Would you notice?
If your neighbor lost his job, would you notice? If your neighbor had fallen sick, would you notice? If your neighbor had to sell some family heirlooms to pay the mortgage last month, would you notice? For most of us, myself included, I would guess that no, we would not notice. It’s not from a lack of sympathy or empathy— I believe that most people would cook a meal or offer a helping hand if they knew someone needed it— but a lack of awareness. The disease of ignorance is what I believe contributes to the Israeli and global populations’ lack of indignation at not only the apartheid of the Palestinian people but other global crises as well.
Saturday we spent the day in Tel Aviv. Fueled by the desire to wear a tank top, see a large quantity of water and eat soft serve ice cream from McDonalds Jill, Margie and I headed to the beach. At first it was literally shocking. It was so weird to see so much skin! Shorts and cleavage and ahhh, it was a really big culture shock. That being said, lying on the beach was a much needed break. I felt bad that I could actually take a “break” from Occupation when I am only visiting for a few months. It felt so lame to “need” an escape into “normal” life while those I live with have lived the majority or their entire lives under someone else’s control. They are unable to sit on the beach and let their stress float into the sea. Margie made a good point when I mentioned my guilt, she said something along the lines of “I feel bad telling my host family about all these places they can’t go to either, but it’s not that they wouldn’t go if they could. They would want to go if they were able too, and they want us to go too.” But what scared me was how quickly into the day all thoughts of the Occupation, of the West Bank, of the conflict in general seemed to slip from my mind. The sun, the beach games, the stores seemed to capture my mind’s presence so that when thoughts did come they felt very removed from my present status of sun-soaker and were quickly forgotten.
And that is how the occupation and world tragedies are forgotten and overlooked. We just aren’t aware. I don’t blame the average Israeli population for not screaming out in indignation and rage: they aren’t reminded of it, they don’t experience it. Which is not to say that is not the exact goal of the Israeli Government. Take the Separation Wall, for example. In Bethlehem and other Occupied Territories you can not miss the towering slabs of concrete that split the horizon. You can’t avoid the cages, barbed wire and turn-styles you must walk through to get from Palestine into Israel. In Israel, however, it’s different. Often you can’t see the Wall because it has been landscaped into the scenery. Generally they build up dirt and land so you can’t even see that it is a wall, or they actually put designs into the wall that coordinate with the landscape. The Wall becomes more like public art. It’s a lot prettier than the plain concrete slabs we stare at. In fact, the other day I was looking at this hill for a while and it took me about 15 minutes to realize “wait, I know what’s right over there…that’s actually part of the wall!” It just looked like a hill. Add an education system that teaches a Zionist-based history of the land and media resources which are obviously biased towards the Israeli state, can you blame the average Joe for not knowing or realizing the depths of the conflict? I can’t.
I was actually in the middle of writing this blog in Tel Aviv’s McDonalds when a guy approached me and asked if I was doing research. He asked me if I was writing on the Israeli people and I told him yes, but my focus was more on the Palestinian people. He asked me what my view was and then offered his own. He serves in an IDF unit responsible for going in “to remove suicide bombers from their homes”. He talked about how he feels bad for the Palestinian people because you do witness the suffering, but in the end the wall is necessary for Israeli safety. I told him that if I believed the Wall was actually for security, I could understand; yet, if it was for security why were they building settlements right next to the Wall? And why can’t the Wall at least follow the green line? He told me that he didn’t agree with the settlement policy and thought it was terrible, but then asked if I had been to the town near Gaza that keeps on being hit with rockets. He described the bomb shelters built throughout town and how it is not life for people to live in such fear and danger. I told him that I was heartbroken at that life because no, it is not life. I told him it was not right, but aren’t the Israeli’s now causing the same kind of heartbreak and tragedy in the lives of the Palestinians? I told him I understood the Jewish desire for a homeland, especially with their personal history of persecution that culminated in the Holocaust. Yes, the Jewish people have suffered and there is no dismissing that.
Now, in reflection of the conversation, I am wondering if suffering has to take sides. There is no “mine” or “theirs” when it comes to human pain. Humanity suffers in the same way regardless of label: having a history of suffering, shouldn’t that make us more willing to reach out to help others that are suffering? Personally, I know that I don’t reach out enough if even at all. Yet I’ve been through personal pain: I’ve lost my entire house in a fire, a dear Uncle was brutally murdered, I know what it’s like to live with chronic diseases and pain and yet I still don’t reach out to those that I see struggling to make ends meet. I get afraid I’ll be ‘scammed’ or will be the ‘stupid tourist’ who gives the begging people money on the street. Yet let’s be frank: even if you are not really homeless or are going to go use that money for beer, that is not my issue, your life must be in a pretty dire state to have to humble yourself to beg.
That tangent aside, our conversation turned out to be really interesting. He told me in the end that it is not the Palestinian people that Israeli’s do not like but rather the Palestinian Authority. He maintains the PA is teaching the Palestinian children to hate Israel. I told him the kids I interacted with didn’t seem to have that kind of education. In fact, a lot of Palestinian kids will actually say they prefer Israelis to Palestinians because their culture is freer (typical teenage angst?). He told me the evidence is seeing kids in Palestine playing with toy guns. I responded that it was the only world a lot of them had ever known. Would he not grow up bitter if he had to live with 34,999 neighbors in 2km, not knowing when his next meal was and knowing his new park, the only green area in town, was locked because there is no money to pay the workers to finish building it? His response was along the lines of “Well their problems began when they wanted a state. When they [Palestinians] decided they wanted their own state, that’s when all the trouble started”. That really surprised me, because it is common knowledge throughout the world that Israel was the one who had a state established in Palestine, not the other way around. I started to talk about the history of Israel’s establishment and the Balfour Declaration and he cited a UN resolution that Israel had a right to be a state. I told him that if we were to respect the UN resolutions than must we respect all of them, including the UN resolutions that the Separation Wall must immediately stop being built because it is illegal and Israel is violating human rights? He just laughed and told me that he hoped that I would become more open to hearing the truth because I was closed.
It was then that I found out I had been arguing with a lawyer, haha, and he ended the conversation with “This is not the conversation I was expecting. I was sitting with my friend and saw a beautiful girl that I wanted to introduce myself too”. Poor guy, he came to hit on me and ended up talking politics for 30 minutes. I was really grateful for it though. He did give me some new ideas and perspectives…I have a few extra weeks at the end of my stay and now I would really like to live or at least visit with an Israeli town that has experienced Palestinian violence. It was my original plan, but I had kind of wandered away from it. I must start networking…
