Since I was a little kid, people have always been startled at some of my insights. I have always been amused by this because to me, they are not so much insights as common sense, and things that are easy to see if you pay attention. I wish more people simply paid attention but often I find that when I am talking to people, they aren’t listening to me, they are merely thinking about what they will say next. I try to approach every conversation as an event in which I am either learning or teaching, I am not one for small talk; my friends often laugh at how impatient I am on the phone but it’s because I do not like to waste time. I have things to do.
I try to explain things I see. It’s not always easy because my life experiences and education may be different than the people I am speaking to, but I still try because sometimes I feel like we miss important things, a sort of missing the forest for the trees thing.
For instance, does anyone with a functioning brain really think that the Jews will one day just “go home”? Not only are they actually already home (making going “home” somewhat problematic) but what exactly in the history of the Jewish people would suggest that they would simply just go away? I mean I am open to discourse, so what events in the history of Jews would suggest that they would just give up? Because I have looked, and I haven’t ever seen one. I come from a people so stubborn that we simply refused to die, hiding on what were called “Road allowances” for 2 generations so I know a little bit about stubborn. I don’t understand how people who have access to history cannot see these things.
The Arabs think they are tough people. They play at being stoic and believe that they have had a policy of “patience” where they seem to think if they make life hard enough for the Jews, that one day the Jews will just give up and go away. Perhaps they got this idea from how the Jews achieved their independence from the British. The Arabs are famous after all for copying or co-opting Jewish experiences and culture (and some would say history and identity). The Jews basically made occupation so difficult for the British that even though they were one of the greatest empires in the world , they finally just said “screw it, these Jews are crazy, we are outta here.” It didn’t happen easily, but it happened. It just took patience. The Arabs of course saw this and probably think they can do the same thing. They look at the history but they do not understand it. They ignore the context. And in history, CONTEXT is everything.
The simple truth is that the Arabs just cannot understand that not only are the Jews a stiff-necked, stubborn people who managed to resist assimilation even in the Diaspora for over two thousand years, but they have a trait that is common to all indigenous people – an almost inhuman tolerance for hardship when it comes to their ancestral lands. For some it’s religious, which adds yet more strength, but for many it is simply the fact that Israel is their ancestral land and they will never be willing to give it up. You see this in studying Jewish history; the fact that many Jews remained despite incredible hardship under Muslim rule, and you see it in other aspects of Zionism and the way that the Mizrachi Jews were expelled from Arab lands yet became integral parts of Israel and the Jewish nation. Colonisers and imperialists do not share this sort of connection. They may feel connected to the land, but it’s not a deep and abiding connection. It is not something they would die for, so it’s almost impossible to explain it to them in terms they will understand. Indigenous people are used to being marginalized and oppressed, while we do not like it. We aren’t overly impressed by it anymore either.
I see a commonality with the first Zionist Jews who returned to their homeland, and my own family. For two generations, my family were “civilized” – they lived in houses in large communities, and though we maintained many of our traditions, we were no longer “bush people.” Then when the RCMP came and forced us off our lands, we had to relearn how to be people of the land again, and it was not a gentle environment. Many people perished, but those who were left were very tough, so that even for the subsequent generations who were forced to live on the road allowances, life was difficult but not impossible. For the first Jews who returned to their homeland, I imagine it was much the same, incredible hardship, a complete change from being “ the pale sickly Jew of the office” to becoming again “the Jew of the land.” Going from living in continental Europe for several generations, to a place that was devoid of anything resembling their old life was tough, but the Jews didn’t just survive, they thrived. They reclaimed salt marsh into arable lands, sometimes washing dirt by the bucket. They relearned how to plant and farm in inhospitable lands and they reclaimed not only their heritage and ancestral lands, but in doing so, they reclaimed their very people-hood. I have met some of these kibbutzniks and they don’t whine about how tough their lives were. Instead they celebrate that they returned. Those are the Jews who fought not one, not two, but three wars against their neighbors. knowing if they lost, they would lose everything. They didn’t lose.
Now knowing what you know about indigenous people and our ties to our ancestral lands, seeing the fact that we will undergo massive hardships to maintain those connections, that we prefer death to allowing our sacred places to be in the hands of others where they are despoiled and desecrated, let me ask you again: Do you honestly think that there is anything in the world that will make the Jews leave their ancestral lands now that they have returned? Do you think that killing a few here and there, even in horrific and despicable manners, is going to change something that is so deep rooted in these people?
Do you think that saying stupid things to hurt their feelings will make them leave? You can compare Jews to Nazis all you want, anyone with a third grade education can see how wrong that is. We know you do it because you know something so ridiculous is bound to be hurtful. You can insinuate that they are mean-spirited and cruel, but the fact that even during an actual war they were sending food and water to the people attacking them, shows that to be a lie. You can try to silence their artists and scientists, but their contributions to the world are too great to ignore.
What you do when you hold them to impossible standards, when you criticize them unfairly, is you help them by attacking them, because you will scare away the sad few Jews who are not tough. You will get to the weak-willed; perhaps they will even leave in minuscule numbers, But to the vast majority of Jews who understand their history, the ones who descend from people who resisted oppression and great pressure to “do what they were told” who refused to assimilate – and yes the ones who would argue with G-d himself – well, all you do for them, is teach them another history lesson.
