Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-02-22- 11:55 p.m.

Remembering Daniel Pearl

So they killed Daniel Pearl. Whoever “they” are. And they videotaped it, like something straight out of a mediocre action movie.
And if the reports are right, it happened something like this:
He looked into the camera, and he said his last words. “I am a Jew. My father was a Jew. My mother was a Jew.”
And at that moment, they slit his throat.
Not too long after I moved to New York, I met a girl named Corinne. She was a dancer with the American Ballet Theater. She and I became friends, and even dated a little. I met her mother one night when she was in town from San Francisco. One night, we went to a party at the apartment of some of her friends, and she got into an argument with her best friend. They were making a bit of a scene, so I tried to intervene, just to get her to calm down about it.
She turned to me, and in a voice like raw granite, said, “What the hell would you know about it? You’re just a fucking kike.”
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even really understand or believe what had just happened. I just went back into the living room and sat on the couch. For about half an hour. Then, I just got up, put on my coat, and walked out of the apartment. And I never said a goodbye, and I never spoke to her again. I couldn’t believe it really happened, and a part of me still can’t.
But, of course, it did, and it does.
I don’t photograph especially well, although there are a few pictures of me that I’m rather fond of. But my favorite photo ever taken of me is one with me in the uniform of the Israeli Defense Forces, with a M-16 in my hands. It isn’t an especially flattering picture; I look washed out, and more than a little exhausted. If I posted that photo in a personal ad, I doubt I’d get any callers. Although I suppose that could be said of pretty much any picture I might put in an ad.
I love America. I believe in the ideals on which this nation was founded, and I believe that those ideals live on today. We’re not living up to those ideals, I know, but I sincerely believe that we’re trying. I enjoy the privileges of being an American as well, and doubt I could truly make a home for myself in any other place. But I’ve never felt prouder than when I wore the uniform of a Jewish army.
I’ll never get over the World Trade Center falling. I’ll never get over the horror of it all, the panic about finding out if my friends in New York had survived, the long walk I made that day from my apartment on the Upper East Side down to St. Vincent’s hospital to give blood, the stench of the smoke that migrated all the way uptown to my block for the week to come. Too many people have written far better than I could about this; I won’t try to give you my words about it now, so long after it has all happened and just as we are all hopefully starting to heal a bit.
But there is one more thing about the attack on the Trade Center that I will never forget: that the very next day, all across the internet, claims were being spread that it was done by the Jews.
I was in Eilat in the south of Israel the night madmen blew up a building in Oklahoma City. We sat in a hotel room and watched CNN all night. When they caught Timothy McVeigh, they found out that he had done it to strike at the government, which he believed was being run by Zionists. He and his conspirators killed hundreds because they wanted to destroy the Jews.
There are less than fourteen million Jews in the world today. Total. Less than sixty years ago, the Nazis slaughtered over six million, a number that would represent almost a third of world Jewry today. And people still believe it didn’t happen, that it is simply “Zionist propaganda”. One hundred years ago, there were pogroms in Russia because they taught the people there that Jews made matzoh from the blood of Christian children. Today, in the West Bank, in Iran, in Syria, they teach children the same things. They call us dogs in children’s history books.
I wonder how many of us they will have to kill, and how few of us there will have to be, before we can stop being used as a scapegoat. Would we no longer be able to control the media in their eyes if there were only six million of us left? Could we no longer secretly run the government if there were only a million Jews? How about if we were a mere thousand?
Growing up in D.C., as a kid into hardcore music, I knew a lot of skinheads. I was a mildly tough kid in high school; at least, I didn’t shy away from a fight. After a fight at a show, one of the skinhead kids came up to me and told me I was pretty tough for a Jew.
People still think of us that way. People think the Jews are wimps, that we can’t fight, or that we won’t. We’re supposedly the smart ones. We’re good accountants and doctors. Which is why I’m so proud of that photo. Even if only for a brief time, I was a Jewish soldier. I was part of a group of Jews who could kick the shit out of whoever messed with us.
I too am a Jew. My mother is a Jew. My father is a Jew. And I’m proud to say it.
Come for me if you want then motherfuckers. I’m not ashamed, and I’m not afraid.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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