Reading about home in the news is difficult. I have wanted to write that sentence in an entry for months. It was the election that initially spurred this sentiment as I lived through the excitement of being an American from a distance. This was an experience in itself, but I craved to feel the mood in America firsthand. I continued to check the news compulsively as Obama’s cabinet began to take shape. I read as economic instability increased and winter weather wreaked havoc on the northeast. I don’t think I have ever read The Boston Globe as carefully and as thoroughly as I have in the last two months.
And it is quite unsatisfying. Of course I have my favorite columnists and sections, but I am now more aware than ever of the fact that trying to connect to the atmosphere, character and quality of a place through reading about current events in the news, is really an exercise in imagination. Just the fact that I haven’t seen a hardcopy of the Globe in nearly three months is a symbol of the limited perspective that one can gather just from reading the news. Of course imagining home is easier for me because of all the memories, but ultimately the knowledge that a newspaper provides is only as helpful and enriching as the collection of sources with which one supplements it. The voices and anecdotes of friends and family are the meat of my sense of home.
This, I think, cuts to the core of this entry’s purpose. Connected to my frustration with trying to connect to America through the news these days, I know as well as anyone what it can be like to have one’s understanding of Israel rely on the news. Indeed, the homepage on my internet browser only changed to The Boston Globe when I got here in October, after long being set to the website of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. The experiences I have had in Israel since my first visit in the summer of 2007 have advanced a long process of adding to my intellectual and cultural knowledge of the place, and trying to develop a real relationship with it. Today I have my daily life in Israel to supplement the news, but that relationship is being tested. Although it’s not always healthy to confront the issues in a relationship in the heated moments when they rise to the surface, as I’ve discussed before, history shows us that challenging times like the present offer the best opportunities for growth.
On December 27th, 2008, the difficulties of reading about home in the news took on a whole new meaning. That is, if I may use the term “home” to refer to the place where I live right now. The news about the Israeli airstrike in Gaza was shocking. I felt very uncomfortable. The sheer numbers of the dead and wounded startled me and sent my heart sinking like a stone. I was torn between the anxiety of knowing how nearby the events were taking place and the relative calm of the Jerusalem streets. I felt at once closer than ever to the heart of this conflict, and more alienated than ever from Israel. For news of a defensive operation, the headline “Israeli airstrikes kill hundreds in Gaza” made me feel unsafe in a way I had never experienced in this country.
Ironically enough, December 28th was to be the first day of Kivunim’s vacation—a time for me to break out of my home base in Jerusalem and get to know Israel a little better. I had planned to basically wander around the country, exploring places where I hadn’t spent as much time, roughing it in general, hoping to live day to day and have some experiences that would enhance my independence and further develop my relationship to the land and the people here. Of course security restrictions and personal safety considerations have affected the plan, barring visits to mixed cities in the north and various cities in proximity to Gaza. Yet over the past ten days I have been able to travel cross-country in a way that I never have in my life—in any country. I have ridden a bus literally from one end of Israel to the other. I have smelled the desert, the mountains and the sea (actually two seas!) all in one day. I have walked a lot, learning the layouts of cities that I had only toured through briefly in the past. I have explored many of Jerusalem’s neighborhoods beyond the bubble of my daily life in the center of the city. Yes, today I feel a new level of familiarity with Israel, from a number of new favorite ice cream joints and new knowledge of the public transportation system, to new confidence with the Hebrew language and closer personal investment in the current political climate of Jerusalem and the national government.
Meanwhile, the burgeoning conflict in Gaza looms in the background. It’s hard to describe what can only be described as really complicated. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but at the same time I don’t want to sound out of touch. It’s not as if everything feels completely normal and I wouldn’t know what was happening without the news, but I haven’t seen any of the fighting with my own eyes. I won’t say that I feel like I’m living in a war zone even though I feel more aware than ever of the immediacy of conflict. It feels like walking a tightrope. Of course the situation in Gaza commands many of my thoughts. Of course there’s the anxiety of wondering what the next stage could be; no one wants to get caught up in the next headline. However, after reading the news I can step outside, look out on the living and breathing city of Jerusalem, and remember that this place is neither its government nor its military. Of course I have some experience with living under and being represented by a government with which I disagree, and I have felt more strongly than ever in the past two weeks that my life is being deeply impacted by the actions of such a government. Yet the past two weeks have also reminded me that Israel, like any other country, stands for much more than the policy of its leaders and its appearances in the news.
That being said, I don’t remember any time in my life when I have been as attentive to Israeli news as I have been in the past two weeks. For days I have had a lot of difficulty writing and reflecting about the situation here. I have felt paralyzed, tied to a pendulum that swings between fear, frustration, hope, shock, and awe. Searching for solace, understanding, explanation, and above all context, I have surrounded myself with the endless editorials, policy propositions, blogs, and other news analysis that the last two weeks in Gaza have generated. Yet at the end of the day, this is the least intellectualized that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has ever been for me.
Throughout my life this conflict has been a constant fixture in my cultural and intellectual development, an often-painful passion of mine that has provided the deepest and most rewarding challenges in my search for identity. It has taught me foundational lessons of patriotism and appreciation for multiple narratives, framing many of the ideas that inform my life, relationships and worldview. Today it is challenging me like never before, presenting new levels of complexity and affording me firsthand (up to a point, of course) experiences of the historical, political, social and just plain emotional struggles that mire the lives of those involved. I’ve only been living with the immediacy of this conflict for two weeks, and even I feel the vortex of fear and anxiety welling up inside of me when I hear an ambulance outside or I decide not to ride a bus. I realize that in these moments of feeling healthy and rational perspective slip away, I am finding new appreciation for the difficulties of Israelis and Palestinians to resolve this conflict themselves. In high school my friends and I used to lament the stress that we associated with our early-morning alarm clocks; I can only imagine what it must be like to live in Sderot, Israel, where the sound of a siren gives a thirty-second warning before rocket impact, reminding you multiple times a day of your inability to live in safety and protect your family, or to live in Gaza without clean water and electricity as nearly constant bombing shakes the foundations of your home for weeks on end. New sensitivity to the reasons why the conflict endures does not make it any easier to stomach, but that is another entry entirely!
For all the times that I have expressed the importance of not settling for simplification, the past weeks have re-taught me that ethic over and over again. Seeing geographic diversity equivalent to that of the entire continental United States, feeling the coexistence of peace and war, and hearing at least five languages being spoken on a bus, all in a place smaller than the state of New Jersey are really inspiring testaments to its potential. This potential is not a euphemism for failure; it is pragmatic hope, the promise that we can commit to remain faithful to the pursuit of our highest ideals, and to react constructively to the unpredictable processes of our lives and the world. Indeed, insofar as connecting to a place through its appearances in the news requires imagination, so too does the necessity to envision a better situation fall heavily on those on the inside. Reading about home in the news is certainly very difficult, but—although I still wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to call Israel my “home” per se—living here, among and between the headlines, is a whole different ball game.
