Another Side of the Story

Just had a much needed conversation to help me restore balance to my understanding of the situation here. I finally met my flat mate Bar and her boyfriend Ido, both Israelis. Over breakfast we had a fascinating conversation about Israel.

Amit, Bar, Ido and many of their friends did not do their time in the IDF. I learned that there is a growing movement of people who do not join the army, but that political reasons are often not the reason. There are many excuses to avoid it, and many Israeli NGOs that can help you navigate that course. One of the reasons, Ido informed me, is that Israelis don't want to be starting their undergrads at 22, when Europeans and North Americans are starting their Master degrees. Either way, this was a nice counterpoint to my belief that all Israelis did IDF service.

Ido also talked about zionism. He self-identifies as zionist, but defined it as "believing that the State of Israeli should exist and that is should be democratic." This was an important distinction, and a wonderful nuance I had yet to hear. He said he is zionist because he is patriotic, but that being patriotic to him means being abel to criticize his government - a basic democratic freedom and a measure of the health of a democracy. He argued that ending the occupation was being patriotic because it is a necessary precursor to a democratic state, and so, in an about way, ending the occupation is necessarily in the best interests of the State of Israel, and all Israelis.

Ido is an upper-middle class Israeli - something he claims is rare. His mom (who is dating a Palestinian) is the Cultural Advisor for the President of Israel, and his dad was an journalist of foreign affairs. The family is secular. All this to say that his perspective may be a minority one, a perspective facilitated by and maybe even restricted to, his economic context. Either way, I am happy to have met people that balance out the image of Israelis. There is so much black and white rhetoric, that I was finding it challenging to retain a sense of the nuances of both groups of people.

We talked also about the different Jewish cultural and religious groups, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi and the history of these groups. One interesting thing I learned was about Jewish identity building in Europe in the 19th century, creating the Hebrew Jew. This was closely related to the Zionist movement, and led to an interesting cultural growth and evolution in then Ottoman Palestine and among Jews all over the world. The succeeding waves of immigration (after WWII, Arab Jew immigrations, from Russia after the collapse of the USSR) led to different groups of Jews discriminating against each other for being more or less authentically Hebrew, the original settlers in Palestine being racist towards new immigrants who could not speak Hebrew and had not been there as long. I need to learn more about this, as it adds fascinating complexity to an already complex area.

Finally, I listened as Bar and Ido argued about whether Jewish was a culture, a religion, a nationality, or all of the above. I think its fascinating the way the three all converge when talking about Israel. Its a messy thing, though, to have the three mixed like that. Ido made the interesting point though, that if it were not a Jewish nation, it wouldn't have any right to exist at all, and so the three are almost necessarily intertwined. This, too, I will need to think and learn more about.

It all provided a fascinating glimpse into yet another part of this world. It's been only five days here and my mind is spinning, my curiosity whet. I can't wait to continue digging deeper, exploring the people and the place. It all helps me understand Canada in a deeper and broader way, seeing the struggles we have as a nation reflected - though unique - in the complexities and nuances of this place. That's the magic of travelling. Ido even said, though he didn't site a source, that its psychologically proven that when people live abroad, it strengthens their identity as a person from their original country. Even though this sounds counter-intuitive, I think he may be right.