They asked me to make it make sense and I shrugged my shoulders and told them I didn’t know how to do that. Said I couldn’t give them anything that would provide a context they could buy into.
Mentioned an interview I watched with a former peace activist who said the terrorists who butchered our people was told by an older member of the organization don’t see us as human beings.
“Many of them grew up knowing nothing but Hamas, they don’t view you as people.”
I am paraphrasing but that is close enough. It is supported by interviews with their leadership who reaffirm this and their desire to repeat the massacre as many times as necessary.
They told me there has to be another way to get through to them other than violence and I said it is impossible to do that this time.
“They need to be rooted out and destroyed or at least beaten down so badly they don’t look up without expecting a boot to the head.”
“Then you are complicit in a cycle of violence.”
“Maybe, but if a cycle of violence leads to safety that’s the road we travel down now. Because when people promise to try and exterminate you it is something you take seriously. They will lose.”
There Is Thought Behind The Rage
Some people asked how I can layer multiple messages and ideas into posts and I shrugged my shoulders again. What you think you see in a headline may not be what is there or it may tie into multiple ideas.
The previous post centered to an extent on my father telling me to take his hand. I thought about a couple of things I didn’t include in it that jump out at me.
The memories of when I realized I was towering over my mother and that my hands were far bigger than hers and the moment when I realized my own hand was as big as my father’s.
For years he had giant hands and then one day they weren’t giant, they were the same size as my own.
****
People have commented on some of what I have written and said it sounds angry. They aren’t wrong on some of it but there is thought behind the words and facts contained within.
Sometimes you have to pepper your paragraphs with words that elicit emotion and expand the reader’s understanding of yours.
When you want to make a point you can’t rest upon a sterile description that serves as a written dose of Ambien. You have to find a way to impress your message upon those who see it.
It shouldn’t be hard to do when you are discussing rape, murder, kidnapping and torture. Those who aren’t bothered by such things are people with impaired morality.
Old Emails
I went looking through some old emails for some material I wrote during the Hitnakut, the withdrawal from Gaza and fell down a rabbit hole.
I watched the video below for the first time in 15 or 16 years, if not longer and remembered thinking that this was painful but that it might be necessary to further the peace process.
I was wrong.
Maybe if Sharon had lived longer things would have been different, can’t say. Could say the same about Rabin too, but nothing is served by that speculation.
Then I came across other material and reentered the kingdom and the world I once lived and the bells went off. I remembered things I had forgotten or pushed away.
It made me think about mixed feelings, circumstances and situations and places in time and space. It made me believe a few things.
There was a respite from some of the chaos and craziness of the past three weeks.
I thought back to where I was ten years ago having just returned to Los Angeles. Felt like I was tearing myself into two pieces.
Don’t feel quite like I am straddling two worlds anymore but definitely am several steps closer to something else.
October 7th made that very clear to me.
Leave a Reply