Good Chats

Yesterday, I woke up early to take the bus down to Yafo in order to meet Yotam and Ro'ee at their apartment.  The three of us were going to a junior high in Bat Yam (a neighborhood south of Yafo which is south of Tel Aviv which is west of Ramat Gan.  Which is where I live).  Ro'ee and Yotam teach workshops to ninth graders (junior highs go from seventh to ninth grade in Israel) - Ro'ee does theater and Yotam does a kind of arty discussion type thing.  I had asked why Mahmoud and Samer (still haven't met Samer - he was asleep when I got to the apartment) weren't going with them.  Ro'ee explained that Sadaka - Reut thought it wise that the Israelis go to the Israeli schools and the Palestinians go to the Palestinian schools.  At first I thought it may have been better for the Israeli kids to meet some Palestinians, but after watching Ro'ee's workshop, I now know that it's much better to separate the two.

Ro'ee's workshop was fun at the beginning.  I participated in the theater warm up.  It was interesting to watch some of the same games and exercises that I lead for my theater stuff, but in a different language.  That being said, it was fairly easy for me to follow.

After the warm up, the students (five ninth graders) started talking about the terror attack that happened last week.  They seemed to be asking more questions than saying anything definitively, and Ro'ee was warding off the questions and trying to rally the kids into doing a scene.  It was more of an improv scene, except less focused on being funny and more focused on exploring different situations.  The first situation was that a group of girls is offered a joint of marijuana, and one of the friends decides to take a hit.  From that moment, the students led the scene into whatever situation they believed would be most accurate.  So, as I watched (I was impressed by my ability to follow the Hebrew), one of the girls took a hit, instantly became addicted (according to her friends), and then her friends went and told her mother, who told her she had to go to rehab every day for a month.  The entire exploration took about twenty minutes.

After that scene, Ro'ee suggested that they do a scene where the students were in an Arabic class.  They didn't want to do that.  They wanted to change the class to a bible study class.  Well, that didn't entirely work out either, because the students were losing focus.  Then Ro'ee suggested the big kicker - a scene where one of the girls brings home an Arab boyfriend.  The students told him they didn't want to do that at all, and instead continued talking about the terror attack (I'll attach a link explaining what happened at the end).

After about five minutes talking about the attack (again, I spotted a lot of questions), Ro'ee announced that they were done for the day.  Here I didn't entirely understand what they were talking about, so as Ro'ee and I walked outside into the sun to wait for Yotam to finish teaching, I asked him what the discussion had been about.  He told me that the students were asking questions like why the Palestinian man had killed them, how he had broken into the home, how he had stabbed the child, etc., etc., and then Ro'ee told me that one of the students had said "I just want to burn all the Arabs."  That was when Ro'ee had stood up and said that the workshop was over.

When Yotam came outside, the three of us sat in the grass and talked for about an hour and a half.  I asked a looooot of questions.  They explained to me the difference between Zionist Left and Radical Left (Zionist Left means you want to have Jewish Democracy with a two state solution to the conflict, Radical Left means you want to have a plain old Democracy where everyone is an equal citizen.  How radical).  Ro'ee also talked about the history classes in Israel.  I had expected that Israel taught a very stilted history of their country, but Ro'ee told me that the comprehensive history of the State of Israel doesn't really exist, at least not in his experience.  He said his history classes stopped when they reached the year 1948, and that after that he'd receive a paragraph summarizing each war after the war in 1948.  I was really surprised.

It's the same thing in the Arab schools - because they're Israeli schools for Arabs, the 'Arab narrative' isn't taught.  Ro'ee and Yotam agreed that's one of the biggest problems.  Ro'ee used the example of the student talking about burning all Arabs.  "They say racist things, yes, but it's complete ignorance, not based on personal experience."  This is why Sadaka-Reut is attempting to use the volunteers to give workshops: to inform the students, to teach them the Arab narrative, to give them a place where they could think critically and discuss the conflict.  The problem that I saw was that the students really had no interest in talking about it at all.

"Leftist Zionists think that Israel became a morally wrong state in 1967, when Israel began occupying," Yotam told me.  "Radical Leftists think the root of the conflict isn't in 1967, but in 1948.  There was supposed to be a law that said anyone living within the perameters of the proposed Israeli borders would become a citizen of Israel.  According to most Israeli schools, all the Palestinians left, that's why they're not citizens.  That's not true.  Some left.  Some ran away.  Some where kicked out."

To me, it would have seemed obvious that the root of the conflict started in 1948, when Israel first became a country, but Ro'ee and Yotam told me that it wasn't obvious at all to most people.  They also asked about the perspective of the conflict from America.  I told them what I know: that in my social circles, or academic circles, it's really not talked about.  It's not that it's taboo or anything, it's just that Graham teaches different classes with just as much relevance and importance - the Genocide Awareness class, the American Political Thought and Radicalism class, etc.  It'd be really cool if someone at Graham taught a Middle Eastern studies class, if not about the Israeli - Palestinian conflict specifically then just about the people in power in the Middle East at all.  Ro'ee and Yotam were also asking about the Jewish community in Columbus.  Again, I told them all that I knew: that from what I've seen and who I've talked to, the conflict itself is really not discussed among Jews in Columbus - it's more Zionism and the importance of "making aliyah", which means to visit Israel or to live there.

When I got back home to Ramat Gan, I was angry.  I hate how racism is so parallel everywhere you go.  The biggest racist issue for Palestinian/Israeli relations is the fact that 'they're' Arab - it's all to do with nationalism, where in the United States it's all about being Muslim.  There's the foreign workers who are coming into Israel from Africa, Eastern Asia, Russia, South America - stealing Israeli jobs.  Sounds familiar?  The difference between foreign workers in Israel is that they come in on a government granted visa.  It's not a good system at all, actually - it costs a lot of money to maintain that visa and there's very little hope at all of becoming a citizen - but it's different than South Americans coming into America with no visa at all.  Ro'ee said "It sucks.  It's depressing."  It is, but it's also fascinating.  I'm thinking right now about the most recent American politics that have been on my mind - the union debacle, the budget cuts to women's health, Guantanamo Bay - it's so different from here.  The same level of beurocratic mess and awfulness, but different.  I tried to come up with a parallel between the conflict in Israel to something in the U.S., but there really isn't anything.  I find it's easier for people to relate to the conflict if they can find a parallel in their own lives.

The two balconies of the Sadaka-Reut commune.

 Today I went into Tel Aviv to meet up with my mother's friend, Merav, who actually got me the internship with Sadaka-Reut.  We had lunch in this really adorable sandwich and salad and bakery type place, and we talked a lot about Sadaka-Reut and the conflict.  She was far more optimistic than anyone else I have talked to.  She works in a research organization that collects information and data about all the social action organizations in Israel.  One of the things that she does is work with a team of people who put pressure on companies that are involved or are helping with the occupation to pull out.  She said, "The economic situation is the weakest point of this regime."  She believes that, much like what happened with the apparthide in South Africa (where the final push was corporations pulling out of the apparthide), companies disassociating themselves with the conflict will motivate the Israeli government to cease the occupation.  It was refreshing to sit with her and feel her motivation and optimism.

After lunch, I took the bus back to Ramat Gan but stopped halfway at a park that was off the side of the road.  It's an enormous park with a huge sculpture at the top of the hill and benches and picnic tables.  It was about five in the afternoon when I got there, and the sun was just setting.  I was scribbling away in my notebook and there was a guy who was training his dogs on the lawn in front of me.  They were doing really awesome things - one of the dogs sat on a recycling bin and didn't move until the guy said so.  After a while of my watching them, the guy asked me if I was afraid of dogs.  I said no.  He said most kids are afraid of dogs and it's a problem when he tries to train them.  I laughed.  He asked me if I had a dog.  I said yes.  He asked me what kind she was.  I said she was black.  He laughed.  I asked what kind of dogs those were.  He said they were Belgian shepherds - as opposed to German shepherds.  He also informed me that they were the best and most well trained dogs in the world.  He asked me why I didn't bring my dog to the park.  I said that she was in America, so it would be hard to do.  He asked if I live in America.  I said yes.  He asked me what I was doing here.  I said doing volunteer work.  He asked what, and I told him about La Escuelita (even though that internship is almost done).  He asked me where I lived in America, I said Columbus, OH.  I also apologized for that not being interesting.  He said all of America was interesting.  I laughed.

THIS. WAS. ALL. IN. HEBREW.  I was shining with self-worth.  He talked about training his dogs.  He is a professional dog trainer, don't you know.  He told me there were lots of good dog shows in America.  I said my dog was more sweet than smart.  He said all dogs are sweet, only the Belgian shepherds are the smart ones.  When I left the park I told him good luck, and he said "Same to you."  HEBREWHEBREWHEBREWHEBREWHEBREW.

I am going to Kfar Saba again tomorrow to stay with some friends.  Tomorrow is the beginning of Purim, which is basically a Jewish Halloween.  It celebrates the story of Queen Esther.  I don't know how we got to this point, but in the bible after the Jews won victory over our oppressors (sound familiar?), the men dressed like the women, the women dressed like the men, and everyone got drunk.  Now people dress in different things, although at the Purim party at La Escuelita last night, Liat was dressed as Ofer and Ofer as Liat, although it was kind of odd to see Ofer put two bean bags down his shirt and call himself a woman.  I don't have a costume yet for Purim.  I'm thinking maybe gypsy?  I have a lot of hippy-looking clothing, so I could put it all on at once and I'd look like a gypsy, right?  The friend I'm staying with is going to be a cowgirl.  This should be a lot of fun - it's a non stop weekend of parties.  In much the same spirit as Halloween, people also send baskets of sweets to each other.  On the counter in the kitchen is a basket of junk food (oh, it'll be gone by the time Udi and Alon get home from work), and on the table beside me is a bunch of Indian sweets.  I also bought two muffins and two chocolate balls from the bakery with Merav today.  Yeah, I wasn't joking when I said the flight attendants were going to have to roll me off the plane as I come home.  I won't walk across the stage at graduation, I'll waddle.  Cute, no? 

Here's the first link I could find that gives a brief overview of the terror attack from last week.  It's a letter to the UN.  Israeli Terror Attack