The Next Generation
“How did this country come to be, Abba?”
It was late afternoon and Koby was driving back home with his family. The apartment complexes and the mini malls gave way to the open fields. That meant they had another 15 minutes left of the drive.
Koby does not lie to his kids. He has felt the pain of having his beliefs destroyed several times in his life. While pain is a great teacher, some beliefs can get you killed. Others destroy the world. He doesn’t want his kids to be swallowed in that fire.
“So, the yehudim, they came to be in this place a few thousand years ago,’’ he started. “It wasn’t called Israel. They had other names, and they were kingdoms back then. But they were yehudim all the same.”
“There were a few wars, and the yehudim lost and moved to many places around the world. Some stayed here. There have been yehudim here this whole time.”
“Okay,” said the son. He sounded a little unsure.
“But this place wasn’t empty, you see,” said Koby. “Many people lived here. You had Greeks, Romans, Turks and Muslims.”
“About 150 years ago, some yehudim started to come back. They built a couple of places to live, like Zichron Yaakov and Rehovot.”
“There were other people living here too. The aravim. They didn’t mind the yehudim at first but then when they saw that the yehudim were doing better than them, they got angry, even though some of the yehudim wanted to collaborate with them.”
“Collaborate?” asked the son. He had just turned eight and English is his second-best language.
“To work together,” Koby said. “Remember how I told you that some kids don’t like the kids who do well in class? Instead of learning from the successful kids, they get angry because they think the smart kids are making them look bad. But that’s the wrong way to look at it because it’s not a competition. Not really. What those kids should do is find out why the other kids are doing well, and then apply that to themselves in the way that works for them.”
“Okay,” the son said.
“So the same is true with the aravim and yehudim,” Koby said. “They began to fight until there was a war seventy five years ago, and the yehudim won. That’s when this country was born.”
Before he could turn off the ignition, the kids ran to the patio. The son had just gotten a basketball hoop as a birthday present. It was all he and his brother wanted to play with.
“I don’t agree with what you said,” Daphna told Koby. “All Arabs?”
He could feel the indignation rising within him, but ten years of marriage taught him to control his ego and listen. His wife had proven to be the wiser of the two many times before.
“This is how they get brainwashed,” she told him. “What do you think the other side is doing? That’s the whole problem.”
She’s right. You should treat everyone as individuals. You will have failed as a parent if your kids are dim-witted racists, left-wing Koby said.
Yeah, but the Arabs did start a war against the Jews, right-wing Koby said. And Palestinian culture is a confused mess because it is rooted in opposition to Zionism and resentment. And while every individual is sacred, and racism is a stupid idea, we cannot deny that Palestinian culture is very hostile to Jewish sovereignty in Israel. I can’t raise our kids in a delusion.
Koby put his eyes down and began setting the dinner table. He could hear his sons pounding the basketball.