No one can fault the education I was given. I was born into a cultured family, I read all the right books, I studied basic history, I developed critical thinking skills, I loved quiet, beautiful, Ashkenazi-style songs and I didn't leave out parties in the best clubs in Tel Aviv. Nothing prepared me for the feeling that rose every time an Arab state, an Arab terrorist, or an Arab terrorist organization tried or managed to kill one of my people: like a wild animal, I wanted to kill them right back.
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"Narrative," they told me. "Occupation." "Oppression." I answered: "Fine. Great subject. Let's talk about all those things after the person who is trying to kill me is killed." They said: "But he has reasons. He has a narrative." And I answered: "I'll be happy to talk about the narrative after they get the knife out of his hand, dismantle the explosives belt, and put away the rocket launchers. I might be politically incorrect, but at this particular moment I don't want to be shot at. So shoot back and then we'll have a discussion over a cup of coffee."
They said: "You're racist and apartheid," and went to the High Court of Justice to petition against the IDF's "neighbor policy" and against the demolition of terrorists' homes, against the revocation of terrorists' citizenship, against the deportation of 500 Hamas terrorists to Lebanon, against cutting off electricity to the Gaza Strip while the Gazans were sending my family and me to the bomb shelter. The High Court did the right thing, because the High Court is more enlightened than I am, and ruled in favor of the petitions.
It didn't help. I didn't let up. I still don't want to die, either as an individual or as a people. What's more, I've become spoiled, and I don't enjoy running to the shelter in the middle of a shower or the middle of the night. What's worse, I don't feel like an occupier when the Jews of Lod are locked in their homes while the oppressed Arab rioters are throwing Molotov cocktails at them and burning their cars. I want to see half the IDF put down the pogrom, and not necessarily using a water cannon.
Unfortunately, I haven't developed to the point where I can expand the term "protest" to include storming people's homes, burning synagogues and police stations, shooting police officers and civilians, and attempted lynches on passers-by, all of which are done while waving Palestinian flags, and while Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are shooting 1,000 rockets at me (fine, I take it personally) a day. The opposite: I've gone so far that even when people tell me "It's the occupation," something deep-seated rises up and answers, "It looks like we need another one."
The problem got worse every time I encountered texts that accused me personally โ or the state of Israel โ of being responsible for any and all Arab violence. I was supposed to bow my head before a message from lecturers at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design to their Arab students (the lecturers call them Palestinians), who are on strike for some narrative reason or other: "We, the lecturers at Bezalel, would like to express our deep identification with your struggle for your home and for freedom, in light of the police and settler violence, the fruit of government policy, which have been demonstrated unbearably in the events of the past few days in Sheikh Jarrah, at Damascus Gate and Al-Aqsa Mosque. We understand the difficulty of studying in institutions of the occupying and oppressive people in general, and even more so at times like these."
Rather than wondering at the gender-neutral Hebrew of the original, which testified to a highly-developed artistic soul, all I thought was, "Fire their asses." Friends explained that freedom of expression was sacred. True. But meanness, mendacity, and perversion of spirit shouldn't โ to my primitive thinking โ shouldn't be paid salaries out of my pocket. Bezalel is a public institution funded by the government, so its lecturers should keep their freedom of speech for a private, independent institution of design and moral purity, that will collect money and issue receipts. Their imaginary moral superiority doesn't impress someone who at this specific moment is in the shelter at 2 a.m., and doesn't have the energy for this ridiculous and evil pose by people who feel the enemy's pain.
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Oops. I said "enemy." Too bad, but I'll go on and propose my plan for defeating the enemy, and I know that there are some who have a hard time with the word "defeat." After all, it hints that someone who is trying to kill you should die a lot more than you. Well, how do we win? I think the IDF, or as we used to call them, "our forces," should do what is necessary so the enemy dies and we live. It's obvious to me that my strategy is mistaken, because the enlightened ones explained that Arab violence toward Jews is an emotional expression of the wretchedness of the oppressed, but I still insist that it's murderous, boundless antisemitic hatred. Maybe I'm confused by, among other things, a film clip of a top Hamas commander from Gaza recommending that the Arabs of Jerusalem invest five shekels in a knife and slaughter Jews, and demonstrated the right way to do it.
I'm also wrong in that the "victory" that is permissible to secure must be achieved under careful monitoring by military prosecutors, High Court justices, and, of course, we can't forget the NGOs that file petitions to tie the IDF's hands. These petitions are funded mainly by Germany and a few other EU nations, as well as private donors from abroad, who aren't sitting in shelters right now or shut inside their homes, afraid of their Arab neighbors. I, in my primitive and incorrect way, think that mercy for enemy civilians is a nice luxury, so this is my recommendation to the enemy, their civilians, and children: Try not to fire rockets from residential neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals. Actually, don't fire at me from anywhere, and you'll see that you benefit.
Since my feelings are undeveloped and unaesthetic anyway, I'm exempt from any sense of constant guilt for my very existence, or for having difficulty liking people who hate me. Although my education demanded that I question everything โ other than UN condemnations and High Court rulings โ at the end of the day, no academic figure eights or Haaretz editorial or speeches by Joint Arab List MKs have managed to make a dent in my narrative. I know where it stands on the Olympus of the moral decision-makers worldwide, and I don't care. The only truth is the people of Israel, the Torah of Israel, the Land of Israel, and a heavy dose of the Israel Defense Forces.
