Entitlement and Life

By Moshe Feiglin

1 Elul, 5770
August 10, '10

Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaper

Your graying hair is simply cut. No, you don't dye it.
You wear a simple, wide oriental dress that - under other circumstances - could well serve a settler from the hilltops.
Very intelligent - that is clear.
About fifty years old, with a student's backpack.
Of European descent - that is also clear.
Very fluent, Israeli Hebrew.
Just like the women of the radical left Machsom Watch.
Surely, you are also part of that group.

You do not know Arabic, and you devotedly help the Arabs that you accompany to the Israeli hospital - Arabs from Gaza till Afghanistan - with a mixture of Hebrew and English. You offer a cup of water to a crying mother, to another you offer a chair, you take care of their paperwork. You are a special woman - no doubt about it. Everyone already knows you here - and respects you.

We did not exchange one word. But the weeks of furtive glances that we exchanged said it all. Once, I would simply have hated you. I would have considered you a traitor. Why are you fluttering around a burned child who was playing with a bomb that for some reason was in his backyard in Kalkilyah? Is there not enough Jewish pain into which to channel your kindness?

But the anger has been replaced by a feeling of pity. I understand where you are coming from. I saw people like you not long ago, in protected housing for Holocaust survivors. I happened to have met a group of German youth there. They volunteer there regularly, to try to atone at least a bit for the crimes of their fathers.

You are motivated by the same, horrible feeling of collective guilt that you have taken upon your conscience. You are trying to atone for their dispossession from "their" land. But unlike the youths from Germany, here in the hospital you come face to face with someone who still believes in the "Occupation."

I am not the only one looking at you. The Arabs who you so selflessly help are also looking. Most of them are good people, sympathizing, trying to calm a crying child. But what do they think when they see you, an Israeli who thinks that if she stole Sheikh Munis from them in 1948, they will forgive her if she brings them a cup of water?

In truth, I have more respect for them than you do. I do not try to buy them with superficial friendliness. I think that they respect me much more than they do you because you have declared that you are a robber and I - I am living on my Land. They understand and respect that.

You have won. The State of Israel has lined up with your worldview and in the end, you even convinced the Arabs. We could have lived with them very well. With mutual respect, with peace. I saw them. Professional, human - regular people. If not for you, an Arab in the state of the Jews would have had no problem. But you convinced them that they have been robbed. It took time. The generations of 1948 and the Six Day War made way for a new generation that was born into the Occupation mindset that you have instilled in them.

The newscaster announces that the terrorist who murdered the policeman a few months ago has been apprehended. He admitted that he had been planning an abduction and that the kippot (skullcaps) that were to be used to confuse the police who would hurry to help - were bought in Jerusalem. His daughter was being treated in the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and her father was authorized to accompany her. Maybe you were even there and offered him a chair or a cup of water. Maybe you ran through the hospital corridors, helping him with his paperwork. And he - while his daughter was being treated at a Jewish hospital - took advantage of his time in the Jewish city to buy what he needed to carry out the abduction that turned into the murder of a Jewish policeman.

Did he feel any shame when he admitted those details?
Of course not.
Will anybody think twice before allowing Arabs from Judea, Samaria and Gaza to be treated in Israeli hospitals?
Of course not.

After all, you are the strong one here - not me.
You determine the mindset, the agenda.
And both sides are stuck in the "Occupation" mentality that you have created.

We have no problem with the Arabs. Our only problem is with you - or more specifically - with me. Because I have not yet managed to replace your disengaged consciousness with the consciousness of Jewish entitlement to this Land.