Just DON'T talk to me!!!

You can't know what it feels like to go to the market and wonder if this is why you die, because you wanted garlic and zuchini and hallah, you can't know how it feels to go sit at an outside cafe and wonder if this is how you die, you can't know how it feels to walk into a shopping mall and wonder if this is why you die, because you wanted to buy some books at Stimatzky's, you can't know how it feels to always be alert, so alert you don't know it anymore, to always check your surroundings, the way people around you are dressed, what they're carrying, what they leave behind, you can't know how it feels to be learning a language and be taught the words "bomb", "bombing", "police" and "suspicious object" before the colours, you can't know what it feels to send off your children to school on different buses so that the chances of at least one of them surviving is higher (and neither can I for the matter but I've seen it), you can't know what if feels like to sit outside your room on the kibbutz with your best friend who was home from miluim and help assemble and reassemble his gun because there are 4 Arab villages close by, you live 8 km away from the Green Line and you never know so you might as well learn, you can't know what if feels like to read in the newspaper that 5 men were arrested mere moments before they set off to YOUR KIBBUTZ to bomb themselves up in the pub on a Friday night and to realise YOU WERE THERE AT THAT VERY TIME, you can't know what if feels like to be on a bus wondering if this is how you die, in bits and pieces, or maybe, if you're one of the lucky ones, you'll simply lose an eye, a leg or an arm, most of your beauty gone, maybe if the nails didn't become lodged in your face you will be able to disguise it somewhat, you will forever part with a lot of your sanity but you will have survived oh yes, and so will have your guilt.

Don't talk to me about the Palestinians right now because right now I want to cause you pain and you're not helping by not shutting the fuck up, don't talk to me about people who use their children as human shields, who raise them to be martyrs, who feed them hate, don't talk to me about people who show images of the morgue, of corpses, on TV so their small children can know better and faster, people who have special educational cartoons and motivational radio speeches, don't talk to me about people who copied the best the world has to offer and boarded the kiddnapping train only they were so dismally stupid it was a Druze they kiddnapped, don't talk to me about people who will use the fact that they are treated in Israeli hospitals to hide bombs under their bandages and you can bet your life on the fact that Israel WILL GO ON treating Palestinians and rightfully so, don't talk to me about Araft and his sweet Suha who is so good at HomeEc that she lives like a QUEEN IN PARIS - of course she had to give birth there in solidarity with the rest of their people - on her husband's meagre salary and do you know she's being investigated for money-laundering? And do you know where your UN money is? Don't talk to me about Hamas members working for the UNRWA and it being perfectly alright because "I don't see that as a crime, Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another, We demand of our staff, whatever their political persuasion is, that they behave in accordance with UN standards and norms for neutrality", and when did Hamas become a "religious organisation"?, don't talk to me about the UN having TAPED the 3 kidnapped soldiers, tortured and killed by the Hezbollah, being transferred to another location a mere 18 h after their abduction and HIDING THE FOOTAGE and keeping mum, destroying evidence, and they are now being sued by the parents of the soldiers AND DON'T YOU EVER WONDER WHY NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT?, and BTW when was the last time you saw an Arab being dismembered on the telly by Jews, when was the last time you saw Arab demonstrations against Arab violations of Human Rights, so don't talk to me about people who celebrate a person's death as though it were a personal gift if the person in question happens to be a Jew, don't talk to me about people who turned down 85% of the territories and part of Jerusalem - and have you ever looked at the map? HAVE YOU??? Such a coincidence of kabbalistic proportions that the Palestinians should invent themselves as we know them today and decide to claim the country ONLY AFTER ISRAEL built roads, schools, hospitals, acqueducts, a railway network, only after Israel had plowed the fields and started conquering the Negev.

Don't talk to me about Muslim countries right now, don't talk to me about them because I can't muster any sympathy for places where men have their throats cut for all the world to see because it is good publicity (and that poor Ken Bigley's tape will be available on the net shortly because SOMETIMES Arab can be amazingly swift and organised), where hands and tongues are chopped of as punishment, where teenage girls are hanged without having been allowed a lawyer and deservedly so because they were "cheeky", where women are stoned to death if their reputation is SAID to be tarnished, where women are killed by their families if they are raped because honour can only be regained through blood, don't even talk to me about France where Muslim girls are gang-raped in the ghettos that the police do not dare enter and then killed etc, where girls are still excised because such is the tradition (and don't talk to me about tradition because yes I'm an Anthropologist and you wouldn't believe the horrors that tradition is responsible for), don't talk to me about Muslims because their sheiks urge the people "to kill Jews, the pigs" so the "Ressurection" can happen, and I have yet to hear an Arab leader or commentator, A SINGLE ONE, on the telly or the radio or the newspapers, condemning terrorist acts.

And I can't hear you say ONE MORE FUCKING WORD ABOUT IT because you have NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! You don't know what Resolutions 181 and 242 are, you don't know the first thing about the wars in Israel and why they were started AND BY WHOM, you don't know about Camp David and Oslo, you don't know about the camps in Jordan and Lebanon, you don't know how Jordan kept its Palestinians without citizenship or any dignity for almost 20 years, you don't know anything about the Black September do you, you don't know what conditions the Palestinians in Jordan today live in or that they constitute the majority of the population, you don't know how the former Emirate of Trans-Jordan/East Bank gained its present existence, you don't know that Egypt and Jordan ABSOLUTELY REFUSED to take responsability for Gaza and the West Bank after the war because, frankly, those Palestinians are an embarrassment and it is enlightening to read about what transpires of their love for each other and the Palestinians in particular when Arab nations hold their summits, you don't know what Barak offered the palestinians in 2000 and how we, ALL OF US, were mightily slapped in the face when his offer was turned down because MOST OF US IN ISRAEL TRULY WANTED peace, TRULY BELIEVED in the peace process - and I know because I was living there and people were so happy, most of us, the naive, the unbelievably stupid, it was going to be all over finally, instead it turned out we should all just march into the sea and save them the trouble because that's really what all the Arab nations want, and you don't even know WHO Barak is do you, you don't know fuck and you presume to have an opinion??? Do you protest every time a "collaborator" is executed? Do you know what constitutes a "collaborator"? Do you daily appreciate the fact that YOU ARE ALLOWED to express your opinion without being beaten/emprisoned/tortured/made to Disappear/killed?

And while you're at it, what is your stand on Darfur? China and Tibet? China and the Uighur? China and coerced abortions? Diamonds? Indonesia? Honduras and LGBT? Fatemeh Haghighat-Pajouh? Amina Lawal? Child soldiers? What are you doing about it? Where were you when East Timor needed you? And when the homeless have the audacity to beg you for money on the street, do you at least offer to buy them soup or do you quickly avert your eyes and scurry away because it's none of your fucking business and it's all their fault anyway?

YOU CAN LOOK ALL THIS SHIT UP, TRUST ME, IT'S NOT LIKE THE MEDIA ARE PRO-ISRAEL SO THEY REALLY CAN BE TRUSTED!

So just SHUT THE FUCK UP because any sentence that starts with "I know that terrorism is unacceptable BUT" is shameful, gut-churning, beneath you, beneath anyone alive regardless of who says it and whom it applies to!

Don't fucking talk to me right now because I lived in Eilat for almost 2 years, I could see Akaba from my lab, and the towers of Saudi Arabia and all the way into Taba, I went to Sinai, those poor people celebrating Simchat Torah, those poor people on holyday trying to forget about the horror and frailty of daily life, I stayed in Nuweiba, it is gorgeous, it is like heaven on earth, you rent a hut from the Bedouins on the beach, right in front of the ocean, it rocks you to sleep, and the Bedouins are so easy-going and friendly, and you will go out and snorkel and swim with Olin, the female dolphin who bonded with Abdallah, the deaf fisherman, and it reads like pulp fiction but it is all true, I went there to check it and I saw it myself, I SAW IT, and now the Bedouins will pay the price for THEIR BROTHERS' actions, because Israelis feel safe in Sinai, or they used to, and they flocked there, and now it's over, and tell me, you the well-informed, tell me how they'll make a living when NO ONE COMES ANYMORE! They were so poor already, you can't know how poor, tell me who will feed them now that they will starve! You think the brethren will give a flying fuck???

But most of all, DON'T talk to me right now because I HAVE FRIENDS THERE AND I CAN'T REACH THEM SO I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THEY ARE ALL STILL ALIVE!!!

UPDATE: Everyone is alright, thank you for thinking about us, shabbat shalom.