israeli politics

helplessness - 8.7.25

Everyone I speak with agrees with me.  The primary reaction to the failure of all our efforts to influence the actions of our government, of our enemies, of the environment, the heat – is helplessness.  All we can do is cultivate our gardens.  

One of the reasons I first fell in love with Israel was the sense that every individual can make a difference here.  When I was visiting as a student, I hitchhiked a lot around the country and met many different kinds of people.  One man who picked me up was an Arab doctor whose daughter sat in the back.  I don’t remember the entire conversation or even what he looked like, but I remember that he warned me that I couldn’t control every situation.  It was a warning about hitching rides and also my sense that this was a country much more complex than my sense of freedom and control warranted.

 

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israeli politics

heart clinic - 8.6.25

A European friend sent us a video of Gideon Levi talking about how Israelis think themselves superior to Arabs, and I sputtered to myself something about how all the pharmacists and at least a quarter of the doctors are Arabs, but I didn’t write her.  I didn’t write her about the physiotherapist who got me walking the day after my surgeries and encouraged me to the point that within months I was back to normal.  I didn’t write her about the tiny experience I had yesterday in the heart clinic with the turbaned secretary who seemed like a very typical haredit, but who laughed at my jokes.  Then a hijabed woman in a long dress with long sleeves entered the room and began talking to the secretary through the reception window. 

I waited for a scene. 

But after a few humorous pleasantries the Arab woman went into the secretary’s room and began using the phone.  “I’m calling from the heart clinic – you missed your appointment with me this afternoon, Mrs. Cohen, and I want to make sure all is okay with you.”

 

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israeli politics

Partisans -8.5.25

I took a break from translations of poems of the holocaust, and the book I’m trying to finish on Kurt Gerron to try to figure out how my new mini-tablet works.  I uploaded my kindle and lo and behold a book I had never read appeared – The Jewish Partisans of Belarus by Zeev Barmatz – that was published in 2012.  I must have downloaded it years ago but my book club reads only novels, and a lot of them, so this little document got lost in all the trash we talk about and appeared just as I was trying to escape the issue. 

And there were all the stories I’d heard about my aunt.   

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israeli politics

social contract - 8.4.25

Watching the knesset today, busy with getting rid of amazing leaders of our country while the hostages starve, I couldn’t help thinking of the first time I learned academically about Democracy.  My teacher for two years was a Quaker named Phillip Schuyler Benjamin.  I forgot which numerals followed his name, but I remember every philosopher and historian we read, and I clung to every concept.  The meaning of democracy was brought to us gradually, from Hobbes to Locke to deToqueville to Thoreau, and I distilled the idea that government exists to improve our lives, all of our lives.  I learned that the majority gets to choose who are in office, but their function is to follow a system by which all citizens are protected to live their lives as they wish as long as they do not impose their will on others.  

As I watched the knesset fanatics I kept thinking about the gentle Mr. Benjamin and one story he told about a Quaker meeting he attended where no one spoke – for hours.  Suddenly one man got up and said,  “Two skeletons were in the closet for centuries.  Suddenly, one turned to the other and said, ‘You know, if we had any guts we’d get out of here.'”

 

social contract – 8.4.25 Read Post »

israeli politics

By the rivers of babylon - 8.3.25

I’d forgotten that Boney M pointed out our history – 

Bombarded by fake news, we tend to forget basic truths.

Still, I wish that tomorrow our parliament would not be discussing tightening the security of the prime minister instead of getting the hostages out.  The reason the prime minister needs tighter security ….

 

by the rivers of babylon -8. Read Post »

israeli politics

writing about war - 8.1.25

The other night I chaired a small group session of writers who spoke about the effect of the war on their writing.  As small as it was, almost every political opinion was voiced.  Only one of us lost their home, but all of us seem to have lost direction.   Who are we? Do we recognize ourselves?  What has happened to our lives?  Of course the people who came from abroad are a little less disoriented, but not much.  

Years ago a wrote an article about how people reacted in poetry to September 11 (https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-abstract/26/2/257/20856/The-Poetry-of-September-11-The-Testimonial?redirectedFrom=PDF)

, and suddenly I remembered it, and how different the grief and mourning was then from the crippling depth of mourning in our writers.  I’m sure this little group represents the way most Israelis feel about this war – helpless to the point of wordlessness.

The worst part of this is that even though we know theoretically about how people feel and live in Gaza, we have no communication.  All we hear are  threats, terrifying threats from Hamas. Hostage who were released tell of families who caged them, starved them, and demeaned them, and hostages still there are kept alive only to torture us with videos of their terrifying suffering.  Articles like that from the New Yorker this week that concentrate on the suffering of the Gazan population would be something with which we would identify with completely except for the fact that we can only think first of the terrible tortures, rapes, murders this population inflicted on our people.     

(https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/treating-gazas-collective-trauma)

It is almost impossible to form any kind of empathy with people who murdered your children and yet I am becoming convinced that the only way we can ease our pain is to talk. As much as we are repelled by one another, we suffer together.


writing about war – 8.1.25 Read Post »