Conflict stirs deep passion across Hub

Israeli police helped a woman in the southern border town of Sderot yesterday after a rocket attack from Gaza. (Menahem Kahana/ AFP/ Getty Images)

Tahir Hussain recently returned from what he said was the most moving experience of his life, a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he saw millions of fellow Muslims from across the world praying in peace. Yesterday, at a Lebanese take-out shop in Allston, his eyes were riveted by images of bomb blasts and rubble coming from a television on the wall that was showing Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

"Everybody was getting along so beautifully and so peacefully, and then I come back here and I see this, it just hurts me so deeply," he said of his Dec. 15 return. Yesterday, he said, he prayed for peace at 5:30 a.m. at the Islamic Society of Boston's mosque in Roxbury, then wrote an anguished e-mail to US Senator John F. Kerry.

The Israeli bombings in Gaza, and the Hamas rocket attacks that Israel says provoked the assault, have unleashed visceral responses across the city. Arabs and Israelis, Jews and Muslims watched with horror, outrage, and, in some cases, hardened determination and hope as the third day of assaults continued. There have been protests and arguments, in the Jewish neighborhood around Coolidge Corner, and outside Kerry's office in downtown Boston. More demonstrations are planned this week. But for many, the attacks set off private turmoil, as they read and watched the devastation unfolding in one of the most emotionally charged regions of the world.

"I'm very upset," said Miriam Natan, an Israeli woman who was working at the Israel Book Shop in Brookline and who lost a brother in Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon. "Both sides are not going to benefit from it."

Like many Israelis, Natan said she believed Israel was finally "fed up" with the barrage of rocket attacks that Hamas has been firing on towns in southern Israel in recent years. But she was skeptical that Israel's response - which has produced hundreds of casualties and thousands of injuries - was going to make Israel safer.

"Both sides are going to lose people, and we have to continue to live next to each other for years to come," she said. "I hope this is going to be over soon and somehow that we can get into an agreement and talk. Because war never accomplishes anything. . . . It also brings bitterness for Jews and Arabs that live here."

Many on both sides of the issue felt misunderstood and lashed out at demonstrators with opposing views. Some reacted harshly to the international condemnation of Israel, venting long-held frustrations.

George Saxe, 70, who works at the Butcherie, a nearby grocery store stocked with Israeli products, said criticism of Israel's assault from the United Nations and others was "very disheartening, very distressing, and very unfair."

"Israel can't win - even the UN is against them - it's crazy, it's a one-sided issue," he said. "They gave them back the whole strip and what do they do? They throw rockets in there! You can't deal with people like that. If it was me, I'd take an A-bomb and wipe them out."

Dor Juravski, 32, an Israeli informational technology worker who was shopping at the Butcherie, said, "I have tons of things to say. I could talk for hours and hours about it."

For one thing, Juravski said, "Some of my best friends here are Palestinians. We miss the same culture, food, openness, and we can solve our problems here."

Like others with ties to the Middle East, Juravski said he found himself tuning in to Al-Jazeera. He said the Arab network depicted Israel's assault as a direct response to rocket fire from Hamas, which he felt was missing from some American coverage.

"They say Israel is doing bad things over there. They’re right, but it’s not balanced to look at one timeline beginning from when Israel does it and not look back at what caused it," he said. "Show the other side as well."

He said he was frustrated that those protesting Israel's response did not speak out against the rocket fire from Hamas. "Why didn't they shout a week before that, when civilians and kindergartners were shot by rockets on purpose, as opposed to us trying to pinpoint the culprits" and mistakenly killing innocent civilians in the process.

Outside Kerry's office, two dozen people protested Israel's response. "Over 300 dying in just two days - it made me sick," said Helmy Mostafa, 28, a Milwaukee native and orthodontic resident at Boston University. "I felt like when you're so upset it affects your whole body. That’s how I felt. It's the worst. It's a massacre. There's no other way of describing it, regardless of where you come from."

Salma Abu Ayyash, 40, a Palestinian engineer and translator who grew up in Jordan, said she, like "every human being with a conscience," is simply opposed to violence.

"This is not an issue of balance or a conflict with equal sides," she said. "This is a situation that's been going on for 60 years. Palestinians have been experiencing violence from Israel for 60 years. You have suicide bombers, you have whatever you call it, but we’ve been experiencing state terrorism for 60 years. Palestinians have been starved, humiliated at checkpoints. There's incredible violence. It's very important for people to stop thinking this is a conflict between equal sides. You have the fourth strongest army on this earth fighting a helpless, armless people."

Among the adamant voices with hardened opinions, though, were many less certain there is any clarity to be found amid the bombs and bloodshed.

"It's not so easy to go out and say, 'OK I side with them or I side with them,' " said Mayer Krochmal, a 30-year-old clerk at the Israel Book Shop who said he has "tons of friends" in Israel but is torn about who is right. "I do feel bad for the Palestinian people who I think do not side with Hamas. . . . I think there's a large contingent of people who just want to live a normal life, but unfortunately the extremists have the guns. . . . This is just another conflict in another endless stream of conflict."