Menachem is a friend of mine. As are his family, wife, and children. Menachem is Israeli. He was born in Austria after WWII, the child of Holocaust survivors, both Hungarian, both with unfathomable stories of escaping death again, and again. Their story was simple, after surviving the camps, never having met before, they stood in a group with other holocaust survivors and were told to "choose a spouse," because apparently in order to increase your chances of managing to survive in Palestine, and not get kicked out by the Brits, it was better to be married.
Shortly after, Menachem was born and his parents made the journey to the promised land and settled in Zichron Ya'acov. This was about 18 months before the creation of Israel. They eventually built a modest house, and lived long lives. Menachem grew up in Israel, fell in love and married a charming American woman. They lived in Israel for a few years, then decided to move to the states. Where they continued to build their lives, all the while making annual pilgrimages to where their hearts really were.
Menachem's mother passed away a few years ago, his father just a few weeks ago. His father's death was expected, and long in coming. He died quietly, after a long and extraordinary life. They are one of the many typical Israeli families. Having struggled many years, been part of this country's founding, fighting in wars and losing relatives, and always, constantly dreaming of peace.
Me and Menachem met up the other day, since his father's passing he's had some business to close up and has been in town. He decided to come down to Tel Aviv to spend Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. I headed out to his hotel Friday morning, before the start of Yom Kippur to meet up and say hi. We have a lot in common, whether that being both from the same area in Israel (my beginnings in this country are two kibbutzim bordering with Zichron), living in the same area in the US, and more.
And our political beliefs are also very similar. It's hard being an Israeli that supports and loves Israel these days in the world. We were taking a walk in Tel Aviv port, bristling with people even on this Friday morning, so close to Yom Kippur when everything grinds to a halt, and talking about politics. He was telling me about a classmate of his who also moved to the US years ago. Someone that rejects all that Israel is, someone that uses her Israeli heritage to provide legitimacy to the Israel haters of the world. Apparently she doesn't call herself Israeli, she calls herself Jewish Palestinian. I mentioned that funnily enough there have always been "Jewish Palestinians" in this land, even before Theodore Herzyl's dream of a State for the Jews, even before the first wave of immigrants from Russia in the late 1800s. Yet people like his cousin like to portray Israel as having been a land robbed from another people. People like her don't bother to acknowledge those Jews that have lived here for generations, and centuries.
I told Menachem about the recent Time Magazine cover story titled "Why Israel doesn't Care About Peace," how it first sets the story by painting Israelis as Nazi-like fascists complete with a cover photo of an Israeli with a large Jewish star tattooed on his arm, sitting on the beach smoking a hooka (water pipe), then goes on to portray Israelis as only caring about only money, that centuries old anti-Semitic canard, and finally mentioned that I had written a blog post on the subject.
Menachem gave off a snicker, more of indignation than amusement. And said how it was funny that people write that Israelis don't want peace. He told me how he had grown up on songs of peace, that hopes and aspirations for peace filled almost everything in his life growing up in Israel, that in school and summer camp they were taught to work for peace, and that Israeli poets for generations wrote about it. As we were walking a small child on a two wheel scooter passed us in the crowd. Menachem said that was exactly what the people of this country had dreamt about and fought for all these years, so their children can ride their scooters, go out and play, fall in love, and live normal lives.
Then he said, "I guess the whole thing about of Peace was just propaganda. That's what it must have been, right?" And I answered, "yes, Israelis apparently living their lives and teaching their children to strife to achieve peace was all some propaganda campaign, to convince the world that they wanted peace (even though apparently they don't). And it's been going on for 60 years." And we both shoot our heads.
Menachem then went on to say that while our schools and summer camps take kids out to be kids, to have fun, to get to be children, and yes, imbue in them a desire for peace. On the other hand, those that are supposed to be our partners in peace teach their children anti-Israel hatred in their schools, fill their songs with dreams of martyrdom, and send them to camps to learn to shoot guns and kill people, like the Hamas run summer camps in Gaza which hosted 100,000 children this summer alone.
As we began heading for our final destination, a coffee shop named Café Café in the port, Menachem asked how it is that people who don't have to raise their children knowing they will have to serve in the army, fight wars, and risk their lives, can claim that Israelis don't want peace? And it’s a good question.
Most writers of these types of pieces don't know the lives that Israelis live, they apparently haven't experienced the pain of loss. Menachem lost a cousin in the Six Day war, in the narrow alleyways of the old city of Jerusalem, and ever since he gets nervous just being in Jerusalem. Apparently the writer of the Time Magazine piece didn't have to fight during one of Israel's wars, lose a relative during one, or have a child that lost an arm, leg, or their life in a suicide bombing. Apparently he didn't have to go to the hospital and identify his 15 year old daughter by her eyeball after a suicide bombing on a bus, because that was the only piece of her intact enough for identification (the story of a friend of mine) but no matter.
Indeed, there is one thing that the Time Magazine piece did get right, Israelis are tired of it. Tired of the one sided efforts, the withdrawals, the Intifadas, the calling for Israel's destruction, the chatter of Iran getting the bomb, the smuggling of missles and weapons to the two places we've already left, Gaza and Lebanon, the sending of their children off to war. But the one thing they don't get tired of is teaching their children to yearn for peace, because if there's anybody in the world that knows the ramifications of not having peace, it’s the Israelis. The problem is, to the Israelis, it doesn't seem that the feeling is mutual.
Menachem came up with a novel idea, one I've never heard of before. He says apparently peace is too hard to achieve. For as much as we want it, we're not willing to give up everything for it. On the other hand, the average Palestinians just want to live their lives too, they're struggle to survive and do what it is they have to do to do so. When Yasser Arafat waged his war against Israel, and now that Hamas is in power, the Palestinian people still needs to feed their children. So Menachem suggested we just declare mutual quiet. If nobody can agree on peace, they can agree on quiet. Just everybody stop attacking each other. No war, no violence, just a ten year period where people live their lives, something that is what all the moderate people want anyway, (and not the "Hudna" that Hamas has suggested, in which they can continue to smuggle weapons and gain strength to attack Israel again).
For as opposed to what the blog Hurryupharry so deftly observed that in the opinion of the world "Israelis, apparently, should be constantly politically engaged and protesting their government’s policies. Americans, Brits, Turks, Australians, everyone else in the world, is allowed to work and live." That is exactly the dream of Israelis, to be allowed to work and live, in peace. Without having to worry about war, or suicide bombings, note where the nearest bomb shelter is, or be worried about if your children's government issued gas masks is too small.
Me and Menachem carried on about a lot of other subjects, about how apparently in the world sticking up for Israel makes you a bad person, how in Israel itself, and among Israelis, they make it as if nobody can do anything right anymore. How the politicians, even those that aren't corrupt, make all the wrong moves, and how the military, the one body in Israel that nobody ever questioned, today is more and more being exposed to public criticism, a fact that weakens its deterrence and ability to properly function.
But then again, as hard as these facts are to deal with, they just go to show that as opposed to all the demonization of Israel and Israelis in the world press like we saw in Time Magazine, as opposed to all the one sided fluff pieces that examine why it is that supposedly Israelis don't want peace, while completely ignoring to ask whether the Palestinians, or Arabs want it, while Israeli children have been indoctrinated into the Propaganda of peace for 60 years, while Palestinian children to this day are indoctrinated into the propaganda of war, murder and Jihdad, Israel is still a strong, vibrant democracy where everybody has the right to say what they want, where Israel's Arab Parliament Members can stand at the pulit of the Parliment and openly call for Israeli leaders to be prosecuted for war crimes, and Israeli peaceniks can on a nightly basis ironically lament the death of Israeli democracy on national and international TV.
For in any case, even if peace is still elusive, in Israel, thank g-d, the propaganda of peace is alive and well.
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