Living in the COVID World ... and Beyond #40: More Thoughts and Emotions about Israel and the Palestinian Territories

My second post, 4 weeks later, on the same topic.   Why?   Because it is hard for me to focus elsewhere.   My climate activism, other than a few Zoom calls, has been at a standstill.  Again, I’m not well-organized … more a collection of thoughts and feelings that have been helpful as I try to sort through the evolving situation.

1st, I have been listening over the last 6 weeks to a friend who lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.   She shared with me that, on average, she races to a bomb shelter at least two times each day to seek safety in response to rockets being launched into Israel.   Yes, I participated in duck and cover exercises when I was in elementary school, but I really can’t imagine what it would be like, the ongoing repetitive terror, of living in a situation like she describes.  Plus, I could hear it in her voice … she is very scared and has an emergency pack ready in case she needs to evacuate from the country.

And of course, the terror is running from all directions – Israelis, the Jewish diaspora in response to increased words and actions of antisemitism, Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank who are suffering from increased violence by Jewish settlers, and the Palestinian and broader Islamic and Arab diaspora who are experiencing increased incidents of Islamophobia.

Yikes!  This is a lot of terrified people acting out with sound basis in historical terrors – for Jews, centuries of pogroms and then the Holocaust and for Palestinians, the Nakba (forced removal from their homes in 1948) and subsequent occupation of their homelands and ongoing mistreatment.

Do you remember Moshe Dayan?   He was an Israeli military leader memorable for wearing an eye patch.  I read that he made the following three statements:

“What cause have we to complain about their [Palestinian] fierce hatred to us?  For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.”

Source: “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World” by Avi Shlaim, 2000.

“Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived.  Wea re the generation of colonizers and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a house.”

“There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”

I appreciate Dayan’s understanding of the history of Palestinian displacement.   I can understand that Hamas would act out in pain and try to inflict pain on the people that they perceive as their colonizers.   It does not make those actions right, and it does not make them something that I agree with, but I’m glad to at least understand the emotional basis for Hamas’ actions on October 7th combined with whatever their political calculations were about the consequences.

And I can understand the response of the Israeli government based in the historical terrorizing of the Jewish people.   It does not make those actions right and it does not make them something that I agree with, but I can understand the emotional basis for the Israeli government’s actions post-October 7th combined with whatever their political calculations were about the consequences.

I hope that the new conditions that these horrific actions have created will provide a new foundation for movement towards a lasting peace.   I’m reminded of the situation of Ireland where there were violent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics for decades and somehow, they seem to have found a way through that to people living together peacefully.   If it can happen in Ireland, why can’t it happen in Israel and Palestine?

Finally, I have had a story/song that keeps recurring in my mind.  It is from the musical Camelot.  In the final scene, as I recall, King Arthur has been wounded and is dying on the battlefield.  And he calls over a young page who had been serving him and he sings, as he is dying, these words:

“Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.”

Let’s not forget that people can put down their swords (and machine guns, rockets, and bombs) and live together in peace.   I think peace is possible.