by Dave Pell of electablog and NextDraft

from April 2, 2002

Taking Sides

The first time I shopped at the convenience store just steps from my apartment building I was buying a loaf of Jewish Rye bread. The guy at the register looked up and asked, "You feeling a little Jewish today?" I responded that I feel a little Jewish everyday. Because the person behind the register was Palestinian, the moment was not without a hint of discomfort. But that moment, now more than five years ago, was the last time that I ever felt any discomfort when it comes to hanging out with Andy and George, the brothers who have owned this particular store since just about the time my wife and I moved into our San Francisco apartment. The store, and the brothers, have become something of an annex to our apartment. We see one of them everyday. Over the years we have met members of each other's families and talked about almost everything. We know about each other's vacations, good times and bad times, how George's daughter is doing in school and the latest about Andy's wife's pregnancy - after three tries, it will be a boy. It has become for my wife and me not only a place of convenience (they order products specifically for us), but a place of great comfort. A place where everyone knows our name.

And since George and Andy have two sisters who live in Ramallah and I have a sister who lives in Israel, the Middle East crisis has been as consistent a topic of discussion as anything else. At times, the conversations have been spirited or even heated. But rarely. Why? Because George, Andy and I and our families firmly agree on the key issue in question. We agree that there should be peace. It makes me sick when I hear that Andy and George's young nephews have been holed up in their homes with their families, heat and water cut-off, subject to door-to-door searches at gunpoint, seeing tanks push their cars out of the street and hearing shots fired at all hours of the day and night. Why should they suffer because of the behavior of the few? It makes me sick when I hear about a suicide bomber who blows up a cafe in a diverse community in Haifa where Arabs and Jews live and work together.

All of this, ultimately, is for nothing. Sane people on both sides of the issue want to live together in peace. There are of course differences when it comes to crossing this T or dotting that I, but until the recent violence sent everyone into the deep-end of the anger and grief spectrum, these differences would not have been great enough to jar people from the course that leads to the only viable destination.

So what's going on? There is a third side. The third side doesn't want peace. Every time there is a glimmer of hope, another bomb goes off. Yesterday, George told me "The fanatics are winning." And it's true. The victims of these fanatics cut across religions, states and cultures. The victims of those who answer peace overtures (from either side, from any source) with explosives are widespread and first among them are the children who are trained to strap bombs to their person and walk into a crowded store or restaurant. It shocks me how many people perceive a hard-line against terrorism and terrorists as some overly conservative viewpoint. To me, there could be no more liberal stance than to condemn those who would use their own children as human explosives. It's time to drop the foolish line that people blowing themselves up is about desperation. Desperation for what? More violence? That has been its only result in the long history of terrorism. The use of kids to blow themselves up is part of a broad political scheme - backed financially by the likes of Saddam - to avoid peace at any cost.

The saddest part of all of this is that the alternative to the current state of violence would be beautiful. It would be an example to the rest of the region and the rest of the world. With two peaceful states and communities that work and do business together, and hopefully a full democratic political structure for the Palestinians - what is now a site of grief and despair would be quickly transformed into the most economically and socially advanced section of the entire region. It would show the extremists - both in the streets and in the seats of government - that there is a better alternative; that peace and diversity is the best way, period. But there are those, driven by hate and their own desire to cling to tyrannical power who fear this peaceful and thriving eventuality and will stop at nothing to throw a wrench into the process every time the majority of people feel they are finally getting peace into gear.

So today, I'm feeling a little Jewish. And I'm feeling a little Palestinian. I'm feeling like I am on the side of peace, freedom, secularism, diversity and prosperity. And I feel like the world is breaking apart into two schools, those who want to play by the rules of civilized society and those who are only satisfied when behaving like extreme fanatics. And there are of course extremists on both sides in the Middle East.

And I am depressed because I feel like the fanatics are more sure of their cause than the rest of the world is of our own. And while I hope that history will show that the right side will win over time, right now, the extremists are winning. Israel and the Palestinian territories are the front lines of this war. As soon as the majority of good people on both sides wake up and realize once again that they are on same side, maybe that will change. Maybe one day in the not too distant future my sister and Andy and George's sisters will hang out in their homelands just like we do in ours and talk about how goddamn stupid all of that was.

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