive and safe. that his kids are now playing with my soccer ball. that he hasn't forgotten me, either. and - most importantly - that every time he, like me, hears somebody rant and rave about how wicked the other side is, he interrupts them, corrects them, and then goes back to living his life as best he can.