Reconciliation

Sheila Samples is on the money here at The Smoking Chimp.


It's clear to me that the same elitist, greedy, morally-deficient and fear-mongering style of government in the United States and Britain is also the force behind Israeli national policy today. What is less clear is how I, myself, fit into the "scheme of things." I am still coming to terms with reconciling my jewish ancestry and my time living in Israel, which was a very happy time, with what is happening now, with what has happened in the past.

First, I need to talk about labels. For starters, I'm a female liberal Jewish-Mexican American from California. (Do you think that if Dick Cheney were to read that sentence, he would instantly projectile-vomit all over himself? Possibly his least favorite combination of words in the English language, unless you count the phrase "Michael Moore's new movie" or even "Daily Kos' latest post") I could add a few more labels in there, "Hungarian decent," "former resident of Israel" and "product of a single parent with a PhD." I've always been pretty proud of the fact that I have a lot of labels that are fairly unique and even slightly ironic and oxymoronic. On one side, I have relatives that died in the Holocaust and on the other, generations of ancestors from the tiny fishing villages of Baja California. I was raised by a single mother, but she didn't work the checkout line at the grocery store; she's a scientist and an environmentalist who had no compunctions about taking me traveling around various countries on the other side of the globe for lengthy periods of time.

When we lived in Israel back in 1986 and 1987, it was a time of relative peace. Granted I was only a little kid, but I had no perception of the violent history of the country I was living in, other than stumbling across the entrances to abandoned underground army barracks on our hikes in the desert. I didn't even realize that the jungle gym in the courtyard where we lived wasn't a jungle gym, it was a bomb shelter. We had family living on a kibbutz in the north, but at the time we lived in Israel, our cousins Dov and Shoshana were more concerned with the kibbutz's financial problems than with suicide bombings and border security. My first inkling of what the Israeli legacy is came when I went to a party for my mother's friend's daughter, who was leaving home for the first time to join the army. That was when my mother told me that everyone in Israel has to join the army for 4 years when they turn 18. I thought about that; I was only about 6 at the time but the idea troubled me for reasons I could not express.

My labels, the many facets of who and what I am, have led me to condemn the government of my own country and a good many of the people who live here in the US as apathetic, greedy, ignorant, bigoted, and downright nasty. I've prided myself in keeping up to date on politics and protesting the war and generally standing up for what I believe is right. I've written here about the importance of acknowlegment, of educating myself about the struggles of other peoples. My upbringing made me a free-thinker and I have always believed that I will never be afraid to speak my mind; because I thought I was lucky enough to have the upbringing and ancestry that would always put me on the right side in any given conflict.

I've gone to the streets and protested the war, I've denounced the fundamentalist Christians and tried to understand the fundamentalist Muslims, I've cried for the people starving in Darfur and on the streets of New Orleans, I donate to charities, I give my blood, I shout at the TV and beg it for diplomacy. My moments of indecision are only on the subject of Israel. Reading articles and looking at pictures of the violence perpetratd by Israel against the Palestinians has always been very uncomfortable, but I comforted myself by thinking that eventually, SOON there would be negotiations and compromises that would let Israel give back the West Bank to the Palestinians without giving up their nation, and Jerusalem would be shared and a new time of peace would be ushered in. I've believed that Israel must compromise in order to survive, but I was angry when I saw other people who call themselves liberal Americans like myself, marching in protests with anti-Zionist slogans and pictures of the Star of David with a swastica emblazoned over it. It was painful, even. I couldn't help thinking, who are they to act so righteous?


The recent brutal violence against the Lebanese and the utter destruction of their beautiful country was a slap in the face and a sudden immersion in the freezing, roiling river of reality. My heritage is being controlled by a violent regime that does not represent my beliefs or philosophies. Ironically, this sentence could also refer to my heritage as an American, but I have never felt controlled by Bush and the GOP because I had a choice whether I voted for them or not. I do not vote for them, I am smarter than them, I see through them. But the past few weeks have led me to feel duplicitous. I have been unable to reconcile the past with the present. And I still haven't figured out where I stand.

What I have been able to understand is that moderate Jews of the world will soon be facing the same situation as the moderate Muslims of the world. There are people amongst us that are destroying what is good and right about our respective heritages and beliefs. Now the question is, will we be joined by our mutual fates or be pulled further apart? I still have hope, there are still real leaders among us. But what about me- will I be able to find the right side to stand on as I have always tried to do?


What do you think?