When I was little, I used to scream and scream whenever I had my hair brushed, as if it were the worst pain in the world. My Mum, whilst not unsympathetic, sought to give me a sense of perspective, and pointed out that there was suffering in the world that I could not begin to imagine. She was encouraging me to focus on the genuine suffering of others rather than creating my own mini-dramas. Obviously, she had a point (now when I brush my own hair, it is mildly painful at first while it's still tangly, but I don't tend to kick up quite such a fuss!) and I've tried to make that point central to the way I live my life, but I maintain to this day that, if the worst thing I could imagine was having my hair brushed, then that was a form of genuine suffering.
In the context of my previous comments about the situation in Palestine not being the worst one in the world, this makes me seem rather hypocritical, especially given that having their hair brushed is probably the least of many Palestinian children's worries. But the question remains, if each instance of suffering is to be recognised as in some sense valid, then how can we treat all of the really awful instances with enough urgency? During Operation Cast Lead, a friend of mine posted a list of other conflicts that were going on or escalating at the same time, exploring the question of why everyone (the media and the British left, among others) was so obsessed with Palestine, and the death count was certainly among the lowest. Inside Israel, it's been mentioned to me as a problem that most of the news coverage is of things relating to Israel, with limited wider perspective. It certainly makes sense for Palestine to be a priority issue for me, given that Israel acts in relation to it in my name and, apart from anything, my family will be affected when Netanyahu and Lieberman scupper all chances of genuine peace talks, Fatah decides to talk to Hamas instead, and an intifada begins, maybe even me as well if it happens soon enough.
That's putting it very crudely. During the intifida, the death count was much higher amongst Palestinians than Israelis, the Israeli roads are more dangerous than anything the Palestinians can hope to do to us, etc. etc., but the point still stands that when Israeli politicians are messing around with your safety and that of your loved ones, it becomes a pretty immediate problem, quite aside from moral objections you might have to their behaviour.
Maybe I've started on a tangent. Read on, dear reader, and perhaps it will make sense, although this being me there's a good chance it won't, but hopefully you'll read on anyway. It's been ages (sorry about that), so there's a lot to catch up on. I'll organise it into catagories for ease of reading:
1. Family stuff, Hebrew etc
2. The African Refugee Development Centre
3. The Israel Palestine Centre for Research and Information's 'Yes We Can! Creating Community – Realizing Peace: Creating a Community of Peace Builders' weekend conference
4. The Breaking the Silence Tour of the South Hebron Hills
Part 1
So, the big news is that my Dad's girlfriend's daughter (try describing that relationship in Hebrew - ha bat shel ha bat zoog shel ha abba sheli) has HAD A BABY. He's very very very sweet, although I've only seen him once, but tomorrow we are having a brit milah, involving celebrating his circumcision (this struck me as slightly odd, but then so is eating dead turkeys because the messiah was born, so it's not like anything makes sense when I live in a historically Christian country... at any rate, lentil loaf is better, and clearly far more fitting to the occasion!) So that's very exciting. We kind of saw it coming, 'cause she'd been pretty heavily pregnant ever since I got here, but still, new person in the world (or rather, in the world around me involving people I'm close to, 'cause obviously getting excited every time any new person comes into the world would be quite an undertaking)!
My explorations of Israel itself have thus far taken me to Haifa for the day, which was very nice, vaguely similar to Tel Aviv but different as well, and through Hayakon Park on bikes with Dad and his girlfriend. Apparently hiring the bikes was quite dear, but it was bloody good fun, I'd recommend it. Other than that, I'd like to go back to the Dead Sea and Galilee, but having already been to both more than once, that just leaves going back to Haifa to see the famous gardens there, and then any cultural experiences I have the opportunity to have. Any other suggestions would be great!
Hebrew is coming along decently enough, still not overly useful for day-to-day conversation which gets frustrating, but getting there if people are patient with me. It was a little embarassing: Dad's girlfriend's other daughter, the one who hasn't just had a baby, came over from New York with her two adorable kids, and asked me one morning if I'd been kept awake by the children. I gathered that she was asking something to do with sleep, so responded with 'yes, thank you', assuming it was whether I'd slept well. That was a little embarassing. Pretty much the last thing she said to me upon parting was 'maybe next time you'll have more Hebrew'... But, on the plus side, I ended up helping to TEACH Hebrew yesterday, and I can definitely get by on the streets more now. Unlike most people, I can speak more than I can understand, which is somewhat frustrating, but hey ho. I've got the opportunity to do an hour's Arabic a week as well, which might be a very bad idea, but is too tempting an offer to resist, so I'll let you know how that goes...
Part 2
I was looking for relevant work experience for my application to train as a social worker, and my sister's housemate works at the African Refugee Development Centre in Tel Aviv, so he very kindly put me in touch with them and I'm now helping asylum seekers with their applications for asylum and researching sex and gender based violence in Eritrean culture. On a personal level, I've met some great people, it's daunting but hugely satisfying work, and it makes good use of not needing a proper income for the time being, assuaging my guilt.
It's more on a political level that it's been interesting though. For the monthly staff development evening, we saw the film 'Refugees' by Shai Carmeli Pollak and had a question and answer session with him. Now, in Israel, the line that gets parroted all around the world with regards to immigration rings a little hollow. Because denying the right of return to one set of people, and making it incredibly difficult/impossible for another group to gain asylum, whilst at the same time actively encouraging another group to move here, rather undermines the point that we're a small country that can't accomodate more people. As with most countries, it becomes more obviously a case of being a small country that priviliges a particular group for its room. The question of what happens to all these refugees from Africa can't be resolved, as far as I can see, independently of the entire question of the future demography of Israel-Palestine. It simply can't be a single issue. But then, Israel is more blatent in its double standard, but it's not as if most other places have open borders. Hell, even opening your borders to a specific group counts in a sense as a relative achievement. I'm not quite sure what to do with this new addition to my overall picture of Israel-Palestine, but I have to say that my self-definition as a zionist is being stretched here. But then, I can't help but think that my reactions are more as someone who's rather distressed by the whole fact of borders and people fleeing for their lives and then being treated like criminals, than as an anti-zionist perse. We'll come onto this, but the thing that really makes my blood boil is diaspora Jews who haven't fled persecution but just thought it was a good idea settling, not in Israel, but in Palestine, where they proceed to make life hell for Palestinians. Again, I don't really know what my point is, I'd be interested to read others' thoughts. Maybe just 'fuck, everything is fucked up' (please do excuse my language, but it seems called for here).
Part 3
So, you've heard of 'hugs and houmous' right? Where Israelis and Palestinians get together, hug, eat humous, and that's somehow meant to be relevant to peacebuilding? Well, I found myself at such a gathering, which is not to devalue it: getting Gazans, West Bankers and Israelis all in a room together is no easy feat, either psychologically or practically, and it is important. The trouble with it was that it was heavily dominated by the Jewish participants; the one time actual concrete political issues were touched on, I managed to get myself labelled 'the girl from the far left' (following on from the point by an Israeli that some Palestinians objected to settlers attending, where he seemed to be implying that having someone there from the 'far left' is as uncomfortable for Israelis as having settlers there would be for Palestinians) simply by mentioning that Israel has been an expansionist state from the start and is still colonising what's left of Palestine (mentioning, I tells ya); and peace very much seemed to be an ethereal idea rather than a concrete reality that we were working towards by anything other than the fact of our having put aside our prejudices to all come together. So I've volunteered to help organise the next one, which should be happening in February, with a view to trying to bring in a bit less of the fun, depoliticised bonding activities and a bit more confronting of the issues and concrete action planning. Maybe that's arrogant, but helping to organise things is something I like to think I do reasonably well, and having a vision of how something could be is always an incentive to get involved in making it happen, right? I will listen respectfully to any objections raised to my ideas, and it might turn out that for some reason I haven't thought of it is better to do it the more relaxed, less tackling of the issues way. Friends from the far left do seem to agree with me, though, so maybe it's true that I am from the far left. It's slightly worrying that using words like 'expansionist' and 'colonising' in relation to Israel is what identified me as such in a group of peacebuilders, though!
Part 4
So, my friend David has been working on a project in a village in the South Hebron Hills building a community centre there and ensuring a constant presence of Israelis and internationals in order to try to curb the worst excesses of the horrendousness of the behaviour of the settlers towards their Palestinian neighbours. He wanted me to get involved, so he suggested that I go on the Breaking the Silence Tour there yesterday, so I'd get an introduction to the region, which I did. Breaking the Silence are a group of ex-soldiers who feel that Israeli society, and internationals, need to know about what they did, and were encouraged to do, in the army. I was incredibly impressed by and grateful to our tour guide, who was sharing his experiences of doing things like blindfolding and tying up Palestinians and leaving them at the side of the road for driving on a road that was closed to them, which can't have been easy. I would strongly recommend the Breaking the Silence tours to anyone and everyone who's in the vicinity of Jerusalem, which is where the tour starts from.
Now, the most illuminating point that our tourguide made is that there was limited military presence in the South Hebron Hills following on from Israel's initial occupation of the West Bank. It was only once settlements started being built that the army became necessary. This is an important point, because the line is that the army is in the West Bank, controlling the Palestinians, for Israel's security. Settlers might be Israeli citizens, but they're not living in Israel. So the logical conclusion is that the only function of the occupation, rather than being for Israel's security, is to facilitate settlement. What baffles me about this is that people in Israel accept it with so little outcry. Settlers are heavily subsidised by the government. It's soldiers from Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem who are taken at eighteen and put in a position where they do things that at least some of them feel the need to break the silence about. Not to defend Israel, but to facilitate the destruction of Palestine. No one likes the settlers. But people seem to largely accept them as a legimitate part of Israel.
Let's look a little more closely at the way the settlers behave. Our tour ended in the village of Sussia, which is where David's project is. The villagers of Sussia are living in tents, because every time they've tried to build on land that they hold the deeds to, it's been destroyed by the army. Within view of their village of tents where water is scarce and there's no electricity, is the settlement of Sussia, which looks like something out of 'The Truman Show'. And it's worth noting that, while the Palestinian villagers are fighting for their right to the only home they have, the people in the settlements will have come from Europe and America, with nothing but ideology stopping them from returning there, or at least living within Israel itself. This links back to the issue of who Israel provides refuge for and who we try to keep out.
Is this the kind of anti-Israel propaganda that is supposed to have poisoned my mind? An ex-soldier who only realised after he'd served the full cynicism of what he had been utilised to do?
Now, to end up back where we started with the question of whose suffering deserves whose attention, I think what has made the situation here such a rallying point for people around the world is that it's being done by supposedly civilised, Western forces. Israel couldn't subsidise the settlers and militarise the Occupied Territories without the support, financial, practical and diplomatic of America and, to a lesser extent, Britain. The settlers don't just appear by magic: they come from Europe and America. I'm going to end with a quote from a friend of David's that I met yesterday. I'm sorry if this post doesn't really seem to know quite what it's getting at: I've fallen back on collating descriptions of my experiences and perceptions, because I'm having so much trouble making sense of them. If any of you can, dear readers, then please do comment!
'It's not about peace, it's about doing what's right. If Israel withdraws to at least the 1967 borders, that won't be a present we give to the Palestinians if they are nice to us, because we shouldn't be there in the first place.'
Friday 29 October 2010
Saturday 2 October 2010
Meet the Cast, and Disjunction, Inertia, Action: Wha?!
I've had a bit of a weird, disjunctive week since I didn't go to Ramallah last week. Before I get into that, though, I've had a request that I talk a bit more about the people in my life here, so I'll do that first, as it leads in quite nicely to the point I'm going to go on to attempt to thrash out from the tumult of my mind.
So, I'm living with my Dad (Yehuda/Yuda/Yud [the latter is what people seem to call him here; I'm convinced it's a codename and hence a sign that he works for Mossad, but he assures me it's just a nickname based on the fact that his name begins with the Hebrew letter of the alphabet 'yud' - suspicious, but he does manage a pretty convincing impression of someone who works in sales for EMC, I suppose, so I might be reading too much into a nickname...]) and his partner, Ilana. From that little aside there you'll have already gathered that Dad works in sales for a company called EMC; Ilana works in human resources for a company called Radware. They're both very warm and welcoming. Dad is addicted to swimming, and seems to have been given lots of books for his recent birthday, as well as initiating outings to the cinema pretty regularly; Ilana goes swimming less regularly but also to the gym, cooks amazing food very casually all the time, and has a pHD in Psychology, so that she's interesting to talk to about human behavioural patterns and so on. (I hope I'm not making a hash of meeting the above request: I don't really know quite what information people are looking for, so am wildly improvising.)
The other place I stay when I need to be in Central Tel Aviv (Ramat Hasharon is a suburb next to Herzliyah) is with my sister, Anna. Anna is a self-professed workaholic at the moment, for a marketing and communications company called Tamooz. Her job looks really cool, working on these giant marketing booths that pharmaceutical companies use to market their products at big symposiums of doctors, very creative. She also has lots of really fun friends who she's been kind enough to introduce me to: her flatmate, Ben, who works for the African Refugee Development Centre and has a cool accent and an impressive DVD collection; her friend Keri, whose Brummy accent sounded Australian to me at first, and who always strikes me as very chilled out and cheerful; her friend Aviva, who passed on wisdom from working as a mother's helper with a very funny mime of changing a nappy in the Mediterranean Sea the other day; her friends Sheni and Chen, who she works with and lives near to and are both very friendly and fun. Anna herself can be very playful and silly, which is fun, but also really good to talk serious issues through with, although things can get a bit heated if we find ourselves disagreeing, but what's family for if not to be truly yourself and descend into the odd argument with?
Inbal and Iran are Ilana's daughter and son-in-law; Inbal's English is very good because she lived in Canada for a while, and she did some English Literature modules at Uni so we have that in common, and she's very animated and lively; Iran is very friendly but seems to be most comfortable in Hebrew, which is a good incentive for me to speed up my progress as much as possible! They live just around the corner from us in Ramat Hasharon, and are having a baby this month, which is VERY exciting! Orneet, Inbal's older sister, lives in New York with her husband Dino and their two children Omer and Dafna, but they're coming to visit soon, so yay! Osnat, another sister of Inbal's, had reportedly disappeared when I came here, but we went out for a meal with her the other night. I always have the feeling that I've seen Osnat on TV, but I think I've mentioned this in the past and she denied it!
Turning from family to friends, Jude has just made Aaliyah and Jono has been here studying Hebrew over the Summer: they're the people I was going to go to Ramallah with, and I know them from studying English together at Cambridge Uni. They're people who share my interest in politics, and are also a bit mad and unpredictable, so great people to meet with no idea of your plans and have an adventure! Jono is sadly going back to Cambridge for his final year today, but he'll be back in December, so that's cool. Tali has just arrived as well; I know her from the lefty scene in England, and she'll be working for Magan David Adom (the Israeli branch of the Red Cross) and staying with her UNCLE, AMOS OZ, at some point!!!
Maya is the daughter of Dad's best friend from uni, lives just down the road from us, and is very cheery, fun and artistic company. She's always made me feel very welcome (and spoken English with me!) when I've been in Israel for shorter visits, so I'm glad to have some extended time to hang out with her in. Her friend Lenoy, who I've met a few times, is also very friendly and fun, so hopefully I'll see more of her too.
Yael is a friend I met in a hostel in Vienna whilst inter-railing round Europe a few year's ago: she's been having back problems, so I've only managed to see her once so far, but hopefully we'll be able to see more of each other from now on. She's what would be known in Cambridge as a 'Mathmo' (Mathmetician), and very friendly and thoughtful.
My class at Ulpan (Hebrew School!) is full of fun, friendly people and we've had various outings to the beach and whatnot. They're from all around the world, with India, Mexico, Indonesia, France and Peru being just a few examples, and a heady mix of Jewish, non-Jewish and partially Jewish! Some of them have married Israelis and either made aaliyah or moved here to be with them/spend some time here with them; some are younger and have just come for a bit of fun pre- or post-uni; some have just come to work on their Hebrew and spend more time here; some are hoping to move here to work. Patrick, who was the first person from Ulpan to give me his mobile number, deserves a special mention: he's very mean to me, but apparently it's because we're such good friends and I'm mean to him too. There are also Aline and Lian ('The Mexican Girls'), Tamar and Iman ('The German Girls'), Becky from France, Cara who's very posh and has thus out-Englished me, Bertille who walks in slow motion and seems very kind and patient, Enrique who dropped everything to come here with his girlfriend of three weeks and sits next to me in class; the list goes on! Emma is someone I met through a TEFL workshop but who studies at the same Ulpan as me, has a very comforting, familiar London accent, and studied English like me.
The final people to mention are of course Dani, the mother whose helper I am, and Amalia and Lian, the eleven month old twins, and Arabella, the two year old. Dani is very nice, and studied at Oxford, so understands about how Cambridge works. The twins are absolutely adorable, as is Arabella, if going through the slightly posessive phase I think is common at two. The other day she decided briefly I was trying to steal the pram with the twins in, but seemed to forget her suspicions a minute later, so that was OK.
So, this last week, there's been stuff happening in Ramat Hasharon and with family for Sukkot, and having a job has kept me a bit busier, and admittedly I had one of those really nothingy days mid-week where I couldn't make myself do anything productive. The point is, there's a disjunction between just living out your daily life here, spending time with family, working, studying Hebrew, going to the cinema or to the shops; and knowing what things are like in the Occupied Territories, wondering how to resolve it all, and discovering, irony of ironies, that the weekend I didn't go to Ramallah, a bomb was planted outside the Dizengoff Centre, where I go all the time. Jude and Jono came back from Ramallah, and later from Bethlehem, really distressed by what they'd seen and heard, so that in the space of a week I went from feeling crazy left wing around them to almost feeling right wing!
The point is, though, the stuff they're shocked by, I know it's happening. It doesn't shock me anymore. It's there, all the time, as I eat my frozen yoghurt or swim in the sea or play with the babies I work with. And it's bad, don't get me wrong, it's very very very bad. Settlers shooting at Palestinians, people getting shot for walking too close to the wall, being held up at check points in their underwear for hours or tortured by the IDF; maybe these are just stories people tell tourists, but I doubt it. It's real, and you might understand it as self-defence or survival or measures that were necessary after the intifada but, if you're going to value all human life equally and call a spade a spade, it's wrong.
But the question is, what does obsessing about it and worrying about it and feeling guilty about it and arguing with my family about it actually achieve, other than stress and distress and no change to the situation? Does it absolve me that I'm mad as hell about the settlement freeze not being extended and the peace talks falling apart if I can't think of anything to do about it other than boycotting settlement goods and deciding not to risk being the next Rachel Corrie? Added to which, the most apt analogy for the situation here that I've come across is by Amos Oz: imagine that Israel is a person who's been drowning for centuries and finally grabs a boat and hauls themself up, only to push Palestine, also imagined as a person, into the sea to start drowning. So one side is still haunted by memories of drowning and constantly fears drowning; and as a horrible, ironic consequence, the other side is now drowning. Of course, I don't know how to extend the analogy to include the role of the old imperial powers and how the Palestinians are treated in the Arab world and so on, but the point is that seeing and recognising the reality of the situation in Palestine shouldn't compromise one's ability to see and recognise the situation in Israel, without descending into liberal proposals that we all just have a cosy chat over falafel and don't make too fine a point of the occupation. And let's not lose sight of the fact that the situation in Palestine catagorically isn't the worst one in the world, even if that doesn't really help anyone and isn't an excuse, it's just a question of keeping in mind the fact that all the vitriol against Israel from people in countries that are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan ought really to be more contextualised.
So what I've decided is that, whilst my views on what needs to happen haven't really changed, if I'm not doing something concrete to bring it about, I'm going to allow myself to enjoy being in Israel with my family. If I can have a productive conversation with someone about the conflict, then I will, but if all I'm doing is going round in circles and driving myself and the people around me mad, then is that really any better than allowing myself to forget about it for a while? That way, I can hopefully have the energy for action!
Suggestions for what action to take on a postcard to the usual address, please (i.e. as comments, although feel free to write a comment about something else!)
So, I'm living with my Dad (Yehuda/Yuda/Yud [the latter is what people seem to call him here; I'm convinced it's a codename and hence a sign that he works for Mossad, but he assures me it's just a nickname based on the fact that his name begins with the Hebrew letter of the alphabet 'yud' - suspicious, but he does manage a pretty convincing impression of someone who works in sales for EMC, I suppose, so I might be reading too much into a nickname...]) and his partner, Ilana. From that little aside there you'll have already gathered that Dad works in sales for a company called EMC; Ilana works in human resources for a company called Radware. They're both very warm and welcoming. Dad is addicted to swimming, and seems to have been given lots of books for his recent birthday, as well as initiating outings to the cinema pretty regularly; Ilana goes swimming less regularly but also to the gym, cooks amazing food very casually all the time, and has a pHD in Psychology, so that she's interesting to talk to about human behavioural patterns and so on. (I hope I'm not making a hash of meeting the above request: I don't really know quite what information people are looking for, so am wildly improvising.)
The other place I stay when I need to be in Central Tel Aviv (Ramat Hasharon is a suburb next to Herzliyah) is with my sister, Anna. Anna is a self-professed workaholic at the moment, for a marketing and communications company called Tamooz. Her job looks really cool, working on these giant marketing booths that pharmaceutical companies use to market their products at big symposiums of doctors, very creative. She also has lots of really fun friends who she's been kind enough to introduce me to: her flatmate, Ben, who works for the African Refugee Development Centre and has a cool accent and an impressive DVD collection; her friend Keri, whose Brummy accent sounded Australian to me at first, and who always strikes me as very chilled out and cheerful; her friend Aviva, who passed on wisdom from working as a mother's helper with a very funny mime of changing a nappy in the Mediterranean Sea the other day; her friends Sheni and Chen, who she works with and lives near to and are both very friendly and fun. Anna herself can be very playful and silly, which is fun, but also really good to talk serious issues through with, although things can get a bit heated if we find ourselves disagreeing, but what's family for if not to be truly yourself and descend into the odd argument with?
Inbal and Iran are Ilana's daughter and son-in-law; Inbal's English is very good because she lived in Canada for a while, and she did some English Literature modules at Uni so we have that in common, and she's very animated and lively; Iran is very friendly but seems to be most comfortable in Hebrew, which is a good incentive for me to speed up my progress as much as possible! They live just around the corner from us in Ramat Hasharon, and are having a baby this month, which is VERY exciting! Orneet, Inbal's older sister, lives in New York with her husband Dino and their two children Omer and Dafna, but they're coming to visit soon, so yay! Osnat, another sister of Inbal's, had reportedly disappeared when I came here, but we went out for a meal with her the other night. I always have the feeling that I've seen Osnat on TV, but I think I've mentioned this in the past and she denied it!
Turning from family to friends, Jude has just made Aaliyah and Jono has been here studying Hebrew over the Summer: they're the people I was going to go to Ramallah with, and I know them from studying English together at Cambridge Uni. They're people who share my interest in politics, and are also a bit mad and unpredictable, so great people to meet with no idea of your plans and have an adventure! Jono is sadly going back to Cambridge for his final year today, but he'll be back in December, so that's cool. Tali has just arrived as well; I know her from the lefty scene in England, and she'll be working for Magan David Adom (the Israeli branch of the Red Cross) and staying with her UNCLE, AMOS OZ, at some point!!!
Maya is the daughter of Dad's best friend from uni, lives just down the road from us, and is very cheery, fun and artistic company. She's always made me feel very welcome (and spoken English with me!) when I've been in Israel for shorter visits, so I'm glad to have some extended time to hang out with her in. Her friend Lenoy, who I've met a few times, is also very friendly and fun, so hopefully I'll see more of her too.
Yael is a friend I met in a hostel in Vienna whilst inter-railing round Europe a few year's ago: she's been having back problems, so I've only managed to see her once so far, but hopefully we'll be able to see more of each other from now on. She's what would be known in Cambridge as a 'Mathmo' (Mathmetician), and very friendly and thoughtful.
My class at Ulpan (Hebrew School!) is full of fun, friendly people and we've had various outings to the beach and whatnot. They're from all around the world, with India, Mexico, Indonesia, France and Peru being just a few examples, and a heady mix of Jewish, non-Jewish and partially Jewish! Some of them have married Israelis and either made aaliyah or moved here to be with them/spend some time here with them; some are younger and have just come for a bit of fun pre- or post-uni; some have just come to work on their Hebrew and spend more time here; some are hoping to move here to work. Patrick, who was the first person from Ulpan to give me his mobile number, deserves a special mention: he's very mean to me, but apparently it's because we're such good friends and I'm mean to him too. There are also Aline and Lian ('The Mexican Girls'), Tamar and Iman ('The German Girls'), Becky from France, Cara who's very posh and has thus out-Englished me, Bertille who walks in slow motion and seems very kind and patient, Enrique who dropped everything to come here with his girlfriend of three weeks and sits next to me in class; the list goes on! Emma is someone I met through a TEFL workshop but who studies at the same Ulpan as me, has a very comforting, familiar London accent, and studied English like me.
The final people to mention are of course Dani, the mother whose helper I am, and Amalia and Lian, the eleven month old twins, and Arabella, the two year old. Dani is very nice, and studied at Oxford, so understands about how Cambridge works. The twins are absolutely adorable, as is Arabella, if going through the slightly posessive phase I think is common at two. The other day she decided briefly I was trying to steal the pram with the twins in, but seemed to forget her suspicions a minute later, so that was OK.
So, this last week, there's been stuff happening in Ramat Hasharon and with family for Sukkot, and having a job has kept me a bit busier, and admittedly I had one of those really nothingy days mid-week where I couldn't make myself do anything productive. The point is, there's a disjunction between just living out your daily life here, spending time with family, working, studying Hebrew, going to the cinema or to the shops; and knowing what things are like in the Occupied Territories, wondering how to resolve it all, and discovering, irony of ironies, that the weekend I didn't go to Ramallah, a bomb was planted outside the Dizengoff Centre, where I go all the time. Jude and Jono came back from Ramallah, and later from Bethlehem, really distressed by what they'd seen and heard, so that in the space of a week I went from feeling crazy left wing around them to almost feeling right wing!
The point is, though, the stuff they're shocked by, I know it's happening. It doesn't shock me anymore. It's there, all the time, as I eat my frozen yoghurt or swim in the sea or play with the babies I work with. And it's bad, don't get me wrong, it's very very very bad. Settlers shooting at Palestinians, people getting shot for walking too close to the wall, being held up at check points in their underwear for hours or tortured by the IDF; maybe these are just stories people tell tourists, but I doubt it. It's real, and you might understand it as self-defence or survival or measures that were necessary after the intifada but, if you're going to value all human life equally and call a spade a spade, it's wrong.
But the question is, what does obsessing about it and worrying about it and feeling guilty about it and arguing with my family about it actually achieve, other than stress and distress and no change to the situation? Does it absolve me that I'm mad as hell about the settlement freeze not being extended and the peace talks falling apart if I can't think of anything to do about it other than boycotting settlement goods and deciding not to risk being the next Rachel Corrie? Added to which, the most apt analogy for the situation here that I've come across is by Amos Oz: imagine that Israel is a person who's been drowning for centuries and finally grabs a boat and hauls themself up, only to push Palestine, also imagined as a person, into the sea to start drowning. So one side is still haunted by memories of drowning and constantly fears drowning; and as a horrible, ironic consequence, the other side is now drowning. Of course, I don't know how to extend the analogy to include the role of the old imperial powers and how the Palestinians are treated in the Arab world and so on, but the point is that seeing and recognising the reality of the situation in Palestine shouldn't compromise one's ability to see and recognise the situation in Israel, without descending into liberal proposals that we all just have a cosy chat over falafel and don't make too fine a point of the occupation. And let's not lose sight of the fact that the situation in Palestine catagorically isn't the worst one in the world, even if that doesn't really help anyone and isn't an excuse, it's just a question of keeping in mind the fact that all the vitriol against Israel from people in countries that are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan ought really to be more contextualised.
So what I've decided is that, whilst my views on what needs to happen haven't really changed, if I'm not doing something concrete to bring it about, I'm going to allow myself to enjoy being in Israel with my family. If I can have a productive conversation with someone about the conflict, then I will, but if all I'm doing is going round in circles and driving myself and the people around me mad, then is that really any better than allowing myself to forget about it for a while? That way, I can hopefully have the energy for action!
Suggestions for what action to take on a postcard to the usual address, please (i.e. as comments, although feel free to write a comment about something else!)
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