Excerpt from Exile

(a not yet published novel by Nora Gold)

Judith, a masters student waiting to see her professor Suzy, notices a poster calling for a boycott of Israel. Shocked, then furious, she inwardly rants for awhile.

     Then, staring at the poster, Judith thinks: Someone should tear this down. This poster isn’t a representation of freedom of expression; it’s hate literature. It encourages everyone who sees it to hate one specific group of people and try to hurt them. Someone has to take it down. But who? I can’t. I can’t just tear down a poster.
     Or maybe I can.
     Judith peeks around the corner of the alcove. Out in the hallway there are two people ahead of her waiting for Suzy. I have at least ten minutes till it’s my turn, thinks Judith. She ducks back into the alcove and scans the poster top to bottom: on the top there’s an invitation to an anti-Israel rally; below it, the call to boycott “apartheid Israel.” This poster is obscene, thinks Judith. It’s disgusting. Someone has to tear it down.
     But she can’t do it. It feels wrong. You don’t go around ripping other people’s stuff off walls, thinks Judith. If you do that, then you’re no better than the people who put up this kind of crap. You’ve descended to their level. Posters are free speech. They’re democracy, she thinks. If I rip down this poster, I’m ripping the fabric of democracy. I may not agree with what this poster says, but “I’ll defend to the death its right to say it.” Whoever put this up had every right to.
    Yeah, thinks Judith. But then equally I have the right to tear it down. That’s democracy, too: multiple voices, each expressing its own reality. The person who put up this poster may perceive Israel as the most scumbag country in the world. But I have a right to disagree. I also have the right to speak. With my lips. Or with my hands.
     But violence, thinks Judith. Violence... Not only is it wrong, it’s illegal. This poster is university property, it has the university stamp on it, I could get into trouble for tearing it down.
     Now Judith sees herself standing in front of the poster and hesitating - to tear or not to tear - and she laughs at herself. She’s being ridiculous. Throughout history, Jews have performed acts of courage, for instance in the Warsaw ghetto. Risking their lives every day to help others. And she can’t even pull down a stupid poster. Her and her namby-pamby left-wing sensibilities. Keeping her from doing what she knows she should.
     Now Judith thinks of her name. Judith in the Bible lopped off Holofernes’ head without even batting an eyelash. With less hesitation than she has now over tearing down a poster. Come on, Judith tells herself. Be strong like your name. Doubt, dither, deliberate all you want first, if it makes you feel like a better person. Agonize to your heart’s content, like Raskolnikov. But then in the end act. Sartre was right: ultimately there is nothing but action.
     Judith reaches out her hand. Act, she thinks. Do it. Have some impact on the world.
     And she tears the poster off the wall.