The Other Side of Israel, Susan Nathan. Israel

@brittarnhild

Last summer, during the St. Olav Festival in Trondheim, there was an open meeting with the title "The Middle East - the knot of the world. Political Christendom, political Judaism, political Islam" One of the speakers were Susan Nathan. Nathan is a British born Jew who left Britain in 1999 to take up the "Law of Return" which were offered to all Jews around the world.  Through her childhood and adult life until then, she lived with the belief shared by so many - Israel is the promised land for Jews. Most of her Jewish family lives in South Africa, a fact which had made Nathan aware of rascism from her early childhood. She was totally unprepared though to meet rascisim in Israel, the promised land.

Not long after she came to Israel she took an extraordinary decision. She moved from Tel Aviv to Tamra, a town of 25.000 Muslims. Here Nathan witness the hardship the Muslims are living under.

The book has the subtitle - My Journey Across the Jewish - Arab Divide, and is a brave, open minded tale about life in Israel, for Jews and for Muslims. I don´t want to put myself on a spesific side in this "knot of the world" conflict. When asked I always say that I am on the side of the people, both the Jewish and the Muslims. I know there are wrongs on both sides, severe wrongs. It might be too easy to not to take side, but which side am I to take as long as there are children, woman, men involved?

I want to share with you the last paragraph in the book:

I realise as I finish wriitng the book that my journey was not really about crossing a divide, but about a far harder journey: one in which I have learned that the divide is really an illusion. It is an artefact we have created in our imaginations - just as we have built a concrete wall in the West Bank - to protect us from the truth. It is not about living in Tamra or Tel Aviv, or for that matter Umm al-Fahm or Jenin. It is not about where we live, but about how we live. It is about learning to look honestly at the places we inhabit and want to call ours, to understand the past, and to face up to the crimes committed in our names. Then we Jews will be ready to apologise and to reach out a welcoming hand across the divide. To embrace the Other, who is really ourselves.