On the current war (again)

October 13, 2023 

A few decades ago, during one of these all too frequent moments when violence in the Mid-East overflows its "normal" bounds I wrote the following paragraphs. They are certainly not great writing. They were and remain nothing but a cri de coeur -- an honest, if awkward cry from the heart.

At the time I first wrote these words Silo saw fit to have them posted on Silo.net. I’ve made minor tweaks to it a few times since then, but it remains substantially as I first wrote it when it sprung fully formed one morning on awakening from a restless sleep.

I wish I had something wiser or more useful to add. Too bad it still feels true. Too bad I didn’t have, and still don’t have great advice for any of those touched by the current horrors.

“I am a Jew and a child of the holocaust. That means most of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and family friends that I might have known were cruelly tortured and murdered before I was born. It means I grew up knowing instead the scars on my father’s body from beatings by the concentration camp guards. I knew his poor injured limbs twisted from their tortures. It knew the KL tattooed into his forearm marking him as a slave, and less than a slave. It means I will always remember the nightmares that haunted his dreams.

It also means that I am descended from people whose neighbours in every generation for thousands of years have turned on them in pogroms, and massacres. Before Columbus sailed we were driven from Spain. Two centuries before that from England. Two millennia ago, the Romans drove my ancestors from the area they called Judea, as the Babylonians had some 600 years earlier. And even these were not the first.

After the holocaust, around the time I was born, even in the tranquil and tolerant city where I grew up there were places marred with signs that read, “No Jews or Dogs”. I grew up in a largely Jewish neighbourhood, but as a child was once chased home from school to a classmate’s taunts of “you killed Jesus”.

I know in my bones who it is that will end up being the scapegoat, the fall guy, the accused. I am a Jew, in the same way that I am a part of the family I was born into. And I find myself one of those who asks: why didn’t they protest when a thousand missiles were launched at us from our neighbours' house?

I feel all that is true and yet even so I ask myself isn’t it right to defend yourself against your jailors, against those who would bulldoze your orchards and take your home? Isn’t it right to defend your children?

I have no wisdom to illuminate this situation only these thoughts, this mess of feelings, and this observation:

Of course, I have to defend my children, my family, my people.

But who are my children?

Who are my family, and my people?

My heart is pierced by every bullet that rips apart that one, who like me, simply finds themselves thrown into a game they didn’t choose. I am torn apart by the pain and anger of every single person who cowers in fear, or shakes their fist in helpless rage.

Even if I would, the tears I shed for that child cruelly slaughtered by bullet or bomb don’t know how to distinguish Jew from Muslim, Israeli from Palestinian, White from Black, or Hindu from Sikh.

This war is a disaster.

All war is a disaster, all violence impossible."

Peace in our hearts. Light in our understanding.

Danny

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