Salaam Alekum

A letter  to my Neighbor in Kalkilia, just 5 km down the road.

Dear Neighbor,  

I don't think I owe you an apology for being a Jew, for wanting to live my Jewish life in the way I have chosen in the only place on earth where I have a chance of expressing my identity. Palestinians are people too. I don't deny you the right to exist, to create a society in your own land where you can express your own identity too.  

All that I ask is to be left alone in peace. Please stop trying to kill me, it only directs me to do what is right, just, and moral, and that is to defend my family and myself. I can't go back to Kaworsk in Lithuania where my paternal family came from, as one of your Palestinian leaders said the other day, "go back to where you came from". I come from right here, from somewhere between the Mediterranean sea and the West bank of the Jordan river. The Galut in Kaworsk is in my past, a temporary place of abode after the Roman expulsion from Palestine in 70 AD. Palestine, yes the same Palestine you now claim as your own exclusive domain.  

My past, present and future is right here, in Israel, the land of my forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They are your forefathers too. They left both of us a legacy to share. Like you, I am here to stay right where I am and when one day you realize that I am not about to up and go away like a bad dream, then maybe we can all settle down to normalcy and seek peace and harmony in this troubled land.   Here are some of the facts about what I think are the differences we have to overcome before we have a lasting and just peace for both sides.  

OUR NATIONAL SPORT, and YOURS!

Israelis are passionate and partisan about team sports, especially football. Our enthusiasm exceeds our ability on the pitch and we sometimes lose in football by basketball differentials. No matter, we cheer our local team to victory, exhilarate in success and mourn our losses to superior international sides.  

You Palestinians have a different sport. You are passionate and partisan about killing Jews. During the Gulf war, the inhabitants of Kalkilia and Tulkarem stood in the streets and danced as Iraqi Scuds flew over to deliver their message of destruction and death in Tel-Aviv. You distribute sweets in celebration of each so called martyrdom and glorify the killing and maiming of innocent civilians in our streets, busses and sidewalk cafes with public ululations and cries for more-more-more. We are in good company. September 11th was a day of celebration in Gaza with a parade and carnival and a half-holiday for the kids.   It's a sad fact. You Palestinians don't like us. The problem is that you don't admit to the fact that what you really want is to kill us all, down to the last man, woman and child and drive us into the sea. That's the truth. I haven't made it up. You can hear this on any day of the week on the official Palestinian radio or read it in their daily official press.   Forget what you are hearing Arafat tell Colin Powel and the international press in the candlelight. The truth is what he tells his own people in his own language, and that is "kill .. kill ..kill ..!)  

WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL TODAY? ... (DEAR LITTLE CHILD OF MINE)

Palestinian kindergarten children study from primers that glorify martyrdom as a way to heaven and extol the virtues of killing Jews. I just don't know why it is such a surprise for us to discover this just now. The Mufti of Jerusalem was a welcome guest in Hitler's household. He was in good company. Many of Europe's rich and famous sought Hitler's presence and admired his way of doing things, including what he was planning for the Jews. One of Hitler's constant visitors and close friend (so we learn now) was an abdicated king of England, protector of the realm and uncle to the present monarch. In my humble opinion, nothing has changed, and Europe's powerful and famous still harbor the same latent anti-Semitic feelings conceived in mid-ages ignorance and carried over with modern expediency waiting to rear it's ugly head once more..  

We are up against up against a barbaric culture unlike ours in any way. We should admit to this and react accordingly. What can we do? We don't share their passion for killing innocents and our we don't know how to change our mentality to fight on even terms, to send killer squads to their cities and plant bombs in their cafes and busses   ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !

For some funny reason, our fighters prefer to live for their country and not die for it! (even though every one would, given the call and necessity.)   Many of our fighters do give their lives!   Our policemen block suicide bombers with their own bodies and die in the process. This in my mind is noble and we grieve with the families of the fallen, those who have died as true martyrs and for the justifiable cause of saving life and not taking it!   So we resort to fighting the way we know. We blow up empty police stations after warning the inhabitants what is coming and when. We warn and plead and beg until one day, we say, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, and we act only to find that the world doesn't like us to do that, and it is more convenient and less controversial to shed Israeli blood than Palestinian. Well, as I said, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and now our neighbors know that goes around, comes around and apparently don't like that much !  

BLUE AND WHITE

I grew up in the Diaspora and spent the first part of my life hiding my Jewish identity in a foreign land. We couldn't fly the blue and white flag outside my house; we always had to consider what the neighbors would think and g-d forbid they would think we were different from them. Well we are different. You know, we have these little horns growing out of our foreheads and a tiny bit of skin missing somewhere else. It took me twenty odd years to acknowledge that fact to myself and to move to the one place on earth where I know for a certainty that my neighbor calls me a Dirty Jew behind my back and I honestly don't care a damn. I think the same of him and it gives me pleasure to scream "Dirty Jew" at him too and know that neither of us is mortally offended at the thought.  

I have a large flag outside my house. It flies "Blue n' White" for the whole of Independence week. Last year I think I forgot to bring it in and it flew bravely for weeks, through the long summer, fading gracefully in the blistering heat until I brought it in to get my wife off my back. This year I have decided differently, "Ol' Blue and White" will fly all ever day on the long flagpole from now on outside the Marcus residence, and when it fades, as it must, I will replace it with another, and another, and another.  

MILITARY STRATEGY

The scenes we are now seeing from Jenin, Nablus and other Palestinian areas are horrific. Nobody in Israel takes pleasure in seeing dead Palestinian civilians, despite what is said on CNN, BBC and SKY. The problem is that nobody balances the destruction with the root cause, and that is the need to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure that was conceived and executed within the crowded alleys of the Jenin and Nablus Kasbahs.  

When mothers hide hand-grenades in babies cradles and bomb-ticking martyrs hide behind women's skirts for protection, the result is clear and tragic. In war, there are no rules of fair engagement and when you chose to make your home your battlefield, manufacture explosives in your bedroom and use your children like pawns, the consequences are awful, as the world has come to see. I have the satisfaction of knowing that we chose not to initiate this conflict and did everything possible, and some more to prevent its eventuation.  

There is a school of thought in Israel, that we should have conducted this campaign in the way that any other civilized Western country would have done and has done with the full approval of the world. We should have emulated the Americans in Afghanistan, the British in the Falklands and the French in Algeria and sent in a dozen F-16's with LASER guided bombs or used other modern remote weaponry and cleared the Jenin Kasbah in a swift morning's work without the need to engage and endanger ground forces. The results would have been better than what we achieved in the current operation, better also in strategic terms because then we wouldn't have incurred the wrath of the world for an over-extended stay in Area-A.  

I do not subscribe to that thought, even with the military expediency involved and the consequent saving of Israeli lives. I say this, even from the perspective of a father with a son somewhere over in Nablus.

THIS WAS A BATTLE AGAINST CRAZED FANATICS WHO SEE DEATH AS A WAY OF LIFE AND LIFE AS A PATHWAY TO DEATH. 

Twenty two Israeli soldiers died in Jenin because in our wisdom we decided that we do NOT bomb innocent civilians. A dead child is a dead child is a dead child. The morality is that simple but bullets are not moral and it was not our choice to place innocent civilians and young children in their path.  

MY JEWISH HERITAGE

My paternal family originates from Kaworsk. I think it used to be in Lithuania until it was decimated by the Germans and the remains incorporated in a Soviet puppet state. Until the advent of the war, Kaworsk was a flourishing center of Jewish culture with some thousands of inhabitants. I looked for it on the map the other day, but in vain. It may exist there under some Russian diminutive and be a physical entity of some size shape and form but there is no trace of the original Jewish population.

These were all rounded up by the Germans in 1942 (I think). The lucky ones were shot in a trench on the outskirts of the town, the unlucky few transported to unimaginable horrors of depravity. Some of the local peasantry, yesterdays neighbors, were active participants as their former friends were put down like dogs. Other neighbors, and the world at large, simply turned their heads and looked away, preferring not to know what was happening. These, after all, were only Yids who were being done away with; g-d's cursed and devoid of his protection.  

I ask myself today, where was the world then? Between 1939 and 1945, a whole continent of Jews was done away with, and the world was silent.  

THERE IS ONE INDISPUTABLE FACT, UNLIKE THE 40'S, TODAY IN ISRAEL WE ARE NOT A DEFENSELESS HERD AND WE ARE NOT WAITING FOR ANYONE TO DEFEND US AGAINST INSTITUTIONALIZED MURDER BY PEOPLE WITH BLOOD ON THEIR MINDS AND GENOCIDE IN THEIR HEARTS.  

We have learned our lesson the bitter way.

 Today's cynical reaction by cultured leaders of nations, by news media that make more money from more suffering and bleeding-hearts with selective memories only strengthens our determination to say...  

NEVER AGAIN !!!!!  
David Marcus April 200