INTERVIEW WITH JOY

Joy was born in Detroit, MI, finished college in the US then moved to Israel.

Joy: Before moving permanently from the US to Israel I thought about it a lot. I moved in 1973 and later married an Israeli kibbutznik, the grandson of second aliyah.

We live on Kibbutz Ein Harod, one of the oldest kibbutzim in the Eastern part of the Jezreel Valley with about another 300 families �a total of about 500 to 600 members. It is located about ten kilometers north east of the Palestinian town of Jenin. This kibbutz makes a living in high tech �night vision equipment �and agriculture. We have four children, two girls and two boys.

Since Israel has compulsory military service all our children have been or are in the army -- my youngest, Anat, is still in the army. She rides buses everywhere and witnesses lots of dangerous things. I feel she is vulnerable and insecure on buses and I�e offered to get her a car but she likes riding buses.  

My son Eyal got out the army in March 2004 so he served during the height of the violence from this second Intifada. Beni served in Lebanon with the Golani Brigade. Yael was a medic and has gone on to teach a medic course.  

When Beni was in Lebanon I didn� sleep well. I think any mother with a child in an active military area virtually stops breathing until that child comes home again. Three of Beni� friends and Army buddies were killed in Lebanon. Isn� that a terrible waste? Nothing good comes out of it.  

The past four years have been the hardest. I feel we�e in a psychologically untenable position in Israel but it seems we have no choice. The extremists in this country are developing policy and there� a sense that the rest of us can� do anything about it. 

I have a terrible sense of heaviness and sadness. When there are fewer attacks on Israelis I can block out those feelings but dissociation only goes so far.  

There is an overwhelming majority of people in Israel who want peace but when great violence occurs, as in the bombing of the hotel on Pesach in March 2002, people get really frightened and they tend to vote toward the right, even leftists do that when fear overtakes them.  

I think everybody is living with psychological trauma now. I know that there are days when I don� want to go out of my house. In our area we don� have the concrete wall separating Israel from the West Bank (Palestine) but we do have a wire fence that follows the green line [the border with Palestine]. It has cut down on the trouble we�e had as a lot of suicide bombers came out of Jenin. Now things are quieter in this region.  

Our kibbutz just has a night guard from 7pm to 4am. During the worst part of the Intifada, April 2002,  we had a security guard 24/7. There is an area citizens' patrol that is coordinated with the border police and that existed before this Intifada when there was a lot of agricultural theft. My husband volunteers for this once a month from 6pm to midnight and they patrol in jeeps.

I feel bad for the Palestinians �its hard not to. But most Israelis don� have any contact with Palestinians; there is so much hatred and distrust. I don� understand how someone could become a suicide bomber.  

If I didn� live in this land and I was reading about it from a distance I� wonder why people choose to live here. But as someone living here I feel I have no other possibilities. I�e thought about going back to the States but my husband won� hear of it. He� very much part of this land. He� a war hero and his politics are the same as mine but he has a much higher tolerance for uncertainty than I do.  

I�e joined various groups, including Bat Shalom. For a while I was going to Jenin to work with a women� peace group but with the second Intifada that became harder to do. Also, I feel some of these groups don� deal with my specific concerns and needs. Others groups see things in very black and white terms and don� deal with the complexity of the situation. I� not comfortable with that. At one group I said, � like the fence. It has cut down on a lot of violence. Does this mean I can� be part of this group?�o:p>  

While I hold all kinds of negative feelings about the usefulness of my political activity, I feel I must do something. But, sometimes, I feel as impotent as many of our political parties have become.  

During the latest wave of violence I have felt very alone and isolated. The worst thing is feeling a loss of hope. I grew up during the height of belief about the American values of integration, pluralistic education, and people of all backgrounds mixing. During the 1960s I was anti-military and anti-war and I really believed we could change things. Now, I� feeling more and more pessimistic. This affects my day-to-day functioning. After one terrible incident I felt I couldn� do anything, I felt almost paralyzed. It affected my performance at work and my being with my family.  

In Israel there is very much a war hero mentality, especially on kibbutzim where so many kibbutzniks succeed in the military and so many are killed. In other countries parents boast about their children becoming doctors or lawyers but in Israel, parents praise their children as fighter pilots and for their military exploits. This mentality will not allow criticism. Refuseniks, for example, have a right to do what they believe is right but our society has a real problem with people refusing to participate in military service.  

Some time ago, thirteen Israeli Arabs were shot dead by the military. I believed that was very wrong; we can� just shoot people like that. When I stated that opinion, people acted like I was a traitor. I felt vindicated when, three years later, an independent commission said the same thing.  

When I was in college in 1968 I attended a speech about Apartheid by South African Desmond Tutu. I liked what he said and over the years I watched as South Africa went through their violent period then turned things around in 1994. There was Desmond Tutu, now an Archbishop, talking about the long journey that country had made. I believe if South Africa can do it, Israel can do it too.