This is the second of a series of blog posts from Israelis with different perspectives on the forthcoming elections. Lisa Goldman is an Israeli freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv. She also writes about the Israeli blogosphere for Global Voices Online and blogs at On the Face. You can read the first post in this series, from blogger Shai Tsur, here.
Lisa GoldmanThe polls say Kadima will win the Israeli national elections on March 28, but my friends Dmitri and Fayrouz will be casting their votes elsewhere.
Fayrouz Shaqrawi, 24, is a Palestinian Israeli from the Galilee; she works for Ma'an, a Palestinian news website based in Bethlehem, studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and blogs on the Land of Sad Oranges.
Dmitri Doubov, 31, immigrated to Israel from his native Tashkent in 1994. He is the foreign news editor for Israel's Russian-language television station, Channel 9, and is studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
I was born in Canada, spent a fair chunk of my adult life in New York, moved to Tel Aviv in 2000 and became an Israeli citizen shortly thereafter.
We are all Israelis, all strongly connected to our country, and our common language is Hebrew. I see us as a collage of Israel's diverse, complex society.
Dmitri was 20 when he first voted. He voted for Likud and for Bibi (Binyamin Netanyahu).
But after completing his army service in the West Bank, Dmitri voted for Meretz, the leftist Zionist party that favours immediate and total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
"I just didn't understand what we were doing there," he said of his service in the West Bank.
He described the poverty he saw among many Palestinians, as compared to the relative prosperity of Israeli Arabs, and the "militaristic atmosphere" on the army-protected settlements.
Dmitri believes in a two-state solution, but cautions against using the word "justice".
"Justice is elusive. Negotiating means that we must compromise and compromise precludes perfect justice. If we start talking about history, then where will it end? Pretty soon we'll be talking about Titus!"
"Do you define yourself as a Zionist?" I asked Dmitri.
"Look, I don't feel comfortable with those heavy terms. I suppose you could see my life as a Zionist success story. I could just as easily have immigrated to Canada, but I didn't. I decided to be an Israeli - learned Hebrew, got an education, served in the army, have a good job and pay my taxes. But I prefer to look at my life as a personal story, not a political one."
"And what do you think of my decision to immigrate?" I asked.
"I see your decision in the same terms as my own. You were looking for your identity."
Fayrouz is not a Zionist, but does understand the search for identity. She wants mainstream Jewish Israel to accept her as both an Israeli and a Palestinian.
"I do not resent Israel's existence," she said. "I don't dream of destroying Israel. But I demand that this state recognise my national identity."
She asks how she can be expected to identify with a national anthem that speaks of the Jewish longing to return to Zion, and a flag that is a Jewish symbol. History, she says, is impossible to change. "But that doesn't stop me from being a Palestinian. I can't ignore my roots."
Fayrouz studies at one of Israel's most prestigious universities and has many Jewish Israeli friends, but she crosses into the West Bank several times a week and works for a Palestinian website. While her Hebrew is fluent, Arabic is her native language.
"I think that both sides have to stop running away from responsibility. Israelis have to accept responsibility for the occupation; and the Palestinians have to understand that opposition is important, but when they move the battlefield to the wrong place, with suicide bombings on civilian targets in Israel, they only show their own extremism. And that only leads to more extremism."
She says she'll probably vote for Hadash, the Israeli communist party that was founded as a party for Jews and Arabs, but feels an emotional pull toward Balad, which represents Israel's Arab minority.
I asked Fayrouz how she saw me, a secular Jew who had moved to Israel.
"I'm sorry if this hurts you, but I think it's stupid to define Judaism as a nationality. Judaism is a religion and I respect it. But I think that a Jew who lives in Canada is a Canadian. I don't understand the need to define your identity."
Next time we meet, I'll ask her how she, a Palestinian Israeli struggling to define her identity, could not understand my search for a place where I could be comfortable defining myself as a secular Jew.
