Lee Diamond – The Israeli Exposed
We are called every name in the book.
You know them, right?
We are occupiers ?
We are racists ?
We’re aggressive ?
We’re arrogant ?
We’re right wingers ?
Uncompromising ?
Did I say gruff?
Or rude?
Yep,we are !
It’s embarrassing to admit to.
But We are —what we are accused of!
BTW: I’m talking about us.
The Israelis!
Wer’e far from being saints or even the
Sons and Daughters of saints
Actually I don’t think that we have
Any saints at all.
Even Moses was denied entrance into
Eretz Yisrael for his human frailties
No St .Moses
Or Saint Joshua
Or St. Isaiah!
We are flesh and blood
We mess up!
We even spill blood
And spill our own
And you always catch us at our errors
Our sins
And you criticize us for being
Flesh and blood!
You have no idea how much this hurts
To see the bleeding that we cause
—And To be exposed—
To your criticism
And we internalize your Israel bashing
Despite our seeming gruffness
And rudeness and arrogance and “occupation”
And despite the fact that we often have a good case for our actions
We become self critical
And it rips us apart
We scream at each other in the Knesset
And upon our streets
And in our films
About ourselves
And we sigh about this
Amongst ourselves all the time
About Our failures
To be Jews.
Yet despite our humanity
Despite our flesh and blood
—Those human qualities —
We struggle as only Israel can and must struggle
We can’t bury our heads in the sand
Israel means to struggle and to bear guilt
Come and view our struggle
The reality
Of an Israeli Jew and Israeli Arab
Who share life more than you can imagine
In our workplace
In our hospitals
In our pharmacies
In our shops
In our malls
In our offices
In our restaurants
In Our foods
In our parks
And playgrounds
And we of flesh and blood
Meet and share public transportation
And voting booths and scream at our own faults in
A free press.
My son was in a hospital room
With a Gazan
No one thought anything
Of this!
My grandson was born in the same delivery room
With Arab babies and nurses and doctors
And not a blink of an eye
Yet I mourn for our failures
And as a Jew —I correct and correct as best as my flesh
Will allow
And yet I’m an Israeli and so human
Who often fails
Tell me about your weaknesses my ‘Saintly ” critics
Do you have saints?
And how do they struggle with
Their flesh and blood
Do you share your lives
With your avowed enemies
As we do?
