Breaking Narratives

I am writing to share my personal narrative and reaction to recent events at APsaA and in the Middle East. I am Jewish, and I lived in Israel from the time I was five, when we immigrated to Israel from Romania in the midst of the Lebanon War, to the time I was fourteen, when we left as the sirens wailed during the Gulf War. I watched Holocaust documentaries every year on Remembrance Day from the time I was eight years old. I dressed in white and blue and celebrated every Independence Day. I was taught that the State of Israel is essential to the safety of Jews worldwide. I loved the beautiful land around me, the wildflowers in the spring after the rains, the deserts and oases of the Negev, and I was grateful to the Israeli government for getting us out of Communist Romania. In school we sang of the land of milk and honey, and we told stories of our victory over the Arabs, of the Zionist heroes who had conquered and cultivated the land, turning it from a malaria-infested marshy swamp into the shaded lush green country we inhabit today. There was pride and strength and victory in those stories that overcame the darkness of Remembrance Day. Those stories and songs and narratives of Israel manifesting our destiny, the happy ending that our people deserve after generations of suffering and exile, the ruins of Masada, and the stories of the Temple, shaped my reality. But then this narrative began to crack. There was the rising of the intifada, the “problem” of the Palestinians, the bus stop ads warning us to suspect a bomb in any bag left behind, my three-year-old brother playing war games, and my father's rifle in the laundry room.

When the Gulf War began, everything shut down. Schools closed, wandering far from home was ill advised, and we ran to our sealed room every time we heard a siren. I can still picture my five-year-old brother wearing a gas mask. Turns out we weren't so safe. We left in a hurry, boarding a plane while my father stayed behind