David Har­ris-Ger­shon is Grand­SLAM sto­ry­telling win­ner for The Moth as well as a pop­u­lar blog­ger on Pales­tin­ian-Israeli issues for Tikkun mag­a­zine, a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Dai­ly Kos, and a peri­od­ic essay­ist for The Jerusalem Post. His mem­oir, What Do You Buy the Chil­dren of the Ter­ror­ist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?: A Mem­oir of Jerusalem (Oneworld Pub­li­ca­tions), is now avail­able. He will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

My recent­ly-pub­lished mem­oir, What Do You Buy the Chil­dren of the Ter­ror­ist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, chron­i­cles the sto­ry of my rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with the fam­i­ly of the bomber who per­pe­trat­ed the 2002 Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty ter­ror attack – an attack which injured my wife and killed the two friends with whom she was sitting. 

It is the sto­ry of how, suf­fer­ing from PTSD-like symp­toms in the attack­’s wake, I sought a meet­ing with the Hamas bomber upon learn­ing that he had unprece­dent­ed­ly expressed remorse to Israeli author­i­ties upon his capture.

It was a meet­ing I sought not out of revenge, but out of desperation.

To some, my sto­ry is a dan­ger­ous one – that is, if you view sto­ries of peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, sto­ries that human­ize both Pales­tini­ans and Jews, as exis­ten­tial threats to Israel’s sur­vival. Appar­ent­ly, some do. Which is why, when the New York Post recent­ly named my mem­oir as a must-read,” a blog­ger for The Times of Israel penned an arti­cle enti­tled, Is the New York Post Sup­port­ing the End of Israel?

With­in the arti­cle, I am char­ac­ter­ized as an anti-Semi­te whose writ­ing could come from Hamas’ Edi­to­r­i­al Team” because, appar­ent­ly, any writ­ing that cri­tiques Israel and human­izes Pales­tini­ans is cham­pi­oning Israel’s destruction.

For those who view the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict as a zero-sum game, in which only one side can emerge vic­to­ri­ous, my book is indeed dan­ger­ous. It’s threat­en­ing. Even ter­ri­fy­ing. Which is why it has inspired writ­ers like the one at TOI to levy the anti-Semi­tism’ charge against me – a charge meant to shut down polit­i­cal dia­logue and debate on a most impor­tant issue. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when the anti-Semi­tism’ charge is employed in this way, it means lit­tle more than this: I dis­agree with your pol­i­tics. And this usage, which is noth­ing more than a scare tac­tic, actu­al­ly dilutes what is a very real and dan­ger­ous prej­u­dice which con­tin­ues to per­sist globally. 

In truth, it’s not so dif­fer­ent from what the Tea Par­ty did recent­ly dur­ing the gov­ern­ment shut­down. In that case, you had politi­cians will­ing to lever­age dam­ag­ing the Unit­ed States in order to pro­mote their extrem­ist, unsus­tain­able demands. It was noth­ing but a destruc­tive tantrum which, in the end, cost the U.S. econ­o­my $24 bil­lion and .5 per­cent GDP in pro­ject­ed growth.

So too are mis­placed charges of anti-Semi­tism by Amer­i­can Jews who stand out­side the main­stream. They are noth­ing more than polit­i­cal tantrums intend­ed to destroy rep­u­ta­tions and silence debate on an issue that needs to be dis­cussed: how to peace­ful­ly resolve a con­flict which must end so that each side emerges vic­to­ri­ous.’

How to bring res­o­lu­tion so that each peo­ple, both deserv­ing self-deter­mi­na­tion, can live in a coun­try of their own?

An anti-Semit­ic notion, no? 

Keep up with David Har­ris-Ger­shon here.


David Har­ris-Ger­shon is Grand­SLAM sto­ry­telling win­ner for The Moth as well as a pop­u­lar blog­ger on Pales­tin­ian-Israeli issues for Tikkun mag­a­zine, a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Dai­ly Kos, and a peri­od­ic essay­ist for The Jerusalem Post. He received his MFA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, Wilm­ing­ton, and has pub­lished work in numer­ous venues, includ­ing Col­orado Review, the Pitts­burgh Post-Gazette, and Pas­sages North. He lives with his fam­i­ly in Pittsburgh.