Someone I know is supposed to go to Israel next week with a Birthright Israel trip and we were wondering yesterday if it would be cancelled. Then last night, I suddenly remembered that K and D's son D is IN Israel and I have something more immediate to worry about (the interesting question is why I worry so much more about Americans who are briefly in Israel than my family that lives there--when S's parents go every winter, I am on tenterhooks the whole time--it's definitely not that I care more about them; I think it's just that having relatives in Israel has been a fact of my entire life: I'm used to it, and the worry has settled into my soul and scarred over, because if I kept picking at it, I would never have a moment's peace, so to speak).
The thing that makes me craziest about this new...let's call a spade a spade, this new WAR, the thing that makes me want to smash my head against a wall, or better yet smash the collective Israeli and Arab heads together, is that it is so scripted (and really I want to say it is so FUCKING scripted, because I am feeling very expletive-ridden lately, except the only thing more unattractive than speaking in expletives, which I do way too much and am trying to cut back on, is writing in expletives).
Arabs: We'll kidnap some of their soldiers; then they'll go nuts.
Israelis: They've captured some of our soldiers; now we can go nuts.
Each side can position themselves as defensive.
Arabs: They have been oppressing us, so we are kidnapping their soldiers in defense.
Israelis: They kidnapped our soldiers, so we must invade them in defense.
When in fact, they are both aggressors--and at this moment I don't want to get into relative degrees of aggression, ore the difference between terrorist groups and states, or histories of oppression, or aggression, because we are talking about what is happening at this moment, and my point is: IT DOESN'T NEED TO HAPPEN LIKE THIS.
They could abandon the script. They could choose other means. All of them. Only they don't. And we walk down this path again, for the umpteenth time, in hatred and fear and disaster. And it is all so wrong.
(I will now return to your regularly scheduled diet of fashion and other mundane topics, because I just can't bear this, but know that it is always on my mind.)
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2 comments:
I was wondering if you would comment on this. Have to say I am in complete agreement with you.
Oh good God. If one of your neighbors were shooting at your home and another kidnapped M and E, would you be singing Kumbaya and watsing time talking about scripts or would you be defending yourself and getting your children back?
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