Mayim Bialik: It’s Hard to Write Anything With Israel on My Mind

Besides the fact that I am recovering from major hand surgery, I am finding it difficult to write these days. I am using a dictation program as well as utilizing Fancy Assistant Brandon’s typing skills, so it’s not that I have no way to communicate with the outside world.

The problem is with Israel. It’s on my mind pretty much all of the time. When the three teenagers were kidnapped a month ago, it was on my mind. When they were found murdered and left in an open field, it was on my mind. When Jewish extremists burned a Palestinian teenager alive in retribution, it was on my mind.

What is also on my mind is the plight of the Palestinian people; the innocent people caught in the crossfire of Hamas, a military and political entity which calls for the explicit destruction of the state of Israel as part of their official charter. What is also on my mind are the hundreds of thousands of Jews and Arabs in Israel being shelled with rockets from every border. What is also on my mind is my family and my friends and their children and their grandchildren being ushered into bomb shelters when sirens blare. 

What is on my mind is the very real war in Gaza and Israel and also the public relations war that is raging in the Middle East. Israel is losing this war because of bureaucracy and fear and denial. I wish all of the Israel haters would learn more about Israel. And I wish all of the Arab haters would stop hating in the name of religion.

I wish no one cared what celebrities think about the situation in Israel. I wish people would stop posting things on social media about what a horrible person I am because I am a Jew. And about how all Israel supporters are Nazis and hate Palestinian children and want them dead. Because that’s just wrong and ridiculous.

I watched “Braveheart” a few nights ago for the first time. I instantly fell in love with it, even as so many people in my life express varying shades of shock and dismay that I would support a Mel Gibson movie, you know, “because he’s a raging anti-Semite.”

Even watching “Braveheart” brings me back to Israel. Is Mel Gibson really an anti-Semite? Are the people who hate me for being Jewish because I support the right of Israel to exist anti-Semitic? Is the freedom that William Wallace fought and died for 1000 years ago in Scotland the same freedom that the Palestinian people fight for? And is that freedom the same as the freedom for Israeli citizens to live without rockets falling on you and without your neighbors rallying actively for you to be pushed into the sea simply because you exist as a Jew?

I will try to turn my frown upside down for next week. I will try and tell you some of the fun and funny things that have gone on as I am recovering from surgery. My hairless cat is endlessly amusing. My sons are complicated and delightful and delicious. There is so much goodness and there is so much joy in this world. But this week, I am having trouble putting that into words.

I have been listening to David Broza’s “Yi’hiyeh Tov” a lot right now. I can’t help it. Here is the song and here is the translation:

I look out of the window
and it makes me very sad
Spring has left
who knows when it will return
The clown has become a king
the prophet has become a clown
and I have forgotten the way
but I am still here

And all will be good
Yes, all will be good
though I sometimes break down
But this night
oh, this night
I will stay with you

Children wear wings
and fly off to the army
And after two years
they return without an answer
People live under stress
looking for a reason to breathe
and between hatred and murder
they talk about peace

And all will be good…

Yes up there in the sky
clouds are learning how to fly
and I look up
and see a hijacked airplane
A government of generals
divide the land
to whats theirs and ours
and when will we see the end?

Here comes the prince of Egypt
oh how I rejoiced for him
there are pyramids in our eyes
and peace in his pipe
And we said let’s complete it
and we’ll live as brothers
and he then said let’s advance
going out from the shtachim

And all will be good…

We will yet learn to live together
between the groves of olive trees
Children will live without fear
without borders, without bomb-shelters
On graves grass will grow
for peace and love
One hundred years of war
but we have not lost hope

And all will be good…

I look out of my window
maybe it will come:
A new day

Every week, the Sabbath provides us an opportunity to hit our reset button. Let us hope for an end to the war in the Middle East for the Israeli Jews and the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians and the larger Arab world that seeks peace and coexistence. Let us hope to start new next week. And may this Shabbat truly be a Shabbat Shalom: a Sabbath of peace.

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