Ethnic relations

After an IRC conversation about ethnic relations in Israel I started thinking... it's been 60 years, and I still wouldn't trust my grandma Riva around Germans with a semi-automatic weapon.

Distance helps. I remember my grandma's stories about how a couple of Polish officers were torturing her brother in front of her. These people could, in theory, be Yoe's or Joy's great-grandfathers, although they probably weren't. It does not matter, and does not affect the way I relate to Joy or Yoe. Even if we actually found out that their great-grandfathers were indeed the officers that tortured my grand-uncle, we'd just marvel at the coincidence (at least I would, can't speak for Joy or Yoe) and have a drink. But I think it would have been different if we were both still living where our ancestors were living at the time. We would have inherited the enmity, at least in all probability. I would, anyway. I don't know why it works this way.

I thought about this before, when Oska (my father) and I were stopped for a chat by some magazine-selling Palestinians on Kärtnerstrasse in Vienna. They were completely normal people, and did not want to live in Palestine any more than we wanted to live in Israel, and it was strange to think that maybe some cousin of theirs will kill some cousin of mine tomorrow, or maybe even the other way around, and here we are peacefully chatting about life in Austria.