What it’s like to be a father of a Jew in Palestine
I’m a father. That in and of itself is a big deal: You’re gifted with the responsibility of guiding a little person into this wild world of chaos and possibilities, of violence and hope. That is universal. But in Israel-Palestine, there is the additional mandate of bridging the divide, of raising a Jewish son to understand the complexities of oppression that he himself benefits from.
My son is three. I don’t know what he understands and what he doesn’t understand. Sometimes he surprises me with the things he has picked up and the situations he notices. He randomly responds to people asking him his name in Arabic, as well as Hebrew. Occasionally he will chirp a few words in Arabic and he laughs when he listens to me try to say a few things in Hebrew.
His little world is becoming increasingly bigger. The first couple of years, his mother and I opted to send him to the YMCA in Jerusalem where he would have Palestinian and Israeli teachers and be in a classroom of mixed students, little kids from around the world. Rather heady when considering, realistically, the biggest achievements he would make during that time would be to go to the bathroom in the potty and learn how to play well with his little friends. But those first couple of years with those Palestinian teachers kind of help to set the stage for him to be in Bethlehem a few days a week and his time at his new school in Jerusalem — where there are no Palestinian teachers and children for him to get to know.
In this place of perpetual violence, it becomes clearer every day, that in this conflict propelled by racism. As a father one of the most important aspects of raising my son, is giving him consistent exposure to Palestinians — the group of people which pay for their life from the violent racism that defines this place.
There is a carefully crafted set of laws that make for Palestinian and Israeli integration very difficult, everything from the marriage laws, to the permit system that allows Palestinians to travel freely, and the way in which the education system is separated.
But what I can say is this, the ways in which the Palestinian have embraced him has been absolutely special. The guys on the street all the time give him little things, try to get him to open up. The gentlemen at the restaurants always bring a little something extra out to him and now Alex is getting out of his shell a little bit. He goes up and pays the bills, he’s happy to say thank you and just the little things that a three old does, like trying to answer in Arabic.
It may seem like a small thing, but so few Israeli children have parents that make the conscious decision to give their child a life that is works against the racist underpinnings of society here.
