At night, while I was trying to sleep and waiting for the siren to send us to the safe room, the daughter of the jihadist killed in Gaza came to me in the twilight of my dream with his family. I saw her on the news for a moment, holding some kind of school certificate, a proud look on her face, like children all over the world, like my daughters. Her face was etched in my heart. She asked me, "Lish?" - why? Why did you send a pilot to launch a missile at my bed at night and destroy me and my dreams?
I told her, in a dream, I'm sorry, really. Your death hurts me, girl. You really haven't done anything to justify such a death, at such an age. But with all my sorrow, I refuse to accept responsibility. Your father, the one who took pride in your certificate along with you, is solely responsible.
If he hadn't launched missiles with the intention of killing my daughters, through no fault of their own, a hair wouldn't have fallen out of your head. As far as I'm concerned, you'd even meet and play with dolls, hide-and-seek, class. I have no problem with you or with your people or with your religion or with your culture, except for this small problem that is passed down from generation to generation and brings down martyrs, adults and girls, the problem of the sick hatred of some Muslims for all Jews.
You were born into the wrong family, the wrong father, the man who chose to believe that my family and I belong to the ape and pig race, and that it is permissible to kill us in the name of some religious commandment, which by the way does not appear in your book of books, the Koran, even once.
My conscience is clear, girl. I treat your death like the unnecessary death of an Arab child who was murdered with his delinquent father in a car. Heartbreaking with grief, but not directly related to me. Your father executed you, the curse of Allah on his head, but I, the Jew, cannot accept responsibility for what is happening in your society, in faith, in violence, in racism. The victimized tradition in Arab society, which both destroys itself from within and blames me for all this, does not speak to me, and although there are Israelis who gladly respond to the call to feel guilty, because it is in our culture, I am happy to say that I have quit the addiction to feel bad because of the consequences of the actions of others.
Dear dead girl, you don't get out of my head. We could have been good neighbors, but your father preferred religious madness to family hugs. Please turn your Leish to him, after he finishes looking for the virgins who are gone, and I wish you are the last child to die innocent on the altar of Jew-hatred.
An hour with Gantz
You won't believe what happened to me this week. At least I couldn't believe it when I received a phone call inviting me to a personal conversation with Benny Gantz, the man from the flattering polls. I agreed, and in my heart I was ready to say "no" to the plethora of proposals Gantz would make me.
When the day came, I got on my bike and pedaled to my blue and white office. I put on the least wrinkled T-shirt and walked to the office. An atmosphere of yawning boredom met me there. Slow living in opposition.
I sat down to talk to the theoretical prime minister for about an hour. Was interesting, though not exciting. Ten cabins of charisma went down into the world, and Gantz took maybe one. He's not the man who makes you fall in love with him in a minute, admire him at five, follow him through fire and water at ten. But he is businesslike, direct and speaks openly. To my naïve eyes, he looked straight as a ruler. And don't tell me the fifth dimension. Don't know what was there, I didn't bother to ask either. The spin grinder leaves me indifferent. But in his willingness to speak candidly about his difficulties and dilemmas, I found a high and unpretentious level of credibility.
I told him I expected his party to become democratic. If democracy is elevated in their mouths, elections will be held. He explained to me the complexity and concerns of creating a democracy like that of the Likud Center, where Knesset members work for centrist members. He assured me that they are currently working to create a democratic model that will address these concerns. I told him that they would be tested on this. I advised him to lead a process of democratization throughout the centrist bloc, otherwise there would be too large a gap between declarations and actions. Promised to implement. Seem.
He asked me what I thought was important to address now. I said, 'Violence in the education system.' The boycotts, the videos, the beatings. I explained that a child who leaves the education system bruised will never rebuild his life. A new post-traumatic generation from school has been created here. Not from the army. He was impressed, wrote on a note. What did he do next? I'll never know.
Time passed, an offer to join politics did not come. I asked him if he did not intend to offer me the position of defense minister in his so-called future government. He said he was counting on Gila Gamliel. We laughed. He has a pretty good humor. We got up to say goodbye. Wahad height he has. Had a pleasant hour. I got on my bike and pedaled home. I thought that although I like people with a slightly extreme, colorful, charismatic, out-of-line personality, I prefer my theoretical prime minister in shades of steel gray.
Circuits
The deep crisis into which we have entered, or into which we have entered ourselves, has calmed down a bit. Do you feel it too? He didn't go anywhere, he would wake up again, but there was a gap between the contractions, like at birth. There was a sharp pain, another one would come, and now rest.
I use an image from the world of birth because the word crisis itself, in Hebrew two thousand years ago, means the birthing chair, as it is said in Isaiah, "For sons have come until crisis and there is no power for birth." So where will the birth come from? Where will the boys come from? Key to hope.
In the midst of the demonstrations for and against, activists in the city, who saw the strong demonstrations in Goren Square, took the initiative to hold dialogue circles. The idea is to invite supporters and opponents to talk to each other instead of slamming each other.
And they came. Lots came. In circles, residents sat and talked in the square. At first they were angry, they used all the harsh words. Then, after the internal pressure subsides, a genuine and respectful dialogue is created. Everyone said what pressed him, and even if there were no deep agreements, at least there was recognition of the other's pain, values, fears and hopes.
There are ancient untreated pains in our society. Pains of deprivation and exclusion, pains of discrimination and harm. We all carry pain. The pained think that if they scream their pain at the person they think caused them, there will be liberation and healing. But that's never true. Shouting and abusive behaviors do not open any heart to understanding. But when you sit in a circle, a form of discussion in which everyone is equal and everyone gets the opportunity to share respectfully - after the first stage in which there is volcanism and noise, the common denominator that always exists between all people, and certainly between members of the same people, no matter how much they think the distance is enormous.
In my dreams, the whole country has circles, La Familia with the pilots, the settlers with the high-tech companies, Tel Avivians with the ultra-Orthodox – everyone sits in the squares and talks. This is the crisis, the birthing chair, that will turn this torturous period into a time when we will begin to grow again – this time not at each other's expense, but with each other. Not out of sticky agreements about unity with Israel, but out of recognition of our differences, in the diverse stories of all of us, but with familiarity with each other.
When you don't know, it's easy to hate. When you listen, this option is off the table. And here Petah Tikva has become worthy of its name, an opening of hope for this entire nation, to dismantle primordial anger in circles and build an exemplary society.
Then I woke up.
avrigilad@gmail.com
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