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LIVED THROUGH THIS
I Was a Zionist Until I Fell in Love
Hate is harder when we see each other’s humanity
1987My freshman year at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The First Intifada had just begun. Young Arabs with keffiyehs around their necks stood at a long table near the cafeteria’s exit, a Palestinian flag hanging behind them.
“Sign the petition! Free Palestine!”
They terrified me; I walked by as fast as I could. To me, a keffiyeh stood for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Palestinians weren’t human beings, they were terrorists. Right in front of me, in real life.
I wasn’t alone. The main student cafeteria, the Marvin Center, had its own imaginary Green Line. Arab students sat on one side, American Jews on the other. Cross at your own risk.
I was 19, born and raised in a conservative Jewish home. My dad and I often walked to synagogue, most of my friends were Jewish. I went to Hebrew school, had a bat mitzvah, read from the Torah. My best teenage memories are from my conservative youth group, United Synagogue Youth (USY).
I was also a Zionist. I spent the summer of 1985 in Israel. On Shabbat, I attended an orthodox synagogue; I participated in Gadna, the Israeli military youth program. I planned to return, enlist in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), make Aliyah to Israel.
I planned to major in foreign affairs and go into the diplomatic corps. I studied Hebrew; I would help solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. But when I got to GWU and saw all these Arab students, I stayed away from them. They were not partners in peace, they were my enemy.
Then I met Ramzi Jamal, and everything changed.
Ramzi was a business major who tutored some of my friends. I’d see him around campus. This adorable, chubby, olive-skinned man with a head of tight black curls and an unrelenting smile. My friends—all Jewish—loved him: “Oh, he’s different, he’s not a real Arab.”
Of course he was a real Arab. What they meant was he’s an actual human being. And he was impossible to hate.
1989. My junior year. I had given up dreams of solving the Middle East conflict and changed…
