Wednesday, May 30, 2018
He was
only 20 when the heavy concrete or marble slab was dropped from above, ending
his life. Three stories up, a young Arab male flexed his hands. He’d held that
slab for five full minutes, studying the situation, making sure his aim was
true. He’d developed a cramp. But he’d completed his mission, born of hatred
nursed for years. He’d dropped the slab. Seen it connect.
Everything
that was bad in his life, he’d learned to blame it on the Jews. This is what
his parents had taught him, because everyone whose life is hard needs a target
for blame and fury. Everyone needs an outlet for the things that can’t be
changed, doors that cannot be opened.
For
this Arab youth, that outlet, that target,
was an anonymous 20-year-old. He would do, this boy who’d never know hardship,
who’d never known life as his murderer experienced it. For the Jew wore the
uniform of the IDF. The uniform of the people the Arab youth had been taught to
hate.
He didn’t
know Ronen. Didn’t know if he loved fried chicken, or chocolate ice cream, his
brother, his parents. He didn’t know that Ronen may have once had sensitive
skin that reddened in the hot intensity of the Israeli sun as he stood guard
over his people, a rite of Israeli passage. The Arab youth knew only that the
pieces were laid out on the chessboard, had been laid out ages ago, perhaps
before the players had been born. The Arab youth on the roof, holding a slab of
white marble, three stories up. The Jew on the ground below, in clothes
representing all that had ever gone wrong. A symbol. Something to hate.
Ronen,
on the other hand, had no symbols of hate as he stood there in his IDF uniform.
His energy was not directed that way, but to opening doors.
“You
fought. Throughout your life you chose all of the closed doors and were better
than everyone else. I’m sure you chose this moment too,” said his brother Arik
at the funeral attended by hundreds, for a boy who lost his life too soon,
because he’d worn a hated symbol.
Did
Ronen see hate as a door closed against him? Something that must be opened?
We will
never know. Because the slab came down, down, down, closing a door forever. A
door that might have, could have been a bridge between peoples. But was not.
It was
just a door slamming firmly shut, sealed by hate. Hatred of someone the Arab
youth didn’t know, hadn’t met. He didn’t have to know Ronen to hate him. Didn’t
have to know a thing about him. Clothes make the man, they say. The IDF uniform
had marked Ronen for death, because of something the Arab youth had been told
all his life.
Told at
his mother’s breast, imbibed with her milk. Because everyone needs a focus for
hate and blame. It helps to let out the fire in the wound, like lancing an
abscess, the pus needs to out.
How do
you hate someone enough to kill? How are you strong enough to end the life of
someone you’ve never met? Only there on the ground beneath you in clothes you
don’t like as you hold a heavy concrete or marble slab.
A
symbol, that IDF uniform, like a red hot poker, poking you in the eye, nudging
you from behind inexorably forward.
A
symbol for all you’ve been taught to hate that uniform and the boy wearing it until
it boils up, boils over, the hate. Red hot, touching everything you know,
poisoning everything in reach.
Did the
slab feel heavy in your hands as it waited for the moment you would anoint it killer?
Or did it feel light as a feather? Could you have held it for hours until just
the right moment when the Angel of Death whispered in your ear, saying, “Now.”
What did
it feel like, the moment the slab left your hand? How did you feel watching it
plummet from your high perch on a building, unseen and undetected, to watch
your missive crash on the head of the unsuspecting Jew?
Or did
you run away so you wouldn’t get caught?
No. I
think you stood there. You wanted to see, needed to see. Vindication for all
you’d ever suffered: poverty, unemployment, hard work, food insecurity. Like
the murderer attending the funerals of his victims. Like collecting a trophy,
you needed this moment to soothe and calm you, this visual picture, the
culmination and full flowering of the hate you’d been raised on all your life.
You would see the moment over and over again in your head, an instant replay of
the moment Ronen’s young head was smashed like a sharp knife plunging into a
ripe melon, splitting Kevlar and steel until you could see the soft, sweet meat
that once directed hands to move turn the pages in a book, ears to hear
birdsong, a throat to swallow the favorite dish his mama always made him when
he came home on leave for Shabbat.
With
that slab in your hand, from high above, you were all about ending things and the
finality of hate. But Ronen was about possibility, a door-opener. His brother
Arik said so at his funeral. He would have done great things, Ronen, opened
many closed doors in his life. While you stood there, your mind seething with
hate and contemplating evil, Ronen saw doors and challenges and ways to move
forward.
Incurable
cancer. Could that have been Ronen’s great challenge? The closed door that no
one else could open?
Might
Ronen have someday discovered the cure for the cancer that would one day take
the life of his murderer, or perhaps the life of his murderer’s beloved mother?
The one who taught him to hate? To throw heavy slabs of stone on the heads of people
wearing a uniform she didn’t/he didn’t like?
Or
maybe the great closed door in Ronen’s life would be ending the violence: The Arab
war against the Jews. Perhaps that was the unbudgeable door that was closed to
Ronen, the door he felt he must open, the door that challenged him above all
others. Might he have come up with the plan that would open the door? The plan
that would end all the violence forever and all the hate?
The
plan that would mean no more marble slabs thrown from three stories up, to slam
down on the head of a boy too young to die. A boy who would have opened doors,
ended hate, cured cancer, loved well, fathered children. Who might have opened
doors, ended the violence, stopped the people who target those in a uniform
they don’t like with refrigerators, washing machines, furniture, and marble
slabs, while telling all those who hate like them that they have no arms, no
guns to defend themselves, as they stand on rooftops above the exposed heads of
those they hate, holding things too heavy to fall on the heads of boys.
