There are some certain circles in Germany, including in this paper, with a Pavlovian reaction for anything that smells of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. It must be something about the German past and the glorification of the 68′ movement, that makes the Germans identify completely with the Palestinian struggle. One of the things that I really can’t stand is being dogmatic. By that I mean the tendency to fall into one’s default, no matter what are the circumstances.
Before I will get to the wall, I would like to write a line or two about the German past and the people I am writing about. This group of people are really ashamed of the past, and are fully regret what happened to Jews in this country, yet somehow this group fails to materialize on drawing a direct line between this past and the current situation in Israel.
By that I mean: yes, it is horrible what happened to the Jews here. Israelis? fuck them, they are colonial bastards, oppressing scumbags. I don’t think I would have many friends if I was holding different political views here, but my Judaism is a nice certificate.
Back to the wall. Germans feel that they really have moral superiority when it comes to the wall. They fucking broke down a wall. They will tell you that this is not how you solve things, that building a wall will create hundreds of more suicide bombers, that this wall is a symbol of the asymmetric conditions of the two sides of it.
And you know what? they are all right and justified arguments, but I was living in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in one of the horrible tsunami of the suicide bombers, and I recall very vividly the horrors of an everyday life experiences: going to the supermarket, sipping coffee with the daily paper, go to the movies, have a beer with a friend, get on public transportation. tik-tak, tik-tak, tik-tak. you were having beer and your heart was ticking like a fucking bomb.
So I know that it is very cool to wear a Kafiya, and identify with „Free Palestine“, and protest every fart Israel is making. But after all the protest, do you really have a better solution? Any solution at all? An alternative?
Let me be demagogic for a bit: I wonder what would be the reaction here if someone would interrupt your daily coffee and paper with an explosion. Actually, I don’t really want to wonder about it. I think that building a wall would be Dalai Lamanian compared to what would happen here.
There was a problem in Israel, an existential problem. A problem that was targeting the heart of Israel’s liberalism circle. The problem has been solved. It is not the perfect solution, but until I will be convinced otherwise, it is the only solution.