I once read a bumper sticker that said, "World Peas." Get it? World Peas=World Peace. I think it was meant to be joke. It's not that I've lost my sense of humor here in Israel, but sometimes I feel like it's easier to find "peas" here than "peace."
My sweet Israeli boyfriend told me that I need to calm down. It's kind of funny actually that an Israeli--someone from a country where old ladies beat you up in supermarket lines--would tell me--calm, little, American me--to calm down. I was moving to a new apartment, and the moving guy (ie Lucifer) was giving me an extremely hard time because, well, if you haven't noticed:
1) I'm a girl
2) I'm not Israeli
3) I'm someone who hired an Israeli moving guy and therefore agreed to an unspoken contract that I was looking for someone to verbally, mentally, and financially abuse me.
So, I basically told him to quit being such an ass. Turns out that was NOT a good idea and he threatened to quit on me in the middle of the move. I had to backtrack, and I learned a serious lesson: You can THINK someone is an ass, you can even whisper to your dog, "Hey, this guy's an ass!", but if someone has your bed, closet, and underwear in the back of his truck, you shouldn't tell him outright.
Anyways, the move went fine. MY move went fine. But this past week, if you haven't heard the news . . . for the last 16 months . . . there are a lot of other moves happening here in Israel. The disengagement started last week. Jews living in Aza (Ie The Gaza Strip) and the Northern Shomron (Ie The West Bank) received their eviction notices, and were moved--some more willingly than others--to new places (places, because they may not necessarily be homes) inside the Green Line. For the last 6 months we've been bombarded with posters, ribbons, bumper stickers, even buses that say: Jews do not expel Jews, Sharon is a Nazi, The Disengagement is another Holocaust, The Disengagement is worse than Pea Soup, etc.
I've seen them all. And I think I've found my favorite. First you need to understand that "Yehudi Lo Mi-garesh Yehudi"= "Jews do not expel Jews."
Now you can understand my favorite poster (reminiscent of "World Peas"):
"Yehudi Mi-karev Yehudi"="Jews bring other Jews closer"
It's a play on the popular statement in rhyme and meter.
It doesn't really translate well, but let me take on an imaginary tour of Jerusalem. There are parts of the city where if you show your shoulders and knees, you may get a rock--or at least a dirty look--thrown at you. There are parts of the city where you can buy pork. There are parts of the city where everyone on the bus is muttering prayers and Bible verses beneath his breath. There are parts of the city where you'll only hear Russian/Arabic/Hebrew curses being muttered beneath someone's breath. There are parts of the city where no head is covered by a kippah, a wig, or a black hat. There are parts of the city where when you get on the bus, the combined worth of the wigs you see women wearing is larger than the national debt.
So the idea of a Jew bringing another Jew closer--and let's be honest--in a place where sometimes the only reason you want to do that is to strangle the other Jew is a great idea. The poster shows two men:
1) facing away from the camera
2) with their arms around each other.
Both of these things speak truth. First, that we're really not all that different from each other. Religious Jews and non-religious Jews. Russian Jews and Middle Eastern Jews. Jews and non-Jews. Dare I take the leap and say even Jews and Arabs?
But the second part also makes a statement. Perhaps the intent of the the anonymity of the pictured men is meant to convey, "This could be anyone, even you." However, with the current situation always in mind, the idea I take from it is more along the lines of, "You can cross the line, but only so far. You wouldn't want to actually be labeled as someone who does ____, would you?"
And THAT is the crux of the problem. It's not necessarily exactly what someone thinks, but rather how he acts. I'm a firm believer in the idea, "Good intentions pave the road to hell." One can do his best. And it IS important. But how someone acts--how far he goes to prove his conviction--is more important. Let's take parenting as an example. If a parent wants to teach a child the lesson that stealing is wrong, he must first, not steal himself and second, punish the child if he steals. If a parent wants to teach a child not to be racist, he must first, not use racial slurs, and second, discipline the child if he does.
And if a state wants to prove that it is indeed a democracy and cares about equal rights and the rule of law, it must . . .(and here we arrive, finally, to my opinion on the disengagement from Aza):
1) make painful concessions even in the face of a nationalist/religious ideology that argues against them
2) show the world, but more importantly the unfortunate and perhaps even unintended victims of its policies, that it is willing to "put its money where its mouth is"
3) take a step to change the status quo.
Stagnance is perhaps one of the worst problems facing social, political, and economic systems in the world today. One would not argue that a fascist party staging a revolution to overthrow a democratic regime is a good idea simply because it is change, but let's revert for one moment back to the World Peas idea.
My question (perhaps a silly one) to all of you is: Do we actually see the peas in pea soup? That is to say, do we see the parts that make up the whole? If we begin to, and I have, it then becomes impossible to say, "But what about the terror that will inevitably come after the disengagement," because you know that one of the "peas" is a little kid who would much, much rather play soccer than learn how to throw a molotov cocktail. It becomes impossible to say, "But it is Jewish land," because you see each one of the 1.8 million "peas" that lives in one of the most crowded areas in the world, and then you see their Jewish counterparts' villas. I wouldn't say I'm a leftist. I'm simply say I'm for World Peas and all the other vegetables out there.
