March 22, 2005

Alison on Aliyah:  Identity Crises and Unsolvable Dilemmas

            The other day, in one of my classes, we were given a dilemma to discuss.  It concerned a “hypothetical” Palestinian family who had grown up in a house in Haifa, which the father had built with his own hands.  They had been forced out by the Israeli army when Israel became an independent state, and they now live in a refugee camp outside of the borders of Israel.  They still have pictures of their home and proof that they built it.  Of course, a Jewish family lives in it now, and has for nearly half a century.  Indeed, several generations of this family have also grown up in this house.  And now the clincher:  whose home is it?

            We were asked to think about the dilemma and write down our feelings.  As soon as I put my pen to paper, I felt myself flowing out of it, words spilling onto the page almost faster than I could construct them.  “I feel a great deal of shame,” I wrote, mentioning the number of times I had heard the Palestinian students in my class draw parallels between the Holocaust-era expulsions of European Jewry and the actions of the Israeli army towards Palestinians.  I wrote about my internal conflict between wanting to tell the Palestinians to “suck it up,” just like Jews have had to do throughout history (i.e., we don’t see any Holocaust survivors sitting in a refugee camp outside of Krakow waiting to get their houses back), and wanting to apologize for what has been done to them.  I also expressed my feelings of utter helplessness and hopelessness about the situation, and how unsettling it feels to know there is no “right answer” to a dilemma such as this.

            Many of the other students expressed similar feelings of despondency and uncertainty.  What struck me most profoundly, however, was the “pronoun game” that was being played around our circle of students.  The Jewish students, understandably, used “we” when referring to Israelis, but also frequently in connection to the Israeli army, even though none of them had actually taken part in the activities we were discussing.  One Israeli Arab student referred to Palestinians with “we” and to Jews as “they” and even “you” when looking at us. 

            As I looked down at my paper, I saw that it was riddled with signs of my profound identity crisis.  I had used “we” to refer to Israeli Jews as well as Holocaust survivors; “they” when discussing both Palestinians and the Israeli army.  There were times that I couldn’t even distinguish between my feelings of identification, resorting to “we/they” in one sentence.  Even my use of “I” felt uncertain, at times referring to myself as American and at times as Israeli.

            It quickly dawned on me that I am swimming in uncertainty, unsure of where I fit in and with what I want to identify.  I realized that I have only recently begun to attempt a construction of my own Israeli identity, as a citizen and as a new immigrant and as a Zionist.  I have actively shunned my American identity, both by moving away physically and by vigorously disassociating myself from what I view as traditional American values.  But what am I left with?  I am in limbo between both worlds:  neither American nor Israeli; neither fully productive citizen nor uninitiated outsider; wholly accepted by neither culture.

            I have begun to look at my identity as a “melting pot” of constructions, few springing spontaneously from within and most having been taken almost by force from various other arenas.  I identify strongly with Zionist ideals, yet I was not brought up within this framework and have no one in my immediate relations with whom to share this.  I have a strong connection with Holocaust survivors, most specifically through my research work and friendships with many; however, I have no survivors within my family.  I cling strongly to my identity as a student and a scholar, all the while floundering in this sphere in my current life.

I am finding it impossible to associate myself with the “old me” from the “old country,” while similarly desperately searching for the “new me” in my new country.  It was only when I was asked to put myself into a dilemma that pits Jews against Palestinians, right-wing Zionists against liberals, that I realized how hopelessly outside of the situation I really am.  I cannot count how many times people have told me what a huge thing I did by making aliyah.  “You packed up everything you own, and left everyone you know, to settle in a foreign country,” they say, noting the courage they presume that must have required.  Only now have I begun to realize that the moving itself was the easy part, and really just the beginning.  The identity crises that have followed, and the struggling with my self-image and sense of self-knowledge – that’s the part that takes real courage and strength.