DAMN DAMN Papers.
ugh this thing I'm writing is such crap,
And the more I write the more I realize I have no information. BOOOOOO.
It's ok, I can write crap for now. It's ok, it's ok. I'm going to keep telling myself that. No one has to see this crap, it's just me, and I have to write something down to work from. Just keep working. Just keep working.
Ok, Carolyn.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
I've been really bad about posting.
I guess I've been spending a lot less time alone in my room (which is probably a good thing) and so haven't been able to write.
It's a combination of a lot of things -- the "war" ended, school started and we have lots of makeup classes now, deadlines are coming closer and so I spend more time staring at books but not writing (of course), and I've been hanging out with new people.
Blah, I hate writing obliquely.
New goal -- to do some kind of exercise everyday because afterwards I feel like I'm on opium. Ahh, it's so nice. I don't care that I'm not doing my work. I don't care that I'm fighting with my roommate. I don't care that I'm being awkward with guys.
Just watched the end of a girl's volleyball game in the gym. Girls' volleyball seems to be the biggest sport at the university, at least the most popular spectator wise. No, basketball probably is. But anyway, volleyball is maybe second most popular and 90% of the fans are guys. Why? Because the team is really hot. (And because they are one of the only real teams at the university with a coach and practices etc.) I think the Amherst team is better though.
Hmmmm..... what else? My mind is a blank: The beauty of exercise.
Spring Awakening closed on broadway. So I won't be able to obsess about it anymore. Probably a good thing. It's weird though, getting attached to something and then it going away, ceasing to exist.
So, that's it for now. Maybe writing this will help me get going again.
Love,
Carolyn
I guess I've been spending a lot less time alone in my room (which is probably a good thing) and so haven't been able to write.
It's a combination of a lot of things -- the "war" ended, school started and we have lots of makeup classes now, deadlines are coming closer and so I spend more time staring at books but not writing (of course), and I've been hanging out with new people.
Blah, I hate writing obliquely.
New goal -- to do some kind of exercise everyday because afterwards I feel like I'm on opium. Ahh, it's so nice. I don't care that I'm not doing my work. I don't care that I'm fighting with my roommate. I don't care that I'm being awkward with guys.
Just watched the end of a girl's volleyball game in the gym. Girls' volleyball seems to be the biggest sport at the university, at least the most popular spectator wise. No, basketball probably is. But anyway, volleyball is maybe second most popular and 90% of the fans are guys. Why? Because the team is really hot. (And because they are one of the only real teams at the university with a coach and practices etc.) I think the Amherst team is better though.
Hmmmm..... what else? My mind is a blank: The beauty of exercise.
Spring Awakening closed on broadway. So I won't be able to obsess about it anymore. Probably a good thing. It's weird though, getting attached to something and then it going away, ceasing to exist.
So, that's it for now. Maybe writing this will help me get going again.
Love,
Carolyn
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thoughts from the Computer Lab
The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) claim that less than 25% of the deaths in Gaza are civilian.
IDF spokesmen says that of the 900 names of the dead they have recieved from Palestinian hospital sources 150 are women and children, and they estimate no more than 250 civilians have been killed total.
Al Jazeera, (an Arab news network stationed in Qatar), says that 40% of the deaths are civilian.
The Jerusalem Post says that some Palestinian sources claim more than half of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians.
I watched a video on youtube of a British doctor in a hospital in Gaza about a week ago. He claimed that half of the people coming into the hospital were women and children (this means the wounded).
So what does this mean? Who is being killed here?
Israel, I believe is fighting in its ground campaign those who fight them ie. those with guns. They call these people Hamas militants. I wonder if they are all so easily distinguished between Hamas and people who have just decided to pick up a gun against the attacking army. On the ground, I atleast hope, Israel is only shooting those who shoot back. Some of those that shoot back might be more of what we would call civilians than militants, but... well, anyway.
But, with the bombing campaign Israel does not seem to be distinguishing very well. I believe them when they say they make house calls before bombing. Well, I believe that they have made house calls -- calls to houses to tell them to get out before the area is bombed. I don't believe they make house calls every time, or even close to every time. (Obviously not).
And, well, they have bombed a UN school, a mosque... lots of other things that I don't know. In each place they claim there were weapons stock piled underneath or Hamas militants hiding there. So, Israel is bombing targets where there are civilians in order to get at the Hamas amid the civilians or the weapons below them. It is not merely that civilians standing near by the fighting are getting hit, some are being hit directly because they are with the wrong people or in the wrong places.
I started writing just now because I am in the computer lab, trying to do work but we just had another alarm. There is a safe room next to the computer room so we just went in there (people meandered in). There were two booms, and one sounded close. Really loud. I don't know where it was. It wasn't next to the dorms or anything but must have been in a neighborhood nearby. We only had one alert yesterday and none the day before. They have been lessening. Two people were seriously hurt in this last rocket to hit here and six others wounded. They are the first serious injuries here.
I don't know what I meant to say with the stuff about civilians, just that it is all so unclear.
But this talk/ media on Gaza is making me think, aren't all the wars we wage terrible? I mean civilians are killed in the crossfire all the time, but maybe because the wars the US has been fighting have been so far away from us -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- the media coverage of them has been mostly sanitary. As in more sanitary than what they show and imply in their coverage of Gaza. I did not get the same sense of widespread suffering of civilians from the coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan as I do with the coverage of Gaza. Does this mean that the suffering was not there, or only that the media did not report it in the same way they report it in Gaza? Of course, I probably wasn't paying close enough attention to IRaq or Afghanistan to make very dependable claims.
Regardless of my weak amount of information, I wonder, if we take out the fact that Israel is implicated in the reason Gaza's situation exists, is Israel killing more civilians/ being more cruel towards civilians than the US was in its two previous wars? Well, both are ongoing I guess.
I read that US dropped food and aid in between its bombings of Kabal, AFganistan in 2001. And we all know that the army used smart missiles which can hit specific buildings even if shot from very far away. The implication of all this -- the aid and the smart missiles -- is that the US killed only the bad guys and helped the good, the innocent. But we know from Gaza that civilians are in every building. Whether the missiles are smart or not, they still kill civilians.
One thing I am learning in my studies here is that the US is not as benevolent as we believe it to be. We forget when we are in the center (in the US I mean), what the US's policies really look like from the outside. Our government tells us it goes after the bad people around the world and aims to help the innocent. But we determine who is bad and good, and the people in the societies themselves do not see things the same way. When the US targets Iraq, it targets Iraq. For the people in Iraq, an attack on Iraq feels like an attack on everyone there. Or, well to be more I don't know more subtle, even if the people of Iraq see the US working against certain factions, they are probably suffering as well. Basically, well Basically this is crap and I need to be more specific.
It is 6:45 pm on Thursday (Israel's equivalent of Friday, ie. the start of the weekend) and the only people still in the computer lab with me are Arab. All the Jews have gone home for the weekend, or stopped working. I have noticed the same thing in the library the last week. Out of the students who stayed at the University after the war started and classes were cancelled a high percentage were Arab.
It's like a party for them in here. I mean they're all cracking jokes with one another.
Arabic really is a cool language. You can't speak it and be a wimp -- there are so many guttural, and what sound to the American's ear as empathtic sort of noises. Just listening to it reminds you that there are so many parts of the mouth and the throat that can be used in speech that we never use. I quit my arabic class because I didn't have the energy or the drive to learn a new language right now... It felt like forcing myself to do yoga exercises that were damn hard for me to do and that I had not decided I wanted to do, but was only doing because I was told I had to. But anyway, it's still nice to listen to other people doing it.
IDF spokesmen says that of the 900 names of the dead they have recieved from Palestinian hospital sources 150 are women and children, and they estimate no more than 250 civilians have been killed total.
Al Jazeera, (an Arab news network stationed in Qatar), says that 40% of the deaths are civilian.
The Jerusalem Post says that some Palestinian sources claim more than half of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians.
I watched a video on youtube of a British doctor in a hospital in Gaza about a week ago. He claimed that half of the people coming into the hospital were women and children (this means the wounded).
So what does this mean? Who is being killed here?
Israel, I believe is fighting in its ground campaign those who fight them ie. those with guns. They call these people Hamas militants. I wonder if they are all so easily distinguished between Hamas and people who have just decided to pick up a gun against the attacking army. On the ground, I atleast hope, Israel is only shooting those who shoot back. Some of those that shoot back might be more of what we would call civilians than militants, but... well, anyway.
But, with the bombing campaign Israel does not seem to be distinguishing very well. I believe them when they say they make house calls before bombing. Well, I believe that they have made house calls -- calls to houses to tell them to get out before the area is bombed. I don't believe they make house calls every time, or even close to every time. (Obviously not).
And, well, they have bombed a UN school, a mosque... lots of other things that I don't know. In each place they claim there were weapons stock piled underneath or Hamas militants hiding there. So, Israel is bombing targets where there are civilians in order to get at the Hamas amid the civilians or the weapons below them. It is not merely that civilians standing near by the fighting are getting hit, some are being hit directly because they are with the wrong people or in the wrong places.
I started writing just now because I am in the computer lab, trying to do work but we just had another alarm. There is a safe room next to the computer room so we just went in there (people meandered in). There were two booms, and one sounded close. Really loud. I don't know where it was. It wasn't next to the dorms or anything but must have been in a neighborhood nearby. We only had one alert yesterday and none the day before. They have been lessening. Two people were seriously hurt in this last rocket to hit here and six others wounded. They are the first serious injuries here.
I don't know what I meant to say with the stuff about civilians, just that it is all so unclear.
But this talk/ media on Gaza is making me think, aren't all the wars we wage terrible? I mean civilians are killed in the crossfire all the time, but maybe because the wars the US has been fighting have been so far away from us -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- the media coverage of them has been mostly sanitary. As in more sanitary than what they show and imply in their coverage of Gaza. I did not get the same sense of widespread suffering of civilians from the coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan as I do with the coverage of Gaza. Does this mean that the suffering was not there, or only that the media did not report it in the same way they report it in Gaza? Of course, I probably wasn't paying close enough attention to IRaq or Afghanistan to make very dependable claims.
Regardless of my weak amount of information, I wonder, if we take out the fact that Israel is implicated in the reason Gaza's situation exists, is Israel killing more civilians/ being more cruel towards civilians than the US was in its two previous wars? Well, both are ongoing I guess.
I read that US dropped food and aid in between its bombings of Kabal, AFganistan in 2001. And we all know that the army used smart missiles which can hit specific buildings even if shot from very far away. The implication of all this -- the aid and the smart missiles -- is that the US killed only the bad guys and helped the good, the innocent. But we know from Gaza that civilians are in every building. Whether the missiles are smart or not, they still kill civilians.
One thing I am learning in my studies here is that the US is not as benevolent as we believe it to be. We forget when we are in the center (in the US I mean), what the US's policies really look like from the outside. Our government tells us it goes after the bad people around the world and aims to help the innocent. But we determine who is bad and good, and the people in the societies themselves do not see things the same way. When the US targets Iraq, it targets Iraq. For the people in Iraq, an attack on Iraq feels like an attack on everyone there. Or, well to be more I don't know more subtle, even if the people of Iraq see the US working against certain factions, they are probably suffering as well. Basically, well Basically this is crap and I need to be more specific.
It is 6:45 pm on Thursday (Israel's equivalent of Friday, ie. the start of the weekend) and the only people still in the computer lab with me are Arab. All the Jews have gone home for the weekend, or stopped working. I have noticed the same thing in the library the last week. Out of the students who stayed at the University after the war started and classes were cancelled a high percentage were Arab.
It's like a party for them in here. I mean they're all cracking jokes with one another.
Arabic really is a cool language. You can't speak it and be a wimp -- there are so many guttural, and what sound to the American's ear as empathtic sort of noises. Just listening to it reminds you that there are so many parts of the mouth and the throat that can be used in speech that we never use. I quit my arabic class because I didn't have the energy or the drive to learn a new language right now... It felt like forcing myself to do yoga exercises that were damn hard for me to do and that I had not decided I wanted to do, but was only doing because I was told I had to. But anyway, it's still nice to listen to other people doing it.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
I am going to bed. I hope there will not be any more alarms tonight.
A rocket landed next to my dorms today. Our dorms are in a circle surrounded by a fence. The rocket fell just inside the fence, fifty feet from one of the buildings.I was in the library when it happened. My roommate called me because she had seen on the news a picture of where it fell. I hadn't known that it hit so close. Everything is muffled in the library.
I got really excited on the phone with her, was picturing it having fallen inside the courtyard of the dorms rather than on the outside. Was picturing where I would have been if I had stayed in my room all day like I did yesterday rather than go to the library. Mother fucker, another couple of feet and it would have hit someone's room. Mother fucker, I could have been in my room but I wasn't.
A guy who was here said it shook the foundations of his building.
Enough of that. I am calmed down.
I am keeping my door unlocked tonight and my shoes out next to the door. If an alarm goes off I will go all the way to the shelter. The problem is I have to run through open areas to get to the shelter. But really, They never hit the same place twice. Ever. So though it seems crazy to stay here it's not really.
And also, it's interesting I just said I had to run through "open areas". I have always joked that our dorms are like a fortress -- tiny windows, lot's of concrete, and these strange multi sided buildings that seem to hunker together against whatever onslaught could come from the outside. Well, now there is an onslaught, and I have taken for granted how protective the dorms are, and now feel that the tiny bit of space that isn't enclosed by walls is "open" and not secure.
The architects knew better that I, I guess. I really thought that these dorms were an example of the Israeli subconscious obsessed with self defense. Maybe they are, but it works in times like this.
I went to the doctor today after the rocket hit and the doctor wouldn't see me. He and this other woman yelled at me in hebrew. Basically it is because I had missed two appointments. One of them I had gone to an hour early and had gotten in early, so they didn't think I had gone to it. The other one my relative had made for me last week but then I left Beer Sheva to go to Tel Aviv to get away from the rockets. And I didn't know the number to call and cancel. Nor did I want to bother. It's different here, no one respects the appointment times, you have to fight to get in to the doctor whether you have an appointment or not. So I thought they didn't keep track. They do apparently. And I still have this rash all over my body that makes me feel like shit.
After walking out of the doctor I started to cry. I knew that my relatives would tell me to go away from Beer Sheva but I couldn't take it. I really feel like a hag with this rash all over my neck, plus I've been wanting to buy new clothes, last week in Tel Aviv I only had one pair of pants and all the girls there always look so good. I felt like such a mess and I didn't even have anywhere to go and rest and try to get better. No where to just take a shower damnit without feeling bad for doing it in someone else's apartment.
Anyway, the thought of having to pick up and go again, while feeling sick and not knowing where to go, and now worrying about all the school work I was missing, and the whole reason I had come back to Beer Sheva - to go to the doctor- being thwarted, it was just too much.
We just had another alarm. I am still dressed so I sprinted to the bomb shelter. At first I was running, jogging, but then I started full out sprinting. I feel different now that it's hit so close.
As we walked out of the shelter, some guys were walking around the other side of the courtyard. One of them was yelling. Apparently they were yelling in Arabic. A guy with us jumps up on a bench to see them better. Then he starts running after them because they are heading towards our rooms. Other people start running too. I walked behind with another girl. Apparently they were worried about these two Arabs in the dorms.
I go around a corner and up some stairs and see the guy who was running talking to two guys a floor above him. Now I recognize the two guys. They live where they are now sitting. They are students here like us. They are Arabs but they are students. They had gone to the other shelter in the dorms when the alarm sounded.
How is this going to get better if the people running for shelter with us are suspects themselves?
Everyone assumed they were terrorists or something. The prejudice is so automatic. I followed because everyone seemed so sure it was something, and I assumed they knew better than I, but really they heard arabic and they jumped. And truth is I wasn't thinking clearly either. I saw the two guys and didn't think anything, but when I saw everyone else's expressions of worry and fear, I thought, "oh no, this must be something."
Though at the same time but weaker in my head was, "but we're running from rockets, not from people right now. What can these guys have to do with anything?"
Then as I started following behind I thought maybe everyone thought the guys were coming to rob the buildings we had just left.
Usually we sit in the computer labs together -- Jews and Arabs -- and there seems to be no problem. Something like this happens and we see there is a problem.
We just had another alarm. Ran to the bomb shelter again.
You see how hard it is to have perspective? I keep trying to start talking about what's going on in Gaza and I keep getting pulled back into what is happening here.
I will not join one of the facebook groups arguing for "Israel's side". The "Truth about the Rockets Israel's story". A couple of my friends are joining this group, or they are posting articles arguing for the offensive against Gaza. I just wish there were something less partisan. It is true-- these rocket attacks in Israel are damn scary. But it is also true that whole streets are being leveled in Gaza right now. I read a report by an Associated PRess reporter that since there is no power for the water pumps, Gaza City has stopped pumping water. It is not just the military assault they are suffering from right now, it is a crisis of basic necessities - food and water.
Does it mean because I am a Jew and I am in Israel I cannot care about other people? I hope not.
Here are the Hard points that I see: (Or some of them)
1) Rockets have been falling on towns, on kibbutzim, on people in Israel for years. Today we had three alarms here and we are a mess. Some towns have had 30 alarms in a day. (And with each alarm there is a rocket).
2) The most basic purpose of a government is to protect its people. I think we can accept this as a premise.
Then Israel should protect its people. That's what it says it is doing with this offensive in Gaza.
So what is our argument with Israel?
That it is killing too many people, that it is attacking too hard?
Ok, but they have been doing small scale raids in Gaza for years and that has not stopped the rocket fire.
So what to do, when the small scale stuff isn't working?
1) Do nothing, just take the attacks.
BUt this means Israel's government is not performing its duty of protecting its people.
2) Do more - bomb more, kill more.
3) Negotiate.
Why aren't they negotiating? One, to Israel Hamas is a terrorist organization and thereby one they cannot negotiate with, and two, I think Hamas says it will not negotiate with Israel.
So really, Israel is doing what any other government would do if its country were attacked - it is fighting back.
The problem is it is a fight of first rate weapons and power against third or fourth rate weapons, power, and organization. Israel is the machine gun, and Gaza is... a dysfunctional, prehistoric musket maybe. This is what the world sees. We forget that the third and fourth rate weapons are still weapons and see only the power and destruction of the first rate weapons.
And yet, it is still more complicated.
1) A large portion of the population in Gaza are refugees. They came from what is now Israel. In 1948 about 700,000 Arabs left the areas that became Israel and resettled in what is now the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Some fled the violence of the war between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, and many were expelled by the Israeli Army.
I just read something online (trustworthiness?) that says three quarters of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza are refugees. This is because the children of the refugees and the children's children are counted as refugees. Basically, these people have a large bone to pick with Israel.
2) The towns of Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, which are now part of Israel, were, under the UN Partition Plan for Palestine included in what was supposed to be the Arab state. (In 1947 UN made this plan to partition Palestine, Israel accepted partition, Palestinians didn't. Then Israel declared Independence, Arabs attacked, Israel won, AND conquered land outside what it had been given in the Partition plan. These areas conquered in 1948 are now considered Israel proper, by Israelis and by the International community. ) Hamas does not consider Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod part of Israel. They call these towns the names they used to have - ARabic names. So, the last eight years of missile fire on Sderot can be seen an attempt to claim lost territory -- territory that should have been in the Arab state.
3) OR you can see the rocket fire as attempts to gain the larger lost territory -- all of Palestine. Because to well all Palestinians Israel is lost territory. The difference between moderate and extreme Palestinians is that the moderates, I think will accept that Israel exists, though they don't believe it should, and extreme Palestinians will not accept that Israel exists. They continue to fight and will continue to fight its existence. To Israel, anyone that says ISrael does not have a right to exist is a dangerous extremist. BUT, if one looks at how many towns in Israel once had arab names because they were once ARab towns (including the town where I live now) then you can see why many Arabs are not so quick to accept the existence of Israel.
My head hurts and I haven't said anything really new or noteworthy or even rational I think.
But that is some of why this thing is not so easy.
It is not merely the right of one state to defend itself, and the right of another to running water and electricity (though it is these things too). The fates of these two places are tied up in each other.
Monday, January 5, 2009
jkl;jkl;jkl;jkl
Am back in my room in Beer Sheva.
There was one alarm today. I stood next to the toilet.
Should be studying but am not. Spent a disproportionate amount of my time today cooking chicken (or trying to). I did end up cooking it, but now the whole kitchen smells of burnt butter and chicken. Luckily my roommate isn't here to scold me. And, I may have burnt one of her pans....
Maybe will try buy her a new one before she comes back.
Feel as if I am always doing something wrong. Had to get out of Tel Aviv because was staying in a 1 bedroom apartment with six other people, because the day I decided to go to Tel Aviv one of my relatives decided to get out of Beer Sheva too and to come stay in the same apartment, with her three small children. Would have been fine but I was caught in the middle, didn't know where to sit, stand, sleep.... Then on Saturday I plugged in the radiator in the den, not knowing that the outlet was faulty, and then all lights in the house went out. I haven't told you that the room was freezing because they have no heat, and we had been using that very same radiator from that very same outlet on and off all weekend. But still it was my fault. And I felt so bad.
We couldn't get the electricity on after that. My relatives are these two older women who work realy hard and are always taking care of other people. I wanted to just tell them I would pay for everything but I couldn't, adn they wouldn't have accepted it anyway. Plus they only speak spanish, and I don't express myself well in spanish, especially not when confused and upset.
So anyway, I ended up fleeing the house, not even properly thanking them for letting me stay there for the weekend.
Blah blah.
Have spent the day on and offline. phewf some of the stuff on Gaza is upsetting.
I think that Israel is going to make Gaza their Iraq. They are trying to oust the government in power, but then what do you do after you oust a government? You occupy.
Which means lots of Israeli soldiers in Gaza for a long time. One of my cousins got called up in the middle of the night two nights ago to go to the army. That's what they do here if you are a certain age and they need you. He is being sent to, or is already in, Gaza. It's crazy, not only do they have a draft here, but it's constant. You never know when you can get called up because there is always something.
Ok, that's it.
There was one alarm today. I stood next to the toilet.
Should be studying but am not. Spent a disproportionate amount of my time today cooking chicken (or trying to). I did end up cooking it, but now the whole kitchen smells of burnt butter and chicken. Luckily my roommate isn't here to scold me. And, I may have burnt one of her pans....
Maybe will try buy her a new one before she comes back.
Feel as if I am always doing something wrong. Had to get out of Tel Aviv because was staying in a 1 bedroom apartment with six other people, because the day I decided to go to Tel Aviv one of my relatives decided to get out of Beer Sheva too and to come stay in the same apartment, with her three small children. Would have been fine but I was caught in the middle, didn't know where to sit, stand, sleep.... Then on Saturday I plugged in the radiator in the den, not knowing that the outlet was faulty, and then all lights in the house went out. I haven't told you that the room was freezing because they have no heat, and we had been using that very same radiator from that very same outlet on and off all weekend. But still it was my fault. And I felt so bad.
We couldn't get the electricity on after that. My relatives are these two older women who work realy hard and are always taking care of other people. I wanted to just tell them I would pay for everything but I couldn't, adn they wouldn't have accepted it anyway. Plus they only speak spanish, and I don't express myself well in spanish, especially not when confused and upset.
So anyway, I ended up fleeing the house, not even properly thanking them for letting me stay there for the weekend.
Blah blah.
Have spent the day on and offline. phewf some of the stuff on Gaza is upsetting.
I think that Israel is going to make Gaza their Iraq. They are trying to oust the government in power, but then what do you do after you oust a government? You occupy.
Which means lots of Israeli soldiers in Gaza for a long time. One of my cousins got called up in the middle of the night two nights ago to go to the army. That's what they do here if you are a certain age and they need you. He is being sent to, or is already in, Gaza. It's crazy, not only do they have a draft here, but it's constant. You never know when you can get called up because there is always something.
Ok, that's it.
Friday, January 2, 2009
I will feel guilty for writing this
This internet connection is really weak so I don't know if I will be able to post.
Am now in Tel Aviv. Came here yesterday to go to a wedding in the family and also to get out of Beer Sheva. There was a tzvei adom (siren) while I back in the dorms, packing to go to Tel Aviv. I decided to run all the way to the bomb shelter this time, something about being alone made me feel like not half assing it. And maybe it was also from seeing the pictures of the rockets making it through concrete walls on the news. Showed up down there wearing a skirt and lacy blouse for the wedding with long striped socks and clogs. Got some strange looks.
The dorms were so empty. One neighbor was there, he came out to say hi when he heard me going back into my room, so maybe there were more people who I didn't see, but it really felt like a ghost place.
I appreciated the wedding much more last night because of all the stress in Beer Sheva. It was so strange to walk into normal land after well, basically being under house arrest. People looked at me wide eyed when I tell them a rocket landed just a couple blocks from the dorms. Almost wanted to slap them because they seemed to have no idea of what it was like though they were so close. But that would be hypocritical of me on so many levels:
1) People in Sderot have been experiencing this and much worse for eight years. Eight Years. (People say this to me as part of their wild, vindictive, tirades about why Israel should just kick the shit out of Gaza and I usually ignore it because I hate their tone and their opinions) but if you take politics out of it, wow. I can't imagine it. And, the entire rest of the country has been going on as normal for eight years while these towns have been suffering. I was one of those people up until a couple days ago.
2) But then, on the more confusing level there's Gaza. They suffer more than we do and we ignore. They are people too and they are just as close to us as the towns in Israel that have received rockets (quassams) for years. But then of course they are the enemy.
New Years Eve I was in my relatives' house sleeping in their guest bedroom. They had a radiator in there but it didn't work. I was freezing. Plus this allergic reaction I have was spreading all over my body so I was itchy and feeling like I had leprosy or something. We went to bed at 11:30, I noticed that it was almost the new year but this celebrating the change from 11:59 to 12:00 seemed so irrelevant. No one else seemed to have even noticed.
(This makes me think about why some moments feel special and other times don't. It all has to do with popular consensus. This is obvious but sometimes the obvious we ignore. Even at home when I wasn't celebrating New Years, I would turn on the tv and see the fireworks and the parties around the world and on some level, knew or maybe tried to believe, it was a special moment. Obviously everyone else thought so. But in Omer on New Years we had only watched local tv all day, which is so insular that they do not even mention Gaza, that even is too far away to talk about. (Psychologically more than physically.) What they do show is only sites that have been hit in Israel: news reporters showing the damage in this school or this street, over and over again. And then the alerts when new rockets come. It puts your mind in a prison. To think about things like New Years seems not even pointless -- it barely occurs to you.)
I read a bit of something the other day that said Israelis have gotten too used to, or caught inside the patterns of war. I tell you it is true. It all seemed so natural for them -- the reports on tv from Beer Sheva and Ashkelon (towns being hit) were like reports from a war front. Right now, in Tel Aviv, that mentality seems crazy, but even when one is inside it it doesn't feel entirely feel honest. I mean believe you me if anything of half this magnitude were happening in a number of towns in the US the news stations would be having a ball with it. You can imagine: "The Home Front Under Attack" or "Freedom Under Fire" flashing In Red white and blue while someone talks to us in an overly serious tone. But regardless, how can one report so much on 20, maybe 30 rockets falling a day when your country is dropping I don't know, hundreds of bigger more powerful bombs a couple kilometers away?
I am not the best reporter for this though because I did not understand the newscasts they were in hebrew, nor did I watch the news casts in their entirety. Gaza was reported on, but to a very small extent (or so it seemed to me.) Ahh but we're all hypocrites. I guess it's just natural. We pay attention to what affects us.
Also, with things like this I am always aware that I am not Israeli. I have not taken that step of allegiance to this country and without doing so, my criticism is not bullshit, but it's not entirely fair. I am enjoying the hospitality, the universal health care, the kindness of this country, and I am giving nothing back. And now I want to criticize.
Yes, we all criticize what we think is wrong, but this somehow...
I stayed the night with some friends here in Tel Aviv last night. We were watching BBC in the morning. They had a report about Gaza (apparently less than they have been doing on it) . It was the first time I've seen international news reports on tv since the start of this. Started talking to the guy whose apartment I was in. We started off in agreement I think, in sympathy of what was going on in Gaza.
But then I said, "I don't think this will help Israel. It will just make more people angry."
He said, "They've been bombing us for eight years we need to crush Hamas."
I said, "Ok, but how do you know who is Hamas and who isn't? What are you going to do, kill everyone?"
He said, "If that's what it takes."
We were both not serious, with the killing everyone, at least I hope.
But truth is, my god, if "normal" people in Israel are extreme enough to say things like that, how can one expect the people of Gaza to be any less "extreme"?
ISraelis love to point out where Arab leaders have written in their statements of belief that they want to destroy Israel -- "push the Jews into the sea" is a common phrase. My friend said the same thing for Gaza today. I'm not saying this for you to hate him, only to show how easy it is to hate the other side here. Not even hate, just want nothing to do with. Gaza is a really sharp pain in Israel's back side. They have no idea how to deal with it. They are fed up. And this -- fullscale violence is the only thing they can think of. For so many reasons ISrael would be better off if Gaza just disappeared, and so statements like my friend's, of pushing them into the sea, are..... not rare but common. Ok, not common, but I think it is a sentiment that a lot of Israelis would silently agree with.
Anyway, I brought that whole thing up, because we ended in disagreement, and with me basically saying the Israel could not make the people of Gaza support the man ISrael wants them to support -- that one cannot make a people believe something because one wants them too. Outside interests cannot control peoples' minds the way they control bombs, machines etc. (Vietnam and Iraq for example). But for me to say that was basically to tell this guy that it was hopeless for Israel to get what it wants from Gaza. And that is a harsh blow.
We ended the conversation with me feeling sad and uncomfortable. I felt as if I had slapped him in the face. I don't know how to explain it, but politics are so personal here. They are so nice to me this couple and I didn't show solidarity.
Am now in Tel Aviv. Came here yesterday to go to a wedding in the family and also to get out of Beer Sheva. There was a tzvei adom (siren) while I back in the dorms, packing to go to Tel Aviv. I decided to run all the way to the bomb shelter this time, something about being alone made me feel like not half assing it. And maybe it was also from seeing the pictures of the rockets making it through concrete walls on the news. Showed up down there wearing a skirt and lacy blouse for the wedding with long striped socks and clogs. Got some strange looks.
The dorms were so empty. One neighbor was there, he came out to say hi when he heard me going back into my room, so maybe there were more people who I didn't see, but it really felt like a ghost place.
I appreciated the wedding much more last night because of all the stress in Beer Sheva. It was so strange to walk into normal land after well, basically being under house arrest. People looked at me wide eyed when I tell them a rocket landed just a couple blocks from the dorms. Almost wanted to slap them because they seemed to have no idea of what it was like though they were so close. But that would be hypocritical of me on so many levels:
1) People in Sderot have been experiencing this and much worse for eight years. Eight Years. (People say this to me as part of their wild, vindictive, tirades about why Israel should just kick the shit out of Gaza and I usually ignore it because I hate their tone and their opinions) but if you take politics out of it, wow. I can't imagine it. And, the entire rest of the country has been going on as normal for eight years while these towns have been suffering. I was one of those people up until a couple days ago.
2) But then, on the more confusing level there's Gaza. They suffer more than we do and we ignore. They are people too and they are just as close to us as the towns in Israel that have received rockets (quassams) for years. But then of course they are the enemy.
New Years Eve I was in my relatives' house sleeping in their guest bedroom. They had a radiator in there but it didn't work. I was freezing. Plus this allergic reaction I have was spreading all over my body so I was itchy and feeling like I had leprosy or something. We went to bed at 11:30, I noticed that it was almost the new year but this celebrating the change from 11:59 to 12:00 seemed so irrelevant. No one else seemed to have even noticed.
(This makes me think about why some moments feel special and other times don't. It all has to do with popular consensus. This is obvious but sometimes the obvious we ignore. Even at home when I wasn't celebrating New Years, I would turn on the tv and see the fireworks and the parties around the world and on some level, knew or maybe tried to believe, it was a special moment. Obviously everyone else thought so. But in Omer on New Years we had only watched local tv all day, which is so insular that they do not even mention Gaza, that even is too far away to talk about. (Psychologically more than physically.) What they do show is only sites that have been hit in Israel: news reporters showing the damage in this school or this street, over and over again. And then the alerts when new rockets come. It puts your mind in a prison. To think about things like New Years seems not even pointless -- it barely occurs to you.)
I read a bit of something the other day that said Israelis have gotten too used to, or caught inside the patterns of war. I tell you it is true. It all seemed so natural for them -- the reports on tv from Beer Sheva and Ashkelon (towns being hit) were like reports from a war front. Right now, in Tel Aviv, that mentality seems crazy, but even when one is inside it it doesn't feel entirely feel honest. I mean believe you me if anything of half this magnitude were happening in a number of towns in the US the news stations would be having a ball with it. You can imagine: "The Home Front Under Attack" or "Freedom Under Fire" flashing In Red white and blue while someone talks to us in an overly serious tone. But regardless, how can one report so much on 20, maybe 30 rockets falling a day when your country is dropping I don't know, hundreds of bigger more powerful bombs a couple kilometers away?
I am not the best reporter for this though because I did not understand the newscasts they were in hebrew, nor did I watch the news casts in their entirety. Gaza was reported on, but to a very small extent (or so it seemed to me.) Ahh but we're all hypocrites. I guess it's just natural. We pay attention to what affects us.
Also, with things like this I am always aware that I am not Israeli. I have not taken that step of allegiance to this country and without doing so, my criticism is not bullshit, but it's not entirely fair. I am enjoying the hospitality, the universal health care, the kindness of this country, and I am giving nothing back. And now I want to criticize.
Yes, we all criticize what we think is wrong, but this somehow...
I stayed the night with some friends here in Tel Aviv last night. We were watching BBC in the morning. They had a report about Gaza (apparently less than they have been doing on it) . It was the first time I've seen international news reports on tv since the start of this. Started talking to the guy whose apartment I was in. We started off in agreement I think, in sympathy of what was going on in Gaza.
But then I said, "I don't think this will help Israel. It will just make more people angry."
He said, "They've been bombing us for eight years we need to crush Hamas."
I said, "Ok, but how do you know who is Hamas and who isn't? What are you going to do, kill everyone?"
He said, "If that's what it takes."
We were both not serious, with the killing everyone, at least I hope.
But truth is, my god, if "normal" people in Israel are extreme enough to say things like that, how can one expect the people of Gaza to be any less "extreme"?
ISraelis love to point out where Arab leaders have written in their statements of belief that they want to destroy Israel -- "push the Jews into the sea" is a common phrase. My friend said the same thing for Gaza today. I'm not saying this for you to hate him, only to show how easy it is to hate the other side here. Not even hate, just want nothing to do with. Gaza is a really sharp pain in Israel's back side. They have no idea how to deal with it. They are fed up. And this -- fullscale violence is the only thing they can think of. For so many reasons ISrael would be better off if Gaza just disappeared, and so statements like my friend's, of pushing them into the sea, are..... not rare but common. Ok, not common, but I think it is a sentiment that a lot of Israelis would silently agree with.
Anyway, I brought that whole thing up, because we ended in disagreement, and with me basically saying the Israel could not make the people of Gaza support the man ISrael wants them to support -- that one cannot make a people believe something because one wants them too. Outside interests cannot control peoples' minds the way they control bombs, machines etc. (Vietnam and Iraq for example). But for me to say that was basically to tell this guy that it was hopeless for Israel to get what it wants from Gaza. And that is a harsh blow.
We ended the conversation with me feeling sad and uncomfortable. I felt as if I had slapped him in the face. I don't know how to explain it, but politics are so personal here. They are so nice to me this couple and I didn't show solidarity.
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