I’ve now been an official Hebrew University student for three days, equipped with a Hebrew University student card. There have been a myriad of impressions that I have gathered over these days. My classes have been particularly interesting, for which I am grateful. However, it has not been easy being in a situation where I do not feel comfortable revealing myself. Instead of being open about who I am and what I have been doing over the past few months, I have mostly reverted back to concealing these things, which became a habit while I was living in Ramallah and visiting Israeli areas.
I will share one the experiences I have had here: the one that has had the most significant effect upon me.
Sunday Evening: Alone
I was sitting among dozens of Americans, Canadians and Australians. We were in the Student Centre, though more accurately it should be called the Jewish Student Centre, as religion was overt and emphasised here. The Australians around me were law students and were taking the same course as I am (a short course in Israeli and Jewish law). We were eating chicken and wedges – a free meal offered courtesy of the couple who run the Centre and whose son is a soldier currently in Gaza. They haven’t heard from him since Wednesday because Israeli soldiers aren’t allowed to contact home while in the field.
We were all there for a talk on Gaza and the current situation in Israel. I thought it would be interesting to hear about the conflict from an Israeli perspective. And it was interesting, but I have never felt so alone as I did sitting crushed in that room. It was my first experience of being in a group who held views so paradoxical to mine.
I could write out all the things that I heard during this evening, and in my first draft of this blog entry I did. But the more I wrote, the more convoluted it became. Basically it comes down to two things: rhetoric and trust.
The rhetoric expressed by the people in that room was so similar to the rhetoric I had heard in the West Bank, often just exchanging the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian’ for ‘Israel’ and ‘Israeli’ (or ‘Jew’). The greatest difference was that here in Israel, they seem to be unconcerned about being ‘politically correct’ or qualifying their statements – after all, they need not be concerned with being accused of being anti-Semitic.
The trust issue was also simple: everyone around me had the uttermost trust in the Israeli government and the Israeli army to do the right thing.
‘I know that the army are doing all they can to stop civilians from being affected,’ said one of my classmates. They knew that ‘their people’ were good and they trusted them. Just as they knew that the Palestinians were different.
‘They don’t have the same respect for life; mothers happily send out their sons to blow themselves up and they celebrate this!’ said another. This wasn’t stated as speculation, or rumour; it was fact.
But I have been to one of those ceremonies where they ‘celebrate’ the deaths of ‘martyrs’. It was in Nablus in April 2007 at a refugee camp. The dead being commemorated had not been involved in attacks within Israel but had been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces in assaults. Before attending this ceremony (which I unknowingly walked into thinking that I was going to see a dance performance of the traditional Palestinian Dabke), I had also been told that mothers happily give their sons to the cause of Palestinian Independence. However, that was not what I saw.
I did not see mothers standing tall and proud as they received the small plaques commemorating their sons. Instead, I saw a woman bent almost double in her chair, head down, eyes red and hands clasped in her lap. She was grieving her child. Another family member, a brother, had his jaw and fists clenched trying to stop the tears that could be seen rising in his eyes. Their loved one was being publicly celebrated, it is true, but this family was not celebrating. They were grieving, just as people grieve all around the world when they lose someone. Perhaps this woman is proud that her son had been fighting for Palestine, but no mother can be happy at the death of her child.
So I thought of this woman and this man as I heard my classmates lament the twisted mentality of the Palestinian people. With their faces in my mind’s eye, along with all the images of checkpoints, M16s and army vehicles, I could not stay among them. When the speech was over and we returned to our rooms, I walked removed from the group.
I did try and speak with some of my classmates about some of the things that they were saying, but they were not interested in a conversation.
This aspect of my time here is the most difficult, but I remind myself that I am not here to try and change the minds of the people I meet, even if this was a possibility. I am here to learn, and there is much to learn here.
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2 comments:
this must be a very awkward situation for you given all you have seen and done over the past few years! not that i have seen or heard anything to the same scale as you have during my trips to india, pakistan and europe (not to mention in good old australia!), but its disgusting how much of an impact the media and steriotypes play in racism and mindless violence. even here in france there have been large protests against the violence in many of the citys and towns ive visited with both french and arabs taking part in making people recognise the violence which is happening in this moment. some have been good protests, peaceful but strong, but some, like those here in strasbourg over the past week, have been over the top with mindless chanting of religious slogans and cries in french of "israel - assasins" which i believe only adds to the feeling of hatred and the want for revenge. in my opinion, its important to recognise that everybody is a human being and we all feel typical human emotion: grief, anger, pride etc. and, as much as i hate to admit it, it is very easy to have your opinions influenced by family, friends and the media. but im uber uber thrilled that you are out there talking to the people and trying to understand the situation! if only others recognised we are all human and tried to hear both sides of a story and broadened their minds with a bit of travel, reading and studying, the world would be a much more reasonable place.
let me know what you think of this! im not expecting you to agree, but its what i believe from the small bits ive seen over the past few months.
good luck over there and get as much from the experience as you can! enjoy learning loads of new things and im looking forward to many discussions when we are both back in sydney! take care of yourself!
Thanks for the comment Adam! I find it hard to place where I stand on issues such as protest and what's good and effective and what's not. Sometimes I think protest is just a way for people to release their anger and frustration collectively, hence the aggressiveness of some. I try to avoid those sorts, but I do understand where the people in them are coming from.
But I completely agree with the need for us to recognise (and respect) everyone's common humanity. It's why I came back here to study at an Israeli uni. So when protests and such go to the point of alienating groups in society, I can't see them as positive.
But then it gets to the point where just by putting the situation into words and talking about it as an issue you can alienate people, especially in this country. So there's a balance. I don't believe in being neutral, a position must be taken, and that will inevitably lead to people opposing you. But as long as you keep respecting people, even those whose ideas are the antithesis of your own, there's hope.
So that's where I stand. I'm pretty sure we're agreeing with each other! But I'm quite tired tonight, so I may have confused some things!
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