A Palestinian arguing with Israeli security forces in the Old City of Jerusalem, on Jerusalem Day. The great sin of my people is the exile we’ve caused others, our kin, the children of Abraham
Jerusalem Day reminds me: Israel’s extremists and fanatics are not my Jewish people –
May 10, 2021
Bradley Burston writes in HaaretzThere’s a monster in my closet. Even in the dark I can see the closet door bulging toward me. I close my eyes, but it doesn’t stop, the rattling, the scratching, the sounds of furious pacing on the other side. I hear the doorknob turning. Sometimes I think I hear a key turn in the lock. From the side I can’t see. Don’t want to see.
There’s a monster in my closet. It grows bigger and louder, more insistent by the year. Especially in this season. This time, during which some of my people celebrate in ways that taunt and torment and bait the monster.
I tell myself: I am alive, my family is safe, because I keep the door shut. Against the monster. Not just me. In countless other homes, my people are saying the same thing. Hoping the same thing.
There’s a monster in my closet. Because I’m an Israeli. And a Jew. And because today is Jerusalem Day.
https://youtu.be/rJr5w_TKUww What’s happening in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah?
Here’s the thing. We all know what is behind that door. Stuck there along with the Hamas men sending firebombs slung from helium balloons so that they can incinerate the crops and fields and homes of my family and friends next to the Gaza Strip.
We all know what else is behind that door. Who is there. Everyone and everything we’re terrified of. Not a monster. People with faces and names. And children. And elderly people. Displaced persons. People who do not – are not – allowed to belong. People for whom life, culture, identity, hopes, aspirations, all intersect in the bitterness and longing and lacerations of exile. Sound familiar?
My people, the Jews, pride ourselves on studying a whole lot. But we don’t seem to learn.The great tragedy of my people, the Jews, is also their origin story – displacement, uprooting from a beloved home, expulsion, exile. And now that they – we – have come back home, thousands of years and uncounted expulsions later, the great sin of my people, our deepest transgression, is the exile we have caused others, our kin, blood of our blood, children of Abraham, the Palestinians.
Who is behind that battered, splintering door this Jerusalem Day? To begin with, the millions and millions of Palestinians held under occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, kept bottled up and miserable in Gaza.
But where it comes to those behind the door, we fear our own as well. We know that millions of Israelis have been victimized and abused and neglected by a government too busy campaigning, lying, slandering, polarizing, or scapegoating to help them, whether they happen to be disabled, or abused women, or Holocaust survivors, or war veterans crippled by PTSD, or citizens who happen not to be Jewish.
Who else is behind that door? The settlement thugs seeking to expel and replace Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Jews – a choice selection of the Jewish People’s hotheads and shitheads – who have devised a way to have the state of Israel commit suicide.
It is Jerusalem Day and there is a flag march scheduled to tear apart my closet. The delirious, hormone-soaked Orthodox young people dressed in white, self-segregated by gender, singing at the top of their young lungs a song by a suspected sex offender.
“Mi sh’ma’amin lo mifa’hed,” the chorus begins. He who believes is never afraid.
It goes on to state, “We’re the ones who have the King of the Universe, and he keeps us safe from everyone else.”
“Am Yisrael, the People of Israel, will never give up,” it continues, using a phrase – lo yivater – which also means “will never compromise.”
In other words, if you are in favor of compromise, if you are in favor of coexistence, democracy, equality over religious-right supremacy and suppression of non-Jews – you are not, in fact, part of Am Israel.
Until I came to live in Israel, until it became the property of extremists and supremacist fanatics, I felt wholly a part of Am Yisrael. Not today. Not on Jerusalem Day. These are not my people.
Still. I am one who believes. Better days will come, for all the children of Abraham here – Muslims and Christians as well as Jews. Better days will come, even if it will be too late for me to see them, celebrate them, open that door wide.
Until then, for me, Jerusalem Day will be a day of mourning.
Today is Jerusalem Day. I am one of those who believes. And I am scared to death.
This article is published in its entirety.