OK, I will do this.
I am Jewish, a term I define as exclusively racial and completely divorced from organized or personal worship of ancient literature. I spent the first 17 years of my life in a Soviet school where I was taught that Israel doesn't exist. Literally...
In its place, I was told, exists an illegal, imperialist, militarist, American puppet pseudo-state whose very existence, besides being a temporary historical error, automatically makes potential traitors and defectors of people like me, documented, registered racial Jews...
The fact that socialist, revolutionary, freedom-loving Arab states would eventually, with a brotherly helping hand of the great Soviet people (their non-Jewish part, at least), remove this cancer from the world's map was an unquestioned predestination that we were taught as such.
Mere mentioning of the word "Israel" was considered scandalous. When a Soviet basketball team played Maccabi Tel-Aviv in the European League, the announcers would never mention the opponents. Not the team name, not the players. They'd just be refered to as "the opposition"...
The only context in which a loyal Soviet citizen could utter the word Israel was when addressing a Jew with the standard "Your lot should go to your fucking Israel." It mattered not that I didn't believe the word of the Old Testament. My Jewishness was issued to me by the state.
When I left the state behind, I was relieved by no longer having to be embarrassed for being a Jew. Though I still haven't shed it completely. I still feel like it's a less than desirable thing to be. This will stay with me forever.
So will my atheism, though I am fine with it.
I have also come to be proud of Israel. Proud of the fact that my people, which were led as sheep to the slaughter and stereotyped as pathetic weaklings, had an ass-kicking army that could stand up to much more numerous opposition.
I also came to view Israel as insurance policy..
A place where we could go in case whatever country we currently live in once again decides that we make irresistible scapegoats and slaughter animals. And no country in the world is immune to this.
So, having Israel out there was (and is) nice...
I also came to be unapologetically pro-Israel's-existence. And I won't deny that it's because of my roots. I am not an objective observer. I am a Jew who knows full well why this country exists. I support my people's survival, physical and cultural.
I am honest about my bias...
I also wish people like @IlhanMN (who is a hero of mine in some ways) admitted their bias on the issue as well. But it's their business.
I have also come to be frustrated by Israel. By it's abusive relationship with the right wing and the religious zealots. By its inflexibility..
By its borderline fascistic Russian-speaking community. By its comically inept soccer team.
And this is where my feelings have emerged.
Arabs aren't going anywhere. They will be a part of the region, and of Israel, forever. And Israel needs to find a way to let them live in peace
We're terribly bad at holocausting other folks, so there is no other way here.
And here is what Arabs and the rest of the world needs to understand: Israel is not going anywhere either. It's not cancer, it's not a historical error, it's not an imperialist colonial crime syndicate
It's a fully established, viable nation, which resurrected a dead language, developed a unique culture, built its own economy and has fucking nukes.
You will not get rid of it, no matter how many companies you boycott or how many campus sit-ins you take part in.
It will stay.
You can shame Jews for living on stolen land (presumably after you donate your house to a Native American tribe), you can worship Hamas and Hezbollah (and their bud Putin), but Israel won't go anywhere.
So, you have to learn to live with it, too.
And while I wish we all learned to live without religion, I'd start with having all sides just acknowledge this one stupid fact: that nobody is going anywhere and both sides have the right to exist, legitimately.
It's not hard. It's easy. You ain't goddamn Soviets. You can do it.

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More from @SlavaMalamud

11 May
That is patently not true. Israel was founded by secular, mostly atheistic socialists who had a radical idea that maybe it's better for them, as Jews, to live somewhere where folks don't want to slaughter them all the time.
Then, they had the temerity to defend themselves...
What has happened since is, of course, another story. They were assaulted on all sides by religious fanatics who would not tolerate non-Muslims living alongside them, then became corrupted from within by their own zealots.
Eliminating religion once and for all would help.
Like, honestly, the entire two-state solution idea was scrapped because the two sides couldn't agree about what to do with the "holy city" of Jerusalem. Here is a fucking proposal: knock down the old shit, build some housing and businesses and soccer arenas.
Then, split it up.
Read 9 tweets
10 May
Wait, what does America's ranking 36th in math (waaaay too high, I think) have to do with teaching history?
As a former Soviet and American student and a current American educator, let me tell you that I am terribly upset about the state of math education here as well.
From my own experience (and I love my students and don't blame them), in about a generation or two an average American adult will not be able to count past 7 to say nothing of performing basic math operations.
I am frankly floored that America still knows how many states it's got
However, I always loved how American schools teach liberal arts. Again, in my own experience, history/politics teachers in American schools invite debate, encourage free thought and expression, promote fact research and present different view points.
I loved this as a student!
Read 5 tweets
10 May
Over the last 10 years, the #Sabres:
1) Tanked a season
2) Broke O'Reilly's will to live then gave him away for nothing because he cared
3) Ruined Evander Kane
4) Ruined Skinner
5) Ruined Okposo
6) Absolutely destroyed Eichel through sheer stupidity
This franchise needs to die
And I have only done these 6 because of the character limit. You can trace the tale of misery to the 2008 Drury/Briere clusterfuck, since it's been pretty much a single uninterrupted horror show, with maybe the Vezina year to break the pattern once.
What an incredible disaster.
Add in the fact that this timeframe also encompassed the Slug and Turdburger jerseys and Ville Leino, and the picture is complete. There have been sad-sack franchises before. There has never been anything approaching this level of malignant ineptitude crossing into fraud.
Read 4 tweets
10 May
He has demanded a trade, for sure, and I will be supremely surprised if he plays another game in this dumpster-fire of an organization.
They tanked an entire season and condemned themselves to more than a decade of horribleness to get this kid. And utterly ruined him.
Nobody has ever been this gone in the history of being gone. He is more gone than the dodo. He is more gone than the Soviet Union. He is farther and more irretrievably gone than the Republican Party.
He has just redefined being gone.
He couldn't be any more in Boston if he were buried on Bunker Hill. He couldn't be any more not in Buffalo if his name were Stanley Lobmardi. He couldn't be more gone if he were Marvin K. Mooney at the end of his own sad tale of horror.
Read 4 tweets
9 May
Today, Russia celebrates Victory Day. Germany capitulated on 5/8, but it was past midnight in Moscow, and Russians, who wound up calling the war Great Patriotic, are a bit Russo-centric.
I've promised a thread about another personal connection to this long-ago horror. Here it is.
Despite the festivities, the jingoistic bacchanalia of aggressive militarism that are the hallmarks of Putin-era VD celebrations, to me, it is always the saddest of holidays. A day that commemorates an existential tragedy that left no Soviet family untouched.
Last year, I told the story of my grandpas, real, bona fide, decorated heroes, a marine and a comms specialist, who went through the worst of the meatgrinder and came back to make sure I exist.
My parents' generation are Miracle Children. It took huge luck
Read 23 tweets
13 Apr
Let's do that baseball.
Currently explaining to my kid why you want your best on-base guys to be 1 and 2 in the lineup and your best power guys 3 and 4, and I feel like I built the fucking Statue of Liberty, invented the hot dog and won the Civil Motherfucking War.
It's 4-4, but Slava's offspring is predicting a "two-point loss." He might not be a baseball expert, but he knows how the story goes...
Read 5 tweets

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