Fifteen Months of Personal Anguish and Terror

Professor Joe Goldblatt

During the past fifteen months I have experienced more personal anguish and terror than I have known in my entire 72 years of life on planet earth.

Let us not ever forget that this anguish and terror began at a happy and joyous music festival with a deadly surprise attack and subsequently the extermination of over 1000 Israelis by the terrorist group Hamas. The purpose of this attack was to fuflill the never ending mission of Hamas which is to irradicate the state of Israel.

A few days after this attack the Chaplain at the University of Edinburgh asked me if I would meet with some Jewish students on campus to listen to their concerns. I did not know what to expect and asked her how many students might attend this session. She said “Perhaps a dozen?. I really do not know as I have never done this before.” I must add that indeed she had not done this before because there had never been an attrocity of this size, scope, and magnitude of evil sense the Jewish holocaust.

When I arrived I was surprised to see over 40 students seated in a circle. The looks of grief, horror, and fear upon their faces spoke volumes about what might be forthcoming. The wise female chaplain closed the door and said “Why don’t we introduce ourselves to one another and then talk about how we are feeling.”

She began with her own personal experience in Latvia, the country where she herself was a survivor of war. Then one by one the students quietly and emotionally while choking back tears told of their worries about their brothers, sisters, friends, and even strangers in the middle east. One young woman’s brother was a member of the the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and another young man expressed his fear for his seventy year old grandmother who had been kidnapped in the attack upon the kibbutz. On and on, story after story, the overall narrative was grim and by the time the last person spoke there was little else to say.

However, another woman from Israel, slightly older than the rest, explained that she had recently enrolled at the university as a post graduate student in information technology. Now, as she looked outside her window and saw dozens of Palestinian flags waving and angry people shouting “Death to Israel” she was petrified with fear and had not left her room for over one week.

I reached into my pocket and gave her my business card and encouraged her to call me anytime she wished to have an escort to go to the shops, to class, or run other errands. I explained that I lived near her accomodation and would be happy to help.

I then turned to the rest of the group and said “In my experience, this war may last a long time, and it will get worse before it gets better. However, it will get better.”

The student to whom I had given my card exploded in rage and with tears projecting like missles from her eyes she said “How do you know? Look at what is happening!”

I drew a deep breath and once again turned to the others and said “Just look around you. We are all members of the Jewish people and despite attacks upon our ancient temples, expulsion of our people from England for 300 years, the tragedy of the Jewish holocaust where we lost 6 million of our brethern, and continuing and rising anti semitism, we are still here. We have a way of triumphing over evil. Our way is through justice. Let us pray and hope that justice will prevail again.”

When I heard this morning that a cease fire will begin tomorrow morning I remembered that woman who asked me how did I know that the war would one day end. In fact, at that moment I did not know. In fact, I still do not know if this will be a lasting cease fire that may or may not lead to a permanent peace. What I do know is that we must continue to advocate justice, respect, and love for one another even in the darkest of times.

One of these dark times was a few weeks after the outbreak of the recent war. I was invited to give a talk at the New College at the University of Edinburgh. I slowly climbed the Playfair steps and heard loud shouts of “From the river to the sea” which is the phrase Jews fear because to us it means the extermination of the Jewish state of Israel. When I reached the top of the steps I saw hundreds of Palestinian flags waving atop long poles and then I experienced a deeper sense of doom when I witnessed upon the small stage my long time political friends who were leading this rally.

At that moment I had to make a decision whether to proceed through the crowd, to turn around and go home, or to circumvent the crowd and try and quietly enter the New College by the back door. I asked myself what my father would have done in this circumstance and then I straightened my shoulders, held my head high, and walked into the crowd. As I approached each of my political friends I shook their hands, embraced them, and even kissed them on both cheeks. There were astonished and perhaps even justifiably embarrassed by my behaviour.

When I made it safely into the New College I paused and silently and said to anyone who was listening “Please, one day, let us be friends once again.”

Therefore, as this newest chapter in the multi thousand year middle east conflict unfolds this weekend with a cease fire planned and a potential time of peace upon the horizon, may all of us look back at our behaviour during the past few months and ask what we might do differently in the future should this terrible time occur again. In my own case, I shall simply remember the words of the prophet Michah that I recited at my Bar Mitzvah 60 years ago. “O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Professor Joe Goldblatt is Co Chair of the Edinburgh Interfaith Association in Edinburgh, Scotland. His views are his own. To learn more about his views visit www.joegoldblatt.scot