Since my return from the Land of the Dead, my friends have been phoning to hear my voice. They all say I sound better than before and this afternoon Big Abe called from $7th Street to say that he had seen an advertisement online for a Shabbat Goy ie that is a gentile to turn on the lights and anything else during the weekly Holy Day. I laughed and he asked if I had any clients selling jewelry for the holidays.
“Zal zeyn.” Maybe was a better answer than no, which was more the truth.
“You get someone I’ll cut you in.”
“I get someone, I’ll show them the stone and I’ll give you a piece.” I had to find new customers. Most of my old clients thought I was dead and my new young friends had no interest in diamonds, since their only possessions were their phones and the attached apps.
Our conversations immediately vectored to Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack.
“I don’t want to hear any history. There are only three possibilities; occupation of Gaza, genocide, or re-set.”
“We have to right to defend Israel.”
“Yes, but there is not one Hassidim serving in the IDF.”
“I’m religious and not Hassidim.”
“I know this, but this does not affect the outcomes. The IDF gave up on occupying Gaza. It’s too expensive and deadly for the young troops.”
“The IDF is the best troops in the Middle East.”
“Except that Shin Bet has trained them to shoot stone throwers instead of fighting 20,000 gunman.” The border troops had been stripped by the PM before October 7 and 15,000 fighters had flooded the Negev to wreak bloody havoc.
“Now the IDF will teach them a lesson.”
“Zal zeyn.”
“Yesterday troops had occupied the al-Shifa hospital and found fifteen AK47s and computers with Arab videos of October 7. There were no fighters in the tunnels.
“Never again.”
“The Holocaust, no. Never, but one of the solutions and Netanyahu’s options is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and march the Palestinians en masse into the desert where they will perish in the winter like the Turks did to the Armenians in 1915.”
“What?”
Abe like most people possessed a very limited history sculpted by their side. Everything was colored by the Holocaust, one of the many attempts by the Gentiles to exterminate the Christ Killers.
We would never do that.”
“So occupation and genocide are out, leaving only reset.”
“Reset?”
“Yes, start from the beginning. Before October 7, the Infatidas, the wars, back to before the Partition of Palestine and redraw the land. There are more than two people, so create one nation with rights for all people. Peace is the only outcome. Humane outcome, but no one wants peace now. So it’s back to genocide.”
“The wisdom of the Shabbat Goy, feh.”
“I am also a sheygutz.” It was a perjorative term for a goy, but also offered the connotation of a wise starker or tough guy. Before my operation I had been both. Gedenk tat.” I intoned a South Shore accent with a touch of Yiddish.
“That you are.”
Shalom.” The word meant peace in Hebrew and Arabic.
I hung up hoping for a customer or a G, which meant Goyim on the street. Peace was my mission. It was an impossibility, but so had been my chances for life. Gut glik far ale. It was the only way to go.