THESE TIMES- A LETTER FROM JERUSALEM….see note please
The author wishes to remain anonymous …..rsk
Subject: these times.
Hi all,
I feel the need to send out an update about our lives in this situation, but I honestly feel speechless. People’s ability to adapt is uncanny, and so, you just keep going..Today as I packed my bag for work in Jerusalem, I grabbed my water bottle, computer, and…swiss army knife.
When I drive into Jerusalem on the 443 road, I veer to the middle lane to avoid any potential stone throwing. I pass by the petrol station on my route and recall 2 recent terror attacks that took place there..
Earlier this week, I advertised in the community group list, offering a lift to anyone needing a ride to Jerusalem, as I was frightened to drive alone. What would happen if I was stoned, attacked, stuck? A lovely, elderly lady from the kibbutz responded that she would be grateful for a ride. Together we rode and with her beside me, I felt safer. Yes, people were being targeted on the streets but… she had a dentist appointment in talpiot!
Originally from chutz la’aretz, though having lived through many a conflict, war, and intifada, she continued to explain to me, that there was absolutely no where else she would ever imagine being. Uneasily, I dropped her off at a bus stop on French Hill, as I continued onto the campus to teach my class, a course on Trauma & Resilience. In the middle of class, a student apologized and blurted out that she just received word of the wave of terrorist attacks that took place that morning. “I can’t concentrate, I’m freaking out…” The duration of class, became much more practical than theoretical as we discussed what to do, how to cope, and how to move forward.
How would I get home that day? The roads in and out of Jerusalem had been closed in an attempt to catch an escaped terrorist…How would I pick up my kids?
And then all at once, roads were again opened, the city gates unlocked..
I recalled once, last semester, how I missed a turn at the roundabout, a few meters from a campus building, yet in the direction of an arab village. At once, I recognized my error and planned to take the soonest possible u-turn, yet I was stopped by a car who pulled up beside me in the middle of the road. The driver, an Arab- speaking clearly and carefully, he said- turn around immediately, here are arabs, they will throw stones at you. Grateful and shaken, I turned around and within 10 seconds, was in front of the Hebrew u campus. A matter of a few meters…a difference between being stoned or running to class.
I am proud of the ethics and moral standards that govern our decisions, that make us hesitate before we are forced to take a life in self-defence, that guide us to not fire a gun at a murderer if he is no longer an ‘immediate’ threat.. yet I’m still angry…I feel conflicted..and something certainly does not seem right.
To use the money I earn, to treat and save the life of an injured terrorist- a person who desires to brutally end mine…Is there remorse? Is there a consequence? Is there an awareness from the terrorist that my ‘enemy’ has saved me?
What would be my fate if I entered Ramalla? East Jerusalem? If I wanted to study in Beth Lehem? I am denied entry into these parts, or I hold my life in my hands and enter at my own serious risk. Yet, Arabs are treated and employed in our hospitals, universities, are served equally and freely in our restaurants, malls etc..It is unfair.
Why can’t we share the same freedom? Why as a Jew am I denied to exist in their world?
Yet, what hurts me the most is the world’s reaction. This is what I felt during tzuk eitan and what I feel now. Shocked, horrified, stunned at the apathy or condemnation..whatever we may call it- it has become clear to me what it is- pure and simple antisemitism. A glimpse of pre-holocaust Europe.. an awareness of what pure hatred feels like for being a Jew. It horrifies me because I need to believe that people are good.
This is my challenge. To not see things in black and white terms. To not let myself believe that the entire world hates us, to believe in the nuances…This is my challenge..
—
________________, Psy.D.
Psychologist
Private Practice,
Jerusalem Israel
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