Israel and Palestine and Palestine and Israel
We all have obsessions. Some of us have many of them. Israel and Palestine is one of mine and has always been has been Israel and Palestine. They have never been separate.
So many years ago my friend Sandy ran a news service in California. Still does. She asked me to write a piece not too long personal not too personal Israel and Palestine, or, she said Palestine and Israel. Say something she said. Important to say something.
I believe that too. But it isn’t always easy to know what to say.
Years later I still don’t know.
I could describe injustice. Moments of war. Losses and families and walls real and unreal
or what music sounds like in a light pink country what sounds can happen there
After Israel my first time in Israel I traveled through the Arab world. None of those words people use: exoticism, for example. Oppression. Insanity. In Israel and then, in the equally crazy countries all around the way you do when you’re young before it happens more often I completely fell in love. Not with a person. With what the place might be one day. Not the romantic notion of place either. Just with the place.
Like so many people love Italy or France. That’s how Jerusalem and Cairo and Damascus felt to me.
And now so many years later tragedy after tragedy after tragedy again my friend Sandy came to visit after so many years of being away. Maybe she said you can write about Palestine and Israel and Israel and Palestine. Maybe now she said. Maybe now.
(here's an addendum. I have never written an addendum here. I could tell you this tomorrow but today seems better. Don't miss today's GOOGLE DOODLE. It's wonderful.)
https://g.co/doodle/t3ev5s