Walt and Ram, chapter five

“How ya’ doin’ this mornin’?” inquired Ram as Walt approached their bench, sport­ing his usu­al cane, this one with a sil­ver knob for a handle.

“Not bad, Ram.  Can’t com­plain on a day like today.” 

The sky was a bril­liant blue, almost cobalt, with scud­ding cir­rus clouds snaking their slow way west to east.

“Yeah,” respond­ed Ram, “Looks like the rest of the day is going to be a good one, not too hot, nice breezes.”

Walt had tak­en his seat, prop­ping the cane to his right.

“What kin­da wood is the cane?” Ram inquired, intrigued by the streams of dark and light run­ning the length of the shaft.

“Cocobolo,” said Walt, let­ting his hand gen­tly caress the work of art.  “Comes from Central America and the nat­ur­al oils pro­vide a water­proof polish.”

“Pretty,” offered Ram.

The two sat in silence for a brief inter­lude, just enjoy­ing the soft breezes that flut­tered the near­by tree leaves and the warm touch of the ear­ly morn­ing sun.

“Walt, I wan­na ask some­thing, and I hope it won’t strain our friend­ship or upset you,” Ram broke the silence.

“I can’t imag­ine any­thing that would do either, Ram.  Got a burr under your saddle?”

“No, not that so much, my friend.  Just won­der­ing how you might feel about some­thing, con­sid­er­ing the fact that you’re Jewish.”

“Oh, so my Jewishness is now becom­ing a thing between us?” chid­ed Walt, teas­ing Ram.

“No, no, no,” Ram quick­ly inter­ject­ed.  “But I want­ed to dis­cuss some­thing about Israel with you and fig­ured you might have a spe­cial take on it, com­pared to an old sec­u­lar­ist like me.”

“So?”  Walt wait­ed for Ram to continue.

“Ya know,” Ram con­tin­ued, “the gov­ern­ment of Israel has become quite con­ser­v­a­tive and seems to be con­tin­u­ous­ly forc­ing Palestinians out of their homes so that Jewish set­tle­ments can move in.  It almost seems like the Palestinians are being forced into ghet­tos, and I can’t help won­der­ing how the Israelis can accom­mo­date that con­cept con­sid­er­ing the his­to­ry of what so many of them endured dur­ing the War, espe­cial­ly in places like Warsaw.

“I’ll be truth­ful with you, Walt, I’ve nev­er believed that Israel was a legit­i­mate nation.  I mean, I don’t under­stand what author­i­ty the UN had in 1948 to sim­ply declare that this was a nation to be carved out of Palestine.

“I can’t help won­der­ing if all that wasn’t just a uni­ver­sal guilt over how the rest of the world ignored what the Nazis were doing to Jews.  I know there are many, many Jews who always con­sid­ered Palestine to be “their” right­ful home, but Israel hadn’t exist­ed as a nation for two thou­sand years and sud­den­ly declar­ing it as a home for Jews would be like the UN telling the U.S. gov­ern­ment that it has to return all the coun­try to Native Americans.

“I’m sor­ry, Walt, but this whole thing just seems so incred­i­bly strange and unfair and so much of the sup­port from the U.S. to Israel seems to be based on noth­ing more than bib­li­cal considerations.

“Does all that make it seem too sim­ple?  I must be miss­ing something.”

“Well, that prob­a­bly does over­sim­pli­fy the whole Mideast thing but, to be truth­ful, I may not be a typ­i­cal Jew in the sense that I real­ly can’t jus­ti­fy what is hap­pen­ing to the Palestinians, the way their homes and land are being tak­en, the way they’re being treat­ed as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens in a land that belonged to them for millennia.

“Of course, I’ve nev­er lived in Israel, so my take on the sub­ject may be as skewed as any­one else’s, despite my faith.

“But I have to agree with you about how Israel was formed.  As far as I know, it’s the only coun­try formed strict­ly based on reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. And that whole Balfour Declaration thing must have trig­gered the events in 1948 along with uni­ver­sal guilt for the six mil­lion Jews killed dur­ing the War.

“The whole bloody thing is just too ludi­crous.  Take an Israeli and a Palestinian, strip them both naked and stand them side by side and you’d nev­er be able to tell the dif­fer­ence; they’re all cut from the same genet­ic cloth.

“I guess, in the final analy­sis, reli­gion is always going to trump rationale.

“I sure don’t have a solu­tion. But I sus­pect that if the U.S. would tell Israel that all our sup­port is going away if they take anoth­er acre of Palestinian land, it might have some influ­ence on bring­ing them to their senses.

“One thing I do know is that pri­or to 1948 Jews and Palestinians were liv­ing side-by-side in rel­a­tive peace and pros­per­i­ty.  It’s a shame it can’t be that way now.”

Both men sat qui­et­ly for a while before Walt broke the silence.

“Anything else, my sec­u­lar friend?” he asked, some­what whimsically. 

“No, Walt.  Thanks.  I think I’m a bit sur­prised by your reply, but then I’m not sure exact­ly how I expect­ed you would reply.  I cer­tain­ly agree with you about the fact that they can’t seem to live togeth­er in peace.  Maybe in the next lifetime.”

“Maybe,” mused Walt, a brief look of sad­ness cross­ing his face.

“Well,” said Ram.  “Guess I’ll see you next time.  Gonna have a dif­fer­ent cane with you?”

“Naturally,” respond­ed Walt as he and Ram both rose from the bench.

As Walt walked away Ram noticed that he seemed to be walk­ing just a bit more bent over than normal.