How are you, people have asked. It’s a question I have asked others in situations where it can feel impossible to describe your mindset, all of the swirling emotions, all of the racing thoughts. The question comes from a good place, a place of empathy, a place, I think, of fear. A fear of staying silent, of abandoning those you love. And also a fear that there is a layer, a nuance, that we have missed. A landmine that we try desperately not to step on. We want to provide a listening ear, a sense of comfort in an impossible moment. And we don’t want to say the wrong thing, to inadvertently rub salt in the wound. Let me be clear: I don’t hate the question, I welcome it.
So to answer the question, the truth is I feel so many things. I feel angry. I feel hurt. I feel sad. I feel afraid. And I feel really, really lonely. It’s strange being an American Jew on any day, but it’s especially strange being an American Jew when Israel was just attacked. And it feels strange to write those words, “when Israel was just attacked,” and feel the need to explain what I mean, to justify it, to add in equivocations and caveats. It feels strange to see people celebrating this atrocity, an atrocity that would be widely condemned if it were to happen anywhere else. And it feels strange to realize that this long and complicated conflict has become something of a purity test for some people, for the people who weigh in angrily on everything and also the people who weigh in on almost nothing, but feel the overwhelming need to weigh in on this.
I try not to share my views on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle because I feel like there are too many assumptions that people make about what an American Jew, us of the ‘dual loyalties,’ must think. I also, quite frankly, don’t know enough to feel as though what I have to say is productive. The conflict is long, it is complicated and it involves so much unnecessary pain and suffering. So I am going to heed the advice I wan to give to others and just stay quiet on my thoughts about the specifics of the conflict itself. There is no winning there. Not in my mind, anyway. And so I think I am going to focus on two things.
One, self-protection.
Two, being better.
I’ve decided to take myself out of spaces where largely unmoderated comments are flying. I can usually find humor in the idiocy of comment sections, but not right now, not on this topic. And I’ve decided to focus on what I’m seeing, how I’m feeling and making sure that at some point in the future, if and when there is a similar situation involving other groups of people, that I do better. That I choose my words carefully, that I temper my responses. That I consider.
I remember when 9/11 happened. From the stairwell in my freshman year dorm I called my mom and I asked her: what horrible things did we do to push people so far that the only recourse they felt they had was to murder thousands of innocent people at their place of work? There was no justification, no excuse for those attacks. They were evil and cowardly. But the context, the history, it matters. We can mourn the dead, we can cry and rage, and we can also ask the hard questions. We can say that the policies and actions our government took helped to create a tinderbox without placing any blame on those who died. Without saying that anyone deserved it. We can say that those who carried out the attack itself, who planned and executed it, are responsible for the destruction they left behind. And we can also say that the retaliation that followed was ill-conceived and unnecessary, that nothing good came of any of it. That we are, all of us, worse off because of it. Many things can be true at once.
And so again, all these years later, I find myself holding a lot of conflicting realities at once. I find myself wishing the world was a different and better place. And I find myself here in my house knowing that it will get scarier and more complicated in the days, weeks and months to come and that, again, we will all be worse off because of it.
And I mourn. I mourn for those who have died in Israel and Palestine today, over this past weekend and every single day before. I mourn for the deaths that are sure to follow. I mourn for people who celebrate the massacre, rape, kidnapping and torture of civilians anywhere. I mourn as I tend to my heavy, broken heart.
So that’s how I’m feeling today. Tomorrow, I’m sure, will be different. How are you?
franklyrebekah 