I did not go.
I sat in my room, beating my fists against the fake wood of my desk, whisking tears out of my eyes as fast as they could form, and pummeling my mind over and over against the news that Olmert wants to give away the Golan to Syria.
The Golan.
The Golan, that Israeli boys fought and died for during the Six Day War. The Golan, overlooking the vulnerable farmers in the Chuleh valley below. The Golan, breathtaking mountains with cascades of almond and crocus blossoms spilling over on the heights. Give away the Golan, after the spectacular fallout (bad pun, I know) from the Gaza withdrawal. Give it away to Syria, which so clearly wants peace with Israel that it built a nuclear reactor in secret. Good idea. Do you not remember Gaza?
It has been three years since the hitnatkut, and the dominating emotion now is the same as it was then, with a little nostalgia added to the mix: lo nishkach v’lo nislach. We will not forget. We will not forgive.
I remember that summer. I was young, mid-teens, palms sweaty from linking hands in the human protest chain we made stretching from Gaza to Jerusalem. My voi
ce hoarse from shouting the obvious; “Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi!” (One Jew does not exile another). My eyes smarting from the sea of bright orange shirts and bands that were the symbol of protest. My heart convinced that G-d would not allow this outrage to happen. And if He screwed up, I knew Sharon (the then prime minister) was not a big enough idiot to actually give away land for peace! We all knew Oslo had been a big fat failure- there’s no such thing as land for peace. We gave away Gaza, and rockets rained on Sderot and Ashkelon and Iranian militants smuggled weapons into Gaza. Giving away the Golan or Jerusalem are equally stupid ideas. While I’m debunking myths, let’s do another: there’s no such thing as a ceasefire. As Noam Bedein of Sderot Media Center said: We cease, they fire.The more than 800 refugees who we
re kicked out of their homes by their own country, by their own army that had sworn to protect them, in some cases by their own friends and cousins and lovers, are still living in shanty towns throughout Israel. They are fighting hopeless, endless legal battles with the Israeli government for the payment they were promised for their land. Their belongings are still kept in huge crates by the sides of the highways because they have no room for them in their houses. And Olmert wants to give away more. Land for peace, land for peace. It’s become the mantra of the left wing.Israelis want peace more than anything else. I grew up singing popular Israeli songs, “Noladeti lashalom” (I was born for peace), “Shir lashalom” (Song of peace), “Od yavo shalom aleinu” (Peace will come upon us), and my favorite, “Hinay ba hashalom” (Here comes the peace). Can you spot the trend? Whereas the most played video shown on Arab TV this past year was a music video celebrating the act of becoming a shahid- martyrdom by murder. Palestinian MediaWatch shows alarming trends in their newspapers, TV shows, and textbooks. They do not want peace. If they did, then we could talk about peace in that little spot in the Middle East that is causing so much trouble. But till then, no land for a nonexistent peace.
Olmert, listen to the slogans that are raging through the country. Lech labaitah, Olmert! (Olmert, go home!). HaAm im haGolan! (The nation stands with the Golan). Lo nishkach v’lo nislach— we will not forget, nor will we forgive. Yehudi lo megaresh yehudi. Please, Olmert. Listen.
I am in America. I am not yet an Israeli citizen. I have no say. Were the Golan to be given away, I would cry, and I would throb with pain, and I would scream to the high heavens, but I would be two thousand miles away. Jerusalem… is different.
I wear a golden ribbon knotted onto my knapsack. Here in Maryland, nobody has the slightest clue what it means though bags in Israel sport them routinely. It is golden for Jerusalem, and I tied it to my bag as a silent protest against the idea of dividing Jerusalem, the golden city. Remember before ’67, when Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city? It was under Jordanian control, and no Jew or Christian could enter the city. Now it is a beautiful metropolitan capital, filled with people of diverse religions and the ubiquitous Asian tourists who cover the world. Give that away, and no Jew or Christian will be able to enter. Give that away, and I will be on a plane and latched to that ground until they pry me off kicking.
The other area that Olmert has been discussing giving away is the West Bank: Yesha (Yehuda and Samaria). I lived in Samaria last year, in the beautiful little community of Elqana. I took long walks on its brick sidewalks overshadowed by calyonim blossoms. I visited its red-roofed, sprawling white houses and taught the children English at the local middle school. I hiked among the empty hills and looked out over the Arab and Jewish towns. I want to live on a hilltop in the Shomron, in a caravan with one wall covered with books and the other just a wide window with a view of quiet, peaceful rolling hills. And regardless of green line, security fence, assholes named Olmert, or American pressure, I will.
2 comments:
Lets not forget who lives in the Golan 38,900, including approximately 19,300 Druze, 16,500 Jews, and 2,100 Muslims. Lets not forget either that more than 70% of the Druze in the Golan maintain Syrian citizenship, despite illegal pressure from the Israeli government to renounce it.
Nor should we forget encroachment of Syrian territory by Israeli farmers: "Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land ... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us." -Moshe Dayan, former Israeli Foreign Minister and Chief of the IDF from NYT, 1997.
About the article: Hmmm… Dayan is the same guy who gave away Har Habayit, so I would definitely believe he would say this… On the other hand, the New York Times are notoriously anti-Israel so I’m inclined to take their posthumous interview of him with a grain of salt (dude, this came out in 97 and he was dead in 81- he’d never have a chance to try to explain or put in context).
Historically: Syria got the land in 1944 when France left the region, and built fortifications in 48 to bomb the hell out of the Israeli farmers in the Chuleh valley. Maybe the kibbutzniks were just land-grubbing, or maybe they were making bids for their safety by sending the message: we’re willing to cultivate the land if the government will protect us. All you’d have to do is roll rocks down those slopes to kill people, and the Syrians were sending regular artillery bombardment. Children on those kibbutzim grew up sleeping in bomb shelters.
What Olmert’s talking about, giving land to Syria, is ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Golan. Think about it: would Jews be safe living in Syrian-governed land? No. Whereas under Israeli rule people of all religions can live in the Golan. I’ve spoken to Druze who spoke Hebrew from two different Golan villages, and they said the same things: they are very close to their Jewish neighbors, and they fear that this will hurt their relatives back in Syria and Jordan. Maybe the reason the rest of the Druze don’t renounce their Syrian citizenship is because they’re afraid that their family will face the repercussions.
Also, I just thought of something. Let’s inject a healthy note of reality into this conversation: regardless of who said what, have you ever seen a picture of the Golan? Maybe you can’t tell from photos, but I’ve hiked all around it, and it would be a teensy bit hard, okay, ludicrous, to send tractors up. The Golan is a small area of seriously steep inclines. The idea of kibbutzniks driving tractors up those mountains with bullets raining down on them isn’t so realistic.
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