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PARTISAN REVIEW
tances, American students, were killed, she broke down in tears. And
only at the end of summer vacation did she reveal that her classmate, a
new immigrant from Russia, was badly wounded and still paralyzed.
During hours of insomnia I agonize about whether I have the right to
bring up my daughters here, in a war. Is this the last minute, when look–
ing back we'll be able
to
say we got away in time and those left behind
were killed? I have imaginary conversations with my dead mother, who
survived the death camps. And the next morning, I need to get up and
smile as the girls go about their normal day.
I grow even more isolated at the sight of parades supporting "suc–
cessful attacks," row after row of inflamed masses dressed as
shahids,
calling for "Death to Israel." There are parades in Gaza, Rafiah, and
Jenin, in the Muslim world, but also anti-Israeli demonstrations in
Europe. There are condemnations by Western politicians on the right
and left, by intellectuals, artists, writers (including Saramago) , boycotts
of Israeli products, of Israeli intellectuals and academics, pressure on
universities to withdraw their connections with Israel.
How to bear witness to the moral and emotional trap in the middle
of a war of two populations that for two years have been pitted against
each other, in a war that has (at least in the Israeli consciousness) no
opposition between absolute good and demonic evil, especially in
Jerusalem, with its complex texture of life? A moment of laughter with
an Arab taxicab driver, and joy at the laughter itself as a victory in some
essential way. And the despair upon learning that the members of the
gang that carried out the attack in the university cafeteria had worked
for years as plasterers in Jerusalem.
How to tell of a war of terror in a civilian population composed of
old timers and new immigrants, foreign workers and Arabs, settlers and
pioneers, leftists and rightists? A war that doesn't distinguish between
its casualties. Whose purpose it is to rip apart the fabric of life. And in
what terms to talk about the persistence of individuals in defending the
fragile fabric of their society? To open the stores downtown even after
repairing them after explosions two and three? To go on studying or
teaching. To play an instrument,
to
dance. Not to give up buying books,
listening
to
music, going to the theater. To preserve what is precious,
most private. It's a long struggle for survival, as in London during the
Blitz, a struggle for life.
I
CAN TESTIFY TO THE DEPTH
of disappointment at the collapse of the
peace process only in the first person, and from Jerusalem, where I set–
tled after studying in Paris,
to
the amazement of my Tel Aviv friends. To
