HORROR…TERROR…MADNESS…EVIL

A journey within an emotional moral maze: revenge…unproportionate revenge…evil

IS THIS IT? photo:Robert Golden

I grew up in a family in denial of their Jewish roots.
My 2^nd and 3^rd generation American parents
provided me neither an American nor a Jewish identity.

At the age of 12, seeking some sense of who I was,
I asked my mother if I could attend the local synagogue
to see what it was like.
After all, I was neither schooled in the knowledge of the Pentateuch
nor the celebrations and warmth of the commemorative holidays.

My mother looked at me as if she was suddenly convinced
that her book-reading younger son was truly mad,
but as she didn’t care what I did, she shrugged her shoulders,
meaning ‘do what you want.

Not knowing what to wear, I put on my best trousers and jacket
and walked the several blocks to the synagogue.
I shuffled in amongst poorly dressed bulky middle-aged men,
noticing several of them had blue numbers on their left forearms.

I grabbed a seat as far from them as possible
and waited nervously for whatever might happen.
Soon a cultured looking middle-aged man,
more refined in features than the tattooed mob,
walked briskly to the podium.

He peered up, scanned the crowd and began to speak.
He talked about an apparently famous Jewish poet
finally having his collection of previously banned poetry published in the States,
and how the poet and his poetry
should be welcomed into the hearts of the largely male congregation.

Several men began to shout at the rabbi.
They accused him of favouring a ‘homo’, a ‘queer’, ‘a disgrace to Judaism’.
The rabbi breathed deeply,
his salt and pepper beard quivered.
and to my young eyes he seemed to grow twice his size.

In a deeper voice,
sounding like a growling lion he commanded,
“listen to yourselves.
Listen and remember the cries of our people.

“As Jews who have seen the worst of humanity,
and whether you speak in broken English, Polish or Yiddish,
you sound like those who rationalised destroying us
because we are different.

“This poet, this thrilling poet with an American accent
and a Jewish heritage should be embraced by you
and celebration of his book should be in each of your hearts.

“Alan Ginsberg is a good man,
a bright man
and represents the pride of our cultured people,
finding new ways in a new country
with modern critical ideas to represent the best of us.
So, shame on you.”

As I walked home from the synagogue
thinking of the rabbi’s sculpted brave and angry words,
I suddenly realised I still had the skull cap on
which one of the elders had thrusted at me.
Without a pause, I snatched it off my head
for fear of being recognised as a Jew.

Immediately I was ashamed of my cowardice,
but at 12 years old I already knew, in antisemitic Detroit,
home to the American Nazi Party,
home to an every-Sunday-morning rant by an antisemitic priest
listened to by millions,
home to the antisemitic industrialist, Henry Ford
in antisemitic America where Jews were hated.

Always as a child I wondered,
‘but we are doctors, lawyers, intellectuals, scientists,
artists, composer, musicians and poets.
Why should we be so hated, and why always and everywhere?’

Now, as of the last few days,
I see again the hate-crazed, hate-twisted roving gangs
of armed young testosterone driven, traumatised young men,
hunting down and defiling infants, children, older and crippled people.
I am horrified and confused.

Confused because for years I have condemned the right-wing Israelis
for their endless punishment of the Palestinians,
just as I have damned the Islamist terrorists killing innocents for headlines.

---

At the turn into this century
I was being driven up the main highway
of Lebanon’s central valley towards Baalbek,
the ancient Roman granary town,
to film for a documentary about food and culture.

My driver, guide and translator was a young woman in her late twenties.
As we were nearing Baalbek from the south
there was a roadblock ahead with a fluttering banner shadowing the tarmac.

Miriam turned to me and asked, “by chance are you Jewish?”
“Why ask me now?”
She said, “this is Hezbollah ground and that is a Hezbollah roadblock.”
The banner says “All Jews are dogs who will be driven into the sea.”
“Ahh” I said.

A heavily bearded middle-aged man with an automatic weapon
stepped into the road and waved us down.
Miriam said, “scrunch down, pretend you’re sleeping.”

I thought: I’m tanned, unshaven and we are in a beaten up car.
Maybe I look like a local?

The man jutted his head into her open window
and harshly spat something in guttural Arabic.
To my amazement,
Miriam shouted unrelentingly in his face in her refined Lebanese Arabic.
Angrily, he pulled his head away and waved us on.

Miriam slowly drove off.
I asked “what just happened?”
She said, “he wanted money and to know who we were”.
“And?”
I told him “my father’s the mayor.”
Surprised, “is he?”
She smiled and said, “we’re almost there.”

She saved me from kidnapping.

---

Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah are guided by hate filled, damaged psychopaths
as are the proto-fascist Israeli right and their opportunist prime minister.
None of them command a plausible moral high ground.
To pay for their madness
the people of both sides spill their blood and gain their trauma.

---

Returning to my childhood exploration
of what being Jewish might mean,
the Saturday following my first encounter,
I returned to the synagogue,
excited to find out more.

Having seen that I was over-dressed in the midst of those impoverished men,
I slipped on a sweater and again walked to the synagogue.
When I arrived, I was quickly surrounded by 5 or 6 of the tattooed men
who shouted at me in Polish and Yiddish.
They pushed me around;
their thick fingers picked at my sweater.
I was confused and frightened.
What had I done to offend them?
The elder who had given me the skullcap barged in,
leant down and seethed,
“you dare wear red shmates (dirty cloth) in our lord’s house?
Go, get out, you got no respect.”

I fled and understood that all my young mind’s instincts about religion and gods
had just shouted at me, “none of that exclusion and mystical nonsense is for you.”

---

Lately, really only in the last 12 months or so
I have come to know a man
whose last name is the same as my mother’s maiden name.
He comes from a family whose history is darkened by the holocaust.

As I thought about him and his
which could also be mine,
it occurred to me that because of my parent’s unexplained denial of their Jewish roots,
I had never been introduced to the thought
that the families which they and I had come from
across Poland, Germany and Russia
and earlier from Odessa, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean  
will have, in all probability,
been destroyed by the holocaust,
just as this new friend’s family had been.
I was shocked to realise these lost connections:
distant cousins, aunties and uncles...

---

Now on the streets of Israel
my worst fears are played out.
Roving gains of murderers cannot be talked down,
cannot be reasoned with,
cannot be embraced as brothers and sisters
because a part of what I am has imprisoned and terrorised them for years.
A part of what I am has driven them to an unimaginable cruelty
that can only be a consequence of endless insults and humiliations,
under education and a morally corrupt leadership.

Now on the streets of Gaza,
other fears are played out.
Squadrons of highly trained soldiers cannot be talked down,
cannot be reasoned with,
cannot be embraced as brothers and sisters
because the gratification of revenge and the hollow words of politicians
are too commanding.

Is it a coincidence that with the most right-wing, racist government in Israel’s history
after months of increased attacks by the IDF and the secret police,
after more intimidation, more destruction of young people’s dreams,
more insistence on the Palestinians losing all hope,
more subjecting a proud people to new restrictions
more stealing their lemon and olive trees,
that the crazed right-wing Islamic leaders
could find enough traumatised young warrior-louts to massacre the ‘other’?

---

Over time I have met a small number of young Palestinians who were,
to a person, gentle, polite, educated
and only desired peace and freedom for themselves and their people.
I see no difference between them and me.

Now my head is bowed.
I feel I am in mourning not alone for the Jews who are suffering,
but also for the Palestinians
and in part for my own humanity.

For me this is an intellectual and emotional moral mess.
I feel nothing but sorrow for our species.
It could be so much better.

Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli people
will gain from what will continue to happen.
It is obvious that the munitions makers,
the huge construction corporations and sundry others will gain financially,
as the people of both sides, mourn their losses.

We must be rid of our psychotic leaders in whatever country.
Trump, Putin, Modi, all of these Alphas
weaken our countries and lower the bar on acceptable human behaviour.
We must reembrace our humanity
and insist decisions made on our behalf,
with kindness being the source.