To My Palestinian Neighbors
By Natan Shalva
5/2010
To my Palestinian neighbors, greetings,
Today, at the age of 36, a father of two children, I can start being truly thankful. The truth is horrible as you probably know well. The residents of the state of Israel are committing a protracted and continuing series of massacres and thefts. We are all responsible for this, and this shame will follow us and our children for hundreds of years to come.
I had a part in it. I was an active soldier in the territories. In Hebron, in Tarqumia, in Ramallah, and in other places that I no longer recall. It was an evil deed and I am ashamed of it in my heart. I know that words will not wash away the disgrace, and to ask for your forgiveness is a presumptuousness that has no place here.
But with all, this I want to tell you how it happens that a person with good intentions comes to commit such horrors. Not for forgiveness, because I am not worthy of that, but rather in the hope of softening your rage.
Today, when I look back, the signs of the Nakba were everywhere. And despite that, I did not seem them until I reached my 30’s. I remember that as a child we went hiking in an abandoned village beside us, Al Wayziyya. I remember that it looked strange, but that I did not have even that bit of necessary imagination to think about what happened to people there. “They ran away,” they always told us. “They just ran away.” As a child and a youth, I mainly absorbed the idea that the Arabs want to through us into the sea. To kill all of us. And if we’ll be weak it will end in a Holocaust like Germany. When I reached drafting age, there was no option not to serve in the military. Not a legal option, not a practical option, not even in our imagination. To serve in the army is for us a God-given law. Just like we have to drink water, we also have to go to the army. That’s the way it was in the late 1990’s.
But in my first week in the army, as my division marched on a pointless mission into the yard of an innocent Arab family next to Kfar Etzion, I understood that something here is not right. Not right at all.
And I didn’t do anything. Not then, and even not in the thousand times I saw the injustice occurring right before my eyes. I didn’t do anything because I was tired, hungry, scared, and in love. I fought for my existence as a human being, much before I dreamed that I would fight for justice. I did everything they wanted me to do, just so they would leave me in peace. That they will let me come to those moments of refuge with my beloved back home. Today I know that that was a stupid fear. I would have survived if I had refused everything and I would have spent some years in the military jail. But then, as a confused, scared youth, with no support from my parents or friends, I had neither the courage nor the strength to do a thing.
After the army service I started to try to piece together the shards. To return to life. I left my kibbutz in the north and moved to the city. With that transition I left most of the truths that I grew up with back there. I got to know more and more people who experienced similar things. I studied. I learned to appreciate my strength and abilities. Until one day, I reached the decision to no longer hold a weapon unless it was needed to defend my home. In other words, not to take part in any army for the rest of my life. Except in cases of a clear and immediate threat to me and my loved ones. When a person reaches this decision, all the authority of the army evaporates as if it never was. The army grudgingly released me to my ordinary. After I was released from the army in practice, I started to get released from the army in my thoughts. To understand the picture in a more balanced manner. To try to act with a bit more justice and reason in Israel and Palestine.
I am not despaired. We will establish a here a just, cooperative and just state for all. Our despair is the greatest victory of the miserable souls who wish for war here. Don’t give it to them. The history shows that in the end of the day the people that demand peace win in the long run. Otherwise human beings would have continued to live as dogs, fighting constantly amongst themselves.
We, the residents of Israel and Palestine, have the power and the ability to find a way, partial though it may be, to compensate for the holocaust that was caused to the residents of Palestine. May the day come that we will succeed in accomplishing this.
In friendship,
Natan Shalva
By Natan Shalva
5/2010
To my Palestinian neighbors, greetings,
Today, at the age of 36, a father of two children, I can start being truly thankful. The truth is horrible as you probably know well. The residents of the state of Israel are committing a protracted and continuing series of massacres and thefts. We are all responsible for this, and this shame will follow us and our children for hundreds of years to come.
I had a part in it. I was an active soldier in the territories. In Hebron, in Tarqumia, in Ramallah, and in other places that I no longer recall. It was an evil deed and I am ashamed of it in my heart. I know that words will not wash away the disgrace, and to ask for your forgiveness is a presumptuousness that has no place here.
But with all, this I want to tell you how it happens that a person with good intentions comes to commit such horrors. Not for forgiveness, because I am not worthy of that, but rather in the hope of softening your rage.
Today, when I look back, the signs of the Nakba were everywhere. And despite that, I did not seem them until I reached my 30’s. I remember that as a child we went hiking in an abandoned village beside us, Al Wayziyya. I remember that it looked strange, but that I did not have even that bit of necessary imagination to think about what happened to people there. “They ran away,” they always told us. “They just ran away.” As a child and a youth, I mainly absorbed the idea that the Arabs want to through us into the sea. To kill all of us. And if we’ll be weak it will end in a Holocaust like Germany. When I reached drafting age, there was no option not to serve in the military. Not a legal option, not a practical option, not even in our imagination. To serve in the army is for us a God-given law. Just like we have to drink water, we also have to go to the army. That’s the way it was in the late 1990’s.
But in my first week in the army, as my division marched on a pointless mission into the yard of an innocent Arab family next to Kfar Etzion, I understood that something here is not right. Not right at all.
And I didn’t do anything. Not then, and even not in the thousand times I saw the injustice occurring right before my eyes. I didn’t do anything because I was tired, hungry, scared, and in love. I fought for my existence as a human being, much before I dreamed that I would fight for justice. I did everything they wanted me to do, just so they would leave me in peace. That they will let me come to those moments of refuge with my beloved back home. Today I know that that was a stupid fear. I would have survived if I had refused everything and I would have spent some years in the military jail. But then, as a confused, scared youth, with no support from my parents or friends, I had neither the courage nor the strength to do a thing.
After the army service I started to try to piece together the shards. To return to life. I left my kibbutz in the north and moved to the city. With that transition I left most of the truths that I grew up with back there. I got to know more and more people who experienced similar things. I studied. I learned to appreciate my strength and abilities. Until one day, I reached the decision to no longer hold a weapon unless it was needed to defend my home. In other words, not to take part in any army for the rest of my life. Except in cases of a clear and immediate threat to me and my loved ones. When a person reaches this decision, all the authority of the army evaporates as if it never was. The army grudgingly released me to my ordinary. After I was released from the army in practice, I started to get released from the army in my thoughts. To understand the picture in a more balanced manner. To try to act with a bit more justice and reason in Israel and Palestine.
I am not despaired. We will establish a here a just, cooperative and just state for all. Our despair is the greatest victory of the miserable souls who wish for war here. Don’t give it to them. The history shows that in the end of the day the people that demand peace win in the long run. Otherwise human beings would have continued to live as dogs, fighting constantly amongst themselves.
We, the residents of Israel and Palestine, have the power and the ability to find a way, partial though it may be, to compensate for the holocaust that was caused to the residents of Palestine. May the day come that we will succeed in accomplishing this.
In friendship,
Natan Shalva