Things are pretty quiet here again today, at least in the news updates and outside my apartment. The sights and sounds of people going about their business, of car doors slamming and voices on the patio below me, and of the pigeon finding shade on my balcony, float over a calmer sea and more listless, windless trees than I've seen since the days before the thunderstorm. But in here, the raging violence in my mind and heart has taken a turn, anger and shock dissipating in favor of a profound sadness for which I just don’t have words. After yesterday's almost uncontrollable rush of verbiage in a tirade of anger and frustration, today I don't really know where to start or what to say.
To write that I’m sad for the victims and hostages, and for everyone affected by what happened to them personally or communally seems like such a cliched understatement that it could have been written by a university administrator. To write that I’m sad about the state of the world isn’t even worth taking the time to type. To write that I’m sad about all of the people who I thought were my friends, who know I’m here and haven’t reached out even once to check on my wellbeing and let me know they’re thinking of me, or that I’m sad about all the ones who did initially reach out and then haven’t been in touch since I sent them a link to my blog, makes me sound like a navel-gazing angsty teenager. Anyway, those of you who have been reading and following and writing to me through this unbelievable week of pain and trauma already know what I’m sad about, so maybe I don’t need to write about it at all.
Instead, here are some things that I'm thinking about that make me feel better:
My family. I know you all wish I wasn’t still here but the fact that you respect my decision means the world.
All of you who are making time in your busy lives to read what I have to say because you think it’s important. Those of you who are reaching out even with a few words of encouragement are having an outsized impact on my state of mind. “Thank you” doesn’t capture it, but thank you.
The small number of media outlets and university administrators that have been willing to stand up and call out hatred and incitement to violence against both Israel and Jews, no matter what they think of Israeli government policies over the years.
My daughter, who has not given a moment’s second-thought to risking her reputation and friendships with her nonstop activity on social media, trying to educate and promote truth and understanding to hundreds of followers who are confused by rampant moral relativism and blatant and repugnant lies. Seeing what she’s seeing (and losing former followers) is taking a cumulative psychic toll that I am probably more aware of right now than she is in the heat of this moment, but her bravery is inspirational and motivational. Plus her ongoing physical company here in this lonely and stark reality provides a bright light of warmth and love.
The bevy of bright kayaks rowing across my field of vision when I emerged into the living room early this morning. While life here can never continue as it had before, I derive an absurdly acute sense of vicarious contentment from such superficial returns to normalcy.
In sadness and silence, I spent a few hours reading through news, trying to get a handle on what’s going on and trying to find my own words out of the sea of language and rhetoric crashing and frothing around the internet. So much has changed in the world in the matter of a few hours on Saturday morning, though it will take the distance of history-writing years from now to be able to fully comprehend what. Much of this change is out of our control, following currents that began long before we noticed them close to our shores. But in reading and thinking and despairing over all of it, I found some words, and what emerged here below is a change that I would like to see, a change that anyone can help effect and participate in. What follows is a plea for the practice of post-partisanship.
There is a lot that Israel does badly. While the parliamentary multi-party system represents the potential for all voices to count, the reality has been that in order for a government to form and stay in power, it has to enlist the cooperation of minority parties through concessions to their demands that often don’t represent either what the majority of Israelis want, or the best interests of the country. The worst scenario is one in which a power-hungry would-be dictator who flaunts the law and the very principles upon which the country was founded will sell out civil society and democracy itself in order to remain in power.
Over tea the other day, and still in shock and fighting back tears over Saturday’s massacre, in between stories of people he knew who were witnesses or worse, A. said quietly, “If there is something good that can come out of this, it is that people will see Netanyahu’s true colors.” He said that the prime minister has been so busy fighting his own people to keep himself out of jail and on his throne, that he has let the fanatics keep building settlements, keep taunting Palestinians and Arabs everywhere, and wilfully ignored the threats and the warnings from terrorists, diverting money and attention to shore up support from the religious minority so much that he was singularly responsible for “depriving the army of the ability to defend us.” I asked what he meant, and he told me how under-equipped and under-prepared the IDF was for this assault – even though intelligence had sounded the alarm. He fervently hoped that Israelis would not forgive and forget, and the polls seem to be indicating that A. is not alone in this sentiment.
My hope is that what A. hopes for is representative of a trend toward breaking down simple categories, cutting through and complicating the dichotomies we assume and impose on the world so that we can easily know who the good guys and who the bad guys are by identifying with a larger group (the good guys, obviously) and not having to think too hard about what that group stands for. Case in point: many Israelis maintained their support for Netanyahu and chose to ignore his concessions to parties whose policies undercut and gutted the very principles upon which this country was founded. Why? Comparisons to Republicans who blindly followed Trump can only take us so far.
The first step toward understanding what has been happening here is learning that what it means to be on the right or on the left in Israel is not the same as elsewhere. Definitions and political identities also shift and change both under the influence of outside forces and internal pressures. If you’re interested, the hyperlinked article above provides an interesting take and helpful explanations specific to Israel.
When North American newspapers talk about “Israel’s right” and “Israel’s left,” they draw on the categories that we are all familiar with – if you’re religious, if you’re anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-gay, or pro-Israel, you’re a Conservative or a Republican. If you’re pro-LGBTQ+ rights, if you think women should get to decide what to do with their own bodies, if you think guns should be better regulated, and if you care about the environment, you must be Liberal, NDP, or a Democrat. AND vice-versa - if you're "conservative," you are necessarily against women's rights to bodily autonomy, and if you're "liberal" you are anti-Israel.
But what if you don't easily fall into either category? Are you de facto "nothing" - that is, neither categorized nor heard? Or you're "undecided"? That doesn't apply to me. I’m an atheist in favor of strict gun regulation and zero womb regulation; I don’t care who you love or have (consensual) sex with; and I’m happy to address you with whatever pronouns you want. I’ve been vegan for the past 5 years. I’m a Zionist who is in complete favor of Palestinians having equal rights and their own sovereignty if they are held to the same standards of civil engagement and acknowledgement of Israel’s right to exist as other neighboring countries who have normalized and cooperative ties with Israel. I guess I’m post-partisan? Will anyone listen to me if I don't align with their labels and pre-conceptions?
Contrary to what many anti-left thinkers and writers are saying, it is not the “wokeness” that underlies student and other grassroots support of Hamas terrorism that is the problem here. I personally agree with many of the sentiments that underlie a so-called “woke” agenda. The real problem is the fallacious, unnuanced, de-contextualized, and uncritical lumping together of all “oppressors” and all “oppressed,” as though these categories actually exist as real things in the world, and the perpetuation of ignorance and encouragement of hatred that comes with aligning oneself to a political identity wholesale rather than to specific causes.
Unlike the stereotype perpetuated in documentaries like this one, I’m not a Zionist because I have been brainwashed my whole life by propaganda. And unlike the common perception that being a Zionist means I don’t like Muslims (side-note: someone told me recently that when they said they were coming to Israel for school their friend’s acquaintance asked the friend why she was Islamophobic. True story.), I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the religious, literary, artistic, and cultural expressions of Islam as well as its fascinating and complicated history. I have often delighted in sharing with students the number of scientific, technological, and medical advancements that came directly from Muslim inquiry into the nature of the world; for example performing complicated surgeries using opiates as anaesthetics at a time when neighboring Christians were bleeding patients to heal them. (I even grudgingly acknowledge that inventing algebra was probably an important thing for human progress.) Students are almost always surprised by this rich legacy. I think that while as exaggerated, embellished, twisted, and de-contextualized as it has been over the decades, what has actually happened to Palestinians historically at the hands of Israelis – as well as the British, French, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Syrians, to name a token few – is a tragedy that has never been adequately addressed. I think that Settlements in contested territories based on biblical claims to the land are outright wrong, and I detest a government that supports these for the sole reason that it wants the allegiance of right-wing religious nuts so that it can stay in power and keep its Prime Minister out of jail.
Post-partisan efforts toward education and swaying public opinion, and those who influence it (like the media, university administrators, professors, etc) are crucial right now – even on the smallest of scales, like my daughter is attempting with her 400+ followers, or like my own cathartic enterprise here with the 40-50 people who have my blog link and may be reading this. I believe this with all my being, because as we sit here in Haifa, in greater Israel, and around the world, we are holding our breath to see if Iran will enter the war via its fully armed and ready proxy Hezbollah, currently awaiting orders 138 km north of me. This is not just a question of whether they will inflict some damage here, or even whether Hamas will get its wish and all the Jews from Gaza to Lebanon will be exterminated. This is a question of whether a world war will be ignited, as Russia and China wait in Iran’s wings, and even Saudi Arabia looks on to decide where its own interests lie.
What is Hezbollah waiting for? The US and other world leaders’ official responses and pledges to stand with Israel have undoubtedly given them pause. There is no question in my mind that had their remarks been at all ambiguous, had they given any moral credibility or a foothold for doubt in the consciousness of their followers, any sign of a crack in their resolve, we would all have spent the past several days and nights in bomb shelters and safe rooms, clinging to each other even as we let go of the last ounces of faith in the free world that we had managed to muster. But Iran/Hezbollah’s pause is just that. As groundswells of activists around the world show their support for the annihilation of Israel, repeat the tropes of its illegitimate white settler apartheid colonialism, demonstrate in favor of their idea of “Palestine” instead of distinguishing between Hamas’ unspeakable war crimes committed on women and children and a legitimate struggle for freedom from oppression, and encourage corollary attacks on Jews everywhere just for being Jewish, Iran is watching. Hezbollah is calculating. Beyond Biden, beyond the EU leadership, beyond Die Welt, Hamas sympathizers with their fingers on missile launchers and in command of thousands of troops ready to savage Israel’s northern end in a repeat of what we saw Saturday in the south are looking to see what you all are thinking, what you all are doing, and whether you all are, when all is said and done, fundamentally ok with what has happened here.
You may think that you are simply doing what anyone who supports a leftist agenda would and should do. You may think that you are just demonstrating your unhappiness with Israel’s policies toward Palestinians. But you need to fundamentally understand that when you lend moral equivalency to de-contextualized historical oppression and well-planned mass murder in statements designed to appease all constituents so that you don’t ruffle any feathers, you are tacitly but undeniably fanning the Ayatollah’s flames. And when you go out into the streets and wave a Palestinian flag this week, you are loudly and clearly supporting the genocide of millions, the eradication of the only democratic state in the Middle East, and the denial of Jews of the right to self-determination and sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.