These are moving tributes. My friends in Israel greatly appreciate Americans like you and your readers taking time to remember, and in a small way, join in mourning. Thanks for sharing this!
Unbounded combinations of pride and hate seem to be the often unspoken keywords that cause so much of the strife throughout the planet. Fortunately, for those who seek, the Bible has a lot to say to each individual about getting control of these two things.
Lovely post-I much enjoyed it. I heard you twice on National Review's Great Books podcast, once talking about British playwright Robert Bolt, who wrote the screenplay to 'Lawrence of Arabia,' and decided to subscribe. I'm not American, though I lived in your country for years before returning to my homeland, and always try to stay in touch with news from the US. I'm not sure this is the right place to post a mild dissent, and I apologise if this is not the proper place to note this, but I feel it's unfair to say of one of those who died that he '... came from an Arab family who chose to stay in Israel and become full citizens after the 1948 war.' No one chooses to leave their home, unless they are forced to do so. Even if they can't stand their neighbours. I'm not Arab, and I'm not an expert on this subject, but these two statements are surely inconsistent- 'Palestinian Arabs voluntarily sold their lands to European Jewish migrants until 1947' and 'the moment they realised their neighbours were Jewish, all the Palestinians immediately left for horrible refugee camps in the Trans-Jordan.' Way back in the late 1990s, when I lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, I had a (white) landlord who couldn't stand 'Mexicans', in a neighbourhood that was changing fast (but who somehow took me on as a tenant): when I asked him why he didn't leave, he replied, 'Because it's my home.' No one leaves home unless there's a clear and present threat of violence. Who asked you to leave? It's the same heartless argument applied against Armenians and Assyrian Christians who fled Turkey after the massacres of World War 1, when they later demanded justice: 'Who asked you to leave?' I doubt very much that the Palestinian Arabs--who were, historically, a pretty tolerant bunch, and still seem to be so, wherever one meets them (you find some moving cameos of Palestinian refugees in the Kushner-Spielberg film MUNICH)--voluntarily left their homes for the uncertain shelter of a refugee camp purely out of bigotry. It defies logic. It defies evidence. Why should support for the existence and security of the state of Israel, which is a noble goal, force one into utterly absurd positions? I'll stop now- As Robert Bolt has the great actor Claude Rains, playing a British colonial bureaucrat in the Middle East during World War 1, say, in Lawrence of Arabia, 'On the whole, I wish I'd stayed in Tunbridge Wells.'
Thanks for the long comment. I hope you continue to like what you read.
I acknowledge that the history of the region is complex, but I also think one must honestly acknowledge the fact that Arabs like Awad and many other Arab-Israelis have a deep love for the country and are allowed to flourish there. Arabs have even served in the Knesset. Druze soldiers in the IDF joke that they're hated even more than the Jews. This seems to give the lie to the narrative that Jews have an undying enmity towards all Arabs qua people group. I think that's the power and the point of stories like Awad's.
Thank you for remembering and calling us to remember.
These are moving tributes. My friends in Israel greatly appreciate Americans like you and your readers taking time to remember, and in a small way, join in mourning. Thanks for sharing this!
Thank you for reading!
Unbounded combinations of pride and hate seem to be the often unspoken keywords that cause so much of the strife throughout the planet. Fortunately, for those who seek, the Bible has a lot to say to each individual about getting control of these two things.
This is the best, most moving and appropriate article I read marking the anniversary of 10/7.
Thank you Bethel . I shed tears at each story . I thank God for giving me a heart of flesh 😇
Amen!
Lovely post-I much enjoyed it. I heard you twice on National Review's Great Books podcast, once talking about British playwright Robert Bolt, who wrote the screenplay to 'Lawrence of Arabia,' and decided to subscribe. I'm not American, though I lived in your country for years before returning to my homeland, and always try to stay in touch with news from the US. I'm not sure this is the right place to post a mild dissent, and I apologise if this is not the proper place to note this, but I feel it's unfair to say of one of those who died that he '... came from an Arab family who chose to stay in Israel and become full citizens after the 1948 war.' No one chooses to leave their home, unless they are forced to do so. Even if they can't stand their neighbours. I'm not Arab, and I'm not an expert on this subject, but these two statements are surely inconsistent- 'Palestinian Arabs voluntarily sold their lands to European Jewish migrants until 1947' and 'the moment they realised their neighbours were Jewish, all the Palestinians immediately left for horrible refugee camps in the Trans-Jordan.' Way back in the late 1990s, when I lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, I had a (white) landlord who couldn't stand 'Mexicans', in a neighbourhood that was changing fast (but who somehow took me on as a tenant): when I asked him why he didn't leave, he replied, 'Because it's my home.' No one leaves home unless there's a clear and present threat of violence. Who asked you to leave? It's the same heartless argument applied against Armenians and Assyrian Christians who fled Turkey after the massacres of World War 1, when they later demanded justice: 'Who asked you to leave?' I doubt very much that the Palestinian Arabs--who were, historically, a pretty tolerant bunch, and still seem to be so, wherever one meets them (you find some moving cameos of Palestinian refugees in the Kushner-Spielberg film MUNICH)--voluntarily left their homes for the uncertain shelter of a refugee camp purely out of bigotry. It defies logic. It defies evidence. Why should support for the existence and security of the state of Israel, which is a noble goal, force one into utterly absurd positions? I'll stop now- As Robert Bolt has the great actor Claude Rains, playing a British colonial bureaucrat in the Middle East during World War 1, say, in Lawrence of Arabia, 'On the whole, I wish I'd stayed in Tunbridge Wells.'
Thanks for the long comment. I hope you continue to like what you read.
I acknowledge that the history of the region is complex, but I also think one must honestly acknowledge the fact that Arabs like Awad and many other Arab-Israelis have a deep love for the country and are allowed to flourish there. Arabs have even served in the Knesset. Druze soldiers in the IDF joke that they're hated even more than the Jews. This seems to give the lie to the narrative that Jews have an undying enmity towards all Arabs qua people group. I think that's the power and the point of stories like Awad's.