Fall 2000. Lunchtime. School cafeteria. Within sight were probably a few trend-followers wearing very, very baggy pants (a fashion that is, thank God, long gone). A few of us had finished eating and were wandering around out of doors, just outside the cafeteria. J.A., my Jewish friend, was there. I brought up the latest Israeli vs. Palestinian fighting then occurring. He said a few things which I’m sure he was repeating from his Jewish School teachers or parents. How to solve the problem once-and-for-all. Something about a “two-state solution” which I didn’t understand at the time.
(J.A. also remarked, either on this occasion or another, something about the “real problem” being the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, a comment I also didn’t understand at all, so simply accepted, on his authority as a Jew, without comment.)
(J.A. also remarked, either on this occasion or another, something about the “real problem” being the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, a comment I also didn’t understand at all, so simply accepted, on his authority as a Jew, without comment.)
J.A. is one of the few Jews I have known closely in my life. We were friends in middle school and high school (after briefly being “enemies” in middle school).
J.A.’s father was an investment banker or something. …I know, I know: It sounds like I’m making it up, playing to a Jewish stereotype. He is the only classmate I ever had whose father had such a “high-flying” job, that I knew of. It’s a credit to Arlington Public Schools that such man would send his son to a public school and not to a private school. J.A. himself didn’t look at all like a Jewish stereotype. He was tall and red-haired, with the build of a swimmer (and he was one). I haven’t heard from him in ten years now. I am sure he’s been to Israel, probably more than once.
Reading the news lately, writing #218 and #219, and reminiscing about that period in fall 2000, I see that nothing has changed in 14 years. Nothing! (Just as nothing had really changed from the 1980s up to year 2000, I suppose, when I first became aware of this issue.)
Back on the firm ground of the present. The Gaza death toll rapidly approaches 1,000 dead in the past three weeks.
J.A.’s father was an investment banker or something. …I know, I know: It sounds like I’m making it up, playing to a Jewish stereotype. He is the only classmate I ever had whose father had such a “high-flying” job, that I knew of. It’s a credit to Arlington Public Schools that such man would send his son to a public school and not to a private school. J.A. himself didn’t look at all like a Jewish stereotype. He was tall and red-haired, with the build of a swimmer (and he was one). I haven’t heard from him in ten years now. I am sure he’s been to Israel, probably more than once.
Reading the news lately, writing #218 and #219, and reminiscing about that period in fall 2000, I see that nothing has changed in 14 years. Nothing! (Just as nothing had really changed from the 1980s up to year 2000, I suppose, when I first became aware of this issue.)
Back on the firm ground of the present. The Gaza death toll rapidly approaches 1,000 dead in the past three weeks.
Palestinian Shijaiyah neighborhood, Gaza City, after Israeli bombardment (July 26 2014, AP)