Life on the Israeli Riviera – Part V
It’s getting closer! We’ve had 3 bombings during the past two weeks in Kfar Saba, a town so close to us that it’s hard to tell where one town ends and the other begins. Our little bubble of safety in Ra’anana is starting to crumble. Kids are being told to stay off the main street at rush hour when bombs usually go off. The forces of Palestinian liberation are making damned sure that no-one in Israel feels safe any more. My father-in-law and his wife were here for a visit last week from the USA. The morning after the latest bombing I hid the front page of the newspaper from him since we had been a few blocks from ground zero just a few hours before the action.
I took the in-laws to Tira, a town of Palestinian-Israelis near here. We went to the Saturday market full of factory seconds, bric-a-brac, and food. Before the war started the market was full of hundreds of Israelis in addition to Palestinians. I counted six Jews there last week. Not that Tira is such a hotbed of radicals and violence but Israelis are afraid to associate with anyone other than Jews. What are we afraid of? Bombs and bullets I suppose. But more than that we are afraid of our own existential reflection, that nemesis of Zionism; Palestinian nationalism. And in denying them legitimacy we deny our own liberty and continue to live in the ghetto.
In a recent essay Israel Shamir described himself as the ‘Third Dove’, like the feathered messenger from Noah’s Ark who ventured forth beyond the receeding floodwaters and never returned, finding the world a good and safe place. Far be it for me to deny Shamir his fantasies but surely the nation of Israel (as opposed to the state) must find it’s own third dove from within the bosom of it’s body politic, not from the statement of a marginal commentator. When our dove is ready we shall fly. I just hope to G-d it happens soon.
In the meanwhile depression has settled over the land. We all deal with it in our own way. My friend Nad and I get together on my rooftop veranda late at night and commiserate together.
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