A Turning Point in Israel

I prefer good news to bad.

I prefer to send videos of young people speaking out against violence.

I have always tried to speak the words of peace and reconciliation.

But we might have reached a turning point in Israel.

There is violence on the streets of Israel. Mobs are attacking people in their homes in the mixed towns of Israel. In Akko, in Haifa, in Lod. My guess — and it is only a guess — is that the rioters are a minority and that the majority of Israeli Arabs and the majority of Israeli Jews are looking on at this, horrified.

But the danger is that we only need one or two additional deaths to go down a path too painful to imagine.

Israel is doing the only thing it can do right now in Gaza — I hate to write these words — and that is to launch a ferocious attack on Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. And many people will die; many innocent people will die. And many of you will be horrified (as all decent people should be) by the photos which will come out of Gaza (and possibly from within Israel, too).

We have to make it clear to both the Hamas and to the Islamic Jihad that we are not ripe for the picking. That the internal political weakness they saw in Israel — how we are tearing each other to pieces here because of disgusting political manipulations — is not an invitation to them to carry out their ultimate fantasy, destroying Israel and murdering its Jews.

How did we get here? Are we partly to blame for where we find ourselves? Has Bibi played a role in where we find ourselves? Is this the obvious outcome of the occupation? Racists being elected to the Knesset? A new U.S. administration?

There are so many questions, so many possible depths of focus, historical debates. But they are for another time.

Sadly, the only relevant question now is what has to be done to get beyond this moment of terrible existential threat. It is clear that the IDF will be a crucial player in this awful moment and that it will use all the power at its disposal.

The only relevant question now is what has to be done to get beyond this moment of terrible existential threat.

Will Akko be Akko again?

Will Lod be Lod again?

Will Jafa be Jaffa again?

Will Jerusalem be Jerusalem again?

I find myself clinging desperately to the knowledge I have from my years guiding all the wonderful people I have met: Jews, Muslims, Christians. But are we just a small number of people able to appreciate and acknowledge the other; the truth of the other’s narrative, of their pains and joys; that we need to share this wonderful/difficult place?

I think of people such as Mazen from Daheishe, Eman from Iksal and Muhammed from Akko and just how lovely it has been to work with them over the years. I think of the host families from Galilee Eats. I think of Riman and of Rami. I know that my words about what the IDF needs to do might cause them pain, and this makes using these words even more difficult. But ultimately this is my commitment.

Many years ago I used a quote from Brecht in an essay for university, and it worries me that it might be relevant right now, “What a time it is when to talk of trees is a crime because of all the crimes it leaves unsaid.”

Julian Resnick made Aliyah to Israel in 1976 and works as a guide in Israel and around the world.