From my watching a YouTube Interview with Bari Weiss.
When I heard her back story, I thought of mine as a white shadow in the predominantly Black and Puerto Rican sections of the Bx and the only Jewish student in Fordham’s undergrad school of education as far as I know during my 4 years there (at least in my class of 1970…)
I too felt it a “gift”.
Obviously, I cannot relate to being through terrorist attacks and post attack bullying, although I had to deal with bullying in my situation. Sometimes I had to talk my way out. Sometimes I had to fight. C’est la vie.
I too, was taught never to call anyone an N or S, even if they went off on my heritage. Also, I too didn’t feel I was a victim of antisemitism nor was I willing to feel victimized. It did get worse from time to time when the Bx started burning my last few years in those neighborhoods when they blamed the “Jew landlords”. Unfortunately, they were often right, as was the case with the last building in what is now known as the south Bronx where I lived.
I learned too, through a series of events (obviously without car bombs) that life is much more complicated than we think, and it is not black and white.
She is right: Racism, hatred, and violence was always there.
Shame on the Ministry of Education for cutting off the payment to her (an Arab Muslim Israeli) for speaking at that Shavuot conference for representing assimilation! Was that “Pure Racism”.
Pure Jim Crow? Yes! But as she says, “Apartheid NO, but there is a lot of Racism towards Arabs.” That makes it easier to understand why many members of US minorities as well as many white liberal civil rights or justice fighters see Israel as they do.
Good for her to sue the Ministry of Education.
Can the paradox of Israel being a Jewish State and a democratic one be reconciled? As she says, Israel has to be both because the Jewish people have no other option. As a Jewish man or woman, you cannot allow yourself to be something else than democratic.
Oh Bibi? Do you hear that?
When she says that there are portions of the citizenry that use democracy to hurt democracy, she describes almost work for word what Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, said:
“It will always remain one of democracy’s best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed.” and… “We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons.”
Who, besides her, will remind the Jewish People of their obligation to themselves to preserve that “Miracle” democracy? On October 7th Ms. Aharish felt Orphaned by her Country (that she loves like her parents). She was and is “afraid of politicians doing politics and thinking only about their political small interests”…
When she says, “we gave up on education”, it raises the question as to whether education provided by schools can override or assist the education we all get through our experiences. How does formal institutional education erase seeing your family, or your house blown up or your friends shot and killed while a kid?
That is true in the Middle East. Similarly, how does formal institutional education erase experience growing up in an American Urban Ghetto that leads to an us v them attitude.
However, when she refers to American kids in “Elite Universities, she is right. Those kids know nothing of the life and history of Palestinians and Israelis. They are educated by sound bites. They don’t read. They don’t know. They don’t understand. They just chant!
They don’t know that what happened on Oct 7 had nothing to do with the “occupation” (her word not mine). However, the head of Hamas said there is no two state solution; there is only one state from the river to the sea… eliminating Israel….while asking to stop the war.
“A little bit funny” she says while Hamas are laughing at the fools marching in the street chanting “from the River to the Sea”.
Fundamentalists (on any side) and their followers don’t want to ask, nor do they want others to ask the right questions, or to question what has been done and why. It is easier to find a villain. In religion having a good guy and a bad guy is very clear.
Can Israel win the war if the war is not just about defeating Hamas, but also about defeating an idea…an idea burned into generations of young Palestinian lives? Personally, I believe they can do the former, but the latter is far more complicated, even by winning the former.
She says Israel has to win. It has no other chance nor choice, but the right way.
Over time, however, her mindset changed. She believed immediately the reaction must be harsh and brutal because of Hamas’s goals and methods. She was angry and frustrated because October 7th’s events took from her the ability to see the other side with compassion. They murdered the sense of compassion and humanity in her and others who now don’t want to even listen about the misery of the people in the Gaza Strip.
But she realized “we lost that day” if we give HAMAS the benefit of seeing us lose our compassion. We are NOT HAMAS. She now sees what is happening in the Gaza Strip as horrible, feeling sorrow and pain for babies, children, men and women being killed in this war. No one should experience October 7th and its repercussions.
So, what about the next generation in 20 years? We need them to be part of the solution to find forgiveness between Israelis and Palestinians. These are our neighbors. We have no others. Israelis who believe Palestinians will disappear are dreaming or “are living in a really bad misconception”, Israel and the Jewish people are not disappearing either. (stated as an Arab Muslim Israeli).
She concludes, we must all be part of the solution. We have a great geopolitical possibility. We all have interests. We have peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and we have the Abraham Accords. Plus, the4 Saudis are winking at us. We must be blind not to see this opportunity where a lot of political interests come together for both Israel and the Palestinian people.
“We just need to open our eyes.” Will we?
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