April 2, 2024: Returning from Israel

On Tuesday, April 2 I returned from five intense days in Israel.  During my visit, I met with colleagues from East and West Jerusalem who had been essential partners in the 2022 Jerusalem International Fellows Residency.  I wasn’t there to “do business.”  I wanted to see them. Hug them. See how they are doing. I also spent time with friends living in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, all of whom know someone who has been directly affected by the horrific events of October 7th.  

One dear American-Israeli friend, a staunch progressive, has a 22 year old son who has been serving in Gaza since the war began.  Who has seen unspeakable horrors with no time to “process.”  A young Israeli who is black and lesbian feels excommunicated from her communities because she also identifies as a zionist. Another colleague is close friends with the parents of 23 year old hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The one whose arm was blown off at the Nova Festival. How his parents go on as ambassadors of hostages’ families is beyond me.

My Palestinian friends in East Jerusalem were afraid to go out of their homes during the first months after October 7.  Too dangerous to ride the light rail. Walking down the street could result in being beaten by the police, or worse.  One of my colleagues serves hundreds of Palestinian teenagers who are traumatized. He is a Druze who served in the IDF many years ago (he was in intelligence.).  His family’s village in the north is being bombed by Hezbollah.  

One friend believes that Israel must stop fighting and start a peace process at any cost.  Another believes they must destroy Hamas at any cost. 

What was reinforced for me:  Israelis are not the government of Israel. They did NOT all vote for Netanyahu.  Palestinians are not Hamas – they did not all vote for them. In both cases, so-called leaders are failing their people. And there is enormous distrust on both sides.

I continue to feel like an emotional pinball.  I sense the keen distress of my Israeli friends – shock, trauma, and anger at Hamas and at their own government. The people I know are demonstrating against the Israeli government, facing cannons spewing skunk water and arrest. They are especially upset by how the progressive left discounts their experience – from doubting the rape of hostages to the shout of “From the River to the Sea” –  a call to destroy the State of Israel. They wonder how well educated folks do not understand the explicit goal of Hamas to destroy Israel and put their own people at risk to accomplish this task? Or how they ignore the role of Iran in this geopolitical maelstrom.  And there is palpable fear. Some even say that without Israel, the Jews will end up in concentration camps again. Sounds crazy.  Then again, there are a few survivors still alive and more children of survivors for whom that threat is still real. The worldwide rise of anti-semitism stokes their anxiety.

My Palestinian friends are equally shocked, traumatized and fearful. And what they are seeing in Gaza and the West Bank – and even on the streets of East Jerusalem – reinforces that fear.

And yet. 

The people I work with, running cultural non profits that have lost significant funding, somehow press on AND preserve a sense of optimism. Of what the day after must look like.  How person to person, person BY person, repair must be made.  One of my Jerusalem friends is renovating his home, knowing that if a war with Lebanon begins, it may well be destroyed.  But he proceeds.

What was also reinforced for me: Art matters.  The part of my visit that most moved me was along Rothschild Blvd – the “Champs Elysee” of Tel Aviv.  All the trees had been lovingly wrapped with handmade knitted and crocheted yellow “ribbons”. They reminded me of how the Japanese tenderly wrap their trees before they position a support where it is needed.  At Tel Aviv Museum’s plaza – now “Hostage Square” –  searing artworks, made by artists and community members, are everywhere.  One in particular – Roni Levavi’s THE TUNNEL “simulates the terrible reality into which our hostages have been thrown.” It literally concretized their terrifying experience and the fact that Hamas squandered billions of dollars in international aid to the Gazan people to build 100 miles of tunnels out of which they are waging this insane war.  Then I read how Dar Jacir, a wonderful artist residency in Bethlehem, which our Fellows visited in 2022, was damaged by the IDF. WHY? More to add to my emotional rollercoaster.

The day I returned was the night that the IDF killed seven aid workers in the clearly marked truck of World Central Kitchen –  one of the world’s most effective NGO’s – which had communicated with and had clearance from the IDF.  Gut punch. I had just read, at the urging of an Israeli friend, a piece in Newsweek  about how the IDF works harder than any army to protect civilians.  What was the calculus here that allowed such a terrible mistake???? For what it’s worth, the IDF investigated, took responsibility and apologized. This horrific act might well change the course of the war – towards peace. But the damage has been done. 

Rebuilding trust with someone you see as a mortal enemy is an extraordinarily difficult, seemingly impossible task. Yet it has happened in Rwanda, in Ireland. With Japan, Germany and the U.S.  What were the essential steps that made a reasonably tenable peace possible?  No doubt there is rancor.  But there is no war.  

Today marks six months since October 7th and there are still 132 hostages who have not been released from Gaza (dead or alive) and over 30,000 Palestinians killed. Many of whom are women and children. Those alive are facing starvation. I pray for the end of this war.  The return of the hostages. The restoration of health and a way of life for Palestinians.  And leaders with the compassion, vision, will and strategy for Israelis and Palestinians to live on the land they both love and call home.