This is an excerpt from the 2014 novel, Fields of Exile, which won the 2015 Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Judith is a young woman who, until last year, lived in Israel for a decade, was a peace activist there, working with Jews and Palestinians, and defines herself as “left-wing,” yet returning to Canada in 2002 to get a masters degree in social work, she discovers she is out of step with the ideology at her school.

Today’s meeting of Dunhill University’s Social Work Anti-Oppression Committee (SWAC), which is comprised of professors, students, and representatives from the social work community, is devoted to SWAC’s upcoming (February 2003) Anti-Oppression Day. Chris, a fellow student of Judith’s, begins the meeting by reporting on the PR for that day, as he distributes copies of The Clarion, Dunhill’s student paper, including a feature article about Anti-Oppression Day. Everyone seems impressed. But Judith stares numbly at the picture of Michael Brier, the keynote speaker they’ve invited for Anti-Oppression Day. His arm is around Khaled Jaber, Head of Operations at the Martyrs of Vengeance and the mastermind of what has now been nicknamed “The Baka Schoolchildren Attack.” In an article she read in Ha’aretz, Jaber told a Brussels journalist that the Baka attack expressed not only resistance to the Israeli occupation; it should be understood as “a warning to all Jews everywhere.” A week later the Globe and Mail quoted from an earlier interview with Jaber on Al Jazeera, where he said Jews were “the sons of dogs and monkeys.”

Looking now at Jaber’s photo, Judith sees other photos super­imposed on it: pictures from the internet, TV, and newspapers, of blown-apart little bodies, and of the empty blood-stained street, with pages of children’s schoolbooks flapping in the wind. Here in The Clarion, Michael Brier is gazing admiringly, even fawningly, at Jaber, while Jaber gazes straight ahead with the arrogance of a self-styled hero. Judith now reads the article. Brier says he and Khaled Jaber are not only “close friends,” but “soul brothers”. Soul brothers?! Judith glares at Brier’s face. You’re a “soul brother” to a murderer. Jaber is not merely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and critical of the Israeli gov­ernment, as she herself is. He believes it is morally okay to blow up Jewish six-year-olds on their way to school — in Israel, and everywhere else. This can’t be happening, she thinks. A self-avowed terrorist giving the B.P. Dunhill Lecture on Human Rights.

Chris finishes his presentation. Suzy, a professor and Judith’s mentor, thanks him, and people smile at him. Then Janice, a student with a very high voice, covers lunch on Anti-Oppression Day (of course, thinks Judith — food being women’s domain!). Afterwards, the commit­tee discusses some potential panelists for the afternoon session. Judith scans the table. Everything seems perfectly normal, as if this were any ordinary meeting, just a group of social workers planning a study day. When in fact they’ve just invited a terror­ist into their midst, given him a platform for spreading poisonous hate, and presented him as a role model to their students. She looks from one face to another, feeling like an animal at the end of Animal Farm, who studies all the faces but can’t tell the pigs from the humans. Someone here is crazy, she thinks. And I don’t think it’s me.

Suzy says, “This is good. We’re almost ready for Anti-Oppression Day. Well done, group!” Everyone smiles except Hetty, the oldest professor at the school, who is typically morose. “Before moving on, does anyone have any comments or questions?” Suzy looks brightly around the table. There’s silence. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Speak now or forever hold your peace. It’s now or never. “Well,” says Judith, “I have something.”

Everyone looks at her.

She hesitates. Then says, “We can’t do what we’ve planned.”

Their faces are uncomprehending. She continues, addressing herself to Hetty, “This picture in The Clarion has Michael Brier with his arm around Khaled Jaber. Jaber, in case you don’t know, is Head of Operations at the Martyrs of Vengeance and is personally responsible for the recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed sixteen schoolchildren. In this article, Brier calls Jaber not just his ‘close friend’ but his ‘soul brother’. We cannot have the ‘soul brother’ of a terrorist giving the keynote address at Anti-Oppression Day. Apart from it being morally egregious, we’ll look like idiots.”

She immediately realizes her blunder, but it’s too late. Chris is already saying primly, “Well, Judith, some of us aren’t concerned about appearances. We’re interested in doing what’s right.”

“Right?!” she cries. “Right? This is someone whose ‘soul brother’ is responsible for sixteen children’s deaths. Thirteen under the age of nine.”

Chris, his earring glinting in the light, says, “Any death is a tragedy. But don’t ask me to feel sorry for the Israelis; they’ve brought this on themselves. The Palestinians, living under the occupation, have no choice but to resist, and what other means do they have at their disposal? People have a right to fight for their liberation.”

“Yes,” says Judith, “but there are different ways to fight. There are words, there’s diplomacy. What Jaber opted for was blowing up a bunch of six-year-olds. That is terrorism.”

Chris regards her impassively. “Some might answer that the State of Israel practises terrorism on the Palestinian people every day of their lives. It terrorizes them economically, socially, and militarily. So, in a sense, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” He draws himself up taller. “I’m not ashamed to say that I consider Khaled Jaber a freedom fighter and would be proud to have him at Dunhill.”

Judith stares at him. She knows there are arguments she can make about not equating terrorism with self-defence, and about Israel’s right to protect itself. But since yesterday she’s been feeling fluish, she came to this meeting in spite of a fever of 102, and now her body’s on fire and she’s dizzy and can’t rally the words.

Janice jumps in, in her little-girl voice: “In a way it’s all just a difference in point of view. Because from a postmodern perspec­tive, there’s no right or wrong. It’s all just perceptions.”

“I’m not a postmodernist,” says Judith. “And I don’t believe everything is just perceptions. There’s truth and there are lies. It’s not true that there is no difference between a terrorist act aimed at civilians, and an action aimed at non-civilians and carried out by a democratic state trying to protect its citizens. The two are not the same. I feel compassion for the Palestinians. They’re not always well treated by the Israeli government and they’ve been screwed over by their own leaders. But Khaled Jaber believes in murdering schoolchildren. And murdering schoolchildren is wrong. It’s as simple as that.”

“Actually, Judith, it’s not,” says James, a dark-skinned man in a suit who works for the Children’s Aid Society. “Because sometimes the end does justify the means. As you know from social work, you can never look at just the symptom of a problem. You have to ask: Why is this phenomenon occurring? What is its root cause?”

“Exactly,” pipes up Lola. “Exactly.”

Judith is now getting it from all sides. She’s been attacked by Chris and Janice across from her, by James on her right, and now by Lola on her left. She feels surrounded.

“We need to ask,” Lola says, “why a young Palestinian would even consider blowing himself up. And the reason is that he’s desperate and without hope because of the occupation. You can pretend otherwise, Judith. But that’s the truth, even if you can’t face it.”

Lola’s tone is openly contemptuous, her face is hostile, and her teeth are slightly bared, like a German shepherd’s. This palpa­ble hostility, even hate, paralyzes Judith the way a wild animal’s snarling paralyzes its prey with fear. She’s paralyzed also by confusion. She is in a meeting in a university, ostensibly a place of Knowledge and Wisdom, engaged in a debate about whether or not her people has the right to defend itself against murder­ers. The right to not be blown to smithereens. In other words, the right to exist.

Suzy says in a bright, tinny voice, “There are obviously dif­ferent views here.” Judith looks at her hopefully. “But just to give some context, when Judith lived in Israel, she did peace work, bringing together Jewish and Arab teenagers for dialogue. And her friends in Israel are all active in the peace movement.”

She’s trying to help me, thinks Judith. Despite our recent falling-out.

“That’s great!” says Carl, Executive Director of Indigenous Community Services. The faces around the table look at Judith now in a friendlier way than before. The pack of wolves has turned into dogs. First she’s relieved. Then she’s angry. I get it, she thinks — now I’m a “good Jew”. Not an evil, “oppressor” Jew on the right or, God forbid, a settler — they, of course, all deserve to be killed. But since I’m a peacenik and a lefty, sharing their political views (they think), I’m a good Jew, so I deserve to be allowed to live. Well thanks, but no thanks. Go fuck yourselves.
James says, “Now I better understand, Judith, where you’re coming from. But still, on this topic, obviously the rest of us are more objective than you. Your perspective is biased.”

“Everyone’s ‘biased’,” says Judith. “No one is ‘objective’.”

“Yes,” says James, “but there’s more objectivity and less objectivity. Regarding Israel, you’re less objective than us.”

Judith shakes her head. If there is no such thing as objectivity, how can one person have more of it than another? But she doesn’t bother saying this. These people are crazy. She’s at a party at the Mad Hatter’s.

There’s silence. Then Hetty says ponderously, with her heavy European accent, “We must walk very cautiously here. It is a fine line between criticizing Israel and sliding into antisemitism. We owe it not just to our Jewish students and faculty, but to our­selves, to approach this carefully, sensitively. Because,” she says, and now her voice gets louder with each word, “antisemitism is a scourge.” Scourge she says so loudly and emphatically it’s almost a shout. “A scourge, I tell you! Never will I forget being a little girl in Transylvania and seeing what happened to our Jewish neighbours during the Holocaust.”

Judith stares at her. She didn’t know this about Hetty. She feels like jumping up, running over, and hugging her.

Chris says, “The Jewish holocaust, you mean. Other people besides the Jews have had holocausts. Anyway, how come anytime someone criticizes Israel, they’re accused of antisemitism? I have no prob­lem with Jews.” Well, thanks a lot, Judith snickers to herself. “But Zionism is a colonialist, imperialist movement whose occupation is brutally oppressing the indigenous population of Palestine. Anyone who cares about human rights has to oppose the Zionists.”

“No,” says Judith, “you’re wrong. That’s not what Zionism is. It has nothing to do with displacing or occupying another peo­ple. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and is every bit as legitimate as the liberation movement of any other people. The Palestinians deserve a homeland, yes. But so do we. So right now it’s a hard time. Our two peoples are struggling to share a small piece of land so we can each have a state. Eventually we’ll find a way. But meanwhile, people who just keep trashing Israel aren’t helping this process. They’re doing no good at all.”

There’s a pause. Then Chris says, “What you describe, Judith, sounds reasonable. But most Zionists don’t think like you. Not Ariel Sharon or most Israelis, who believe the whole land belongs to them.”

Judith is exhausted. She is sick and feverish, and this argument has utterly drained her. But from somewhere inside her, like hauling water from a deep well, she dredges up the strength to reply. “Zionism, like any other movement, is not monolithic. It has a right and a left, and I’m on the left. But that aside, a recent poll showed seventy percent of Israelis favour trading land for peace.”

“Really?” Lola asks doubtfully. “I never heard that.”

“Of course not,” snaps Judith. “You never hear about the good stuff in the papers here. All they report are the suicide bombings and retaliations. Lots of good things happen that no one here knows about.”

Chris looks dubious but doesn’t say anything. Again there’s silence.

“All right,” says Suzy. “We have to move on. Judith, is there something you’d like to propose?”

Propose? Judith looks at her, perplexed.

“You’ve expressed a concern,” Suzy explains patiently. “How would you like us to address it?”

Judith thinks a moment. “I’d like another keynote speaker instead of Michael Brier. Someone who doesn’t support violence against Jewish civilians.”

“That’s ridiculous!” says Chris.

“It’s only a month away!” cries Janice. “Brier’s already agreed! We’ve done publicity —”

“Let me,” says Suzy, holding up her hand. She says to Judith slowly, as if to someone dull-witted, “You can make a formal motion, if you wish. I, as chair, must obviously abstain. But per­haps you’d like to think about this first.”

“No, I don’t need to. I move that we replace Brier with some­one else.”

“Okay,” says Suzy. “Will someone second this?” Hetty’s hand rises. “All in favour of the motion?”

Judith’s and Hetty’s hands go up.

“Against?”

A flurry of hands.

“Abstentions?”

Just the school secretary, Brenda.

“The motion,” Suzy says, “is defeated.”

Defeated. Judith herself feels defeated. And now all the sickness in her that she somehow managed to suppress during this awful meeting hits her with full force. She’s going to either vomit or faint. The meeting moves on: they’re discussing park­ing. I can’t stay here, she thinks. But if I leave before the end, it’ll look like I’m being melodramatic. Or immature, like I can’t toler­ate losing a vote. Then again, who cares what these people think? These Israel-haters. These terrorist-lovers. She stands, lifting her purse and coat.

The conversation stops.

“Are you leaving?” asks Suzy.

“Yes.” She turns toward the door.

“Come back,” says Carl. “You’re taking this too personally. There’s nothing personal about this.”

Judith stares at him. Nothing personal?!she thinks. You’re bringing in someone who publicly advocates violence against my people. How “impersonal” would you find it if, instead of Jews, Brier advocated murdering Native people – your people?

She starts walking. Behind her she hears voices like a cacoph­onous Greek chorus:

“Come on, Judith–“

“Sit down.”

“Don’t leave like this–“

She keeps walking, not looking back. Her legs feel like a tin soldier’s — stiff, with no joints at the knees — as she continues down the hallway. No one runs after her. Outside, the Canadian winter air is so cold it hurts to breathe, and all around her is snow. She drives away from Dunhill along dark, unlit roads, and on the highway she drives faster than is safe, flying toward Toronto, toward what once was her home.

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Dr. Nora Gold (noragold.com) is the prize-winning author of five books and the recipient of several awards, including a Canadian Jewish Literary Award and a Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award. Her writing has been praised by Publishers Weekly, Cynthia Ozick, Dara Horn, and Alice Munro, and has received international acclaim. A former professor, Gold is also the founder and editor of the prestigious literary journal Jewish Fiction, which has published over 600 stories (never before published in English) that were originally written in 22 languages.

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