Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

I should be becoming desensitized.  After all the violence and inhumanity I’ve seen I shouldn’t really expect much.  After all, I was born into war and its consequences.  Some of the gorier details I experienced as a child still resurface even now.  But it has only served to make me more fearful of harming others, more vulnerable, to the point where I cannot trust my own reasoning.   It’s not always the right way to go, but I don’t seem to be capable in this situation of other behavior.  In a different situation I could probably react differently.  Take my aunt, for instance.  The one who became a partisan blowing up trains.  Her children were bashed against the wall before her eyes.  Both babies.  How could she have become anything but a partisan?  In my case the enemy is vague, unseen, impersonal, and sometimes even the concept of enemy is not at all clear.