Thursday October 19

After yesterday’s very long writing session, I went out for my daily walk a little later than usual. I was thinking about how sick and tired I was becoming of my own daily preaching here in this forum, and that I could only imagine how those of you who are still bothering to read these (thank you for bothering!) might be feeling. So on my walk I tried to focus on the fact that there were more people out and about, and I took some photos from a distance so as not to violate anyone’s privacy (below). Not in the photos: a guy on a park bench playing the sitar, and kids digging for buried treasure in the sand. Religious Jewish women with their hair covered watching children on scooters and bikes, while scantilly-clad and tattooed other women jogged through. Couples walking dogs, families eating ice cream. On the basketball court there were young boys kicking a soccer ball right through a group of older boys playing basketball. The ubiquitous stray cats, some of whom had gathered close to a fisherman who was throwing them the fruits of his labors that were too small to bother taking home. But the numbers of people were still markedly smaller than the pre-war numbers had been, and there was one group that was conspicuous for its absence: there were no women in hijabs, and with them, no husbands and children playing and mingling with everyone else in the crowds. I could only assume that other than fishermen, Arab Muslims were staying home and keeping to themselves. I had wondered how the Arab-Israelis who were so integral to the fabric of this neighborhood and throughout what I’ve seen of Haifa, were faring. Their absence was my answer. (Read more here if you're interested.)

Just as any population anywhere, one cannot characterize all “Arab-Israelis” as having the same religious or political allegiances. Some oppose the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, and some serve in the IDF. Arab citizens of Israel were killed indiscriminately along with Jewish citizens and foreign nationals on Saturday October 7, so they have as much reason to grieve over what happened as anyone else here. And as I’ve mentioned, there are Arab Christians, Muslims, Baha’i, and Druze here, and my hope last evening was that it was only those who stand out for their hijabs who were missing from the boardwalk and beaches; that the others were blending as they usually do here in Haifa with the rest of the population, in a way that I wouldn't know if they were there or not (as I've pointed out, contrary to popular opinion, there is no way to racially distinguish most Israelis visually into "Arab" and "Jewish" categories). But even if that were the case – and I’m not convinced – the idea that Muslim Arabs may feel unwelcome or at least feel the need to stay home in the wake of the war with Hamas is sadly understandable. Even if they hold no love for Hamas and don’t support even what the Palestinian Authority stands for, those who go out of their way to help Jewish Israelis, or bravely stand up for Israel publicly like Bassem Eid or Lucy Aharish, are bombarded with hate mail and death threats on a regular basis.

I returned to the apartment less cheered by my outing than I had hoped. I (of course) checked in on the news, and Biden’s speech moved me to tears (which, I’ll admit, doesn’t take much this week; still, it was very powerful). Grief once again turned to anger though as, rather than the replacement of earlier headlines blaming Israel for the hospital blast with some that instead showed what had actually happened, I was confronted with a proliferation of he-said-she-saids, with the added note on many that Biden was taking Israel’s side.

After a recent post, several of you had asked me not to be sad, so I’ve been trying to focus on what I’ve been doing here to provide some much-needed context instead, and feel purposeful and invigorated by anger-motivated educational outreach. But the truth is, I’m still sad (sorry mom). The more news I look at, from the biased reporting itself to its contents, the more I’m torn and hurt and frustrated. And I’m not the only one. Before I went to bed last night I saw something that a friend and colleague at the University of Chicago had posted, which I have his permission to reproduce here below:

Some of my colleagues have written and signed a "UChicago call for action for Palestine."

They call the very existence of the State of Israel the "root cause" of all the violence.

• They omit and justify the most vile behavior since ISIS and they omit and whitewash Hamas' brutal 17-year subjugation of its own population.

• They do not call for the UN to dismantle Hamas, who diverted millions of European and American funds for state-building towards oppression of their population and violence against another.

• They imply, very thinly, that there are circumstances when it is legitimate to do what Hamas terrorists recorded themselves doing and posted online proudly for all to see. 

Must I list this indisputably-real-news?

They refer to Israel's actions as genocidal violence.

• They omit that Hamas terrorists carried instructions to kill as many Jews as possible with detailed maps where to find them, whereas the State of Israel selects Hamas targets carefully, alerts Gazans in advance, and gives them time to flee. What this is, it is not genocidal.

• They omit that Egypt shuts Gaza tight, refusing to let Gazans out or to let resources in. 

They denounce the State of Israel as an apartheid regime from its founding.

• They promote a fake history that circumvents facts: where there had been no state at all, the UN planned to make two and the Arab states that already existed attacked to prevent the Jewish one from existing and ended up preventing the Arab one.

They valorize indigeneity...

• ...Except that of Jews, whose origins are well known, whose expressions of dislocation have continued for 2,000 years, and who have suffered all forms of hatred and violence all that time, wherever they’ve been. The double standard and exceptionalism are all too familiar.

• A recent columnist spoke the truth: “all states are born in sin, and yet we can’t live without states.” They, academics, historians and sociologists, know as well as anyone, this is true of indigenous and non-indigenous alike.

As employees of an American university, they call on the US government to quit all support for the State of Israel.

• Given how they come to be in America and how America came to be, they ought first to refuse to pay taxes, receive benefits, and vote; renounce their citizenship; and leave for somewhere untainted. The hypocrisy is all too familiar.

• Many of them have been benefiting from Israeli scholarship, enjoying academic opportunities there for years, and promoting their own careers through them; real rich.

These are some of my colleagues.

• If you feel differently than they do, please stand up and say so. Your voice matters.

#hamasisisis #freepalestinefromhamas #standwithisrael #enoughisenough

#zionismisnotracism #zionismisnotapartheid #zionismisnotcolonialism

I reached out to him and we commiserated about the loss of some collegial relationships and the general problematic academic environments in which we have existed for so long with an ever-present dull awareness of the derision toward us that always lurks below the surface of many of our interactions with others, or is overtly part of some of our colleagues’ curricula. Calling it out now feels lame, like closing that barn door after the stampede toward the open country. But it still needs to be done, so I'll close this brief post (sorry, I spent most of the day researching and writing about the UNRWA and have a work zoom soon) with the same message I've been repeating daily: educators have a responsibility to educate; and that means to provide both the context and tools of discernment and critical thought required to make sense of any situation historically and in the present. Because by standing by and watching (or not watching), or by carelessly repeating the same accusations against Israel (or anyone) that have become standard “knowledge” without questioning their basis or their facticity, we are complicit in perpetuating hatred and fuelling the resolve of those who would act on it.