How to retain your humanity whilst all those around you are losing theirs.

Okay, where do I start?

Perhaps there is something poignant about beginning a blog in a hospital. The wife, (as I lovingly refer to Minda who has put up with me for one and twenty years as from this week) has had an operation today. She is fine now, thanks for asking, but I have had to be with her all day, which was just as well as I did come in handy, looking after her glasses, fetching the nurses and being sent off to buy her coffee. In a couple of hours or so we should be on our way home, so till my computer battery runs out, I have decided to get this blog on the road.

Whilst the wife’s health has been my foremost worry, it has been impossible to escape the news of the day. As I walked into the hospital, I was handed one of these free newspapers that seemed to be shoved in one’s face at every opportunity as soon as one leaves one’s house. It was a picture on the front page that caught my eye. Last night, we heard of the brutal slaughter of 5 members of a family in a settlement in Israel. The mother, the father and 3 of their kids, aged 11, 3 and (I find this hard to type) 3 months were stabbed in their beds by terrorists who had infiltrated over the security fence. I had searched the foreign press for some report of the murder. The Japanese Tsunami had dominated all of the websites and TV news channels. Any references to the murder mentioned that the victims were settlers as if they were not unarmed civilians.

I wasn’t that shocked. After over 30 years in Israel, I have become accustomed to the not-so balanced news coverage that Israel gets in the world media. The underlying message of the reports is that it was a horrifying attack, but they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Now, anyone that knows me will tell you that my views, that will become apparent as this blog develops, are left-of-centre in a big way. I have my doubts as to the efficacy of the whole Settlement Movement in Israel (but more about that another time.) But, in the name of everything Great and Holy, how does living on a piece of disputed land justify getting your and your children’s throats slit?

Exactly 15 years ago, I had a piece published in the Jerusalem Post during the spate of terrorist attacks that took place around the same time of year, before Purim. These included buses blowing up in Jerusalem and the terrible attack at the Dizengoff Centre in Tel Aviv. I wrote it in the wake of the words “Death to Arabs” having been written on the blackboard of a class which I was teaching at the time. I was angry that this could be done in a school, but I understood that the pupils were looking for an avenue to let off steam. An interesting discussion ensued, in which we concluded that “Death to Arabs” was an unjustifiable sentiment, but “Death to terrorists” was a valid political statement which could be debated civilly. Several of the pupils had commented that “All Arabs wish to kill all Jews”. I painstakingly set out to demolish this point of view.

The thing is that as soon as I saw one of the photos in the paper I was taken aback. The father of the 3 murdered children looked extremely familiar to me. After making a phone call, I found out why. I had often seen him in shul (synagogue) even though I live nowhere near the settlement where his family lived. It transpired that his wife’s family lived in my neighbourhood and that I knew her father and brothers. As I passed a TV in the waiting room an hour ago, I saw live coverage of the funeral of the 5 family members and caught a glimpse of the wife’s father hugging his 3 sons all of whom I recognised as I have seen them almost every week in shul for the past 19 years or so. Although I do not know them personally, I have watched the boys grow up into fine young men. The separation between men and women in shul meant that till today, I never knew that they had a sister. I would rather have obtained this knowledge in any other way.

It is hard to contain one’s outrage. I suppose that the instinctive reaction would be to shout “Mavet LeAravim” –“Death to Arabs.” It is at times like this that one has to retain one’s humanity. accompanying the wife to hospital has helped me do this. On coming out of the operating room, she was dedicatedly tended to by two Arab nurses to remind me that we have to be careful not to tar a whole people with the same brush. I hope that the barbarians who perpetuated this heinous crime will be caught and dealt with properly I hope that my tax shekels will not go to financing their incarceration.

Post Scriptum
As if to accentuate the situation, as I was driving the wife back from the hospital after a gruelling, nerve-wracking day (the operation only took half an hour but the waiting around beforehand and afterwards was the worst part,) I drove close to the Yeshiva high school where I have been teaching for the last two decades. As I approached the junction on the main road I saw a bunch of pupils from the the school holding flags and signs that they had written. This was a common enough sight and an understanadable reaction to the weekend's events. However, as I drove past, noticed what was written on the signs; "death to Arabs". Had circumstances been different, I probably would have pulled over, got out of the car and stopped the rather embarrassing spectacle. I was concerned with getting Minda home and I didn't want to get too involved. I drove a little way, out of eyesight if the boys and phoned the principal. At first he didn't answer, but when he did it seems that he had already been out and ripped up the offensive signs.

So the day ended on a hopeful note. Minda was given the all-clear, more or less, and even the hard-line right-wingers running my school understand that there are some things that should not be declared. Even so, I wonder if on my return to school I should ask the boys holding the signs whether "death to Arabs" also includes the nurses who took good care of my wife today.

So ends my first blog and I haven't even started on football yet.