I give thanks today to my community. We are building it, a diverse community of brave people working across traditional tribal and ethnic and religious lines to try and forge a vision of coexistence in a troubled brutalized place. Let us celebrate our commitment, and learn from one another. I’m trying to learn myself, and overcome my own deeply-engrained prejudice.
We disagree about stuff. OK. But remember what happens when we remain inside our own religious and national communities, how weak we can be.
Think about Israeli student Maya Wind, who is being pilloried in Israel’s largest English language site. Wind is a shministim, she refused to serve in the Israeli occupation. Last week we did a couple posts about a brave thing Wind did, when she put on a uniform to act as a soldier at an Israeli checkpoint, at Columbia University. 
Well now Ynet has picked up Wind’s story, and is trying to shame her in her own society. “Israeli student joins other side of conflict”:
While Israel struggles to justify its actions to an ever-growing hostile international community, some choose to join the other side – Maya Yechieli Wind, 19, from Jerusalem, is currently studying in New York’s prestigious Columbia University and chooses to spend her spare time organizing anti-Israeli displays depicting IDF soldiers beating and humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints….
While in Israel, Wind refused to don an army uniform, in the display she gladly depicted an IDF sergeant who, according to Wind, regularly abuses and humiliates the Palestinian population at the checkpoint. …
Wind took her part very seriously, aggressively ordering students to kneel to the ground while threatening them with a carton rifle.
The “soldiers” then proceeded to check the “Palestinians'” bags, while tossing books and personal belonging onto the floor.
This is the price that a dissenter pays. I don’t like to quote old posts, but here is what I said when Maya Wind and Netta Mishly spoke at the behest of Code Pink a year ago:
“the theme of the talk [was] how isolated these young women are. They are in a militarized society in which everyone serves, in which people look forward to serving. When Netta was 15, her class had been taken to a shooting range to try out guns and she had refused because she just didn’t want to–even when people said, you will have to get used to it in another three years anyway– and the school gave her a demerit for not taking “part in a social event.”
“Everyone they know has served. Their grandparents, their fathers, their uncles. Netta had gone to her own father’s release ceremony from the Reserves. “It’s all very personal.” And everyone their age is a soldier; and they are thought to be soldiers too, until they are asked what their role is in the army, and they have to answer. That is the way life is understood. And Maya said that her real punishment had not been jail– no, jail had actually brought her family together, gotten her mother to respect her choice—it had been the feeling of isolation in Israel society. She feels she can never be an ordinary person.
“Both women were declared mentally unfit. That was the only category the army had for them, after they had gone to jail for two weeks for not serving. Very Yossarianish. And the women are in support groups, because there are so few people like them in Israeli society.
“When I go to events like this, I also feel less isolated.”
I like that last line. This week let’s think of the community we are actually building, and be thankful for it.
