Guns, Walking Tours and Black Eyed Peas

You know, I think that the ‘Black Eyed Peas’ were onto something when they wrote the words to their song ‘Where is the Love?’:

 

If you only have love for your own race,

Then you only leave space to discriminate

And to discriminate only generates hate

And if you hate than you’re bound to get irate

 

Let’s try and put aside the right and left-wing politics involving the ownership of Israel for a minute and concentrate on one thing: what are the messages that we are passing onto the children, both Arab and Israeli who live here?

 

Last week, I accompanied the girls in the seminary for a half day walking tour of “The City of David”. After the tour was over, we left the premises in order to wait for our bus to pick us up. As per typical Israel, the street was a lane and a half wide (if that) and as busy as a main thorough fare, with no one giving an inch. As we stood on the sidewalk waiting for our bus to pick us up, a little Arab boy, with the encouragement of his older, teenage brothers (babysitters? friends? cousins?), whipped a toy gun and began “shooting” in our direction, taking careful aim to shoot at our heads and our hearts. After his “shooting spree”, he then proceeded to ‘flip us off’. His brothers (babysitters?) would egg him on by laughing and pushing him closer to us. Needless to say, he spooked my girls and was the topic of conversation long after we had left.

 

Trying to lighten the mood, I attempted and finally succeeded in changing the topic of discussion to one of a lighter nature. However, personally, I couldn’t get that child, who couldn’t have been older than four or five, out of my mind. How could his parents be okay with his actions? Although one might be compelled to excuse his behavior, I really think he was deliberately shooting at us because we were Jews, and we were in their neighborhood. There had been other people, mainly Arabs, walking in the area as well, but he chose to aim his gun at us. What kind of parents let their child grow up this way?

 

As these thoughts were racing in mind, I began wondering if I would have been as appalled at these actions if it would have been a Jewish child aiming a gun at an Arab.

I’m so used to justifying my position on the ‘situation’, that sometimes I forget that there is another side. It’s easy for us to play victim and blame the hatred and violence on the other side. But that’s just the point, as much as we don’t want to admit it, there is another side to the story.