Republished from Shani Manor’s Blog
Dear Friends Outside,
Many of you have written to me to ask how I was, and even those who didn’t, I know, are thinking about me every now and again, and just don’t know how to express what they are feeling. I myself have been meaning to write a blog post since the negotiation talks ended 4 months ago but have had a difficult time escaping clichés.
It’s loaded when you write about dead Israeli reserve soldiers, who run when the country calls only to leave behind hearts that could not be superglued with ideology. And it’s loaded when you mention dead Gazan children, women and men, who make about 0.5% of the total population at this point. You can’t talk about one without the other, and you can’t compare the suffering, and the numbers mean nothing when behind them are families burying the dead.
Perhaps, it would be better to tell you more personal things – my friend at the bar last night drank shots before telling me he is leaving for Gaza in the morning, and me starring him down when he said bye to remember every inch of his face in case he doesn’t come back. Or this existence in Tel Aviv, grabbing Tzutza, my kitty, 1-3 times a day and running down to the staircase – no shelter here – where I see my neighbors more often than I have in the last 2 years, and the random people from the street who come seeking shelter in our building and sometimes cry hysterically. Tzutza meows but then turns silent when she hears the booms. Then there’s the missile that fell in the field by the Edelstein’s house, which thankfully didn’t blow up, but was left as a monument, halfway in the ground. And my Michal, who came to visit for the summer, and tries to understand everything objectively. And my roommate’s friend who was injured, and my friends who left for Gaza, and my father who cannot sleep because he’s screwed up by past wars and this is bringing it all back home. And me, how I function well under stress, but when I came to work on Tuesday and heard the booms of a neighboring city and they were so loud, like a building was collapsing right behind me, I started crying in the middle of the street because Tzutza was at home alone and I was on my bicycle and it felt so real and surreal and scary, and no missile’s going to care that I’m a left winger. And how every passer-byer told me to just continue on with my daily life. And then a squad of 20 soldiers with riffles appeared in the middle of Kaplan Street, and the sirens of fire department trucks and ambulances, and the sun was so strong and I was sweating and then I breathed. Wiped my tears. Got on my bike and moved on.
And the dirty laundry. The right wing extremists, who are multiplying like the flu, and beat up left wingers, who hold signs I sometimes disagree with but would fight for their right to hold. And when I biked through Rotchild Blvd on my way to my boyfriend they yelled ‘Death to all left-wingers’ and held their bats with their black shirts, and then I heard they trashed a coffee shop and broke a chair on a left-winger’s back. And how mad I am at myself for staying quiet mostly, fearing the retribution from the right, their motorbikes, their bats, and when I speak up they tell me my citizenship should be evoked and I should move to Gaza and get raped by thousands of Arabs. I’d kind of like to assume that even in Gaza I could find a nice man to marry. But I’m staying here and need to bring back my flag to me, as I act because I love this country with every cell in my blood and I will struggle to the bitter end to make it what it should be, what it could be. And I will not die in the process.
And then there’s stupid Hamas, fucking fuck-fuck Hamas, breaking every single cease fire we attempted to have in the past however many weeks this has been going on. And my selfish melancholy, because they cancelled Neil Young’s concert and he could have saved my mind, ease this poor existence, and that occurring miserable thought that if I had to choose a moment, I would kind of be okay with dying at his concert, and as we would stand in line at the gates of heaven, hell, or nowhere land, I could tell him that I love him and that he made my break ups in the past much easier and that my man and I make love while we listen to his records and sometimes I reach my peak right as he clenches the guitar, and that I never got to go to Alberta and see the good weather there in the fall, and how this situation is kind of like a hurricane, and how I was once called a cinnamon girl.
We all made jokes when this started. Now I can’t even crack the sarcasm Israelis are so well known for because the heart is tired and needs a rest. And the toll, the numbers, they keep rising while my guitar aggressively wails and my ears hurt and my soul’s exhausted and morality seems like a foreign concept that stays in books and UN reports. And go tell my Arab Facebook friends that though I’m behind their statuses on Gaza, they are killing me a little more when they call my experience one of a “couple of missiles” because, well, there are many. And we’re scarred and Tzutza cries and the choice between bringing my Mac or her down to the staircase because if my Mac is blown up by a missile I’d lose my past, but Tzutza is my present, and then the after thoughts of my guitar and ukulele. Go tell them that I jump every time I hear a motorcycle in the street clenching its engine because I think it’s an alarm starting. Go tell Israelis who praise the Gazans death, that we’re all made of the same fucking skin and bones. And find good advice to give friends, who call and tell me how they wrote a status against the war and spent the night receiving threatening phone calls from people calling them traitors and wishing all sorts of things to happen to their assholes by Arabian camels. And my Arab-Israeli friends, who are stuck in the middle. And how I can’t help them, but give a hug. And how much longer my hugs have gotten lately.
And those little joys that are shaded by it all. Moving in with my man, the pomegranate tree in the yard, Michal’s visit, working for a peace organization during this time, organizing demonstrations and taking back my flag… this is what I came here to do, after all, clean the deck of the sinking ship that is my country – but how long do I clean it for, when is the time to bounce before this deck is all under water, and I’m running out of cleaning supplies because there is so much dirt and crap and the upcoming death of democracy…
And that Ani Difranco song, that gives me sanity because “When you grow up surrounded / by willful ignorance / you have to believe that mercy has its own country / and that it’s round and borderless / and then you just grow wings / and rise above it all” and I remember how I sang this in a Connie Hogarth Center Concert, and everything was safe and happy then, and Connie said Pete Seeger loved my singing, and I was 18, and felt on the top of the world. And how long ago that all seems right now.
And to summarize, I guess I am asking you to not judge so harshly. Don’t be so pro anything because there are so many layers to all this. Just bring mercy and compassion back, even though it’s hard, and it’s ok that it’s hard because it somehow makes us stronger or wiser, or perhaps that’s all bullshit I tell myself but, you know, I try to feel as much as I can, and Crosby, Stills and Nash keep harmonizing in my ear that “the difference between me and you / I won’t argue right or wrong / but I got time to cry, my baby.”
As always,
Shani Manor
