Emily Hauser, who has moved between Israel and the U.S., writes a stirring piece about why she's throwing herself back into Palestine/Israel issues. Her story reminds me of all the Americans who moved to Israel after '67. And now the reverse is happening. Go to her blog to read the more hopeful conclusion:
I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than 12 months without being in
Israel during our entire 11 years in America. I’m always in a state of
decompressing from the last jaunt, or gearing up for the next.
At first, we knew we’d be going back permanently, in time for our
first-born to start kindergarten. Then in 2002, my husband and I
admitted to each other that the Israeli response to the al-Aksa
intifada meant we didn’t actually want to raise our children in Israel,
unless and until something changed — peace and justice were, I think,
what we had in mind.
As I said in an earlier post, this was an excruciating decision for
me, one I’ve mentally kicked at and picked apart ever since. I spent
the next four years essentially apologizing to my Israeli friends for
not being there, and reiterating, ad infinitum (probably ad nauseam),
how much I loved and missed it — a thing which, while entirely true,
probably did not endear me to those who lived there and could have
reasonably wondered why I didn’t move back, if I living elsewhere gave
me a literal, physical ache. I took to referring to the “gentle exile
of American suburbia,” and remarked (again, probably too often) that
though we had built a good life, I never felt fully alive except when
at home. In Israel.
Cut to, where are we now, 2006? The Second War in Lebanon, and the military operation in Gaza which left hundreds dead and flattened Gaza’s one power plant along with much of the rest of the Strip’s infrastructure — all in response to the Palestinian capture of an on-duty soldier, which came in retaliation for the almost entirely unreported Israeli kidnapping of suspected Hamas members from their Gaza home the day before.
Something in me snapped. Having actively advocated for a two-state
solution for years, having apparently hoped in some corner of my heart
that we would one day return, I began to back away. I told people I had
given up hope. (Well, I told some people. I didn’t tell my friends in
Israel, but I did tell them that I would stop bending their ear about
my own internal turmoil. They smiled fondly, for they are very good
friends).
And then: This winter. The absolutely unnecessary, unforgiveable, full-frontal war in Gaza in which rather than try to deal rationally with the undeniable wrong of rocket attacks on its cities, Israel decided to subject an entire population — that it was already keeping in what amounted to an open-air jail
— to a landscape-flattening assault that killed and maimed and
destroyed and wrecked horrible havoc for three weeks. And registered an
80-90% approval rate from the Israeli people.
