“What’s that? I’ve never heard of that place. It doesn’t exist!”
Those words are the punchline of an old joke told by one of the brothers of our Jewish fraternity back in college. “E”, a white Columbian-Israeli born in Israel, grew up in the Holy Land and therefore knows more about being an Israeli than someone like myself, a lifelong member of the Diaspora, watching from afar, the Jews in our Homeland be targeted by intifadas and “blood-thirsty Arabs” wishing to “drive us into the sea”, all over a proxy war against the West and American influence.
This is the narrative we were told as young Jews growing up in the early to middle aughts. Some of this was true, a lot of the hatred against Israel is true anti-Semitism. But sadly, too many of us American Jews have indulged in our fair share of anti-Arab sentiment. I’ve written little tidbits about my childhood in the past, but I haven’t mentioned the most embarrassing and bigoted thing I’ve ever said aloud.
I think I was 12 at the time. We were living in our first house in Georgia when we were discussing the-then recent tragedies in Jerusalem. There was a bus bombing that claimed dozens of lives, but there was one suicide bombing that really got to us as a family: the Sbarro’s pizzeria. This attack had happened before 9/11 when I was still living in Chicago. Growing up, I didn’t eat much. To the dismay of my parents, I ate “nothing with a face”, a.k.a. no meat of any kind but conveniently ate anything with cheese and bread and carbs in general. Naturally, pizza was my absolute, bar-none favorite food. Still is.
And being my favorite food, I would routinely beg Mom and Dad to take me to the nearest pizza place wherever we were. Luckily for my parents, instead of having to stand on their heads to goad me into eating anything else, there was practically a Sbarro’s in any given mall that we’d frequent during shopping trips. Great for around holiday time when we’d spend hours traversing JCPenney, Marshall Fields, Carson’s, the Disney Store (my least favorite place on Earth at that age), and KB Toys. Some of my favorite memories of my middle-class upbringing were spent at a table chowing down on a big slice of Sbarro’s cheese pizza topped with the Parmesan that came in the little white packets. I remember the smell of that store, the faint burning from the ovens mixed with all the glorious smells of an average food court in the late ’90s and early aughts, and that subtle plasticky smell that lightly emanates from paper cups, their drink tops and the straws.
The thought of a store like that bombed out with dust and the smell of charred bodies is something that I thank G-d never experienced, but that fear must have struck such a cord that it all bubbled up following the wave of attacks in Jerusalem. I remember standing in the middle of my foyer for some reason proclaiming that we should pull all the Jews out of the Middle East and nuke it. Wipe it out.
End it all for the non-Jews there.
It’s something that I didn’t sadly recognize was so vile, so reprehensible, even coming from the mouth of an annoyed pre-teen boy that should have been so swiftly condemned by his parents and policed out of his conscience. At least, that’s what my response would have been if my kid openly advocated for the instant destruction of millions of people for the sake of not being Jews.
My parents were not cool with this, but I cannot remember what exactly they said, probably something along the lines of “That’s not right” or “We don’t ever say things like this,” but it’s been a little less than 20 years since that dark moment that I honestly have put it so far out of my mind.
But that punchline by my fraternity brother “E” sticks with me like hot glue.
The joke goes something like this: someone will mention Palestine or Palestinians, like “Oh, I’m from Palestine.” And “E” goes, “Where’s that? What is that place? That doesn’t exist! It’s not real!”
This would be met by laughter from my fellow frat brothers, agreeing that such a place is “non-existent.” That anyone who suggests otherwise is some foolish goy who didn’t understand, didn’t get it.
I never laughed, and if I did, it was more of a laugh of, “Oh, wow, why are you actually saying something like this in 2013? Like, what fucking year is this, man?”
I never actually challenged him, and I should have because I knew better.
And now eight years later, as the IDF begins a new campaign upon the people of Gaza following violent police crackdowns against worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque mere meters away from the Dome of the Rock (prominently featured in Jerusalem’s skyline) which were followed almost immediately by an ultra-nationalist right-wing Jewish sponsored pogrom in which the fascists with their tzitzit dangling under their shirts marched in the streets chanting “Death to the Arabs!,” I know far too much to sit idly by as we Jews watch our Holy Land occupants flex unparalleled muscles on a far weaker and oppressed populace with no true government of its own, no advocates outside of their own spheres of influence, and no true hope of meaningful recourse, since all of the violence committed against them is being justified as Israel “defending herself.”
Yes, “defending” against starved children in the streets throwing rocks at soldiers armed to the fucking teeth occupying their lands.
“Defending” against Soviet-era rockets that while deadly are virtually no match for the literal Skynet-esque Iron Dome defense system that blows 90% of them out of the fucking sky.
“Defending” against people protesting illegal evictions at a mosque in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan and then being attacked following Iftar.
“Defending” their lands by allowing right-wing thugs to do unto the Palestinians what right-wing genocidal Nazi thugs did to their great-grandparents in Europe during Kristallnacht:
It doesn’t matter why Israel was created in the first place anymore – we know why.
It doesn’t matter that Israel has been attacked on multiple occasions only to have won each armed conflict it’s ever faced in rather decisive fashion.
It doesn’t matter that Hamas continues to wage attacks against innocent Jews, and yes that includes the over 2,000 Katyusha rockets they’ve launched into Israel during this current exchange.
It doesn’t matter who even started this conflict in the first place.
They attacked Muslims during Ramadan.
Golda Meir literally declared war after a coordinated attack on Israel during Yom Kippur.
Why is anyone surprised that the Palestinians took those actions as anything but a declaration of war???
Literal jihads have been waged following lesser actions in the past.
Are we to assume that all of Israel, its security forces and its people have such a tiny collective memory despite living their whole lives alongside Muslims that perhaps, JUST PERHAPS strong-arming worshippers at a mosque or outraged Palestinians demonstrating against the internationally-condemned evictions set to take place in Sheikh Jarrah MIGHT inflame tensions past the point of war? Are we so full of our own shit that we have the actual chutzpah to run around on Facebook posting images of solidarity with Israel while her government TERRORIZES Palestinians with shock-and-awe tactics similar to that of the American bombings that leveled Iraq more than a decade ago?
The point is that the Israeli government has lost.
It’s perceived as a mostly-white body of maniacal fanatics looking to suppress the native population into permanent second-class citizenship while selfishly continuing to act in its own best interest, Palestinian lives be damned.
It walks like an apartheid government, talks like an apartheid government, and acts like an apartheid government.
The religious right, like in this country, are vastly influencing the Knesset’s priorities and guiding the government’s policies. They are displacing Palestinians by forcing them out of their own homes and BULLDOZING THE LAND INTO JEWISH-ONLY SETTLEMENTS, thus condemning innocent Palestinians to the street for no good goddamn reason. They are exacerbating a decades-long, now generational humanitarian crisis that needed to be solved long before Bibi Netanyahu fully sold out and became nothing but a tacit advocate of racial and religious hatred and covert genocide.
Israel, a place I STILL AGAINST ALL LOGIC AND SENSE WANT TO VISIT ON FUCKING BIRTHRIGHT, must STOP.
Stop.
Just stop.
That’s the mantra at this point.
Stop.
Palestine EXISTS, its people are REAL, and are not the butt of a shitty and racist joke.
We must stand together and demand that this conflict ends.
Societally speaking, especially in the West (and more specifically America), we’ve always asked how Israel could stop this conflict when Hamas and other terrorists are willing to blow themselves to kingdom come.
Never have we asked if Israel was ever in the wrong, nor have we asked her to display a shred of accountability.
It’s time we do that now.
Diary of a Mad Millennial 