As the Lozenge put it the other night to J: 'It'th noisy in the distanth, Daddy.' From our little oasis in East Jerusalem, only about 60km away from Gaza, we can hear the rockets. Last night a warning siren sounded in our area.
I wonder what the Gazan children are saying to their Dads this week.
As I flew back into Israel from London on Monday the guy at passport control laughed as he saw my passport and said: 'You're coming from a civilization. Why the hell would you want to come here? This is such a horrible place,' shaking his head.
I'd been a bit concerned about leaving J and the dwarves for a weekend, as the country, and the greater region hurtles towards fever pitch. Ramadan and soaring temperatures don't help. And within the space of a fortnight, the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers were found, provoking a vicious cycle of retribution attacks. As their families mourned, people ran through the streets of Jerusalem shouting: 'Death to Arabs.' Then a 16 year old Arab boy was taken by a gang of Israeli settlers, who filled his mouth with petrol and ignited it, dumping his charred body in a forest. Palestinians have been pulled from trams and attacked; there have been 2 failed kidnap attempts on Arab children of only 7 years old. Riots, burning tyres, rocks and stones. And now rockets. In a David and Goliath style inbalance, only the other way around - the Israelis are fending off the furious Hamas attacks with their Iron Dome which is as good a shield as any could muster but the poor Gazans are taking it so hard.
How do you ever forgive the person responsible for filling your 16 year old son's mouth with petrol and setting light to it? Or for kidnapping your boy while hitchiking - a common way to travel here - killing him and dumping his body somewhere?
As an outsider you have to keep silent. We just don't know what it is to be from here. But it doesn't stop you thinking about it.
The seasoned journalist Aidan Hartley wrote a piece recently, based on a recent visit to Rwanda, from where he had also witnessed and reported on the genocide in 1994. His point was that there is not really a political solution that can stop people from tearing each other apart if that's what they're intent on doing. It is only our spirituality (and I don't think he means religion) as individual human beings that can save us.
Sometimes on a Sunday morning, dwarf decibels willing, I manage to catch a bit of Clare Balding presenting her morning show on Radio 2. I love Clare Balding. Not only did she go to my school but she sparks in me an enthusiasm in televised sport, which often I find hard to muster. A couple of weeks ago she interviewed Mpho Tutu, Desmond's daughter, about her recently published book she wrote with her Dad: 'The Book of Forgiving.' I ordered it, then forgot about it.
It landed in our mail box at the Consulate the same day the bodies of the 3 Israeli teenagers were discovered.
The news from here is all about vicious cycles. Living here, you get to feel history wheeling its huge form around and around, like an ancient mammoth-turned-elephant spinning through time, gathering terrifying momentum at each cumbersome 360 whirl, until no one standing within its wake, can work out what to do.
How can we know it won't go on spinning into infinity?
Is the only key, as Aidan Hartley suggests, within ourselves as individuals? Is this spirituality also the same as forgiveness? And most importantly how long does it take? It seems like the slow path when you're in the thick of it right here - with the Caliphate and the remains of poor, broken Syria, on the other threshold.
Bassem, a Palestinian friend who has just been made redundant, gave me a lift to the airport last week. I asked him about the concept of forgiveness, since he is Palestinian, and over 20 years ago, his brother was shot dead in the Al Aqsa mosque, while praying with many other men, by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
'There are two problems,' he said. 'One is that we still don't know who did it, because there were loads of soldiers it could have been. The other problem is that the bullet used was called a 'dum dum' one that explodes after contact - and the bullet went into his body through his cheek. So you can imagine the image I have in my mind, of my brother now.'
'So does this mean you can't forgive?' I asked.
'Time is good. It eases the pain and it helps you to forget. But forgive? No, I'm not sure I could ever do that.'
I haven't read the book of forgiving yet. I'm too busy reading the news: 'The tragedy of the Arabs:' A poisoned history; 'A vicious circle speeds up again'; 'The War for Iraq, every sort of battle'; 'After God'; 'The Jihadi Spy'; 'Sunni vs Shia'. You can't escape it. Which is why I'm also reading Clare Balding's autobiography: 'My Animals and Other Family' which is such a glorious escape from it all. Though it makes me worry we don't have pets for the dwarves to kindle those kinds of early relationships she describes in her book.
Haaretz, the left-leaning paper here (perhaps the equivalent of the Guardian) gives voice to reasonable and reasoned views. But sometimes they seem so quiet. And drowned out by all that background noise, and hatred on the streets.
Bradley Burston, writes an apology to the Palestinians 'for the unforgivable, for the unfathomable, and for all those on my side who never will.'
And Israeli author David Grossman, examines why Israel has not been able to make peace: 'And maybe, just maybe, the despair that has ruled us in recent years is also partly the despair of the doomed, who understand by now that there is no way to avoid punishment for their deeds, or for what they allowed to happen throught their support, or their silecne, or their apathy, so therefore - Why not eat, drink, and make merry while one still can?'
The guy in customs was right. This is a crazy place. But at this point in time, wherever we are in the world, we have to start thinking about it. Not only does it affect us all, but it's not going away.
I wonder what the Gazan children are saying to their Dads this week.
As I flew back into Israel from London on Monday the guy at passport control laughed as he saw my passport and said: 'You're coming from a civilization. Why the hell would you want to come here? This is such a horrible place,' shaking his head.
I'd been a bit concerned about leaving J and the dwarves for a weekend, as the country, and the greater region hurtles towards fever pitch. Ramadan and soaring temperatures don't help. And within the space of a fortnight, the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers were found, provoking a vicious cycle of retribution attacks. As their families mourned, people ran through the streets of Jerusalem shouting: 'Death to Arabs.' Then a 16 year old Arab boy was taken by a gang of Israeli settlers, who filled his mouth with petrol and ignited it, dumping his charred body in a forest. Palestinians have been pulled from trams and attacked; there have been 2 failed kidnap attempts on Arab children of only 7 years old. Riots, burning tyres, rocks and stones. And now rockets. In a David and Goliath style inbalance, only the other way around - the Israelis are fending off the furious Hamas attacks with their Iron Dome which is as good a shield as any could muster but the poor Gazans are taking it so hard.
How do you ever forgive the person responsible for filling your 16 year old son's mouth with petrol and setting light to it? Or for kidnapping your boy while hitchiking - a common way to travel here - killing him and dumping his body somewhere?
As an outsider you have to keep silent. We just don't know what it is to be from here. But it doesn't stop you thinking about it.
The seasoned journalist Aidan Hartley wrote a piece recently, based on a recent visit to Rwanda, from where he had also witnessed and reported on the genocide in 1994. His point was that there is not really a political solution that can stop people from tearing each other apart if that's what they're intent on doing. It is only our spirituality (and I don't think he means religion) as individual human beings that can save us.
Sometimes on a Sunday morning, dwarf decibels willing, I manage to catch a bit of Clare Balding presenting her morning show on Radio 2. I love Clare Balding. Not only did she go to my school but she sparks in me an enthusiasm in televised sport, which often I find hard to muster. A couple of weeks ago she interviewed Mpho Tutu, Desmond's daughter, about her recently published book she wrote with her Dad: 'The Book of Forgiving.' I ordered it, then forgot about it.
It landed in our mail box at the Consulate the same day the bodies of the 3 Israeli teenagers were discovered.
The news from here is all about vicious cycles. Living here, you get to feel history wheeling its huge form around and around, like an ancient mammoth-turned-elephant spinning through time, gathering terrifying momentum at each cumbersome 360 whirl, until no one standing within its wake, can work out what to do.
How can we know it won't go on spinning into infinity?
Is the only key, as Aidan Hartley suggests, within ourselves as individuals? Is this spirituality also the same as forgiveness? And most importantly how long does it take? It seems like the slow path when you're in the thick of it right here - with the Caliphate and the remains of poor, broken Syria, on the other threshold.
Bassem, a Palestinian friend who has just been made redundant, gave me a lift to the airport last week. I asked him about the concept of forgiveness, since he is Palestinian, and over 20 years ago, his brother was shot dead in the Al Aqsa mosque, while praying with many other men, by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
'There are two problems,' he said. 'One is that we still don't know who did it, because there were loads of soldiers it could have been. The other problem is that the bullet used was called a 'dum dum' one that explodes after contact - and the bullet went into his body through his cheek. So you can imagine the image I have in my mind, of my brother now.'
'So does this mean you can't forgive?' I asked.
'Time is good. It eases the pain and it helps you to forget. But forgive? No, I'm not sure I could ever do that.'
I haven't read the book of forgiving yet. I'm too busy reading the news: 'The tragedy of the Arabs:' A poisoned history; 'A vicious circle speeds up again'; 'The War for Iraq, every sort of battle'; 'After God'; 'The Jihadi Spy'; 'Sunni vs Shia'. You can't escape it. Which is why I'm also reading Clare Balding's autobiography: 'My Animals and Other Family' which is such a glorious escape from it all. Though it makes me worry we don't have pets for the dwarves to kindle those kinds of early relationships she describes in her book.
Haaretz, the left-leaning paper here (perhaps the equivalent of the Guardian) gives voice to reasonable and reasoned views. But sometimes they seem so quiet. And drowned out by all that background noise, and hatred on the streets.
Bradley Burston, writes an apology to the Palestinians 'for the unforgivable, for the unfathomable, and for all those on my side who never will.'
And Israeli author David Grossman, examines why Israel has not been able to make peace: 'And maybe, just maybe, the despair that has ruled us in recent years is also partly the despair of the doomed, who understand by now that there is no way to avoid punishment for their deeds, or for what they allowed to happen throught their support, or their silecne, or their apathy, so therefore - Why not eat, drink, and make merry while one still can?'
The guy in customs was right. This is a crazy place. But at this point in time, wherever we are in the world, we have to start thinking about it. Not only does it affect us all, but it's not going away.
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