as a single man i was tireless.. i was able to rationalise everything that was going on around us and then drown the bad in a surf session..
it was more or less easy..
telaviv is a great town - so much is happening there - in spite of everything.. and there are so many things that need to be spited..
and telaviv does it.. sticks a finger up to all of those things and blows raspberries in their ugly faces and gets on with trying to be a mini city..
but even this bubble doesnt have an impenetrable surface and the illusion of isolation no longer achieves that suspense of belief as soon as your kids arrive into your life..
in the beginning it was paradoxically some kind of bliss.. i lathered my soul with my daughter's integration into a jewish and arab microcosm.. xmas trees excited her.. mohammad was the name of the funniest kid she knew with long hair and an enviable ponytail.. until this day she asks for a mohammad ponytail even though i dare guess that the kid has long been forgotten otherwise..
she was a part of something special.. i bragged about it a lot.. sullying statuses with arguments as to who was more delusional and defending my views at the cost of friendships diluted by time and on FB life support..
but as the wars broke out - one after the other - and as the nightmares piled on - steeling my nights and offering me a crash self-applied course in post traumatic stress disorder - i began to fear for the minds of my kids.. how long would it take them until they started categorising people like a filing cabinet.. how long would it take them before hamas and hizballa and daesh and whoever became their boogymonsters..
so we left.. i dont know how long for.. and i dont know what the roadmap is.. but i had to make sure they grew up without the paranoia.. that moment when israelis and arabs say to you you dont understand you grew up elsewhere thats what i wanted them to have.. the clarity of elsewhere..
i know i havent written for a long time anyway but this venture may well rob me of my sense of part ownership over this dispute - maybe thats what i wanted.. so these may be my parting words from peace blogging..
and in case they are i wish us all peace shalom salaam and all things in between..
if there is one thing i have learned over time it is that peace is more than just the absence of war.. it is not a dichotomous option simply to be elected and then acted up but rather a choice that requires social construction..
putting down guns may deliver a cease fire like the one we have with egypt and jordan but peace is much more than that.. and in turn can only survive if people go out of there way to humanise the other.. the little known latent perk is that doing so is so much fun :)
