This weekend, as Jerusalem Day approached, our family started a new tradition. We took down the Israeli flag from our roof.
For me, it had much to do with a uniquely Israeli weekend in which I felt, by turns, hope for the future, enormous pride in a certain slice of the present, and, as Jerusalem Day dawned to cap the weekend, deeply rooted shame.
Something changed in me this weekend. And I don’t see it changing back any time soon.
…….
There’s no denying, though, that as Sunday neared, a shadow began to lengthen over the country, and over our house. We all knew what was coming. It was the March of the (Israeli) Flags, an annual, gender-segregated extreme-right, pro-occupation religious carnival of hatred, marking the anniversary of Israel’s capture of Jerusalem by humiliating the city’s Palestinian Muslims.
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The Flag Parade, and with it, Jerusalem Day, has come to symbolize the worst in us. Arrogance, xenophobia, brute dominance, racist hatred. A march of, by, and for, the worst of our worst.
In our house, ahead of the march, we talked about what to do with the flag on our roof, the flag my wife once saved from being desecrated, the flag which we, by custom, had flown since Holocaust Remembrance Day, to honor long-held hopes and dreams of freedom in a homeland.
It wasn’t a simple discussion. On the one hand, you don’t want to hand the marchers a victory, and cede the flag to the worst of our worst.
On the other, to fly the flag in sync with the march, is to tell your neighbors, Arabs and Jews alike, that the march has merit.
So this year, for Jerusalem Day, we began a new tradition.
We lower this flag in recognition of the many, many people in the city who worked very hard this year to create “A Different Day in Jerusalem,” among them families on both sides bereaved by violence, working for healing and a solution to the conflict.
We lower this flag in recognition of those of the Tag Meir movement who took it upon themselves to hand out “flowers of peace” to Palestinians in the Old City.
We lower this flag in recognition of those who are working to make us proud of this place. Like the Women Wage Peace movement, which is planning a march and vigil for the fall Sukkot holiday to urge the prime minister to return to peace negotiations.
Women Wage Peace hopes to have thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women joined by women from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.
This flag will fly again. But never in sympathy with those who are destroying this land, shattering the Jewish People, and mutilating Judaism itself.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.723665?=&ts=_1470848796261
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.723665?=&ts=_1470848796261
