Lisa, I write stories in which my grandchildren are the characters. They are only for family consumption, but I would like to share one with you to illustrate why your story resonated so deeply with me.
I would ask that you only read a brief passage in which a main character has a troubling dream about King David confronting and slaying Goliath.
It's not like any version of the story you will ever have heard, but having read your own story, I think you might have a special appreciation, or at least understand why I still get emotional thinking about yours. The passage in question is only a few paragraphs long, but if you're too busy, I won't be offended.
I have posted my own email address below, and if you will send me your email at this address, I will email a copy of my story to you, and I'll keep yours confidential:
Thank you for sharing this, Liza. I am by no means a “both-sides” kind of guy when it comes to Israel/palestine. While there is blame to be shared in this conflict, it is not shared equally. I may be a goy, but I am a committed Zionist.
Yet this piece is a powerful and poignant reminder that, behind the issues, there are always people: people with stories, families, and understandable pride in those stories and families.
The only hope for peace is mutual understanding, and the only hope for understanding is to recognize the humanity of our opponents by listening to their stories.
I had so many thoughts while reading this that I would have to go back and read it again and write them all down before I could share them here. Instead, I'll just say that this is a really first-rate piece of writing, and I think it should be published in a print journal or book. It's that good. It's not just the thoughts expressed, but the writing itself is top-notch, nearly flawless. It just flows.
As someone who recently lost longtime friendships due to disagreements, this touched in a way I wasn’t expecting. It’s the most heartbreaking feeling to have a friend who doesn’t want to see you as someone who was part of their past, but it’s nothing more than another person from the “enemy’s side”. I could totally see how important this piece is to you, as I understand you still see your friend for her humanity and maybe in a way you still love her, but you just could never lie about what is true and just. At the same time it seems like they are the only side that can’t understand that your desire for what’s best for everyone is not different from theirs. I pray that one day you will meet your ex best friend for coffee and you can keep up with her life. You will laugh and it will be lighthearted as if you were sixteen all over again, but that in the end you will both have a even more compassionate view of your differences because now you are both women and not girls.
I appreciate your courage in writing this; i think, in our modern era, where we have this sort of incessant and inane moral Manicheanism going on, an account like this-where we can recognize shared humanity-is wonderful, and rare.
👏👏👏 Such a heartfelt and moving article, Liza! ❤️❤️❤️ I’m so glad you shared this story with us because it is especially relevant now more than ever with the Gaza War going on! You met this young lady in high school and bonded over your shared immigrant backgrounds, yours Russian, hers Palestinian. You guys hit it off immediately and became fast friends. Around the same time you started to explore your Jewish heritage. Your family shared very little about their heritage with you because they didn’t want you to face discrimination or prejudice because of it like your father had in Azerbaijan.
You also didn’t really want anything to do with your Jewish background as you didn’t really understand it. Your family was not religious either and you found the traditions that went along with Judaism strange. You’d have nothing to do with Hebrew School. You even convinced your parents to buy you Christmas presents so that you wouldn’t feel any different from any of the Christian kids in school. But your family did insist you go to Jewish summer camp that’s where you learned about your culture and background for the first time and met a young woman who was serving in the IDF.
That was the first time you became aware of the state of Israel, the Jewish homeland. Tensions between you and your friend soon arose because you were understandably, confused and bemused by her conservative Muslim families’ strict rules she had to follow and she was taken aback by your Jewish background. Most likely because growing up she’d been taught the Jews stole her people’s land and that they were evil. She knew her family probably wouldn’t have approved of you and her being friends.
Unfortunately, you guys would have fewer and fewer interactions and your FaceTime calls started to get tense. When you got to college, you started to learn about the Jewish homeland, Israel and learned more about the Israel-Palestine Conflict in all its complexity. You came to have pride in Israel and in your background and saw the nation state of the Jewish people as your home! On a side note, I had no idea you had family in Israel, Liza! I’m praying that they stay safe with the War in Gaza going on! I sincerely hope none of them have been displaced by this war as sadly, hundreds of thousands of Israelis and millions of Palestinians have been. I also hope and pray if any of them as in the IDF they will stay safe from harm! 🙏
Even though you were a secular liberal at the time, you felt great pride when the United States under President Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the undivided and eternal capital of the state of Israel. After Hamas fired rockets from Gaza at Israel in 2021 and the horrific events of October 7th, 2023, you showed your solidarity with Israel and your fellow Jews living there. Your friend was upset by this and made the accusation you were supporting genocide.
You and her didn’t speak again for awhile until one day you got a message from her in which she expressed that she was sad over the deterioration of your guy’s friendship. You wrote her back by saying you’d be open to having a civil conversation about the war and the conflict over a coffee if she would ever like to someday. Against all odds, a Jew and a Palestinian had become best friends bonding over shared interests and backgrounds as immigrants to America. Your guy’s friendship proves Israelis and Palestinians can find common ground and needn’t be enemies.
I hope someday in the future, your friend will reach out to you, Liza and that you guys one day will bury the hatchet and rebuild your friendship despite your differing views on the conflict! For me personally, the conflict is the most important foreign policy issue and one that is near and dear to my heart. I’m a lifelong supporter of both Zionism and Palestinian liberation. I’ve always had a heart for both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples given the former’s experiences in the Holocaust and the latter’s in the Nakba. As a disabled person who has faced ostracism, social exclusion, being treated with paternalistic bigotry, patronizing attitudes, bullying, and discrimination, I understand what it’s like to be treated unfairly and to be seen as an alien other who is unwanted in the broader society.
I will proudly stand before everyone here today in this comment section and proclaim that I am a Zionist. I am a Zionist because I believe the Jewish people who have been persecuted for centuries and endured the horrors of the Holocaust, deserve a home of their own where they’ll be safe and secure. I am Zionist because I believe in the liberation of the Jewish people just as I do in the liberation of people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people. I am a Zionist because the Bible clearly states that the land of Eretz-Israel is the Jewish people’s home. I am Zionist because I want a better future of Jewish children and young people and for them never feel to feel ashamed of who they are and to proudly walk upright with their head held high as Jews.
At the same time, this does NOT mean I don’t sympathize with the Palestinian people. Nor does it mean I don’t support the creation of a Palestinian state. I do and I feel a great deal of empathy for the Palestinian people. I recognize their plight as a people who live in a diaspora with no place to call home. They are treated as second-class citizens in Arab countries, live in dirty, poverty-stricken and overcrowded refugee camps, live under the tyranny and iron fist of Fatah and Hamas, those that live in the West Bank and Gaza are stuck living under strict Israeli security measures and have to follow Israeli rules and regulations, the settlements in the West Bank are beginning to encroach more and more into their land, they are sometimes treated poorly by Israeli soldiers and settlers, and Jewish extremists attack them and destroy their property.
But at the same time, I recognize the hardships Israelis also endure dealing with terrorist attacks and being under constant rocket fire in Gaza. Having to hide in air raid shelters or underground, holding their children in their arms as they cry in fear. Being vilified by the international community as white settlers colonists when Ashkenazi Jews are not white and if you’ve even taken a cursory glance at their history, you’d know they too are a persecuted minority group. Also, Jews are a heterogenous bunch and are white, black, brown, red, and yellow. Not to mention, being surrounded by dozens of hostile Arab states and terrorist groups that want to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
At the end of the day, both peoples come to see the humanity in each other. They have so much in common! Similar cultures, foods and histories. They are both indigenous to the same land and have a long history and close connection to it. They are even are genetically related given both Israelis and Palestinians are the descendants of the Ancient Canaanites and Israelites. So they basically are cousins who are part of the same family just from different branches. :) 🇮🇱❤️🇵🇸
Your courageous story should be published but I'm pretty sure that's not the narrative the mass media want to propagate. All they want is to perpetuate the lie that Israel is committing genocide. I'm a fellow starving artist and former addict that's been following your writings here on substack. Don't give up, your writing is a light in the darkness for many of us out here.
It's sad to live in a time when events like this can rip friendships apart. But they can. Literary humanism is one bridge that can be extended beyond our obligations to family and nation, but the sad truth is that the ground has to be sturdy enough for the bridge on both sides. Otherwise it won't stay steady. In that vein, I found Sahar Khalifeh's novel Wild Thorns a lot more instructive on the Palestinian side of the conflict than anything written by Said.
Your post is incredibly courageous. Your Palestinian friend is like your very similar yet somewhat more slightly different other self. You ask some fundamental questions that we should all be asking and discussing. Why are differences always considered more important than similarities or commonalities? Why is it so much easier to hate a sister you could easily love that you previously loved and deeply cared about? And you both would always love and care about one another if only outsiders weren't allowed to command you and your other self to hate each other? That the granting of space that would allow the presence of your other sister and yourself simultaneously within both your worlds would always be never be allowed? The need a good wind shield wiper for all the tears aspect of all this is so compellingly presented. I hope she reads this and gets back in touch with you. That she will decide to bring back the courage you both demonstrated in originally becoming authentic best friends. I was thinking if if only The Boston Globe could be as courageous as you are and step up to plate and publish this essay. There might be a lot of trollish backflash. But if only one or two of the ones who choose hate might be introduced to their blocked off better selves it would be worth it. Because the world will have been made a slightly better less hostile place even for a moment. Everyone should read this awesome post!!!
While all this may have been new to you, please let me assure you (from my NE Mediterranean home country) that the term 'genocide' was in people's lips long, long before the turn of the 21st century.
This is not only the best thing I have read of yours, Liza, but one of the best things I've ever read by anyone.
They need to make windshield wipers for the eyes! ❤️
Thank you so much for your kind words, Michael! I cried towards the end writing this. Glad it moved you as well 🥹
Lisa, I write stories in which my grandchildren are the characters. They are only for family consumption, but I would like to share one with you to illustrate why your story resonated so deeply with me.
I would ask that you only read a brief passage in which a main character has a troubling dream about King David confronting and slaying Goliath.
It's not like any version of the story you will ever have heard, but having read your own story, I think you might have a special appreciation, or at least understand why I still get emotional thinking about yours. The passage in question is only a few paragraphs long, but if you're too busy, I won't be offended.
I have posted my own email address below, and if you will send me your email at this address, I will email a copy of my story to you, and I'll keep yours confidential:
mdholt52@yahoo.com
Thanks,
Mike
p.s. the dream occurs about half way through, right after a character named Robbie has a crisis he can't deal with.
Thank you for sharing this, Liza. I am by no means a “both-sides” kind of guy when it comes to Israel/palestine. While there is blame to be shared in this conflict, it is not shared equally. I may be a goy, but I am a committed Zionist.
Yet this piece is a powerful and poignant reminder that, behind the issues, there are always people: people with stories, families, and understandable pride in those stories and families.
The only hope for peace is mutual understanding, and the only hope for understanding is to recognize the humanity of our opponents by listening to their stories.
I had so many thoughts while reading this that I would have to go back and read it again and write them all down before I could share them here. Instead, I'll just say that this is a really first-rate piece of writing, and I think it should be published in a print journal or book. It's that good. It's not just the thoughts expressed, but the writing itself is top-notch, nearly flawless. It just flows.
As someone who recently lost longtime friendships due to disagreements, this touched in a way I wasn’t expecting. It’s the most heartbreaking feeling to have a friend who doesn’t want to see you as someone who was part of their past, but it’s nothing more than another person from the “enemy’s side”. I could totally see how important this piece is to you, as I understand you still see your friend for her humanity and maybe in a way you still love her, but you just could never lie about what is true and just. At the same time it seems like they are the only side that can’t understand that your desire for what’s best for everyone is not different from theirs. I pray that one day you will meet your ex best friend for coffee and you can keep up with her life. You will laugh and it will be lighthearted as if you were sixteen all over again, but that in the end you will both have a even more compassionate view of your differences because now you are both women and not girls.
This is truly beautiful.
I appreciate your courage in writing this; i think, in our modern era, where we have this sort of incessant and inane moral Manicheanism going on, an account like this-where we can recognize shared humanity-is wonderful, and rare.
Keep up your work, i think it is commendable :)
👏👏👏 Such a heartfelt and moving article, Liza! ❤️❤️❤️ I’m so glad you shared this story with us because it is especially relevant now more than ever with the Gaza War going on! You met this young lady in high school and bonded over your shared immigrant backgrounds, yours Russian, hers Palestinian. You guys hit it off immediately and became fast friends. Around the same time you started to explore your Jewish heritage. Your family shared very little about their heritage with you because they didn’t want you to face discrimination or prejudice because of it like your father had in Azerbaijan.
You also didn’t really want anything to do with your Jewish background as you didn’t really understand it. Your family was not religious either and you found the traditions that went along with Judaism strange. You’d have nothing to do with Hebrew School. You even convinced your parents to buy you Christmas presents so that you wouldn’t feel any different from any of the Christian kids in school. But your family did insist you go to Jewish summer camp that’s where you learned about your culture and background for the first time and met a young woman who was serving in the IDF.
That was the first time you became aware of the state of Israel, the Jewish homeland. Tensions between you and your friend soon arose because you were understandably, confused and bemused by her conservative Muslim families’ strict rules she had to follow and she was taken aback by your Jewish background. Most likely because growing up she’d been taught the Jews stole her people’s land and that they were evil. She knew her family probably wouldn’t have approved of you and her being friends.
Unfortunately, you guys would have fewer and fewer interactions and your FaceTime calls started to get tense. When you got to college, you started to learn about the Jewish homeland, Israel and learned more about the Israel-Palestine Conflict in all its complexity. You came to have pride in Israel and in your background and saw the nation state of the Jewish people as your home! On a side note, I had no idea you had family in Israel, Liza! I’m praying that they stay safe with the War in Gaza going on! I sincerely hope none of them have been displaced by this war as sadly, hundreds of thousands of Israelis and millions of Palestinians have been. I also hope and pray if any of them as in the IDF they will stay safe from harm! 🙏
Even though you were a secular liberal at the time, you felt great pride when the United States under President Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the undivided and eternal capital of the state of Israel. After Hamas fired rockets from Gaza at Israel in 2021 and the horrific events of October 7th, 2023, you showed your solidarity with Israel and your fellow Jews living there. Your friend was upset by this and made the accusation you were supporting genocide.
You and her didn’t speak again for awhile until one day you got a message from her in which she expressed that she was sad over the deterioration of your guy’s friendship. You wrote her back by saying you’d be open to having a civil conversation about the war and the conflict over a coffee if she would ever like to someday. Against all odds, a Jew and a Palestinian had become best friends bonding over shared interests and backgrounds as immigrants to America. Your guy’s friendship proves Israelis and Palestinians can find common ground and needn’t be enemies.
I hope someday in the future, your friend will reach out to you, Liza and that you guys one day will bury the hatchet and rebuild your friendship despite your differing views on the conflict! For me personally, the conflict is the most important foreign policy issue and one that is near and dear to my heart. I’m a lifelong supporter of both Zionism and Palestinian liberation. I’ve always had a heart for both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples given the former’s experiences in the Holocaust and the latter’s in the Nakba. As a disabled person who has faced ostracism, social exclusion, being treated with paternalistic bigotry, patronizing attitudes, bullying, and discrimination, I understand what it’s like to be treated unfairly and to be seen as an alien other who is unwanted in the broader society.
I will proudly stand before everyone here today in this comment section and proclaim that I am a Zionist. I am a Zionist because I believe the Jewish people who have been persecuted for centuries and endured the horrors of the Holocaust, deserve a home of their own where they’ll be safe and secure. I am Zionist because I believe in the liberation of the Jewish people just as I do in the liberation of people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people. I am a Zionist because the Bible clearly states that the land of Eretz-Israel is the Jewish people’s home. I am Zionist because I want a better future of Jewish children and young people and for them never feel to feel ashamed of who they are and to proudly walk upright with their head held high as Jews.
At the same time, this does NOT mean I don’t sympathize with the Palestinian people. Nor does it mean I don’t support the creation of a Palestinian state. I do and I feel a great deal of empathy for the Palestinian people. I recognize their plight as a people who live in a diaspora with no place to call home. They are treated as second-class citizens in Arab countries, live in dirty, poverty-stricken and overcrowded refugee camps, live under the tyranny and iron fist of Fatah and Hamas, those that live in the West Bank and Gaza are stuck living under strict Israeli security measures and have to follow Israeli rules and regulations, the settlements in the West Bank are beginning to encroach more and more into their land, they are sometimes treated poorly by Israeli soldiers and settlers, and Jewish extremists attack them and destroy their property.
But at the same time, I recognize the hardships Israelis also endure dealing with terrorist attacks and being under constant rocket fire in Gaza. Having to hide in air raid shelters or underground, holding their children in their arms as they cry in fear. Being vilified by the international community as white settlers colonists when Ashkenazi Jews are not white and if you’ve even taken a cursory glance at their history, you’d know they too are a persecuted minority group. Also, Jews are a heterogenous bunch and are white, black, brown, red, and yellow. Not to mention, being surrounded by dozens of hostile Arab states and terrorist groups that want to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
At the end of the day, both peoples come to see the humanity in each other. They have so much in common! Similar cultures, foods and histories. They are both indigenous to the same land and have a long history and close connection to it. They are even are genetically related given both Israelis and Palestinians are the descendants of the Ancient Canaanites and Israelites. So they basically are cousins who are part of the same family just from different branches. :) 🇮🇱❤️🇵🇸
Thank you for sharing this beautiful personal story.
Your courageous story should be published but I'm pretty sure that's not the narrative the mass media want to propagate. All they want is to perpetuate the lie that Israel is committing genocide. I'm a fellow starving artist and former addict that's been following your writings here on substack. Don't give up, your writing is a light in the darkness for many of us out here.
Thanks for sharing❤️
Beautifully written essay
Thank you, that was touching.
Wow! Wonderful writing! (One silly mistake: “ little plot of dessert” should be desert).
Dammit! At least you know AI didn’t write it. Thanks for the catch :)
It's sad to live in a time when events like this can rip friendships apart. But they can. Literary humanism is one bridge that can be extended beyond our obligations to family and nation, but the sad truth is that the ground has to be sturdy enough for the bridge on both sides. Otherwise it won't stay steady. In that vein, I found Sahar Khalifeh's novel Wild Thorns a lot more instructive on the Palestinian side of the conflict than anything written by Said.
Your post is incredibly courageous. Your Palestinian friend is like your very similar yet somewhat more slightly different other self. You ask some fundamental questions that we should all be asking and discussing. Why are differences always considered more important than similarities or commonalities? Why is it so much easier to hate a sister you could easily love that you previously loved and deeply cared about? And you both would always love and care about one another if only outsiders weren't allowed to command you and your other self to hate each other? That the granting of space that would allow the presence of your other sister and yourself simultaneously within both your worlds would always be never be allowed? The need a good wind shield wiper for all the tears aspect of all this is so compellingly presented. I hope she reads this and gets back in touch with you. That she will decide to bring back the courage you both demonstrated in originally becoming authentic best friends. I was thinking if if only The Boston Globe could be as courageous as you are and step up to plate and publish this essay. There might be a lot of trollish backflash. But if only one or two of the ones who choose hate might be introduced to their blocked off better selves it would be worth it. Because the world will have been made a slightly better less hostile place even for a moment. Everyone should read this awesome post!!!
Wow
Dear Lisa,
While all this may have been new to you, please let me assure you (from my NE Mediterranean home country) that the term 'genocide' was in people's lips long, long before the turn of the 21st century.
We all have different viewpoints.