He said he’d been here for six months studying at the Mir Shevia in Jerusalem. I wondered how religious this stocky American could be drinking a beer with tizit hanging from a green Murphy’s beer t-shirt. He must have been at least modern Orthodox (like normal Orthodox just less gay hating) to study at the Mir sheivaia, the only Jewish school of learning to survive the Holocaust by relocating to Japanese controlled Shanghai.
“You like it here I asked?”
“No, not really. I miss Brooklyn everyone here seems to hate each other,” he said and to an extent I had to agree with him Israelis, do constantly seem as though there on edge which makes sense when considering every ten years there nation goes to war with at least two other neighboring countries. I forgot him and went back to the pool game with Juri, a Dutch friend I had met three years ago on a Kibbutz in Northern Israel. We were playing against a cameraman from a Dutch news agency and a friend of his visiting him in Jerusalem. I can’t remember her name because it was something Dutch and hard to pronounce, but Juri says he thinks that her name might have been Hezbollah.
After we lost me and Juri walked outside the bar so he could smoke. Outside Hezbollah came up to us and asked to barrow Juri’s lighter. She told us that the cameraman was an ex-boyfriend of hers and that she was staying with. She told us that in some ways her trip to Israel had challenged her expectations, even though she was nervous at constantly seeing young soldiers walk around with assault rifles slung over there soldiers but also surprised when she found out that Israel offered free fertility clinics to Israeli citizens regardless of ethnicity or sexual orientation. Even though Holland has universal healthcare such a procedure would still be hard to acquire and in America couples often spend thousands of dollars just for the opportunity to have an in vitro baby.
From all accounts we thought we had made a new friend until the two of them switched over to Dutch, which sounds sort of like a less angry version of German. I tried to fallow along but Dutch is a very hard language to learn on the spot. I did however recognize the fallowing words; Nazi, Homo, Juden/Jewish and Palestinian. Hezbollah walked back into the bar while Juri shook his head in disgust.
“Dumb Dutch bitch. She says that we shouldn’t treat the Palestinians like the Nazis treat us. I say to her what the fuck! You see us killing homos or making Arabs walk around with fucking stars or moons or whatever? You know any gas chambers where we kill them?”
So maybe this is why Israelis are always on edge, its not the wars, but rather the blatant hatred that comes with being the only Jewish state in 2,000 years. Someone like Hezbollah comes to Israel with preconceived notions and despite witnessing the exact opposite stubbornly clings on to those beliefs. Or maybe I’m completely wrong; maybe there are secret death camps somewhere in the occupied territories that still have never been found by journalists or humanitarians. Do the dozens and dozens of Arab’s walking around downtown Jerusalem know that the Israeli police are coming to pack off into cattle cars destined for gas chambers and furnaces? How about the gay pride parade in Jerusalem last Thursday? Are they aware of the fact that the master race has sealed their fate along with the 5 million or so Palestinians living in this region?
Clearly if Israel would like to join the ranks of such genocidal nations as Spain, Germany, Rwanda, United Sates Turkey, Sudan, Japan, Cambodia and Nicaragua they have a little catching up to. I mean Jesus Christ how can you be expected to conduct genocide against Palestinians when they have an ongoing population explosion circa 1948.
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