FIRST PERSON
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How the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Got Me Dumped | |
| No justice, no peace, no girlfriend | ||
 by Peter Hyman, May 8, 2007
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TAGS:
Fifteen years ago, before the death of irony and cassette tapes, I fell in love with a girl while living on a kibbutz in Israel. At least it felt like love at the time. Like the affair itself, my arrival in Israel was an act of happenstance. I had just dropped out of law school, veering from a path that had been carefully cultivated by my parents since I was in the fifth grade. This semi-rebellious act left me rootless and ready to take on the world. I was looking to travel to any place, so long as it was away from home. Israel was not the only foreign port that beckoned me forth, but it was warm and far away and full of Significance. At the time, it existed for me more as a mythic abstraction than a geographic reality.
The start of the affair: Slacker + international intrigueFor years my father had been keenly focused on this tiny sliver of land, though I never really understood why. As is the case with many American Jews, Israel influenced his voting behavior, his philanthropic choices and even the books he read. Any decision was justifiable so long as it benefited the Holy Land. Thanks to this cultural cover, it was an easier sell to my parents than Telluride or Prague, other favored destinations for clichéd wanderers at the time. But my decision to move to a kibbutz wasn’t motivated by my father’s political myopia. I was just after the Zionist dream of living communally, turning the desert into a garden, and hooking up with adventurous young Scandinavians who volunteered for kibbutz life as a cheap way to extend world tours.
As it turned out, I never had the chance to enjoy that last rite-of-passage. On nearly my first day on the kibbutz, I fell madly in lust with Leah, an outspoken South African with pale blue eyes and lustrous auburn hair. She was fresh off six months of teaching art to Palestinian children in the West Bank, and her Johannesburg accent gave her an exotic, sophisticated air. This was a woman who had spent a year touring Europe as a member of a punk trio after graduating from one of England’s finest boarding schools. Had Graham Greene been asked write a sequel to Slacker, Leah could have been his female protagonist. I was in love with her at first sight—or with the idea of her, which was, frankly, the same thing to me back then.
As in college and prison, time spent on a kibbutz is catalyzed by severe insularity. Leah and I were together nearly every hour of every day. There were few literal or figurative walls of any kind, so our relationship simply leapt into existence without the incremental steps of courtship. Within three weeks I had moved into her living space, a large cabin at the far end of the volunteers’ compound. Luckily, she had not been assigned a bunkmate, so we pushed two rickety twin beds together and built a makeshift honeymoon suite.
This spontaneity was exactly what I was looking for after the bloodless experience of law school, not to mention my previous relationships. The girlfriend I’d had prior to leaving for Israel wanted nothing more than to settle down and live in a midwestern suburb. Leah was different from the other women I’d been with, most of whom didn’t own electric guitars or the complete works of Hunter S. Thompson. She was uninterested in defining our relationship, and she seemed unburdened by the concept of dating with a specific end goal in mind.
Nice work if you can get it: An avocado fieldThanks to the sub-tropical heat of the Israeli summer, clothes were optional, a situation that was tailor-made (so to speak) for young lovers anxious to explore their “cultural commonalities.” Leah and I formed a community of two, falling into a shared life. Our work took us to different parts of the kibbutz—she toiled in a dog food factory while I had to good fortune to work in the sun-drenched avocado fields—but in our free time we were inseparable. We tended to skip the group social activities in favor of our cozy co-habitation, reading, playing “shesh besh”, and indulging in the kibbutz’s main source of live entertainment: drinking cheap vodka while sitting around a bonfire.
But all was not milk and honey in our enchanted garden. Leah was a diehard proponent of Palestinian liberation, and she felt that any Israeli presence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was illegal, immoral and unjustified. She also contended that the military support provided by the United States to Israel made America, and all Americans, complicit.
At first I simply nodded at her passionate pleas without giving them much thought. But eventually the fruits of the political discussions my father had endlessly belabored began to rise to the surface. I started to assert my own views, or at least those that were then popular in The Jerusalem Report. But when I tried to suggest that Palestinian violence had helped create the current situation, or that there were viable scenarios that would allow for the creation of Palestinian state, she would label me a “lie-spouting bourgeois jackass,” which is an argument that was hard to counter intellectually.
My opinions on the complicated subject were irrelevant, really, because my nationality had, in her eyes, pre-determined my complicity. Had she listened to me, she might have learned that although I had been raised to view Israel as the righteous defender of its land, actually being there had broadened my perspective. I didn’t agree entirely with her arguments, but I saw merit in some of them.
Complications in love and war: Israelis protesting the war in Lebanon, May 2006But I was not bothered by the name-calling. As far as thickheaded zealots go, Leah was captivating and cute. In fact, the furious verbal sparring gave our evening liaisons an intense additional jolt. I don’t know how Arafat was in bed, but to do this day I say there is no better aphrodisiac than political disagreement. Still, her inability to see any side but her own made me worry about our long-term compatibility. Compromise is a necessary ingredient in any relationship, whether between mismatched lovers or ethnic factions that have been warring since the biblical age over a landmass the size of Maryland. Extremism, on the other hand, is a dangerous portent, in both love and war. It got to the point where we couldn’t read the newspaper in the same room. The only solution was to avoid the subject of politics altogether.
Avoidance was a skill I had in surplus as a young male, but something about our purposeful lack of communication felt false. How could we be so synched in every aspect but this one? Leah often spoke of “the privileged blindness of Americans,” but I never felt it applied to Americans like me. Perhaps, in truth, I was not as worldly as I imagined myself to be. For all of the open-mindedness I thought my time spent traveling had engendered, was I simply another over-privileged suburbanite with a well-stamped passport and a worn North Face backpack? I was living with a woman to whom my very nationality was an affront. For a person who claimed she preferred to live without borders, Leah had defined ours pretty sharply.
The détente we’d established went on for a few months, until one night when we were camping on a desolate Mediterranean beach. As we cuddled in one large sleeping bag beneath the stars, she said that, as much as she cared for me, she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t share her worldview. I had seen this coming, but it still sent me reeling. I’d been dumped in the past, but usually for reasons that related to my own personal shortcomings. Leah and I were splitting up over a geopolitical morass that the best minds in statesmanship had been unable to solve for several millennia. Like the peace process itself, we had apparently taken the middle road off the table.
Even Bill couldn't have helped: Clinton encourages a peace-process handshakeBreaking up on a kibbutz is impossible. I moved out of her cabin, but we still slept less than fifty feet from each other and ate all our meals in the same cramped cafeteria. Somehow we managed to tap into a wellspring of maturity that allowed us to weather the proximity, establishing a cordial acquaintanceship but avoiding any prolonged interaction. Heartbroken, I took solace in the consistent regimen of workaday kibbutz life, turning myself into the fastest avocado picker in the Middle East. My downtime was spent clutching dog-eared volumes of Rilke, which didn’t help my cause much. Taking the advice of my male bunkmates, I tried to woo several of the Danish volunteers, who were especially receptive to male attention. But I was “Leah’s ex,” and nobody wanted to make time with a marked man.
The ever-popular Leah had no such problems. She was quickly pursued by a soft-spoken Argentine named Luis who also lived on the kibbutz. With his laissez-faire South American attitude, Luis offered her political commiseration, not to mention a long-term commitment. They ended up getting married, making aliyah and becoming permanent members of the kibbutz. As far as I know, they’re still there today. I came back to the States a year later, after long stops in Morocco and Mexico, to begin graduate school.
I’ve thought about Leah a lot in the interceding years, but any feelings of loss have always been buttressed by the fact that we broke up for external, impersonal reasons. It never occurred to me that she had merely used our political differences as a means to let me down gently. Or that my tendency to mythologize certain geographic regions had also extended toward the concept of Love itself. But apparently the same blind passions that keep nations divided prevented me from seeing what was happening right before my very eyes.
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Peter Hyman is a contributing writer at Radar magazine and a regular contributor to The San Francisco Chronicle’s Book Review section and The Huffington Post's "Eat The Press." His journalism has appeared in dozens of national More... |
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Anonymous
weeeeeeen
[Comment removed, commenter speculated about anatomy of other site users without providing supporting evidence]
Anonymous
weeeen
Don't listen to the weenie up above...only somebody uncertain of his own prowess would make such a comment.
I lived in Israel as well, in the mid 90s, and could relate to some of the aspects of this piece.
I never fell in love, but I "dated" a lot on my kibbutz.
This piece brings me back there.
Peter Hyman
Sizing Things Up
Well, anon poster #1, falling back on dick references is always the sign of a brilliant mind, but you may be right. Though, if you're really concerned I'd be happy to provide a list of references who can attest to my physiology. They might be able to shed more light on the subject. I'm certain, however, I could never measure up to you.
Peter Hyman
Please Reinstate Comment #1
I see that the wise Powers That Be have just removed comment #1, which I refered to (and attempted to counter) in my comment above. I don't mind the anatomical speculation if they don't....so go ahead and STET back the original comment, if you feel so moved. Thanks Peter
Joey Kurtzman
South Africans, Probosci
Hi Peter, well, if there were anything at all redeeming about the comment, I would have left it, I'm very slow to moderate comments. But he really didn't even give it a shot. Just a half-hearted swipe at your phallus and nothing else. A weak effort.
So this woman was South African, but found your American nationality too abhorrent to countenance?
Peter Hyman
Yes, Joey, she
Yes, Joey, she did...Apparently I have that impact on woman, no matter their nationality.
Joey Kurtzman
San Pedro
Well I think you're a good soul, Peter. I don't know how you tolerated it. I don't know how long I could have listened to a white South African lectuting me on the "privileged blindness of Americans" before I lost my shit. No matter how much I liked her. Anyway, I don't think it's fair for a politically engaged person to bully their comparatively apolitical partner. That's bullshit, a power thing.
Mahler
My two agurot...
i'm at work right now so i'll keep it brief. i related to this piece. i dated an iranian muslim girl for 3 years. she was apathetic, passively judeophobic (she assumed that any jew who didn't crave cultural anonymity as much as she did had to be a muslim-hating kahanist), and so it was easy to avoid talking about the elephant in the room.
she and Leah may not have had common passions, or similar volume of expression, but i think that they both manifested a personality failing that no self-respecting partner should excuse. they both lacked intellectual honesty. they lacked the desire to challenge their own conceptions by listening to opposing views. they felt that they had nothing to learn from someone they thought they already understood. worst of all, they thought that anyone who disagrees with them must be morally and/or intellectually corrupt.
etienne
the other white south africa
dear joey,
your comments above seems to assume that all white south africans were supporters of the apartheid regime
you are plainly wrong !
etienne
cape town
south africa
JewcyCraig
Missed point
I think the point that Joey was making is that all South Africans support apartheid just like all Americans support the war in Iraq.
mm
politics and lovers
this piece brings up a larger issue: the process of figuring out what a good match is, in relationship or marriage. Since moving to Israel I have become somewhat, slightly, religious, and some of the ideas of the religious world about dating do seem to have an awful lot of validity.
Particularly, 'birur': clarifying. First for yourself: what do you want, what do you not want, where do you 'hold' religiously and what would you be open to in a partner. The answers can be anywhere from 'haredi' to 'I'm not religious at all' but the important thing is to KNOW at least the ballpark of an answer. Politics with respect to Israel, however much one would like to think otherwise, IS an essential aspect of 'religious' belief.
The sooner that these answers are figured out, both for yourself and for what you want in a partner, the quicker decisions can be made about how to accomodate difference.
lover-politician
"Politics and Lovers" deserves its own column
mm: I think you raise some fascinating issues in your "Politics and Lovers" post. But you raise more questions than answers.
You say that it's important to know what you "hold religiously" and to know you can tolerate your mate's answer to that same question about his/herself.
I can see the wisdom in at least trying to know yourself, especially when it comes to choosing a mate, but do you think you can ever get more than an approximate answer?
And even if you know where you stand now, will that really make a difference later? For example, you say you've become slightly more religious since moving to Israel. Perhaps a year from now you'll give up the religiousness. Perhaps in five years you'll be completely haredi. My point is that one's religiosity is subject to change--particularly in a Western culture where (for better or worse) we all have infinite freedom to express our spiritual impulses however we choose.
The problem with our respective evolving spiritualities is that, when it comes to marriage, we all at least hope we're making a lifetime commitment. Not "I'll love you as long as we're both religious in compatible ways." So although we all must strive to know who we are, if we want to spend our lives with someone else we also have to admit from square one that we'll never know ourselves completely. Eventually we must take a leap of faith and commit to another human being no matter how either of us end up.
Martin
Good riddance!
Was Leah Jewish? If she hates Israel so much, what is she doing living there?
Frankly, if you have any kind of feel for Israel and you plan on having kids, you wouldn't want to be married to someone like that. Also, I don't think people have to apologize for supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. (I suspect that Leah would call that racist.) In my view, for what it's worth, Israel has bent over backwards to make peace and that the Palestinians bear a very large responsibility for their plight. (That and the other Arabs' refusal to assimilate them and the Arab states' penchant for using the Palestinian issue to distract their people from their repressive rule.)
AnonymousJ
That first really true love
That first really true love can be hard to get over, but you are better off without her.
I can't understand why the Israel haters think that history began in 1948 or 1967, when Palestinians were killing the Jewish dhimmis as early as 1908, again in the 1920s (pogroms lead by the British puppet the grand mufti), and in repeated calls for genocide.
The palestinian defenders love ignoring these facts. They love to ignore that the Grand Mufti played a large role in Hitler's final solution, they love to ignore that the palestinian charter calls for the extermination of Israel, that the 'occupied' territories made great economic gains after Israel took over in 1967, that the palestinian 'liberation' consists solely of the genocide of the Jews. If someone can't realize these things, who needs them.
mmausner
clarifying courtship
lover-politician, you're right it's a tricky process to figure out where one 'holds' religiously, and where one is going. I myself have been shomer-ngia and not, shabbat observant and not, kashrut observant and not, now I have paiot and a beard but used to be clean-shaven with a fro...
but religious dating, such as it is, has a fairly advanced terminology for parsing out these distinctions, and even directions. No, you don't always know where you will be holding in five or ten years, but sometimes the right questions can help you figure out your probabilities or at least red lines (what kind of school would you send kids to? Will you let your kids eat at their non-kashrut-observant grandparents' house?)
You articulate your vision and hopes for life, and that should at least outline possible directions... political views about Israel/Palestine DO amount to religious convictions, too...
Anonymous
I planted those trees and am still married to my kibbutz girl
Great story Peter.
I may have planted your avocado trees in the summer of 1967 when we cleared the ruins of the Palestinian village across the road from the kibbutz and which had been abandoned since 1948 (and blown up to make sure they didn't come back). The avocado grove we planted is still there and thriving.
It has been 40 years this month since I met my wife who was a foreign volunteer on the same kibbutz as I. I'm very Zionophile (if I was a Zionist, I'd live there)and went back again last summer to give a hand during the Lebanon business. But I'm nothing compared to my wife who would storm Teheran single-handed if she could.
I too became a hack, covering the Attrition War, the Yom Kippur War, south Lebanon and was wounded during the first Intifada. I also covered Vietnam, Afghanistan, Bosnia and other assorted awful places.
But I liked Israel best. remember: Jews are news !
ChevyNazi
I like most people want to
I like most people want to see peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But I seriously do NOT believe that the Pals will be sataisfied with just Gaza and the West Bank!
The Jewish people EARNED the right to have a homeland and are entitled to live in Israel as they see fit!
naftali
I'm Betting Mostly Guys Will Comment on This
Because there is always that one girl who sent us head over heels, who broke it off, who hurt us to our core because we were young and couldn't recognize what a nut we were dating until it was too late--and by too late I mean years later.
Peter, I hope you figure out she was a nut sooner than later.
Pistachios, dude.
Elvis Baldwell
Good riddance
I suspect Leah has joined Hassan Nasrallahs harem by now in Dahiyeh. Jewish girls who hate their fellow Jews are really attracted to fierce anti-Semites. Read the book "Blonde Poison" about Stella Goldschlag, a Jewish women who used sex to trap Jews in hiding, and went well beyond the call of duty to collaborate with the Gestapo. The only reason Leah was in Israel was to provide logistical support for the next Hezbollah war and guide missiles to your kibbutz
MOQT
Confession
I was a "Leah" myself once. Completely intolerant of any man who didn't share my fierce commitment to social justice, world peace, and human rights, and -- most importantly -- always agree with me. What changed? I finally succumbed to my romantic ideal and hooked up with a guy who thought exactly like I did... only to find out he was even more obnoxious about his values and opinions than I was. Life got much better when I removed the cork from my ass and found another man who was reasonably committed to the same basic principles, but with whom I was comfortable enough to have an occasional disagreement, and was able to at least let me consider a different point of view. More importantly, he's a guy who values me for who I am as a person, not my politics.
Guarantee you little miss self-righteous and her prince call it quits in a few years. Maybe then she'll be a little older and wiser. Or at least not so smug. At any rate, be thankful. Girlfriend did you a favor.
Barbara Reader
Maybe this explains my problem.
I've always tried to be reasonable, listen to and consider other opinions, even find good in disagreement. No wonder no Jewish man would have me!
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