Part I. The Bombing
1 Three weeks before … over his shoulder. – From a transcription of the sentencing of Mohammad Odeh and three others on December 15, 2002. The documents, procured from the Jerusalem District Court, were in Hebrew – a transcription of the final arguments, which entered into the record all indictments and evidence pertaining to them before the sentencing. For posterity’s sake. About sixty pages’ worth of posterity. And so I translated all of them, to rid myself of posterity. Or to rid it of me.
2 “passed time” – Exact words used by the prosecutor when relating during final arguments the time spent by Mohammad Odeh before striking. I found the words so casual, so normal – so perfect in expressing the callousness of it all – that they were irreplaceable.
3 Mohammad Odeh lived … The phone ringing. – Most of this is again from the Jerusalem District Court’s sentencing documents, though supplemented by a few news articles:
1) “Handyman is Arrested in Bomb Blast” by Laurie Copans, Associated Press, August 21, 2002;
2) “Arrests in Hebrew Univ. Bombing” from CBS News, August 21, 2002;
3) “HU Bomber Worked on Campus” by Etgar Lefkovitz, Jerusalem Post, August 21, 2002.
4 The voice of the blood … from the ground. – Genesis 4:10. Much of rabbinic commentary on this verse focuses upon the word blood due to its plural construction in the Hebrew: “
ךיחא ימד לוק –The voice of your brother’s bloods.” This construction leads Rashi to conclude that “blood” is pluralized to indicate that not only was Cain killed, but so too all future descendants. However, it has always been the word “ground” that has most sparked my interest in this verse. Perhaps it’s the writer, the metaphor-seeker within who gravitates toward striking images, toward an image of the ground, soaked, emitting screams: “
המדאה ןמ ידא םיקעוצ – Yelling to me from the ground.”
7 Many answers have been given … points as well. – This is my understanding of Nachmanides’ comment on the verse, which I read in the original Hebrew from a volume entitled
Torat Hayim, published by Mossad Harav Kook, which is a multi-volume set covering the books of the Torah with accompanying rabbinic commentary.
8 For several months … Palestinian cabinet ministers. – This is from a July 21, 2002 Associated Press article entitled “Israel, Palestinians Plan Talks” by Nicole Winfield.
9 Activists from Fatah’s … sealed since June, – From two July 18, 2002 Associated Press articles: 1) “Israel Suspends Palestinian Talks” by Mark Lavie; 2) “Israel Keeps Restrictions After Bomb” by Jason Keyser.
10 But first, July … the terrorists out. – Ibid.
11 Here is what … struggle for independence. – From a July 20, 2002
Ha’aretz News article entitled “Report: PA Discusses Suicide Bombing Halt with Hamas, Jihad” and a July 25, 2002
New York Times article by James Bennet and John Kifner entitled “Palestinian Cease-Fire Was in Works Before Israeli Strike.”
12 According to a … a moral mistake. – From a July 25, 2002
Times (London) article by Stephen Farrell entitled “Agreement Was to End Attacks Immediately.”
13 However, an anonymous … the Palestinian people. – From
Ha’aretz News, “Report: PA Discusses Suicide Bombing Halt with Hamas, Jihad.”
14 Those in the … and the Palestinian Authority. – From Bennet and Kifner, “Palestinian Cease-Fire.”
15 In their three … A start. – From Winfield. “Israel, Palestinians Plan Talks.”
16 Few things were … the Palestinian people. – From a July 21, 2002 BBC News article entitled “Israel, Palestinians Resume Talks.”
17 Immediately, funds Israel … million it owed. – From a July 22, 2002 Reuters article by Danielle Haas entitled “Israel Says Releasing Withheld Palestinian Funds.”
18 Much of this … to succeed. – From Bennet and Kifner, “Palestinian Cease-Fire.”
19 Ninety minutes after … entire families. – From a July 22, 2002 Associated Press article by Ibrahim Barzak entitled “Israel Air Strike Kills at least 10” and Bennet and Kifner, “Palestinian Cease-Fire.”
20 Here is what … the targeted bombing. – From a July 24, 2002
Times (London) article by Stephen Farrell entitled “Palestinian Ceasefire Plan Lies Buried in the Rubble of Gaza” and Bennet and Kifner, “Palestinian Cease-Fire.”
21 Israeli officials acknowledged … on terrorist activities. – From Bennet and Kifner, “Palestinian Cease-Fire.”
22 According to media … its suicide bombings. – From a July 24, 2002 United Press International article by Saud Abu Ramadan entitled “Hamas Halts Palestinian Authority Talks.”
23 Shahada had been placed … began in 2000. – From a July 23, 2002
Ha’aretz News article by Amos Harel entitled “Israel Kills Hamas Founder in Gaza in Air Strike.”
24 Having founded … over ten years. – From a July 23, 2002 BBC News article entitled “Profile: Sheikh Salah Shahada.”
25 A span during … hundreds of attacks. – From a July 23, 2002
Independent (London) article by Justin Huggler entitled “Ten Killed in Israeli Air Strike on Home of Hamas Chief.”
26 After escaping one … conducted or not. – From BBC News, “Profile: Sheikh Salah Shahada.”
27 [Shahada] had grown close … next in line. – From Harel, “Israel Kills Hamas Founder” and BBC News, “Profile: Sheikh Salah Shahada.”
28 Shahada’s death sent … the other victims. – From a July 23, 2002
Ha’aretz News article by Amos Harel entitled “100,000 Attend Funerals of 15 Fatalities of Gaza Bomb Strike.”
29 Retaliation is coming … of our operations. – From a July 23, 2002 CBS News article entitled “White House Scolds Israel for Attack.”
30 But it wasn’t … area like this? – From a July 24, 2002
Times (London) article by Stephen Farrell entitled “‘Would the British Attack like This to Kill Adams?’ Civilian Rage after the Attack on Gaza.”
31 This time was … contribute to peace. – From CBS News, “White House Scolds Israel for Attack.”
32 Critics cynically going … ceasefire talks. – From Bennet and Kifner, “Palestinian Cease-Fire.”
33 Diplomats intimately involved … is now gone. – From Farrell, “Palestinian Ceasefire Plan.”
34 Even though … “the biggest successes” – From Harel, “100,000 Attend Funerals.”
38 And absent from … in the territories. – Karmon, “Israel’s War on Terrorism.”
39 Israel was following the best intelligence available at the time. – Though Karmon’s last assessment
– that targeted assassinations could prevent Hamas’s rise to political prominence
– turned out to be woefully wrong, demonstrating that “intelligence” is often little more than a network of informed guessers uniformed in sophistry.
40 It reaches back … in the 1980s. – Obviously, one could go back even farther, principally to the British Mandate and the colonial history of Palestine. But this will be visited in part IV.
41 In the 1960s … social welfare services. – From a 1999 ICT article by Dr. Boaz Ganor entitled “Hamas
– The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Territories.”
42 The Brotherhood’s desire … gave “tacit consent” – From a paper by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, originally published by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University and reprinted by ICT under the title “Hamas: A Behavioral Profile.”
43 To its actions … even encouraging them. – From an ICT article by Reuven Paz entitled “Sleeping with the Enemy – A Reconciliation Process as Part of Counter-Terrorism. Is Hamas Capable of ‘Hudnah’?”
44 Islamic Jihad was formed … by the Brotherhood – Ganor, “Hamas
– The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Territories.”
45 “claim for exclusive … Islamic law. – Mishal and Sela, “Hamas: A Behavioral Profile.”
46 We promise … on every street. – From a July 23, 2002 Reuters article entitled “Condemnation, Vows of Revenge Follow Israel Attack.”
Part II. Disconnection
1 The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away – This is from the Book of Job, 1:21. It’s Job’s response after learning he has lost everything, including his children.
Part III. Recovery
1 It took nearly … the Potomac River – I checked with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at
http://md.water.usgs.gov/publications/press_release/2003/200310/index.html to make sure my remembrances aligned with the documented timeframes and geological reports from the hurricane. Sometimes memory works. Sometimes it fails. In this particular instance, it half-worked, and the USGS helped the other half.
2 We first considered … until he falls asleep. – The block quote is from page 127 of
The No-Cry Sleep Solution, published by McGraw-Hill (2002). I paused before deciding to cite this book properly, for I’m convinced of its innate evil, and wouldn’t wish to unleash the book’s manic suggestions on any struggling parent, much less one suffering from existential traumas unrelated to parenting, which itself is an existential trauma. A trauma I’d never trade in, understand. (Yes, N & T, I wrote that for your benefit. One day you’ll be reading this, say, in twenty years. I think ahead.) As for the book, it sucks. Plain and simple. Oh sure, it gets 4 ½ out of 5 stars on Amazon.com from 726 reader reviews, which is a staggering number on Amazon, comparatively speaking. And it’s the 233rd best-selling book on the site, another very impressive statistic. And the reviews? Take the title of this one from a self-proclaimed “Childbirth Educator” (she capitalized it) – whose review was rated as the most helpful by fellow readers: “A Practical (and effective!) Guide for sleep-deprived parents.” My response? There is nothing less practical for sleep-deprived parents than asking them to rip pacifiers from the mouths of their sleeping infants and then chronicle in detailed logs, for weeks, every movement that infant makes through the night. No, that is not practical. That is self-fulfilling. That is torture, literally. Sleep-deprivation being a known torture technique, long recognized by the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions as a form of psychological torture. Here’s an interesting found fact: “After World War II, the US military successfully prosecuted several Japanese soldiers who had subjected American prisoners to sleep deprivation” (
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/08/21/psychological-torture-and-bush-administration).
3 tested it on trauma victims … emotional abuse – One of Shapiro’s early papers was “Efficacy of the eye movement procedure in the treatment of traumatic memories,” published in the
Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 2, no. 2, April 1989, pp. 199–223. According to Shapiro, “The results of the study indicated that a single session of the EMD procedure successfully desensitized the subjects’ traumatic memories and dramatically altered their cognitive assessments of the situation, effects that were maintained through the 3-month follow-up check.” The study involved twenty-two people suffering from “intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, sleep disturbances, low self-esteem, and relationship problems” related to memories of traumatic events.
4 Kathy – It needs to be noted that “Kathy” is actually a composite of two separate therapists I saw consecutively during this time. I created this composite therapist for two reasons: A. In my memory, I can’t separate what was said or discussed with each one. The conversations have blended together, the demands they made have blended together. To separate them would itself be an exercise in inaccuracy. So I created “Kathy,” who allows me, as a composite, to accurately and truthfully relate some experiences I had in therapy. B. Forgetting for a moment reason A., which made the composite “Kathy” necessary, I felt that such a composite character would be cleaner for the narrative. I mean, did you really want me to go on for pages about how I couldn’t remember who was who, and do that song and dance for each scene? I didn’t think so. Thus, this note, in the spirit of full transparency and a commitment to the truth. And “Kathy,” in the spirit of narrative integrity and clean storytelling.
5 I decided to research … on wrapped mattresses. – As indicated, this information was culled from
www.cotlife2000.com, Check it out for all your mattress-wrapping needs.
6 Not a word. – Actually, this is not true, though it’s not a lie. I published in the summer of 2005 a poem about the attack called “On Being Anchored” in
Pebble Lake Review, though, unlike my other published pieces, I never thought about it after its publication, never re-read it when the customary contributor’s volume came in the mail, wrapped in plastic. So when I wrote the words “Not a word,” they were written with sincerity, for I thought them to be true. Because, in essence, they were. Though I had written once about the attack, written a poem about the attack, and had even published it, the experience of writing had made no impression, had been compartmentalized, erased. It was as though it hadn’t happened. The experience of writing, in my mind, had never happened. So consider “Not a word” as psychic truth.
7 Research … sure thing – Sitting in the computer lab, the following articles are those I first read:
1) “Hamas bomb suspect arrested” by Ross Dunn, Times (London), August 22, 2002;
2) “Arrests in Hebrew Univ. Bombing” from CBS News, August 21, 2002;
3) Lefkovitz, “HU Bomber Worked on Campus.”
I know this because these are the articles I initially emailed myself, beginning the process of building a research database from which to work.
8 It was embedded … put on him.” – The AP article in question, from which both quotes came: Copans, “Handyman is Arrested.”
9 And so I … was growing within me – As my wife pointed out while reading the manuscript, mention of South Africa in this context always evokes what she called “the Jimmy Carter red flag.” I want to make clear that mention here of South Africa is only in relation to my own journey in discovering the impulses that were gaining momentum within myself. There is no equivalency between Israel and apartheid South Africa being made here, obviously. I don’t believe the two are comparable. But Jews are sensitive, and many, I’m sure – particularly those who might falsely claim to love Israel more than I – would like nothing more than to point toward this text and say, “Ah, he’s just like Jimmy Carter.”
11 The adoption … conflicts of the past – From the introduction of Antjie Krog’s
Country of My Skull (New York: Times Books, 1998), p. x.
12 “
Truth recovery process” – Ibid.
13 Would give victims … suffering and loss. – ibid., p. xi.
14 Initially, she was … them from silence. – ibid., p. 32.
15 Your voice tightens … after all – ibid., p. 50.
16 Jamie could hang … self or others.” – I referenced the PTSD diagnostic criteria at
behavenet.com, which reproduced the material with permission from the American Psychiatric Association.
17 Then I … of spring rain.” – This is from “Understanding the secondary traumatic stress of spouses” by Kathleen Gilbert from
Burnout in Families: The Systemic Costs of Caring (Figley, Charles R.; Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998) pp. 47–74.
18 “Watermelon” from Billy Jonas’ album
What Kind of Cat are You?! (2002).
19 We prick up … one-way flood. – Krog,
Country of My Skull, p. 74.
20 Some people got … hi to me. – From
Encounter Point.
IV. Collective History
1 It was a thought … To live. – This from Benny Morris’
Righteous Victims (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), pp. 14–17.
2 But when … to redeem it. – ibid., p. 38.
3 Palestine was far … region being Jews – Rashid Khalidi,
The Iron Cage (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), p. 96.
5 What was remarkable about … as a people. – Khalidi,
The Iron Cage, pp. 32–33.
6 There was no … did not exist. – Khalidi,
Palestinian Identity, New York: Columbia Univeristy Press, 1997, p. 147.
8 The sudden introduction … as a nation. – Khalidi,
Palestinian Identity, p. 149.
9 Palestinian leaders … representation and self-determination. – Khalidi,
The Iron Cage, p. 33.
10 Recognition of the … legally subordinate position. – ibid., p. 33.
11 Fully-fledged representative … the mandatory state. – ibid., p. 37.
12 Zionism, be it … that ancient land. – ibid., p. 36. Now, some might argue here that I am ignoring the restrictions the British placed upon the Jewish community, restrictions which were rebelled against (via violent resistance). These restrictions came later, and do nothing to mitigate the truth of Balfour’s statement or Britain’s priorities vis-à-vis the two peoples. And besides, the point, again, of this section is to understand the suffering of Palestinians. To understand them. Not to diminish Jewish suffering. History – true history – is not a zero sum game.
13 After the First World War … of state power. – ibid.
14 In the end, we won. – After our own struggles with the British, of course.
15 Overnight … in camps elsewhere. – Khalidi,
The Iron Cage, p. 1.
16 If I was … they accept that? – Nahum Goldmann,
The Jewish Paradox (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), p. 99. This was translated by Steve Cox.
17 Allon’s desire … without national rights. – Gershom Gorenberg,
The Accidental Empire (New York: Times Books, 2006), pp. 16–17.
19 The logic of … unconnected to defense. – Gorenberg,
Accidental Empire, p. 36.
20 The reasons weren’t … land of Israel. – ibid., p. 37.
21 There were minority … mainly Arabs live? – ibid., p. 51.
22 The situation today … presence on you. – ibid., p. 83.
23 While these … each passing car. – Khalidi,
Iron Cage, pp. 200–201.
24 The quintessential Palestinian … as a people. – Khalidi,
Palestinian Identity, p. 1.
V. Reckoning
3 I’m “Why Does” … Daniel Bar-Tal. – This is the title of Daniel Bar-Tal’s article appearing in
Political Psychology, vol. 22, no. 3, 2001.
4 It’s because fear … creativity and flexibility. – Bar-Tal, “Why Does Fear”, p. 601. This piece of “dialogue” is a quote from Bar-Tal’s article, adjusted slightly. The full quote reads: “fear is an automatic emotion, grounded in the perceived present and often based on the memorized past (also processed unconsciously) … Hope, in contrast, involves mostly cognitive activity … and thus is based on creativity and flexibility.”
5 Oh, sorry … the theoretical future. – ibid., pp. 604–605. This piece of “dialogue” splices the following quotes from Bar-Tal’s article with supplementary text to make the dialogue work in context: “Hope is an emotion” and “resembles a state of mind.”
6 More or less … interference of fear. – ibid., p. 601. This piece of “dialogue” is formed with connective text and the following direct quote from Bar-Tal’s article: “is based on thinking, it can be seriously impeded by the spontaneous and unconscious interference of fear.”
7 And this fear … it is invoked. – ibid., p. 604. This piece of “dialogue” is adapted from the following quote: “which bypasses the thinking process. It’s a mechanism of adaptation that automatically protects life and homeostasis, but may operate irrationally and even destructively at the moment it is invoked.”
8 You’ve got it … a lingering flaw. – ibid., p. 604. This piece of “dialogue” uses the following quote from Bar-Tal’s article: “when in fear, human beings sometimes tend to cope by initiating a fight, even when there is little or nothing to be achieved by doing so.”
9 This is “Psychological … and Clark McCauley. – This is the title of an article by Ifat Maoz and Clark McCauley which appeared in
Political Psychology, vol. 26, no. 5, 2005.
10 Negotiation research has … sides better off. – This quote, minus the word “now,” appears in ibid., p. 793.
11 In every generation … for this. Haaretz, April 27, 1987 – Bar-Tal, “Why Does Fear,” p. 617.
12 In Israel, we … are better off. – The “dialogue” in this section from the pages are adapted from information gleaned throughout Maoz and McCauley’s article.
13 Everlasting shrug – I love this phrase, which I plucked from Claudia Rankine’s
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.