I've never dreamed the classic American Dream. I don't want the house in the suburbs, with a private yard. I don't crave a second car, even though it would have fancy features my trusty 2012 Honda lacks. I don't really want to live in America, much as I love my family and friends there.
I picked up a beautiful life and left the US in 2009 for Israel because I craved a country that would be mine in a way the US never was--where the air feels different on Friday afternoons, where my kids dreadful "spirit week" comes not before Halloween but before Purim--where they wouldn't hear "Jew girl" snarled at them as I did in fifth grade, when I was only two years older than my sweet son.
I loved the Israel I discovered on my year here after college, and in the years that followed. I loved spending most of my time with secular Israelis, and I loved volunteering in a pediatric oncology ward that treated both Palestinian and Jewish children entirely equally.
I savored making friends who identified themselves as Haredi and spending a weekend in a Catholic Arab village.
I saw what this land could be, and made it mine. I worked for an organization whose employees included all kinds of Israelis, and for one fighting for justice for Ethiopian-Israelis. I didn't have rose colored glasses, but I was never an Israeli with a plan to go back. I married a man who felt the same way--we were here for good.
And now? Today?
Today, I feel disgusted by what is happening in the country I chose. Last night, in response to two Jewish boys--brothers--being murdered, my fellow Jewish Israelis launched a literal pogrom in the village of Huwara. They burned houses with people still in them. And the government is backing them. The head of the National Security Committee endorsed these despicable acts.
There is a judicial shift underway that will essentially destroy our court system, leaving it to the whims of the government to decide if Israel's Basic Laws stay intact, with no checks or balances. In a government supporting the destruction of a Palestinian village, it isn't rocket science to think what that will mean for the 25% of Israelis who aren't Jewish.
Our Finance Minister committed financial crimes. Our Security Minister committed security crimes. Our Prime Minister? Also a criminal. It reads like a bad movie script.
And we live in a bubble--a beautiful bubble. Here, on election day, the right wing criminals now in power didn't even show up to canvas for votes--they know that we live in a city where they won't get them. Of course, we are not a bloc--no city is--but by and large our disagreements with neighbors and classmates are about superficial matters, not core ones.
For now, that is enough. For now, I can keep my children from the news, and teach them how to say "thank you" in Arabic and that we share this country with others. They have neighbors who are religious, who are secular, who are gay and straight. There are friends with skin as pale as theirs, and those whose families come from other places.
But I wonder how long it will be enough. I wonder if I should start thinking about where we would go. I never thought I would ask these questions--and I'm not the only one. Israeli friends, one after the other, tell me in Hebrew that they're asking these questions, too. That they're scared for their future--for their kids and their families. I get it. I'm scared, too.
I don't have a happy ending, though if you care, I implore you to read this piece by some of Israel's fiercest advocates, immigrants like myself. Take their suggestions to heart. Do what they ask. The future of this country literally depends on it.
