VISIT TO THE U.K.

I was unable to continue with my blog for some time since I am visiting my daughter and family who are living in London and had no access to a computer. I will be coming back to Israel in a few day’s  time and, meanwhile, will confine my writing to my impressions of what is being said about Israel from an outsider’s viewpoint. The people with whom I have come into contact are mostly ignorant of what is going on in Israel and probably couldn’t care less. The exceptions are those who have been to Israel. Those who do come often have a built-in prejudice, mainly as the result of the anti-Israeli media to which they have been exposed.

The following poetic-like piece  was written by Oliver Marjot, a sophomore medieval history concentrator from Guilford, England. He was one of a group of Harvard students, of all backgrounds and faiths. He expected the ten-day Israeli Trek to be a confirmation of his “European certainty of your arrogant oppression”.

“I came to you, Israel, wanting to hate you. To be confirmed in my reasonable European certainty of your arrogant oppression….I wanted to appreciate your history, but tut over the arrogant folly of your present. I wanted to cross my arms smugly, and shake my head over you, and leave you to fight your unjust wars. I wanted to smirk in my Protestant confidence, knowing that God is with me, even if you refuse to turn to him, standing instead staring blankly at a wall of stone…

I wanted to see your sights, to bask in your sun, to tramp my feet over your soil, to swim in your seas, to eat the fruit of your fields. I wanted to be amazed, to be interested, to be engaged. I wanted.

I didn’t realise you were broken as well as wealthy, fragile as well as strong. I didn’t realise that you suffer from a thousand voices clamouring in your head, and that some of those voices care about justice and democracy, and that some of them love their neighbours. I didn’t realise that a thousand enemies press on your borders, hoarding instruments of death, as chaos and darkness and madness consume the world every way your look.

Your beauty caught me like a hook. Seeing you, I see what Solomon saw when he wrote about his Beloved. I see that homeland that Jesus loved. The lush green of your Galilee, the stark strength of your desert, the bare whiteness of your Judean hills. I love the Hebrew you speak, the churches you wear like flowers in your hair, the proud golden dome that crowns your head. I love the strength of your soldiers, the warmth of your sun, the joy of your songs, the peace of your kibbutzim.

I’m sorry I had to leave you. I know I have no right to love you. What’s ten days compared to a year, a childhood, a lifetime? Or the five-thousand year lifetime of a People? “

To return to my family at present in London – their first-born 18 year old daughter has been in Israel for the last six months where she came to do her army service as a “lone soldier”. I will write about “lone soldiers” in general and about my granddaughter in particular in my next communication. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the cool, rainy and unpredictable English  weather.