A tale of two tragedies: From Beitunia to Vienna on Nakba Day
Standing by, watching and listening, my blue ID card burning a hole in my bag, I suddenly understand Israel rather better than before: the extent of its hysterical paranoia, its red lines, its constant reliance on hatred for strength. This demonstration and the army’s response cry out that the fundamental founding reality of this country is one that Israelis are distantly aware of but cannot bear to face, like someone who has stepped on broken glass and dares not lift their foot to inspect the damage.
But there is no time to reflect on this in Beitunia, because we are back in the car on the way to Jerusalem. We do not know at that time that by the end of the afternoon, two Palestinian teenagers will have been shot dead, along with a third who is shot in the lung but survives. Our identity carousel spins again as we drive away: Muslim prayer beads swing from the rear-view mirror and Arabic music plays on the stereo. Eventually, after a traffic jam caused by road closures in Ramallah, we approach the entry back into Israel.
Two days later, surrounded by my family from around the world, and other people’s families from around the world, I listen to my great-grandmother’s niece describe to us all the last time she saw her father, before he was taken to a concentration camp in 1938. A survivor herself, she pays tribute to all those who were lost during the Holocaust, and tells us: “I want to say that their lives weren’t taken in vain, but they were. And today, the atrocities continue in other countries.”
The carousel revolves again. In this 76-year weekend I am standing in the street on which two teenagers are shot dead for remembering, killed in my name, and standing in the street where my family were rounded up and eventually killed for their name. A strange wind blows from one memory to another, one people to another, one history to another. They are two tragedies that dare not speak each other’s name, and they will forever be our shadows.
Their lives were taken in vain.
http://972mag.com/a-tale-of-two-tragedies-from-beitunia-to-vienna-on-nakba-day/106710/
= new reply since forum marked as read
or did the article touch a nerve or something? 
