Home, and all the things that means

The first 2 weeks i was home, i wasnt able to sleep more than a couple of hours a night at most, and i had no appetite. Im not sure why this was, jet lag usually takes the form for me of just sleeping for days. In this extra awake time, i was trying to make myself productive. My roommate and i went to target to get some things for the apartment, which is strange to do when youve become unaccustomed to american consumerism (which is actually nowhere near as bad as china) but i was doing alright until i went to check out. At the check out line i was thirsty, and i went to grab a coke which actually turned out to be written in hebrew and said something along the lines of 'israel, our partner'. In this moment the culture shock really began to hit me, i had no idea what this was or how to handle it and i was really upset. I chose to buy pepsi that day and on my drive home i was just confused. Were america, we invented coke, why would we put it in hebrew? Since then i have realized that they have these in many languages in celebration for the olympics in beijing, but at the time it had just seemed like some sort of cruel joke.

There are two things i think i am struggling with most here in america. The first is trying to talk about the things i did and saw there in a way that gets the message heard, and trying to relate to people here who have not seen and do not understand it. It is the american christian zionist and jewish lobby here that controls the media, that controls the history that many of us have recieved in a biased manner, and as i have said earlier it is those americans that become the most radical in israel, they are building the settlements, they are funding the military. There are few people here that have actually been exposed to any kind of real education on the topic, and the cause is not nearly as trendy as darfur so it just doesnt get much attention. Ive been feeling all of a sudden like i have to watch my words if i want any kind of useful career, like this blog itself could be detrimental to me in the future and having to weigh out all these things against my desire to help and it has made me feel fearful and strange. Even talking to close friends or family members i have encountered the idea that the things i am saying cannot be true because they conflict with the things they have been taught. It is hard, because all of this has become so important to me.

The second thing that may perhaps be the hardest is Palestine itself. I miss everyone and everything there so much, but at the same time i am forced to realize that those memories can never be replicated. by the time i go back, even if it is just next summer everything is going to be differant. The place ive been dying to go back to will not be there, but will instead be replaced by something else, something sadder, and it will be like this every time. To make this clearer i will just give a few examples, obviously the west bank will change a great deal, but i will just talk about where i lived for now. Oush Grab, the place where we had the bingo protest for the settlers so jokingly will be an actual settlement. Even though it is illegal in that zone, they have somehow gotten the man power behind it and are going to begin its real creation soon. This will of course change beit sahour a great deal because now, instead of on the next hill, it will literally be a short walk down the street from where i lived to the nearest settlement which will of course cause tension and conflict in the area due to harrassment from then on the palestinian residents. The wall will be much larger, it will probably have already surrounded bethlehem on all four sides, creating a sort of isolated ghetto with almost no mobility, choking the economy there. Many more homes will be demolished and not rebuilt. The morale will probably be much lower and more desperate, and many of those die hard palestinians i had known will probably have given up and moved out. Many of the roads through the west bank are israeli only, and so the palestinians have been forced to tunnel underneath or attain some sort of rare and special permit. Now they are going to divide it entirely so many roads will be double decker, and segregated. These new aparthied roads im sure will create some sort of a stir as it is blatent, obvious racial segregation rather than security. The whole place will be something else, the whole feeling will be differant, and i am sad just thinking that in just one year the situation will become that much worse, that it does every year and still noone here is doing anything.

Still i believe now that it will be worth it to endure these things to return and to help, i have no choice in life but to follow my heart

"Be the change you want to see in the world"

Mahatma Gandhi

Getting Home

After my flight from tel aviv i had plans to travel to china with one of my friends from home. we met up in LA for our flight, which was somewhat tiring having already come from the east, and then flying around the world west without any real chance to take a break or go home anywhere. My trip to china was sponsored and subsidized by the chinese government, which made the trip cheap and therefore appealing to me. Unfortunately after my time in palestine i was having a bit of a struggle with this concept. China is a country that is occupying Tibet, which wants to be free. They are able to do this because they are more powerful, more violent, and because the rest of the world wants to keep good enough relations with them not to interfere much. It is of course not entirely the same, but im sure you can see how the situation looks familiar. The israeli government also subsidizes trips to their land and i remembered it being something that really bothered me, and now i was a part of it.

Israel is very good at what they do. I dont support it, but i certinaly can respect how genious much of it is. The whole area is just tiny even in comparison to my home state of texas. Its just a little country and everything is right there, and yet all these people come through and see nothing. Even tourists to bethlehem come on israeli tours and stay in israeli hotels in jerusalem instead. They bring them through and they show them only what they want them to see and then they go home and say 'ive been there, and israel was great and i didnt see any of that 'opression' stuff you were talking about' and spread these kinds of ideas to the public making the things im saying look like some kind of leftist exaggeration of the truth, when in reality they didnt see anything.

This is now what i felt i was a part of in china. We took strange routes to places, which i believed had a purpose in trying to go around poverty and other things that may make the government look bad. We stayed in hotels on the outskirts of town so that it was difficult to access the city and the people. We saw only what they wanted us to see, we did only what they wanted us to do. When we went to tianemen square for example, they didnt mention anything about the massacre that happened when students tried to hold a non violent protest there, this event is known to many americans as 'the day democracy died' in china, and it is the most well known thing about it. It was all reminicent of my time in Israel, the rewriting of history and events. Most maps in israel carefully leave off big cities in the west bank, bethlehem is nearly never featured, though there is nothing else really to call it this area is usually either called 'greater jerusalem' or left completley blank. This propeganda machine was really getting under my skin and while i was in china i had to keep reminding myself that there is more to it than what i had been allowed to see, and as long as i kept that in mind then i was doing alright. I had seen only one clip from the news while i was there, i suppose an israeli soldier shot himself in front of the french president as he was leaving tel aviv. I thought maybe this was going to be some sort of statement, but its all just been written off as insanity. All things considered, it was a good trip through china, we saw alot of things but i just had some trouble really being moved by things that are just things because nobody was telling me the politics of any of it, their real signifigance to the people, and without the human element for me it was just alot of pretty things. After that week and a half in china i returned home. The whole journey was exhausting and i was having some trouble reconciling everything that had happened with the resuming of my old life before i had known any of it. I was tired, upset, and feeling isolated.