Choose Life. Thoughts on Israel

I know how to achieve peace in the Middle East. I know everything about the history of Israel. I know what to do about the plight of the Palestinians. I know exactly who is right and who is wrong…

That is not the piece I am going to write. 

Anyone who has been to Israel comes away, surely, with the understanding that, however complicated you thought it was, it is in fact much, much more so. I feel that in much of what I have read in the past horrendous week. It’s correct in theory, but most of those writing have never stepped foot in the place they believe does not belong to the Jews.  

What follows are some incoherent thoughts and experiences that I am writing for myself, perhaps, as much as for anyone else. 

The phrase “the right to exist” bugs me. Israel has the right to exist, just as babies have the right to exist, ravers have the right to exist, the people of Gaza have the right to exist. Yet somehow the “right to exist” also seems to involve death, displacement and destruction. The opposite of Israel’s right to exist is Jihad. How hard is it to choose a side?

The fact is that Israel DOES exist and has for 75 years, and for all those who painstakingly explain “context,” there is no context that can justify the pogroms of a week ago. None.