the human picture

from Zalmi

I understand that you are upset by us, about Israel. Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the "brutal repression of the Palestinians"; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai Campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.

Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish People - upset you. We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset. We Upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.

For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the Church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews Within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.

And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish State. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you) - and have you love us and so, we decided to come home - home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman World that, apparently, we also upset.

Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset. Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody. Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.

Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one Day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967? And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried "no" and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of "upset" then?

The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who - when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state - attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of "itbach-al-yahud" (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream - destroy Israel.

What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not "repress" them. Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres. You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.

If that bothers you, dear world, well - think of how many times in the past you bothered us. In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew who could not care less.

www.zalmi.net

I am sure you're getting news of what's happening here in Israel. It could have been a lot easier if we'd reacted earlier, if we hadn't kept putting off fighting. But that's what happens… you get pushed and pushed harder and humiliated till you have no choice but to fight. And now Israel has no choice but to fight, and half the population is frightened as the missiles fly overhead, and they have to run to the shelters every hour, and sometimes they don't get away in time, and a lot of people are injured, and a few are killed. Some people have to leave their homes. They can't bear the situation, or they don't have a bomb shelter, and they go south to friends or family till it'll be over with. Friends move in, and willingly squeeze a little; friends sleep on the floor; sometimes four or five in a bed where once one or two slept… but that's the good part. It is good to be close to friends. It is bad to be scared. It is bad to be eaten up by worry for your friends and your brothers and you children as they go off to war. Someone doesn't answer the telephone, and you go crazy with fear. It is very bad. It is bad to watch a building that looked like a rock collapse and fall into rubble. To see all the treasures you have collected over the years turn into rubble. To see all the treasures someone else has collected turn into garbage. It is hard and miserable to witness the pain of others, the sense of loss of others, to watch them as they lose their cool. It is hard to watch someone who's always dressed to perfection running down the street in his pajamas and confused, and looking for parts of his family. Or to see a kid looking for his dog when you've already seen the bloody dead dog in a corner where it's waiting to be buried. You know, there are movies; they say they are just like the real thing… I've read books that they say are just like the real thing… unfortunately, I've seen a few wars too… and only they are the real thing.

Anyone wishing to respond is welcome to write me at humpict@gmail.com

All are welcome to see my photography at:
http://www.humanpicture.net/

I decided long ago, that in writing a blog, I wouldn't try to defend the Jewish people or Israel; that I would try to share other things with people in other places… but then I got carried away by some of the things that happened, and did write about these dangerous subjects, and got this letter which I have printed in full below.

Yes, I don't know Maureen Lipman, or Leo Solomon, or even Liz Davies for that matter, but I've had some non Jewish friends in my life, and I don't cast doubt about Liz's ability to care for, admire, or even love some Jews. I didn't mean to suggest that all non Jews dislike all Jews, but I'm an old man, and I've been around this world for a while, and I thought that most people would realize that what I said was true, as a general rule. I could give some hair raising examples as evidence to my claim, but I don't think there would be much point in it.

But Liz also asks, "Do you imply that because of what Israel does, we don't much care for Maureen Lipman?" And I do have to answer that. First of all, it's not what Israel does. I believe that most people don't like Israel because it's the Jewish homeland. I believe that Israel is a more moral and ethical democracy than most of the western countries that see themselves enlightened.

Liz believes that we should possibly get out of Palestine altogether and doesn't realize that Palestine is our ancient homeland, and that we were forcibly evicted by the Romans some 2000 years ago, and that we have one of the richest literatures in all the world, in which the land, its hills and valleys, its culture and history is all recorded. She doesn't know that the Palestinians can't even pronounce their so-called homeland in their own language because they don't have a P in their native tongue, and that they are a make believe people that never really existed. She doesn't know that though there was a Jewish presence in Israel since the forced exile, they were picked upon and abused over and over again, killed and raped and their houses burnt, and their fields destroyed, and pushed and pushed so they became a smaller and smaller community over the years. All of this is recorded. And the different colonial powers that ruined Palestine over the years, all of their anti Jewish acts were recorded too. There was never a sovereign state of Palestine though, and till about 1964, the name Palestine was always identified with Jews.

I could tell you about how immediate members of my family were murdered, or how a friend of mine was stabbed in the back and died at a bus stop, and the perp claimed that this was a political act. But I won't go into that. It seems it's hard for people who are not acquainted with the reality here to understand what's going on. I'm sure that the intentions are good and honorable.

Well, you have a view and are entitled to it, of course, and I'm not really going to state the other side, because you'll have heard it already and obviously don't agree.
The only point I'd like to argue is your very first comment, which extrapolates that because the state of Israel is not well liked, neither are Jews. I don't see this as an automatic deduction to make. Do you imply that because of what Israel does, we don't much care for Maureen Lipman? Or that I suddenly dislike my old maths teacher and friend Leo Solomon?
I do indeed feel that Israel should moderate its response, and possibly get out of Palestine altogether, for all those reasons that have been ignored by Israel before on the grounds you state; but don't start feeling sorry for Jews in general - no need.
Cheers,
Liz Davies

There's no way to avoid it. It seems Jews are not well liked in the world, and likewise, Israel among the nations of the world. I don't know if it could happen anywhere else in the world, that one country would aim missiles at the villages and the cities of its neighbors, and that other countries would tell the country that was attacked, that it should restrain its response. The Hezbollah is often described as a terror organization. It has been identified as such by Nato and the UN, but it has its representatives in the govt of Lebanon, and it seems that Lebanon thinks that this organization can shoot missiles from their territory, and it has nothing to do with them. Well, we just don't accept that. Last night, as a family was sitting down to their Sabbath dinner in a small town, on one of the smaller mountains in Israel, a missile hit their house and injured all of the family, and killed the grandmother and the grandson. Hmmmm. What are we going to do about that? The point is, that the different Islamic terror organizations around us, neighboring our country, have made it a policy to target innocent citizens. That's what the Pals do too. They send people to blow up in city buses in order to scare the shit out of us. And you know what? It does just that. It scares us hard. But it doesn't make us give up, because we're a stubborn people. When we retaliate, we don't target the innocent countrymen of the terrorists. But because they often hide behind or in between their fellow citizens, sometimes when we're trying to put terrorists out of this game, that is, to shoot them between the eyes, things get a little messy and we hit the people right next to them. But it isn't because that was our objective. We are a very empathetic people. We have a lot of compassion for the "other". We take a lot of shit before we start fighting.

We occupied Southern Lebanon from about '82 till around 2000. Why did we do that? Because terrorists on the other side of the border were shooting at us all the time. We were often condemned, and eventually we moved out of there having been given the promise from the UN and other world bodies, that our border would be recognized. Since then, we have been attacked any number of times across the border. One time, three of our soldiers on patrol of the border were kidnapped by terrorists wearing UN uniforms. Did other countries come to our aid? Did Lebanon or the UN straighten things out and return the soldiers? No.

Often, when our citizens or soldiers are kidnapped, it is for the purpose of a prisoner exchange. But who do these terrorists want us to release. Well, this time, I heard Nasseralla mention one guy whose story I know well. He was a guy who killed off a whole family after bursting into their apartment where they lived peacefully. He should have gotten the death sentence. But he didn't. Because Israel doesn't believe in the death sentence. They gave him life imprisonment. And now there have been a number of other fierce crimes committed to release this scum.

So, stubbornly we resist. We don't start fights. We are happy to live in peace with all people. But we are tired of being shot at and hurt, and whoever is doing it, is going to pay the price.

Anyone wishing to respond is welcome to write me at humpict@017.net.il

All are welcome to see my photography at:
http://www.humanpicture.net/