israeli politics

hate - 5.8.24

I’ve never understood hate.  As a friend began to spew hatred of Israel and Judaism yesterday, I found myself responding to her in kind.  My voice raised to her level, and she immediately withdrew.  Not because she believed me, but because she loves me and had never seen me angry before.  But she has since been barraging me with propaganda – the rapes and mutilations never occurred, the children of Gaza are not any more human shields than I am in Tel Aviv, the Arabs of Israel have been kept from education.  These are all lies that I know from experience with the people involved, and she knows that my own shelter I  have shared with Arabs, that we are all protected because the law demands we build shelters in municipal areas.. I know witnesses to the rapes and murders.  I have taught Arab students and felt pride in their amazing accomplishments. It is also known that we were drawn into the terrible bombing of Rafiah by the murder of three soldiers from Rafiah.   The reversal of these facts by my friend in her emails to me show me how deeply hate can overrise facts and friendship and love.  

We are still friends.  I refuse to allow her hatred to overcome my love of her.

 

hate – 5.8.24 Read Post »

israeli politics

Di Shteyn

 In Israel today is Holocaust Memorial Day.  But I am in New York, so I went to Di Shteyn.  On 83rd and Riverside Park there is a stone, promising in 1947 that a memorial both to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and the Holocaust victims would be built in this place.  It wasn’t built, but there are annual memorial ceremoniea in this beautiful spot.

81st Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsUUVKrNqIA

The ceremony is moving.  The stone is not.  It’s a marker only, promising that what will come will be important and eternal.  But all there is is a stone, a shteyn.  That stone itself tells it all.

I had never heard of it until I read Jeremy Eichler’s book, Time’s Echo,  And then I started asking.  Only my cousin, Susan, knew of it.  She sent me the link of the video with no explanation.  That too is an appropriate response – so little tells so much.  If you don’t know you don’t deserve to know.  

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israeli politics

i may buy a tent - may 5, 2024

I have heard so many opinions about the river and the sea in the past few days that I find the threads impossible to unravel.  

First, of course no one is happy about the war.  But some people really think it’s simple.  Shoot them all.  or Make a single state. or go back to Poland.  (That one really gets me.  My brother reminds me that our grandparents had a big house on the marketplace before they were killed and the place was bombed, destroyed – I should have kept the key) 

In any case, I’m lost as far as making a logical and satisfying organization to all the arguments – and certainly no solution.  

I look at the faces of the demonstrators and think how wonderful it would be to talk with them like human beings. not about politics – but mabe about shoes, cooking, horses, etc.  It’s not like there are good people against bad people and we have to get rid of the bad people.  They’re all good and they deserve attention.   how can they all be made to understand that simple fact?  everybody’s right.  now let’s see how we can all be satisfied. 

A peace tent.  yes. that will do it. sure.


i may buy a tent – may 5, 2024 Read Post »

israeli politics

Hard to get the news - 5.4.24

From here, in New Jersey, I find it hard to get the news about Israel and Gaza.  Whatever happens in graduation ceremonies here have nothing to do with what’s going on there.  So I’m stuck with reading the news in Hebrew papers. like the Times of Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/

It too doesn’t tell me much, but my internet connection is pretty bad, so I can’t even evaluate what I’m getting.  

And evaluation is what is desperately needed.  Especially poetic evaliation. As William Carlos Williams wrote “It is hard to get the news from poems/but men die miserably every day/for lack of what is found there. – 

And here, my internet connection seems to be fading – i’ll explain quickly.  With a situation so complex, no single perspective is sufficient, and sometimes only a very specific instance can provide a true taste of reality. 

As I walked into a kind of Mom and Pop pharmacy just now, a customer was talking to the druggist.  I only heard the last line “Jews don’t belong here,” before he went to sit down.  

I bought my cough medicine and left.  I’ll never know if he was talking about me,  himself, or the druggist, or if he was giving the punch line of a joke.

But I kind of feel that moment shows something of the uncertainty of the feeling of being a Jew in the US right now.

 

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blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

divestment: another look - 5.3.24

Watching the kids screaming divestment from Tel Aviv University makes me wonder if there is any awareness of the large percentage of Arab students who gain professions at this very university.  I don’t think the students who learned from me want that university to disappear.  

I may be wrong now…

I mean I went to visit some of my former students who were in mourning last week (stop me if you’ve heard this one – I loved that moment too much to forget it.  The first thing they asked me, after a quick glance at each other, was about something that really troubled them all the years.  “yes, I said, before the question got asked, “It was Coke.”  I get asked that a lot.  I used to come to class with a can of Coke every time, and from the way I behaved, it was clear to them that there was something else in that can…

I don’t think that’s a reason to divest from the university, though.

 

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israeli politics

Stats - 5.1.24

Walk down the aisle on the plane, I count what movies are being watched.  Do people tune in Israeli or American films?  Me – I only got up from my seat after watching “The Monkey Park” which reminds me of many of the forgotten Israeli novelists I knew in the sixties and seventies.  But when I got back from giving the stewardesses and stewards a good story when Ezi and me tried to get into the bathroom together, I could not bear the quaintness and escapism of the Hebrew films everyone had tuned into.  I can’t believe Israelis watch them.  I escape with the memories of American history.   

stats – 5.1.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

what's the difference? - 4.30.24

I keep thinking about the difference between the protests against segregation or later against the Viet Nam war and the protests now.  

They’re exactly the opposite.  We were demonstrating for equality and peace and the protests now are fighting for war and genocide.  They want to kill us.  Not just soldiers, not just Israelis, but Jews.  

Adam Rubin, the son of one of our leaders, Jerry Rubin, says it well:

“This is definitely not my dad’s antiwar protest”

In a way this is showing what Hamas really is, and it is on the way to destroying civilization.

 

what’s the difference? – 4.30.24 Read Post »

blog, israeli politics, my life in tel aviv

from the river - 4.29.24

from the river to the sea

we can live in harmony…

from the river to the sea

we can live in unity

 

 

I can write rhymes as well as the next person.  But I think it’s easier to write hate than love.  Especially love and liberty that disguises hate and destruction.  

why is everyone saying we have to use force to get the protesters to disperse?  Why not just turn on the sprinklers?  These are not violent protester who deserve to be banished from school.  they need to be educated by intelligent professors – not the strange unqualified teachers who seem to have taken over the system.

Sorry to be ranting…

 

 

from the river – 4.29.24 Read Post »