Derek M. Kwait for newvoices.comThis was a bad week for people who believe in human progress. Whether you imagined America was on its way towards becoming a post-racial society or that residents of the Levant could maybe learn to live peacefully side-by-side someday soon, the better dirt of our nature has again graffitied and burned down our delusions.
What happened in Israel this week struck a particularly personal chord for me. While I was a student at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, two things were routinely emphasized by people who lived in Gush Etzion: The first was that, in spite of what some activists said, Hebron is not a microcosm of Israel, rather tense but much more moderate, much quieter Jerusalem is, and second that the Rami Levi supermarket in Mishor Adumim, where Jewish settlers and Palestinians shop and work together without incident, is how life actually is in the Gush. Both claims matched my experience—the first because the open, festering sore that is Hebron was clearly not like anywhere else in the country, the second because grit teeth and the risk of losing everything are obviously the only things keeping that situation from exploding.
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