topic by
Lynette
4/29/2002 (13:34) |
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In the ruins of Jenin, an old friend of mine is digging bodies out of the rubble where Israeli bulldozers flattened houses, burying people alive. Blackened, maggot riddled corpses, unearthed from the rubble, are displayed to anguished relatives for identification. A teenage girl unearths an infant's arm and wonders what to do with it. A Palestinian father cries over the dark smears of flesh that once were his two little daughters. Another Jewish friend leaves an anguished message on my cell phone: 'I'm in downtown Washington DC. There's a huge, pro-Israel rally going on. I don't understand it. How can Jews support this? I know you must have something inspirational to say. Send me what you write.'
She doesn't know that for weeks I've been trying unsuccessfully to write something about the situation. I'm overwhelmed with accounts of the atrocities. Yet I am also haunted by images of bodies shattered at a Seder meal, at a café, a Passover drenched in a new plague of blood. I'm frightened and saddened by the real resurgence of anti-Semitism, by swastikas carried in peace marches, synagogues attacked.
A third friend, a deeply spiritual woman and longtime ecofeminist ally, sends me a copy of a letter she wrote to President Bush entitled, 'Standing Firmly With Israel.'
In no way can I stand with her. And yet I cannot simply stand against her, either.
I cannot stand with an Israel that tortures prisoners, an Israel that has mounted a restrictive and dehumanizing occupation, that assassinates political leaders as a matter of policy, that has cut down ancient olive groves to destroy the livelihood of the Palestinians, that is daily committing war crimes: refusing medical care to the wounded, firing on journalists and peace demonstrators, bombing civilians, destroying homes. Nor can I stand in the bloody remains of the Seder meal, among the corpses in the café, the restaurant. Yet to say, 'both sides are wrong, both sides should give up violence' is to ignore the reality that one side, the Israeli side, is the fourth largest military power in the world. That the suicide bombs are a direct response to calculated political assassinations and to a brutal occupation that has made life untenable for the Palestinians. That for over fifty years, the State of Israel has failed to guard and cherish the Palestinians' rights, aspirations, and hopes for an independence that could lead to peace and prosperity.
It is, on the one hand, incomprehensible to me that my friend could stand with such a regime, that the Jewish community as a whole, composed of people I know to be caring, compassionate and good, can stand behind the tanks, the bombs, the brutality.
On the other hand, I understand quite well the wrenching emotional journey that many Jews must make to admit the reality of what Israel is doing. For those of us who grew up saving our pennies to plant trees in the Galil, who, snowbound in blizzards, celebrated the New Year of the Trees timed to the blossoming of almonds in the Judean hills, who ended every Seder with the prayer 'Next year in Jerusalem,' no other issue is so painful and sad. I am a Jew who has spent her adult life as a voice for a different religion, a blatant Pagan whose spirituality is attuned to the Goddess of regeneration, not the God of my fathers. To Orthodox Jews, I'm a heretic, which gives me a certain freedom to say what I think. I was born into, raised in and acculturated by the post-war Jewish community, but I have not been immersed in that world for many years. I speak from the margins of the Jewish community. But I am still a Jew, and the view from the edge can sometimes be clearer than that from the center.
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