Category: Middle East Conflict

You know that feeling you get — that rush of breath-stopping adrenaline — when you watch a scary movie and you helplessly watch the main character walk across the screen straight into the death trap of pure evil?

And her hand reaches for the door knob…and…

BAM!

Someone behind you — someone in real life — slams a door.

And you scream! You didn’t realize how tense you were. You didn’t realize just how edgy you were until you screamed.

That’s me right now.

I live in Israel.

But not the part of Israel that’s being bombarded by rockets or being forced into bomb shelters every few minutes in response to the Code Red sirens sounding.

I live in Northern Israel. The Lower Galilee.

In accordance with non-specific requests by the IDF, I am not going to tell you where I live or where rockets may or may not have landed.

But I will say a hearty thank goodness we chose Nefesh B’Nefesh’s Go North program. Tel Aviv? Trust me: over-rated. Especially when rockets are flying overhead.

Had we lived in this very house six years ago during the 2006 war with Lebanon, however, I’d be singing a different tune. A tune from inside my bomb shelter, where the acoustics are questionable and the air quality not so fresh. Six years ago, neighborhoods in our region  and especially in the region where I work in the Western Galilee received the brunt of katyusha rockets targeted at Israeli civilian populations during that war.

Lucky for me, in the almost two years that we’ve lived here, I’ve only needed to visit my shelter to add another can of corn to my End of Days store.

Unlike most Israelis, I keep my MAMAD clean and reasonably stocked. I’m just that kinda girl. But as prepared for disaster as I try to be, I know there is no way to emotionally prepare for disaster.

Try as I might with obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior and endless rows of canned corn, there is no way to prepare for war. For cloudy with a chance of rockets.

* * * *

Supposedly, we’re just out of range for the rockets being fired by Hamas terrorists from Gaza. Does that help me sleep easier at night?

A little. But just like chicken pox spreads from one tight knit community to another, so does fear and dread. And with Hamas promising “big surprises,” I asked my husband, who was on his way out to a meeting, to close the outer protective shutters on the shatterproof windows to our bomb shelter.

We normally keep the heavy metal shutters open to avoid mold buildup in the airless room. (As if bombs weren’t bad enough…)

I was sitting on the couch trying to keep up with the latest tweets on the situation when I heard a very loud and extended wail from outside.

I jumped.

My heart almost leaped out of my chest.

When my mind started working. I realized the sound was just the creaking of the metal shutters.

Nothing to worry about.

“Yet,” I added out loud.

I’m more concerned for our safety than I thought I was. And more in denial than I thought I was.

It’s true that the Lower Galilee isn’t #israelunderfire in this moment. But what separates me from the families in real, true live danger right now is a highway shorter than the length of New Jersey Turnpike.

What separates me from them is a stronger rocket booster.

What separates me from them is a whim of a dictator to our North and a whim of a dictator to our East.

The whims of monsters who hate me simply because I’m Jewish and because I live on a particular piece of land.

Hamas would be sending rockets to my backyard if they could.

I tweet and I blog for Southern Israel because I know this is true.

I know I am only out of harm’s way this time.

My conscious mind is in denial, but my unconscious mind is screaming at the screen to “Watch out.”

In case you haven’t heard, Israel has launched an operation against the terrorists in Gaza who have been firing rockets on Southern Israel. Rockets that keep children from going to school. Rockets that force families to sleep in bomb shelters … if they can sleep at all with the alarms going off all night. Rockets that kill.

I heard about the Operation on Facebook and Twitter because this is how I get most of my news, but especially my news from Israel.

And as much I relish feeling part of a strong, supportive, active community here in Israel, it’s days like this that I feel torn about social media.

On the one hand, like any bad news, it’s better to hear it from friends than from a stiff news reporter. On the other hand, I feel like war brings out the worst in people. People I normally like.  And on social media, people let their emotions rip. They don’t just type in 140 characters. They shout.

Today, during what’s been named Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense, I can smell through the computer screen the adrenaline, hatred, rage.

It makes me very uncomfortable.

This is not to say I don’t firmly and strongly believe Israel has a right to defend herself. I do.

This is not to say if I were living in a city in which rockets were raining down, I wouldn’t want my government to act. I would.

This is to say:

I guess I’m a pacifist.

Which sounds weird. It’s not how I picture myself at all. In fact, I normally tag myself as an “accidental activist.” I fight for what I believe in. I don’t stand idly by when I can educate or inform or make positive change.

But activism takes many forms. Blog-ins, rallies, strikes, marches: These are actions I have a strong stomach for.

But not for war. Not for violence. Not for rockets raining down on my neighbors in the south and not for missiles being sent down on Gaza.

On the one hand, I’m thankful I am not in the position to make a decision whether or not to shoot; whether or not to fire; whether or not to initiate or retaliate.

I’m just not built for war. I wouldn’t be able to make such a quick decision. I’d hesitate. I’d think of men as babies in their mothers arms. I’d think of children wailing.

Perhaps I’m not angry enough to make such a decision. Not broken enough.

But, on the other hand, I think: Who is? Who is built for war?

Who is born built for war? What man or woman meets her mate in bed with the express desire to bring a new solider into this world? A new terrorist?

What child is raised for war? What 4 year old, as he learns his letters and starts becoming more aware of himself and his surroundings, thinks to himself, “One day I will defend this beautiful blade of green grass with my life?”

Are any of us built for war?

What would war look like if the broken ones weren’t running the show?

* * * *

I’m a pacifist.

I can still see the good, the innocent in almost anyone.

Is this a gift? Or a hazard?

I don’t know.

But what I can tell you this morning as I sit both behind my screen and behind my country is that I support Israel’s right to defend herself. But I can’t comfortably nod my head at blithe tweets about people (terrorists or soldiers or civilians) being marked for death.

I can’t feel excited or grateful or proud.

War hurts my heart.

In my heart — one that some would call naive, but I see as loving and compassionate — there is still a flicker of light. It’s that flicker of light I often hear my observant Jewish friends talk about.

That flicker of light in all of us.

The flicker of light in my own heart tells me conflicts can be solved with the right people seated around the right table.

And so I can’t enter “operations” with firm resolve or unwavering decisive support.

All I can muster as a sigh.

A disappointed and very sad sigh.

In another lifetime, I was a budding talking head.

I arrived in Washington, DC, as an undergrad with the intention of studying political communications. But one boring “History of Journalism” class later I switched to archaeology. And one boring “Introduction to Archaeology” class after that I switched to international politics. It was in politics I stayed – mostly because I’m a rule follower, and the rule was you needed to choose a major by sophomore year.

The placement suited me, though, since the summer before I had traveled to Israel for the first time on a program organized by what was then ZOA/Masada and returned home armed with a love of Israel and firm ideas about how to keep her safe.

I wrote a term paper freshman year — practically copied straight from the 8 x 10 black paperback handbook I had received on my Israel trip — on why it was imperative that Israel never give up any of the West Bank. (I think I may have even used exclamation points in the title.) My TA, who would later go on to become a founding member of MEMRI, gave me an A+.

The following year, I landed a highly sought-after public affairs internship at the Embassy of Israel. This was in 1993, probably one of the most exciting times to be working at the Embassy of Israel, in the days leading up to Oslo and handshakes on the White House lawn. As I painfully tried to translate newspaper articles fresh off the fax machines, I reconsidered my stance on Arab-Israel relations. I started reading Amos Oz.

In my senior year of college, I applied for and got a research internship at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank where one of my professors was working at the time, and an organization which was, at the time, generally regarded as a melting pot of opinion. But when my more right-leaning professor left the Washington Institute to head up a very right-leaning think tank, I left with him. I liked him better than the institute and this time, more important, I was offered a paying job, as an executive assistant. My ticket to adult freedom was only a few blocks away.

In this position, I was lucky enough to both observe history in the making, and not have my name attached to it. I proofread and formatted a very famous paper, written by brilliant lovers of Israel who would later become key decision-makers in a Republican government. I knew these “neocons” as real people, not as “foreign policy hard-liners” or strategists. These individuals were my professional mentors — no matter what their position was on Israel or Iraq or Iran — and they encouraged me to continue in the field, to go back to get a higher degree, to educate myself, and to be part of the continuing dialogue.

I didn’t, though. I quit before I even started. Only a handful of internships and two jobs into it, I was already frustrated, exhausted, and uninterested in working in a career where I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. As a thinker and a writer, I love dialogue. But I couldn’t see how we were ever going to solve the conflict with just dialogue. Educate, perhaps. Enlighten, maybe. But to solve this thing, we would need action. And I wasn’t convinced that either side would ever be interested in acting. In the summer of 1997, I left Washington, moved to New York, and started a career in publishing.

It’s only now, almost 15 years later, that I understand that my experience in DC at that time was not just educational, but truly formative as it relates to my stance on Israel. Accidentally, I became a centrist. And more specially, it was then I decided I preferred to be an observer of the region rather than a policy maker. A student of human relations rather than international relations.

*      *      *

Two days ago, I sat in an auditorium in Jerusalem with a thousand other attendees of the 2012 Israeli Presidential Conference, all passionate in one way or another about Israel. The strength of their convictions alone could fill the room. The energy was uplifting, but a voice nagged in the back of my head. “Words, words, words…” it said.

As the conference continued, I sat and listened to well-renowned, content producing opinion makers debate whether Americans have the right to interfere in Israel’s national security policies (applause!) or whether Israel alone knows what’s best for herself (applause!). During the few politically inspired panels I sat in I thought to myself, “Have I traveled back in time? Either it’s 1997 or these guys have been talking in circles for the last 15 years.”

In all the political back and forth during the conference — back and forth that often felt more back than forth — two people I heard made me feel grounded in 2012: Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism, and Ayaan Hirsu-Ali, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the writer of Submission, a film about the oppression of women in conservative Islamic cultures.

It wasn’t their forward thinking strategies or their bright visions for the future that captured my attention. In fact, each of them possesses potentially dark visions of the future. Futures in which Israel may not exist, or in which our children are still carrying on the same back and forth we carry on today (as long as we avoid a nuclear war with Iran and survive the end of the Mayan calendar).

It was because when they spoke, they moved me. I felt the heart inside his and her words. I felt their love for humanity, their hopes for our children, and their desire to see change in our time, or at least in our children’s time. I didn’t hear talking heads when I sat in front of them. I heard human beings.

And while, admittedly, my experience at the conference was limited to a handful of panels and speakers, and my reasoning was based not on critical thinking, but on feeling, I move forward today, post-conference, with a firm belief that was planted almost 15 years ago.

It’s we, the students of human relations — not international relations — who will one day help guide this region to a solution. Humans, through their need for one another and their true, deep desire to connect and to love — not just survive — are the only true hope for peace.

*      *      *

My husband and I are growing passionfruit in our backyard in northern Israel. Passionfruit vines are known for their strength and their ability to grab hold of and flourish on fences. They’re stubborn plants, but susceptible to the blustery afternoon wind we get from the west.

We planted four next to our fence, but only one survived. For a time, I couldn’t understand how this one made it while the others didn’t. We watered them the same. They receive the same amount of sun and shade, and presumably the same quality of soil.

But one day, I saw peeking through our neighbors fence another passionfruit vine. Slowly but surely this vine has extended itself toward ours, and our vine reaches for it. One day soon they will connect – without any help from me. Why? Because they want to. One dared to reach across the fence.

Time passes slowly as I wait patiently for their two hands to grab hold of one another. Good days and bad days pass. My children grow. The weather changes. World opinion shifts.

But it’s coming. My heart tells me so.

(This was originally posted on The Times of Israel.)