An Ironic 4th of July

I have not blogged for a month, but I will be blogging past events based on my journaling.

7/5

I spent the 4th of July weekend in Tel Aviv expecting to enjoy Israel's more liberal half--I could talk to some Israelis with less pro-settlement (pro-Jewish settlement building in the West Bank), less anti-Palestinian leanings...I could hold hands with Walter in the street without stares...I could wear a sleeveless dress...I could meet some Americans whom I could celebrate the 4th with.

I did get to wear my sleeveless dress, and I did get to flirt with Walter on the beach. But I actually experienced quite a bit of anti-American sentiment in Tel Aviv.

Above, you'll see a poster that actually did not surprise me. Many Israelis are skeptical of Obama; they are not sure how much he will rock the American precedent set for near-unquestioning support of Israel, and his landmark overtures to the Arab and Muslim world don't exactly ease their fears. The only surprising thing was that I took this photo in Tel Aviv.

The first evening in Tel Aviv, Walter and I crashed someone's bachelor party on the roof of the hostel we were staying at. In TV room of the hostel, on the bookshelf, I saw a familiar book about a rather reknown Alabama football coach, picture below and to the right.

We had a long conversation with a British man, who had been living and working in Israel for some time. When he heard that we were volunteers with UNRWA, he said, "I have to be honest with you, I hate UNRWA." I was shocked, but prepared to have a difficult, but diplomatic and nonetheless educational conversation with him. This man hated that UNRWA thrived on keeping Palestinians as refugees. And that Americans, and the rest of Europe especiallyThe more Palestinians begin to give up on their return to their homes before "Al Nakba" ("The Catastrophe," in Arabic), when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the less they will consider themselves as "refugees" and thusly depend on the UN for services. At least 90% of UNRWA employees are Palestinian nationals--as opposed to international aid workers--meaning that a significant chunk of the West Bank and Gaza's economy depends on the jobs generated by local UNRWA projects, field offices, and headquarters (not to mention the UNRWA branches that care for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, etc.).

I argued that "Realistically, Palestinians will never not need the right to return to some degree or another." The British man proceeded to flip-out, as did Walter who thought that I, in making such a statement, had basically given the guy license to write off our point of view completely. I quickly recovered by clarifying that I did not believe every Palestinian must have the right to return, but rather that realistically and based on my experience, Palestinians would never not desire the right to return. Giving every Palestinian full right to return is just not feasible. Some families, pre-1948, were farming on land where there is now a massive apartment complex in a major city...

Walter and I try to be very sensitive to our opportunities to learn from others who hold different poltical opinions than us, but at times it is difficult to know when to listen and when to challenge. We were frankly thrown off to meet an international, a Brit no less, with such strong pro-Israel leanings. This man believed that the radical Jewish settlers just wanted to live on the land they saw as theirs and that they were mostly ignorant to the kind of disturbance they were creating in the West Bank. People living in Tel Aviv may be ignorant to the seismic waves made by the settlers, but I believe that the majority of settlers know exactly what they are doing. Settlers would not feel the need to oust the Palestinians around them by throwing stones or by pouring sewage into the shops of Palestinians living below their apartments if they weren't aware of the tension.

On the morning of the 4th, Walter and I went to go grab some breakfast and to cut up a watermelon in the spirit of Independence Day. We went into a restaurant we realized served some kind of Arab cuisine. We ate Johan--a rolled up sweet-salty fried pastry bread with a mild tomato dipping sauce and a vinegar-soaked hard-boiled egg. On a hunch, we asked the woman if they served Yemeni food to which she replied, "Yes this is Yemeni." And then, leaning in closer to whisper, "Yemeni Jewish, of course." God forbid she be serving anything associated with the Arab world.

We spent the rest of the day on the beach reading, swimming, and talking. One of my friends

from the University of Alabama, Eric Edwards, joined us for the 4th from Weizmann Institute where he is currently studying physics.

That evening, we went to Mike's Place. Mike is American, and so he had put up lots of American decor and had patriotic music playing. We met Steven, an 20-year old American Jew who knots a rolled-up American flag bandana around his black razored bangs. Steven is in the process of becoming an Israeli citizen and has already completed his IDF training. Steven has been arrested several times for "fuckin' with some Arabs." Besides keeping Israel safe from Palestinian terrorists (there are actually non-ignorable numbers of Palestinians who are detained because they were connected with some minor terrorist plot), Steven thinks the IDF has a terrific sense of humor to boot. He loves these two shirts that he's seen a lot from the Border Security division wearing. One has the crosshairs of a sniper rifle over the silouette of a vieled, pregnant woman. It reads below in Hebrew, "Two birds, one stone." Another has crosshairs over the silouette of a boy (assumed to be Palestinian) with the Hebrew caption, "You're going to kill him when he grows up, you may as well kill him now." 

We were all mostly dumbfounded and let Steven speak uninterrupted on his various political views. In the end, I think at least I convinced him that it is in the United States' AND Israel's interests to begin making stronger diplomatic ties with Syria. See the NY Times article I've posted to the side.

I came to Tel Aviv expecting a break from the tension I feel in Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis. But instead, I got a much stronger dose of pro-Israeli than I expected. And I thought that I wouldn't see a single Palestinian in Tel Aviv, but there were quite a few vieled women on the beach, as pictured on below on the left. It was nice to wear clothes like I would in the states, to act like I would in the states, to ride bikes with Walter on the boardwalk, and Tel Aviv is a place with more liberal characters, as you can see below on the right. But I still saw some of the ugliness of Israel--the parts of it that hate the U.S., the parts of it that hate Palestinians, and the parts of it that attract really dispicable Americans. 

I hoped to relax and celebrate the U.S.A. I was able to relax, but I both absorbed the Israeli animousity for Americans and felt animousity myself towards one specific American.