When they told him that Sharon has said that he’s willing, in principle, to see a Palestinian state, Micha asked incredulously, ”give them land?”
To which his brother and sister explained that ”they” need someplace to live, too, which is why Sharon says that. But then they continued, ”the Arabs probably won’t stop killing us for a long time, which is why maybe Netanyahu’s right.” Elisheva and I didn’t say much, and just listened to this rather lengthy discussion.
They had most of it right, some of it wrong. But guess what, Richard? They were talking about the future, a future they believe in.
In just a couple of years, our daughter will get to vote, too. (That, of course, would not be the case if she lived in the Palestinian Authority. Or Lebanon. Or Syria. Or Jordan. Or Saudi Arabia. Or Egypt.) And she’ll vote about stuff that really matters. The direction her country takes will be her choice, too.
You’re right that we can’t completely stop the terrorism, and you’re right that there’s some danger here. But here’s what our kids have learned: Life isn’t about staying alive. It’s about believing in something that matters while you’re alive.
And at the dinner table tonight, watching our kids think out loud about how much you should trust people who’ve been doing this to you for two years, but what you’ll have if you’re not willing to risk anything, I realized that it works. They actually still believe in the future. There wasn’t a grain of hopelessness in their conversation. I bet that wasn’t true when people talked about your old neighborhood, was it? And that’s what makes all the difference.
Yes, Richard, our family does come first. And that’s why we’re here.
To raise our kids in a place that’s all about them, about their history, their future, their sense of being at home. To live in a place that unlike that old neighborhood, matters very much. Not because we’re heroes, for we’re not. But because we know just a bit about Jewish history; and because we have no right to expect other Israelis to ”fight the good fight” if we’re not willing to.
On the news this afternoon, they interviewed some alleged aviation expert about the attempted attack on the Arkia 757. He explained how these missiles work, and gave a whole dissertation on the ease of operation of heat-seeking shoulder-launched missiles. When he was done, the interviewer asked him, ”Then how did they miss? After all, a lumbering 757, barely off the ground? How do you explain this?”
His answer, I thought, was telling. He said, ”I can’t explain it. Either they fired without priming the heat-seeking element on the missiles, or they were faulty. But normally, there’s no way to miss. It was a miracle.”
He didn’t mean anything theological by the comment, of course, but today’s the day before Chanukah. In your old neighborhood, and in your new one, too, it’s Thanksgiving. I remember it well. College football during the day. Beer and pretzels, and chatting with friends. Turkey and stuffing at night. Not bad at all.
None of that here. Just a regular old dinner. But not so tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night, when you look outside our living room window, in the windows of virtually every other apartment within sight, there are going to be Chanukah candles flickering. Religious families, secular families. Left-wing families, right-wing families. Native families and immigrant families. American families and French families. Young families and old families. Sharon families and Netanyahu families. They’ll all have candles in the window.
Because Richard, somehow, in spite of everything, we still believe in miracles. Some of them happened a long time ago. But others are still happening. We understand them in different ways, and we disagree passionately about how to keep them going. But after a day like today, somehow we find ourselves still believing in them.
