Tzipiyah.com

This evening I witnessed a political rally. Prime Minister Netanyahu was scheduled to give a much-anticipated address at Bar Ilan university, and just outside the campus stood a few groups of people. On one side of the road, on the pavement, stood groups of people who align themselves with the political right. And on the opposite side of the road stood a number of people who have taken a very adamant opposing stance, and who find themselves on the political left.

The demonstrators were relating to one of the hottest topics in Netanyahu’s, and in Israel’s, policy today, which is what to do with international pressure — specifically from USA — to create ‘peace’ with the Arabs, specifically with the steps demanded to create the much-touted “Two-State Solution.” There are many issues at play here, and the situation is complex.

Both groups of people waved signs and banners, and shouted slogans and chants. There was plenty media coverage, which meant that effectively the eyes of millions of people around the world were focused on the signs, the chants, and the general atmosphere at the demonstrations.

(more…)

I was walking along Yaffo Street in Yerushalayim last night. As I came to the corner with King George, a group of foreigners reached me and waited with me at the traffic light. They were speaking in English. I listened quietly.

As we crossed the road, we all looked towards King George street and saw, behind the enclosed construction area where they’re building the light rail, an orange bulldozer. One of the girls in the group joked, ‘Oh, look, it’s a terrorist,’ to the general amusement of the group. Then one of the men said, ‘You know, I’ve heard that the bulldozer drivers are really scared to drive their bulldozers these days; they’re scared that some over-enthusiastic citizen will pull out a gun and shoot them.’

At this point, I decided to break my silence, and I turned to them and said, ‘Forget about the bulldozer drivers. You know who’s scared? We are! The people who walk in the streets!’ The man made a noncommittal comment in reply.

I ended my conversation with him by saying, ‘It’s very easy to get hit by a bulldozer. You don’t have to do anything; you just sit there.’ And I walked on.

What got me speaking? I’d been happy to walk on in silence until a certain point. What really got to me was when I heard these non-Jews, visitors to Israel, taking the side of those who hate us, of those who plan our murder in cold blood. Never mind the fact that totally innocent Jews, who were just on their way to work, or home, or travelling around the city, were murdered or severely injured, or the fact that this could happen at any time to anyone on the streets of Yerushalayim, G-d forbid. No, what occupied the concern of these people was the poor Arab tractor drivers.

The other thing that really got to me was this man’s use of the word ‘over-enthusiastic’. He used this word to express his feelings of superiority towards the heroic Jews who prevented more murder and injury by killing the murderers in their tracks, in the tractor attacks of a few months ago. He used this word to express his scorn; clearly these Jews are just getting over-excited. There’s nothing to worry about; is there really any need to shoot the poor Arab driver dead?

In answer to these unvoiced, implied messages, I say the following to him and to the rest of the world:

Yes! We need to kill the murderers. We will not stand silent and allow evil people to kill and injure us. The Jews who took out their guns and shot the murderers are heroes. May they be blessed. But, most importantly of all, we do not need to include you, world, in our reasoning. We do not need to be accountable to you. We are Israel, and we are proud to be Israel. We will act as we see fit — with our deeply-ingrained, sacred values of justice, righteousness, and goodness — values that you cannot hope to live up to, even as you attack us and rudely claim that we are lacking therein. And if you don’t understand, world; or if you choose to pervert our actions, or to believe the perverted lies you choose to feed yourself about us, about Israel, that’s your problem. Not ours.

Israel is at war. Battling to destroy Hamas, a band of evil people bent on killing and destroying as many Jews as they can. What does a country at war look like? How do people feel? What are Israelis’ reactions to the situation where thousands of soldiers are called up to the front, and where the Jew-haters fire missiles into areas that are closer and closer inland? (The fact that they have been firing missiles onto Jews and their homes, kindergartens, shops, streets for years, even before the Disengagement, and why this has not really bothered most people, is for another time.) I’ll give you a taste of what it’s like to be living in a country that’s at war. (more…)

The inter-city busrides can get long after many times of making the same trip. I decided to pack a book into my bag, so that I could read or study during the hour or so where I’d be sitting still in a chair anyway. My first thought was to take a volume of Plato’s dialogues, some of which we’re studying in one of my university courses. All was good and well, until I was struck by the incredible irony.

That night would be the first night of Chanukah - a festival where we celebrate the Divinely led triumph of the Jews, in their tiny minority, over the Ancient Greeks, in their almost overwhelming majority. Almost overwhelming - but not entirely. The Jews had lived for some years under the reign of the Greeks, which was not a happy situation; however, it was tolerable, and they tried to get on with their lives. This all changed when Antiochus instituted his evil decrees against Torah and Jewish life.
(more…)

Last night I babysat for an American family who made Aliyah; last Shabbat I ate a meal with nine American seminary girls; and all last week I helped out an American family here for the chagim.

I’ve been talking a lot of English and I’ve been spending time with a range of Americans: some live here; a bunch wish they could live here; and others are happy they don’t live here.

To be frank, I felt very American. Which is a good, because I am. But I was also comfortable with that feeling. Which surprises me because I’m usually not.

I am careful to speak Israeli and look Israeli and act Israeli.

It’s an issue with which I often struggle: I want to properly acclimate to Israel’s culture and social setting and yet I cannot disregard my American roots; I will always be American. The desire to become “Israeli” is appealing and complex and impossible all at once.

I was caught off guard, therefore, when I found myself in conversation with one of those nine seminary girls. She was American and intelligent and this was her first time in Israel and she was frustrated. Israelis are rude, she generalized: at restaurants the waitresses are impatient; people rebuke her for crossing the street when the light is red; and the Israeli girls outside her seminary yell out crude, or perhaps clever, variations of the word ‘American’. She described them as malicious and abrasive.

(more…)