(Warning: This post contains Israel. Those of you who are violently allergic to all discussions of the Middle East should refrain from reading further, for the sake of your health and my sanity. Thank you.)
I apologize in advance for the disorganized thought process at work here. I'm sure some of the comments will make me regret posting, but here goes anyway...
As many of you have already deduced from my signature, I am a Jew. I was born in 1987 to a Jewish mother and a "spiritual," Gentile father. Dad converted to Judaism when I was twelve, but he has never really understood the whole "Israel thing". To him, it was just some foreign country. To my mother and I, it was home, albeit a home we couldn't personally remember living in but felt a deep and abiding attachment to nonetheless. One of the few times I remember my parents having a fight I took seriously happened just after the start of the Second Intifada, as my parents were trying to decide which groups to make end-of-year donations to. (They have a joint account.) My mother wanted to send a larger than usual donation to the Jewish National Fund; my father all but pounded the table in his insistence that he wouldn't let one cent of HIS money go to THAT COUNTRY. I thought they might come to blows over it, but they eventually managed to compromise (by sending the money to Magen David Adom, Israel's Red Cross) and have hardly so much as mentioned Israel in each other's presence since.
Why am I writing this? For years, I endured accusations from Gentile Democrats that my Jewish background meant that they could discount my opinions on Israel as bias--even though, growing up, I got an earful from both sides. I put up with it because I did (and do) feel badly for the Palestinians...which they would have known had they ever actually let me speak. I put up with it because after enduring one anti-Semitic attack at the hands Gentile children at a secular summer camp, I was terrified of advertising my Judaism too publicly. I put up with it by changing from using my Jewish first name (Sarah) to my very Gentile middle name (Katherine) and hiding behind my "Aryan" appearance and goyische surname as a shield between me and my peers.
But last week, I got sick of putting up with it. Now I'm going to speak.
I was six years old when the Oslo Accords were signed, but I remember them. I remember the jubilation at my synagogue at the prospect of real peace. I remember the older synagogue members--the ones who had been adults in 1967, the ones who had heard all the newscasts predicting the imminent destruction of Israel and the demise of the "Zionist dream," the ones who had wept like children upon hearing the reports that the Israelis had regained the Kotel, the Western Wall--calling the signing of the Accords "a day to make you believe in God." I don't remember reading about the Accords in the news, although I'm sure I did (I started reading the daily newspaper at age five). What I remember is the feeling in the community: joy, relief, gratitude, and hope.
I also remember something else, just a year later: blood, fear, and sadness. I don't remember exactly when the Oslo Accords were signed, but I remember the exact day that the memorial plaque for Yitzchak Rabin went up in our synagogue, right underneath the memorial placard reading simply "Six Million." I don't remember my rabbi's sermon on the night of Oslo, but I remember our cantor singing a mournful rendition of "Shir L'Shalom" ("A Song For Peace"), the song that Rabin had been singing only minutes before his assassination. I don't remember the famous picture of Arafat and Rabin shaking hands at Camp David, but the picture of a blood-soaked piece of paper with the lyrics to "Shir L'Shalom"--retrieved from Rabin's pocket after he was shot--is forever stamped in my memory. When I look back on the images I remember from my elementary school days, I remember three things most clearly: my aunt's wedding, cracking my head open on the fireplace, and that picture.
In the fourteen years since Rabin's death, I've gotten used to bad news concerning Israel. I've gotten used to hearing nothing but criticism about it. I've even gotten used to the more and more frequent expressions of anti-Semitism--which, thanks to my "un-Jewish" appearance, I actually hear more of than most Jews. I've gotten used to being marginalized by my own party, which seems to think that it can simply "throw the Jews a bone" by putting Lieberman on a ticket (Lieberman, for crying out loud!) and then go back to ignoring us. I've gotten complacent on the things that matter most to me, and I hate myself for it.
Last week's massacre at Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva could have simply been more bad news--and to a lot of people on DailyKos, I'm sure it was. But for me, it hit too close to home to ignore. In a few days, I'll be interviewing at Hebrew Union College, the main rabbinical school of the Reform Movement. If admitted, I'll be flying to Israel this summer to spend my first eleven months of grad school studying Judaism on their Jerusalem campus. As I read about the dead students--killed in the very city I hope to go to, studying the very texts I hope to study--I couldn't avoid the thought that it could have been me. It still could be me in a few months. But the last straw was not the news itself, but a familiar image: a white page of Hebrew writing, stained with the blood of a murdered Jew. Only this time, it wasn't Rabin's blood; it was a teenager's. This time, it wasn't 1994; it was 2008.
And this time, I knew I had to speak up.
I am disgusted, absolutely disgusted, by the Kossacks and others who insisted that these yeshiva students somehow "had it coming." Last time I checked, unarmed teenagers (all of the victims save one were nineteen or younger, the youngest being fifteen) in school do not "have it coming," no matter how much you disagree with their beliefs. Would you similarly dismiss an attack on Wheaton College or Oral Roberts University? I hope you wouldn't. I wish I could say I know you wouldn't, but I'm not that naive.
I am thoroughly disgusted, too, with the Kossacks and others who insisted that these yeshiva students are somehow unimportant because more Palestinians have died: "you have to pt it in context." More people worldwide are murdered every day than died in the Oklahoma City Bombing and the Twin Towers combined, but I have yet to see anyone try to put those victims of terrorism "in context." There is no "context." Do you think the parents of the Israeli children or of the Palestinian children who have died in this conflict find any comfort in your "context?" Would you find comfort in it? God forbid anyone ever try to put the death of one of your loved ones "in context!"
Finally, I am disgusted with the attitude that I have heard from Kossacks and others that Jews who express sympathy and grief for the Palestinian victims are "striking a pose." It's a lose-lose game--if a Jew doesn't express sadness, then he or she is "heartless" and "racist." If a Jew does express the "proper" sentiments, then he or she is "insincere" and "deceptive." I'm sick to death of this belief and attitude that all Jews only really care about Jews. It is anti-Semitic in the extreme, and it is bullshit. Likewise, the increasingly common dismissal of the opinions of any Jew who dares to suggest that peace is not possible while being bombed daily by an opposition who refuses to comply with the established peace plan has got to stop. I and every Jew I know supports a two-state solution to the hilt, but we have been reviled by liberals as "bad Jews" for insisting that the negotiations have to be two-way for peace to be possible. This attitude, of course, is coming from the very people who laud Senator Obama for saying that he would not hesitate to go into Pakistan to get bin Laden if he had actionable intelligence and the Pakistanis were unwilling to cooperate. Once again, this is double standard bullshit, and I'm sick of it.
To end on a more positive note: a few weeks ago, I went on a college class trip to visit a mosque for Friday noon prayers. (I was the only one on the trip who had ever been to a mosque before--my parents were big on "understanding other cultures".) After the prayers were said, I spent close to an hour chatting with two women from the congregation: the imam's young, Egyptian-born wife and an older, recent immigrant from Pakistan. We sat there in our headscarves, talking about our families, our backgrounds, and our faiths. When they found out that I planned on becoming a rabbi, the older woman hugged and blessed me. We even--yes--discussed Israel and Palestine. It was the most rational and amicable discussion of the Middle East I have ever had in my life. I'll never forget what the imam's wife told me as I left:
"Do not lose hope. Jews and Muslims should stick together...we have the same history, the same troubles, the same God. Someday they will see that. Do not lose hope."
In that mosque, of all places, I was finally free to speak my mind as a Jew. With that one afternoon, those two women--whose names I don't even know--gave me back my faith and dignity. If Mercaz HaRav was my assassination of Yitzchak Rabin moment, the afternoon I spent with two Arab Muslims was my Oslo...my "day to make you believe in God."
And this time, I will not become complacent. This time, I won't let anyone silence reason in the name of "peace," but speak up for a true, fair, and sustainable peace for both sides. This time, I will keep my dignity, my voice...and my hope.
Shalom Aleichem. Salaam Alekem. Peace be upon you--and us--soon.