What a strange day.
I'm so tired right now, but if I don't write this out tonight, I'll regret it come tomorrow morning.
So much has happened since the last time I've written...where do I even begin to begin?
For starters, I've just posted an article from Reuters about tonight's "attack" in Jerusalem-I'm trying to figure out why they've put quotes around the word, and I guess it's because no terrorist group was behind the act, and no civilians or victims were killed (yet). Only one casualty, and it was the driver of the vehicle.
The police claim it was indeed an act of terrorism, and I believe this is because terrorism is defined as an act of desperation to incite fear amongst civilians. I was driving back from an Ulpan graduation party at my teacher's house, and we were downtown right next to the Old City when this happened. All of a sudden we heard police and ambulance sirens closing in on the city, and we saw people running towards the scene. There were several different accounts of what had just happened; when we asked the people on the street, they said there were gunshots, while the radio announcer said it was another tractor/bulldozer incident by the Damascus Gate.
I was taken aback by how casually Israelis seemed to react to this incident. One Israeli I met simply said, "Welcome to Israel" and when I asked my Israeli friend if he'd heard what happened, he just sighed and said that things like this were a fact of life in Israel. And that was it. The "attack" hasn't been mentioned again since.
Last night, I went to a concert put on by an MTV-Fulbright scholar who brought together Palestinian and Israeli musicians along with a Palestinian and Israeli youth music group Heart of Jerusalem to perform at the Jerusalem YMCA. The first artists were from the group White Flag; the group is made up of 3 Palestinians from Gaza and 3 Israelis. Because sometimes (like last night) half the group from Gaza can't get through the checkpoints on time or ever, the group's self-proclaimed motto is, "the show must go on". They sang in both Hebrew and Arabic.The hip-hop group G-Town that my internship researcher is focusing on also performed last night.
They were good live, although I think they felt a little awkward at first because the crowd was quiet and seated-really not your typical hip-hop concert with a loud, excited crowd, arm waving, and head bobbing.The crowd was mixed with mostly older parents there to watch their children perform in the youth group, younger Israeli groupie types of the band, the Sulhita project, and the G-Town posse dressed in western hip-hop gear with printed NY and LA wide-brimmed hats, baggy jeans, stylish Kanye hoodies and kicks.
After the concert, the other intern, the researcher and I went to go meet the members of G-Town, and I felt like such a groupie waiting for the group after the show! We hung out and talked with two of the members of G-Town in a nearby playground until late into the night.
It was a really interesting experience to hear first-hand a Palestinian's experience in Jerusalem. The members of the group live in the Shuafat Refugee Camp, which is actually just north of French Hill.
One of the members told us that he is studying film and television in a school in a nearby settlement. I asked him if that meant that most of his classmates were Israeli Jews, and he immediately responded that he didn't have a problem with Israelis or Jews, but he definitely affirmed that he did not like Israeli settlers. He told us how in class the Israelis never spoke with the Palestinians even though the classes are very small. He said that he doesn't even get acknowledged so much with a greeting or a smile.
I found out that there are separate schools for Jewish students and Palestinians students although there are a few schools like Hand-in-Hand that have both Israeli and Palestinian students and teach in both Hebrew and Arabic. Unfortunately, from the get-go, there is no intermixing. The children are segregated by the education system, and it seems that the approach to a peaceful coexistence is set up to fail.
Even in local Jerusalem parks, both Israeli Jews and Palestinian parents bring their children to play although the parents never talk to each other and the kids don't play with each other; they just share the same space.
This is when I realized that most of the people here cohabitate without coexisting.
There is only a feeble coexistence because in each own struggle to affirm the right to live, each must ignore "the other"'s right to live. The system is understood by many as a zero-sum game, and unfortunately someone has to lose.
We talked about the checkpoints and how tedious and humiliating they can be. Then he told us a story from his childhood when he was stuck with his family in the car at a checkpoint for several hours. When they finally got through, someone shot at the car, and the car with his whole family flipped over. They were all in the hospital for days. He doesn't know why the soldiers shot at his car. The bizarre thing is, he told us that until the age of fifteen, he had never met an Israeli who was not an IDF soldier with a gun. For most of his childhood, he confessed that he was afraid of Israelis, and this fear generates resentment, and that leads to hate.
It's interesting that from both sides, there are mutual constructs of "the other" that start from childhood. While Israeli Jewish children, especially those who grew up during the second intifada, imagine Palestinians as terrorists, Palestinian children imagine Israelis as intimidating soldiers with guns.
Both imagine the other as a violent oppressor.
Then, in another interesting turn of events, I went to the settlement of Efrat tonight to my Ulpan teacher's house with the rest of my Ulpan class to celebrate the end of summer Ulpan. I was in the Muslim quarter all afternoon buying Turkish delight and trying Knafeh while trying to find a way into al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (unsuccessful).
I ended up walking to the central bus station with two friends, when I was stopped by a plainclothes policeman just between the Damascus gate and the Jaffa gate. He only stopped me. He aggressively told me to show him my passport. I was skeptical at first as to his identity as a policeman, but a nearby police vehicle with another policeman nodding along convinced me.
Obviously I don't carry such an important document with me everywhere, so I told him that I didn't have my passport in English. He started getting angry and told me that I was a tourist so therefore I must have a passport. I was flustered and so angry, but I managed to tell him in Hebrew that I was a student at the Hebrew University. As soon as he heard the Hebrew, he broke out into a smile and let me go as my friends watched. I was so humiliated again that I was the only one stopped because I was clearly not Jewish. I was so angry by his blatant discrimination. It made me so upset, and I couldn't understand how Palestinians could deal with this treatment on a daily basis. I thought, fuck this place. I would never send my children here.
The bus ride to Efrat was interesting. I saw the separation barrier up close, and the bus was built like a tank with small bulletproof windows to shield against snipers. I also noticed that the walls were not continuous, and a friend explained that this was so that if a driver is shot at while on the highway, he/she could stop behind the walled sections as protection from the sniper. What a life, huh?
Then, on the way back from dinner, the "attack" happened. And it made me re-evaluate my reaction earlier about discrimination. While nothing justifies rude treatment, I realize that here, discrimination equals survival. It certainly doesn't justify discrimination, but it is understandable.
How can they distinguish between the terrorist and the non-terrorist?
They have to do these random checks as humiliating and rude as they may seem to the person being checked. The checkpoints too are horrible, but an Israeli friend of mine who worked at a checkpoint in Gaza told me how they found bombs daily. How could they not have these tedious checkpoints when innocent people's lives were at stake?
I talked to my roommate after I got home, and I was pretty shaken up. I could still hear and see the sirens for a while outside my window. She told me that she had no sympathy for terrorists. She said that attacks on civilians were not justified by anything. If it were up to those individuals, they probably would change the system if they could.
I agree that most people would not condone maltreatment of others without just cause; however, the problem is, is defending against terrorism by a few radical individuals just cause for humiliation and discrimination against the whole group of people?
