Aweful Days

Well, if anyone was in doubt, I'm a mess. But the best way to keep a b-log active when gradschool makes you feel like you're drowning in the ocean on a floaty with a steady leak in it, it's to post something you thought you'd posted like a third of a year ago. So here's some untimely reflections on the Israeli High Holidays as we approach the biblical ones.

Aweful Days

Memorial Day for Soldiers and Terror Victims is less a day of memory and seems to be a day of foreshadowing. I was fortunate to be able to attend a memorial ceremony for a scouts troop. As they read the names of all the fallen and their ages, I couldn't help but to focus on the ages. There was a time 20 seemed old to me now I realize that it's just kids dying and I'm in a country where parents frequently outlive their offspring in a reversal of the natural order. The students who put the ceremony together would be in the military in the next year or two. Twenty still seems old to them. And that's why there was so much push back to include Terror Victims a few years back. This is not just a commemoration of what was but also what will be.

So my clever plan to acknowledge the Palestinian victims of Independence Day will definitely not fly. My hope was that especially in the context of the War of Independence, we could acknowledge that lots of people died in the process of this amazing, and I think wonderful, country. That does not excuse the blind eye though. I believe that giving a national outlet to Palestinian grief would go a long way toward more peaceful coexistence. And more positive incorporation. The token Arab-Israeli lighting a torch does not mean anything if a bunch of nationalistic d-bags parade through the Arab Quarter of the Old City every year. One of the things that makes Israel a great place is the accomplishments of all of her citizens, her efforts toward peace. It's not a perfect plan.

I understand why people want to just focus on the good for a day. The reality here wears on everyone, but also how can we ignore the fact that the way they made it 'safe' for celebrations was to shut down part of the population. To fence them in, cage them in. And I agree that was was probably the best security decision. Nothing ruins a barbeque like a stabbing but currently, both people and their sentiments are trapped, and some of them cry out their destruction, their Nakba. This year for me has been about shared narratives. That's what peoplehood is to me. My Irish stories about tinkers and potato famines; the Jewish narrative of Exodus and Land and Redemption, the Israeli narrative of finding and building a home, the Palestinian narrative of imperialism, refugees and isolation. It's my task to integrate the first two or three for myself but I really believe the modern State of Israel AND the Palestinian people (I've given up on their 'leadership' for the moment), need to work toward the last two. Today I will celebrate, though I'd rather stay home. Today I will continue to hope that this narrative reconciliation is possible; that people can acknowledge the pain of the other, even if it means absorbing guilt. And that Independence does not have to mean isolation.