THE family dinner table in the Tel Aviv suburb was its own kind of war zone.
The opinions came flying like bricks, landing with a series of staccato thuds. Nothing got eaten, but stomachs churned.
“Give them what they want,” the woman of the house was emphatic.
“The West Bank. Gaza. Give the Arabs part of Jerusalem!
“Anything,” she insisted, now in tears, “so we can have peace.”
Her husband sat with his powerful arms folded snugly across his chest. When he spoke, he gestured like a cross between an orchestra conductor and a sniper.
“If you give them one thing, they’ll try to take it all,” he said forcefully.
“The only thing we can do to survive is to be strong. Give up nothing! Otherwise, there’ll be hell to pay.”
If you’ve spent time with an Israeli family, you know that opinions run hot, strong and contrary. My family is no different.
At the dinner table, it became apparent to me that the differences often fall not along lines of religion or political affiliation, but place of birth.
My aunt, the dove, was born in Israel. My uncle, the hawk, settled in Israel from postwar Europe.
In America, we watch the carnage in the Middle East like alien voyeurs – making judgments of entire peoples based on the misinformation spewed by such news sources as CNN.
The one-dimensional picture they air invariably consists of poor, oppressed Arabs, living miserably under the thumb of the cruel Israelis.
The truth is far more complicated and difficult to report. This is not a matter of two peoples fighting over how to wage peace.
There are many, many sub-groups of individuals, arguing just as passionately over how, when and whether it’s even possible – or desirable – to bring it on.
Today, American Jews with strong ties to Israel are in a state of clinical depression. All our lives we wanted to believe, like my aunt who’s never lived anywhere but Israel, that a lasting peace could be achieved with our Arab neighbors.
But now we are starting to suspect, like my uncle – who’s willing to fight to the death for his adopted land – that this peace will not occur in our lifetimes.
When you visit Israel, it is striking how well Arabs and Israelis get along on the surface. They work alongside each other, do business together. Good friends? Perhaps not. But friendly neighbors, absolutely.
Today, there exists a heavy sense of betrayal among doves in America and Israel, who believed that Yasser Arafat, if not exactly a friend, at least had the mutual interests of Arabs and Israelis at heart.
Now, it’s become painfully apparent that Arafat called for bloodshed not when faced with political loss – but with success.
The war that’s tearing apart Israel was sparked when Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to give the Palestinians more than they ever dreamed of getting from Benjamin Netanyahu or his predecessors – 90 percent of the land Arafat demanded.
This put Arafat in a peculiar situation: No longer would he be the underdog, chewing on scraps, but a full-fledged guest at the dinner table.
This turned to out to be a threat worse than gunfire. To Arafat, the prospect of losing victim status was terrifying.
For this, Israel endures daily, bloody battles, in which Arafat’s own people are so frequently among the dead. For this, an Israeli soldier’s wife anxiously calls her husband’s cell phone, only to hear a strange voice at the end of the line crow, “I’ve just murdered your husband.”
I love Israel. But I can’t pretend to understand it.
My mother, who came to what was then Palestine from Vienna in 1939, tells a story of her youth on a kibbutz – whose idealistic residents were taught to love and respect their neighbors. All of them.
One evening, she went on a stroll with a charming young Arab guy she’d met in town. Walking past a shop, my mother paused to admire a watch she could never afford. An Omega.
“I’ll buy it for you!” the young man vowed. And the only thing that prevented a gift from changing hands was the fact that the shop was closed for the night.
My mother returned to her dormitory and told her friends about the evening. One of them exclaimed: “Don’t you know? You can’t go out with Arab boys!”
She didn’t understand. And it hurt.
Years later, she understands too well.
Sometimes, growing up means understanding that some terrible things in the world simply will not change.
Not any time soon.