This too shall pass

October 20, 2023 Brooklyn, New York

Let me start with saying, I have no words. There are actions known to humanity that evoke no words sufficient to describe my pain. The pain reverberates and echoes through my body reaching crevices and corners so dark, so heavy, so deep, they were long forgotten. I was naive to think that such hatred would never reach my body, never reach anyone’s body. I thought this was hatred of an older time, a time before I was born. How naive. Again, I have no words that feel sufficient, words have failed me, as they will continue to. Yet in my sorrow, I must share some form of expression to alleviate and process this never ending grief. Obviously, this isn’t easy.

When asked how I am doing, I say ok. Sometimes I answer that I'm doing better than I was yesterday, better than I was last week. I’m getting by, I tell them. Let me spare you the fluff and tell you the truth. I am not doing ok. I don’t know if I will ever be ok. I’m not sure if I have ever truly been ok. Anti-semitsm has shadowed my life since the moment I was born, just as it has haunted the lives of my ancestors for thousands of years. The toxicity is breathed in with each inhale, and it poisons the water I drink with each swallow. It is deeply ingrained into the fabric of my culture’s existence. To deny that reality would be to tell a lie. This rot remains hidden to many, even those that are most affected by it. It’s a bitter irony, that most people have no idea what I am even talking about, and many that do could care less. They pass it off as yesterday’s news, somebody else’s problem. Yet, I am ‘somebody else,’ and I live in ‘yesterday.’

It’s a bitter irony that I am a queer Israeli, an intersection often in conflict with each other in people’s communities. This is especially true in the United States of America,

otherwise known as the Land of Fools where I currently live. It pains me to share the experience I had with a Jewish community that I briefly connected with. Following the indescribable tragedy of our people, I found myself essentially ex-communicated from a pseudo queer-friendly, inclusive Jewish community. I had only just started to become familiar with them. Blinded by their quest to be “progressive,” they harbored resentment to the fact that I am Israeli. So once the war started, they wanted nothing to do with me. This community could have represented an opportunity for me to embrace all of the intersections of who I am. This would have been a rare find for someone in my complex demographic. Once again, I don’t have words to sufficiently describe my pain.

I’m the lucky one in this story. Oh yes, I wasn’t one of the many babies that was beheaded, one of the many innocent souls who was kidnapped and still in the hands of terrorists. I am not one of the many innocent music lovers who was raped and slaughtered at a music festival. I easily could have been though. I find myself lucky amidst this horrifying time that my significant adjustment has been relocating from an anti -Israeli city in the United States of America, for a more welcoming one. All I had to do was change my life path from the toxic, performative, and pseudo-progressive culture of tattooing to the more accessible path of software engineering. I am truly lucky beyond words’ ability to describe.

I have a vital message in response to the symphony of sympathy that I hear for the Palestinian people coming from those I once considered friends and allies within the 'progressive' community. It has become painfully clear how easily you can be misled. The Palestinian people are truly being oppressed, but it’s crucial to not be deceived. The oppression is by the hands of their own leadership, a ruthless terrorist organization. What kind of leader wages a war they can’t win by massacring innocent people, and without

evacuating their own people beforehand. Instead they sacrifice the Palestinian people, their own people, by hiding behind them, using them as shields, as body bags. Why would you ever want to support this leadership? Hamas has no interest in defending you, supporting you, liberating you. All that they care about is using the Palestinian people as a propaganda tool to serve their higher purpose; eradicating the Jewish people.

As for my “progressive” queer “friends” and “allies,” I see how your sympathy for the conflict is very easily manipulated by the oppressive regime of Hamas. Your blindness to the Israeli struggle is simply intergenerational antisemitism, a sickness that continues to prevail to this day. So let me clarify something for you. If you were to encounter a Hamas agent, count yourself lucky if they killed you on the spot, before they raped and tortured you. I’ll spell it out for you; radical Islamic terrorists are not your friends. Of course if you can’t figure that out for yourself, I just pity you. I’m not in the mood for public relations nor public education. If you can’t do the research yourself, your perspective is meaningless to me. It’s just another lost soul screaming into the abyss. Earth is full of you.

Finally, I speak to my Israeli people; I have a story to share. Once, in a distant kingdom, there was a queen lost in the depths of a never ending grief. She cried and cried and it seemed like her sorrow would never cease. People from all corners of the realm; sages, mystics and wise people came to her, but no one could help her majesty. Only when it seemed like there was no one else in the whole kingdom to help, a humble farmer stepped before the throne. This man, the one who lived in Nature brought with him a ring, which he gave to his grace. The queen looked at the words inscribed on the ring, and it said, “this too shall pass - גם זה יעבור.” The farmer spoke to the queen, explaining, “I am a man of Nature, living my entire life in the fields. Nature, the wisest teacher, has taught me this timeless lesson, always true and eternally valuable, especially in the darkest of times.”The queen gazed at those words on the ring. They did not immediately stop her never-ending tears. Yet, the promise from Nature held true, for everything, like the ebb and flow of the seasons, passes in time. This pain, too, shall pass. "'.גם זה יעבור - To my family, my friends, and my people, I say: 'This too shall pass