Three New Perspectives

This blog, as I mentioned, is becoming a place for me to add portraits of people I meet, assembling a mosaic of the different perspectives and personalities that colour this place. This post is representative of my last 48 hours, in which I met many people with different stories to tell.

Lena, a friend of mine who is doing an internship with UN OCHA, called out to Spencer and I from her balcony as we were walking by her apartment. We went up and spent the evening visiting with her and her roommate David, who is an Israeli Jew. David, we found out, spent five years after his high school studying Judaism, en route to becoming a Rabbi. The experience left him without a religion, as, in his words, "when you study something that much, you start to see its holes."

It was fascinating to hear about what his life was like when he was at the school, and about what it was like to transition out of that world into the modern, secular one that I belong to. He referred to "hopping centuries," moving form a community that in his eyes exists in the 16th century, to the 21st with the rest of us. I didn't realize, but his life did not expose him to popular music, movies, books, and other media, nor did it teach him how to wear "ordinary" clothes, interact with people of the opposite sex, drink, and so many other basic things that we take for granted about navigating our world. He also told us about an organization that exists specifically to "rehabilitate" people who have decided to leave the Orthodox community, teaching them the basic skills that I listed above. I had never thought enough about this to imagine that experience. As someone who has made several transitions in his life - from small town to city, for example - I cannot imagine the process of re-learning and un-learning that someone like David must have gone through. In my eyes, it's simply fascinating.

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Spencer and I ended up at an amazing rooftop party, celebrating someone's birthday whom we had never met. The party was unreal - open skies on the 7th floor of an apartment, a live DJ, hula hoops, a bar, and some lovely and intriguing people occupying the dance floor.

I ended up talking to many people at the party, but perhaps the most engaging conversation I had was with a man named Ido. Ido is a teacher in Tel Aviv, and has a very soft and kind soul. He asked me what I was doing in Israel, and I told him I was working in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem. He asked me, "are you working for the right side?" I paused, unsure of what he meant or who he considered to be the "right side." He then said, "you're not working for the extremist Jews are you?" I replied that I was not, and he said, "well then you are working for the right side."

We then had a lovely conversation about Palestine, Israel, and ending the occupation. He said that he entered the education field with the hope that he would be able to teach young Israelis about the injustice of the occupation. His hope was that they would have their minds changed, and that they would in turn influence their parents to go out and vote for a less right-wing government. He said that he wants nothing more than to end the occupation, a strong statement from an Israeli - until this conversation, the best I had heard was a passive desire for it to end. Ido, however, was passionate about the topic.

He told me about his military service, noting that it was the experiences there that made him such a strong supporter of ending the occupation. He told me a few anecdotes about arbitrary arrests, unprovoked violence toward Palestinians, and the absurdity of having 18 year olds given such immense power and responsibilities, let alone semi-automatic weapons.

One story that he told deserves retelling, however. Through this story, Ido wanted to describe what occupation means to him, informed by his experience as a soldier. He told me of a Palestinian man whose home was repeatedly occupied by the army, to be used as a military outpost. Each time the home was occupied, the soldiers would bang on the door, storm in, wake the family up, and scare the children, as well as disrupt the regular flow of life. One time, when Ido's platoon occupied the house, the father of the home approached them and offered them a key to the house. The father said, take it, it's yours. Next time you come, just open the door yourself, come and wake me up and I will arrange everything so that you don't wake up and scare my children. So disempowered was this man, that he gave over the key to his home, proof of welcome, so as to salvage some normality in the lives of his children. For Ido, this level of submission is more representative of the occupation that the more jarring images of violence that we much more commonly see.

Sadly, the conversation ended with Ido admitting that he was currently suffering from disillusionment, feeling sceptical about his country's willingness and ability to end the occupation. This saddened me, as it shows how immovable systems of oppression can be, and how challenging it is to stand in opposition to them. I just hope Ido has a community of other Israelis committed to the cause, because through community we are constantly refuelled and motivated to carry on our struggle for justice.

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I met two Palestinians named Matt and Farell (fake names), who want to come to Canada to study Law at UBC. They also want to work in Fort McMurray in the oil sands, to make enough money to move to a metropolitan centre and open a business. I have to admit I was a bit embarrassed that Fort McMurray was one of the things that these people knew about Canada. It's certainly not one of the finest qualities of our nation.

The perspective that Matt shared was one I had yet to hear. He was not convinced that the occupation should end, believing that a sovereign Palestinian state would be just as corrupt, dysfunctional, and autocratic as other Muslim-majority states in the region, citing Syria as a specific example. From his perspective of wanting to make a life for himself, he feels that Israel likely provides more stability and opportunity to live a reasonably successful life than would be possible under and independent Palestinian authority.

Both Farell and I strongly disagreed, arguing that at least those problems could be addressed in a sovereign state. The administration of Palestine is embarrassingly poorly done by the Israeli state, acting more to disable its economy than to support it. Farell made many convincing arguments about why ending the occupation and achieving independence was a necessary first step for Palestinians, and that the project of state building couldn't happen until they were sovereign. I agree with that completely. That being said, Matt has an interesting point - ending the occupation does not guarantee freedom and opportunity as it is often thought. This reminds me of the importance of talking not just of ending the occupation, but also of what Palestine will look like afterward.