Discovery #51: I have so much to learn.
It has been a crazy semester for sure: uprisings and revolutions in three out of five of our planned travel destinations...then a bomb exploded in Jerusalem last Wednesday.
(Note: I and all my classmates are fine! I was in Bethlehem at my service project when the blast occurred.)
I haven't been in to Jerusalem since then (our program banned travel to Jerusalem for a few days) but it definitely seems surreal. It's only three days later, but people are trying desperately to move on as if nothing happened -- as if stopping too long to think about or mourn over it would do more harm then good. After all, they cannot show the terrorists any sign of defeat. "We're not going anywhere," the Israeli response seems to say. "We've waited it out before; we'll wait it out again."
And yet, in many ways, this seems to be a facade.
I ate Shabbat dinner with a Jewish family last night and the mother was telling us how shaken up her daughter, Esther, was after she got back from school on Wednesday. Esther's school was 15 minutes away from the bombing.
"She was born into this, you know?" her American-born mother told my group. "When she was born, there were coffee shops and restaurants being blown up all the time. We moved to Haifa to get away from it -- even then there were three bombings there."
It make me sad to say this, but I'm understanding now why there is so much hatred. If bombs were blowing up when you were born and they're blowing up now, how hard is it not to hate? How much can hatred be a coping mechanism to get you through? It somehow makes you feel better if you can hate the people -- and their race -- who have done these things to you and your people.
"But how unfair is that," I ask myself. "How unfair to hate a whole people for one individual's violent action? To hate a whole people without knowing one of them?"
But that's my view as an outsider on this conflict -- as someone who can pass back and forth between the West Bank and Israel any day and at any time I want. Society does not demand that I have friends of only one race -- I have Israeli friends and I have Palestinian friends. I have had a chance to see stereotypes vanish before my eyes -- as my friend's mother welcomes seven of my friends and I into her family's home for dinner on Mother's Day, as I hear the Jewish longing for a homeland, as my friends Dana and Reem joyfully sneak me into ancient holy sites, as a Palestinian man takes time to sit and share his Islamic faith with me -- and as I hear his frustration about being stereotyped as a terrorist because of it.
And where does this leave me? With so much to learn. So much to learn about not blaming people because they have not had the same experiences as me. So much to learn about humility when I think I know everything. So much to learn about patience -- about waiting for change. So much to learn about hope.
It has been a crazy semester for sure: uprisings and revolutions in three out of five of our planned travel destinations...then a bomb exploded in Jerusalem last Wednesday.
(Note: I and all my classmates are fine! I was in Bethlehem at my service project when the blast occurred.)
I haven't been in to Jerusalem since then (our program banned travel to Jerusalem for a few days) but it definitely seems surreal. It's only three days later, but people are trying desperately to move on as if nothing happened -- as if stopping too long to think about or mourn over it would do more harm then good. After all, they cannot show the terrorists any sign of defeat. "We're not going anywhere," the Israeli response seems to say. "We've waited it out before; we'll wait it out again."
And yet, in many ways, this seems to be a facade.
I ate Shabbat dinner with a Jewish family last night and the mother was telling us how shaken up her daughter, Esther, was after she got back from school on Wednesday. Esther's school was 15 minutes away from the bombing.
"She was born into this, you know?" her American-born mother told my group. "When she was born, there were coffee shops and restaurants being blown up all the time. We moved to Haifa to get away from it -- even then there were three bombings there."
It make me sad to say this, but I'm understanding now why there is so much hatred. If bombs were blowing up when you were born and they're blowing up now, how hard is it not to hate? How much can hatred be a coping mechanism to get you through? It somehow makes you feel better if you can hate the people -- and their race -- who have done these things to you and your people.
"But how unfair is that," I ask myself. "How unfair to hate a whole people for one individual's violent action? To hate a whole people without knowing one of them?"
 |
| Friends New and Old after Dinner with Ahmed's Family |
And where does this leave me? With so much to learn. So much to learn about not blaming people because they have not had the same experiences as me. So much to learn about humility when I think I know everything. So much to learn about patience -- about waiting for change. So much to learn about hope.
