The Japanese love English words. And I don’t mean the sort that wind up on engrish.com. I mean complicated words that have been adopted–mangled only by the pronunciation limits of the Japanese alphabet along the way–into the language. I thought I’d heard some pretty good ones while I was studying in college. セクハラ(sekuhara) , which means ‘Sexual Harassment’ is a personal favorite, as are ワーキングヲマン (Working Woman) and ホチキス (Hochikisu) for stapler. Yeah, the stapler manufacturing company [although as the fine folks at WWJDIC remind us, it's a bit more complicated than that] . You pretty much learn about this on the first day of Japanese 101, and it’s rather difficult for me at this point to muster up a serious laugh at linguistic assimilation. It’s one of those things that most people get plenty of good laughs about when they start learning Japanese, but loses its entertainment value pretty soon after your mind starts being slowly pulverized into a quivering pile of gray jello by kanji and keigo.
But then last night, I discovered the word ディンクス. That’s transliterated as ‘deenkusu’. It puzzled me for a little bit, but then I realized that in this case, an entire acronym had been imported: DINKs. Double Income, No Kids.
Turns out that sometimes, katakana never loses its humor. Who knew?
When I was studying in Cairo almost two years ago, a few friends of mine returned to our classroom at AUC after lunch with a very interesting story. Rather than sample the fare of the many nice restaurants in Tahrir Square –more accessible than usual, with an exchange rate of 5£ to the dollar—my friends had opted for one of the ubiquitous corner fruit stands in that section of the city, and a few of their delicious tangerines. As chance would have it, the proprietor of their chosen stand happened to speak some English, or at least enough to ask them where they were from in the United States. When one of them answered “Chicago”, however, the stand owner’s eyes widened in accord with the newfound gravity of the situation. He lowered his voice and, leaning in toward her, asked with the utmost seriousness: “Are you carrying your gun on you right now?”
In the nearly three months since I arrived in Japan, I’ve had cause to ponder that conversation quite often indeed. A big part of my job here, I’m learning, is being a cultural liaison in addition to a language teacher. Particularly out here in Tohoku (the region of the main island that is north of Tokyo), there are relatively few people who have traveled in the United States beyond the obligatory Hawaiian Honeymoon, and scarcely a handful who have lived or studied there for any length of time at all. As a result, some of the images that Japanese people have of life and customs in the U.S. are as strange as they are revealing. Some of the highlights:
- Americans are practically a militia unto themselves. I’ve been asked a couple of times about how many guns I own—and always about the specific number, as the notion of Americans not being armed to the teeth is hopelessly naïve. My friend Koji, for instance, traveled to the U.S. back in August with my predecessor for about ten days. The photo albums from his trip feature at least four shots of him at sporting goods shops, pointing excitedly at the wall of hunting rifles behind him. And that’s all before you flip to the pages of his excursion to the firing range.
- Americans are reckless drivers. My first three weeks here in Japan, I received daily reminders about traffic safety, including specific threats of being thrown in prison for speeding, talking on my cell phone, and drunk driving. I can’t help but notice that my supervisors still drive at least five k.p.h below the speed limit whenever I or the other new JET are in the car.
- American teenagers are, by and large, delinquents. The notion of a school dance, I’ve found, is truly appalling to most Japanese teachers and parents. That’s not to say the idea is any more palatable to their American counterparts. But if you happen to have children of your own, think of the movie Animal House, but replace the lead characters with your offspring, circa seventh grade. The expression on your face is roughly akin to that of my colleagues when they picture American middle schools.
- Random Street Crime is Everywhere. Having survived walking around New York on my own, conventional Japanese wisdom has it that I lead a charmed life.
Outrageous as these perceptions may seem, particularly to those of us who have lived inside the sheltered bubble of Madison, Wisconsin in recent memory, pause for a second to consider something: relative to Japan, where gun ownership is all but verboten, the legal limit for driving is a whopping 0.0, and the homicide rate per 100,000 people is .44—that’s approximately 13 times that of the U.S—all these perceptions are, to a large extent, true.
I like to view my job here, and really language education in general, as being in the service of breaking down barriers of prejudice and inequality. I can’t fight every one, or even many of those battles from a classroom in Northern Japan, but I do what little I can by living and learning with humility, and working diligently to be a positive influence on my community in an area that has had more than a few negative encounters with Americans in recent years. But whenever I’m asked about one of these or countless other impressions of the United States that, while terrible, also happens to be true, I am thrust into perhaps the greatest dilemma I’ve faced here: how to strike that balance between an obligation to the truth, and trying to build constructive intercultural relationships.
I don’t believe that genuine, meaningful interactions can be based on obscuring truths. And while Japanese culture demands a certain obliqueness in discussing such things—a trait I’m attempting to master—I desire to represent the America that is constantly striving to improve, first and foremost by owning up to its failings and its past. That takes on added importance here in Japan. A nationalism that does not allow one to admit shameful mistakes continues to victimize thousands of survivors throughout East Asia today. Even though the stereotypes I’m asked to comment on daily are far from the truths of comfort women or Nanjing, being a stalwart cheerleader for American greatness is not a way of presenting one’s country that I am prepared to model. Not ever, but certainly not five hundred miles from the Korean coast. Not here.
Yes, affirming the post-apocalyptic state of some corners of America day in and day out takes its toll. And not just on me, but on the primary goal that led me want to be on JET. It’s difficult for me to say that I’m encouraging students and others whom I encounter to step outside of their comfort zone, and to open themselves to new ways of thinking, living, and understanding when, for the sake of honesty, I reinforce the negative impressions that many Japanese have about the United States. I could try to give the details, and talk about how some problems are confined to only small sections of the country. Depending on the situation, that sort explanation is all that my Japanese ability will allow. But really, that only suggests that I have no interest in solving endemic problems that plague millions of Americans. And that the majority of us do is perhaps the only greater shame than the fact that these problems exist in the first place.
It’s a painful irony that encouraging internationalism and representing one’s country are ever at odds. And I try to remember that what I confirm or say will not be the only factor in forming one’s perception of a society. But given a choice, telling the truth will always win out over giving a uniformly good impression for me. The first step toward intercultural understanding starts at understanding better where one comes from, perhaps. It might not meet with Sarah Palin’s approval, but I can at least have some hope that I’m modeling a way of thinking for my students that is as valuable as anything else they might gain from this cultural exchange.
Back in college (I say, as though it were more than three months ago), a professor of mine had typed the following on a standard sheet of paper and, using copious amounts of scotch tape, adhered it to his office door:
We have not succeeded in answering all of your questions. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we feel we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are confused on a higher level and about more important things
I’d like to think that I’m the sort of person who enjoys complexity. It shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone who’s had more than a five minute conversation with me that I am fascinated by–some would no doubt say ‘hung up on’–the details of questions, their intricacies and applications, their paradoxes and their contradictions. To me, this is where the true beauty in life and in human thought can be found: we forego, I think, our greatest path toward an examined life by insisting on definitive answers, if for no other reason than that the untidy, uncomfortable, and altogether perplexing ones are the most accurate reflection we have of our existence. Professor Newman, I think, chose to affix this statement to his office door as something of a mantra for students of religion–a mantra that gained added meaning as he taught Jewish ethics and post-Holocaust theology. To him, I imagine, it suggested the importance of perseverance and the willingness to be strung along by knowledge in the hope that the infinite twists and turns of thought will, in the very distant end, spit us out on a level of confusion that is at least palatable. I, for one, always took it as a reminder that sometimes confusion is not a liminal zone between knowing and not, but simply all there is.
A couple days ago, I found myself having a conversation with one of the Japanese friends I’ve made over here. It was one of those conversations that comes when a friendship is somewhere between ‘what’s your name again?’ and ‘Hey, what’s going on?’, where both parties are being very familiar while still trying to learn basic things about each other. Questions about family members, what Wisconsin is like, where I went to school, and what I studied while there. My truthful answer to this last question, though, led my friend to remark: “I really don’t understand Christianity–you’re Christian, aren’t you?”
Now, there’s nothing I like better than a discussion about religion. In fact, there’s no better forum for the exact sort of complexity I treasure than this particular topic. Religious conversations, in my experience, tend to branch off into so many other things, the sorts of topics that allow you to really know a person, and how they view the world. I count certain conversations that have started in just such a manner as being among the most incredible, thought-provoking moments in my life, and so I make it a point never to pass up the opportunity to talk about religion with anyone who’s interested. I should also say that I mean this in the sense that’s about as far from proselytizing as you can imagine–after all, the only thing about which I’m truly devout is pluralism, and God knows there’s too much uncertainty inherent in my own theology for me to dare try and sell anyone else on it. Besides, having this sort of dialogue with any sort of ‘goal’ in mine is the surest step toward making sure that one doesn’t actually listen to a damned thing. Just as I was getting very excited for what I hoped would be a really interesting conversation, and one that might give some depth to what, up to that point, had been a pretty superficial friendship, I stopped.
There’s virtually nothing about my approach to faith that is simple. The very essence of my beliefs is predicated on the notion of uncertainty, or, as Augustine eloquently put it: “If you have understood, what you have understood is not God”. I am unable to trust definitive answers, be they claims about the literal meaning of scripture or the unqualified, no-strings-attached philosophy of “God is love”. All I can have are conjectures and flat-out hunches about God, Christ, discipleship, community, and love, not one of which is static. Instead, they are all entrenched in a beautiful sort of war between the evidence of things not seen, and that which I so plainly do. To me, this is the epitome of necessary complexity, when uncertainty is, in the end, far more truthful than any comforting alternative. I don’t believe, as some have told me with more than a little disdain, that I’m complicating things to the point of obscuring the all-important ‘big picture’. Uncertainty, rather, is the only picture that exists in the first place.
My Japanese is fair, but explaining my understanding of Christianity with it was simply out of the question. I would wind up talking in circles, making little if any sense–which might have been fitting considering the topic at hand. Even if I’d had the proficiency to express something this abstract, though, I questioned whether it would have been the “right” answer for the situation. While my friend had certainly asked for my insights into this problem, I think it’s fair to say that she wanted something concrete, something basic–something you might find if you looked up Christianity on WikiPedia, say. That’s not necessarily a bad place to start, either. The concrete is a useful foundation for the abstract. But it occurred to me, right then, that I had never needed to have a “concrete” explanation for it before. Not that I hadn’t thought about it. It had just never been necessary.
This is the real language barrier into which I have been running headlong since I arrived almost two months ago. I have adapted to not being able to navigate conversations as quickly as I am used to, but I have yet to learn how to be at peace with forced simplicity. It’s one thing to muddle through a basic conversation with the help of a dictionary and lots of circuitous grammar, and quite another to have a concept that is so important to you fall so far beyond your linguistic arsenal–not to mention the fact that the only explanation you feel is honest is not the sort of explanation your audience is seeking. Perhaps that’s the greatest privilege of speaking one’s native tongue: the ability to express thoughts not just quickly, but with true honesty as well. This will come with time, I hope. But there is still a long, long way to go.
My friend–who, I’m sure, had not intended to set off such a bout of introspection–gave me something of a quizzical look. After another moments pause, I answered: “It’s…difficult. Even most Christians don’t truly understand it”. As I’d assumed, this was not quite the answer she had been hoping for, but she took it in stride. It wasn’t the whole of my thoughts on the matter–not even a quarter of them–and there’s probably not a single question she had that had been answered by my reply. Maybe I should have tried for something more genuinely helpful. Then again, maybe not. But it was what I could manage. And if nothing else, my non-answer had the virtue of cutting to the very essence of the thing.
I admire Al Franken for any number of things. I’ve seen him speak four times, and I’m convinced that he is as close to a true renaissance man as one might hope to find in Congress. It’s a credit to his mastery of communication to be able to speak intelligently and fairly on even the most complex of issues, while in the next breath letting fly some tidbit of side-splitting comedy. There aren’t many people, after all, who in the course of one lifetime could go from being the head writer of SNL and writing columns for Playboy (a part of his resume that I don’t so much admire, but nonetheless…), to sitting in the United States Senate.
There is, however, one of his considerable array of talents that I can claim to share:
I learned how to do this while bored in English class back in high school. Maybe there’s hope yet for me to make something of my life too.
While running on the streets around my house about 10 minutes ago, a couple of my students waved to me and called me “Haru Sensei”.
After many, many years of calling others Sensei, that might be the first time I have ever had that title applied to me in non-joking fashion. Either I’ve reached a new plateau in my Japanese career, or I’m now officially old.
OK, so it’s time for a little crash course in Japanese Phonics. Japanese, unlike Chinese, is not a tonal language. They share a semblance of a writing system, but the spoken languages have virtually no relation whatsoever. Japanese has precisely 46 phonetic sounds, built around what we know as the vowels. So, there’s a (as in ‘car’), i (pronounced ‘ee’), u (pronounced ‘oo’), e (rhymes with ‘bay’) and o (like ‘oh’). To get most of the rest of the alphabet, you just add consonants in front of these vowels: ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, na-ni-nu-ne-no, etc… unlike the English alphabet, the Japanese one is usually presented a grid, with each vowel as a column that is modified by preceding consonant sound. There is an identical set of phonetic sounds with different letters, called katakana, which is used to render foreigner words–Coca-Cola, for instance, becomes コカコラ or kokakora. If you think about this for a second, it works very well for most things. You try to transliterate foreign words, like names, and while it might sound a little funny, they’re easily distinguishable. Not to mention a lot of fun to play with–try doing tongue twisters in katakana sometime if you want a laugh.
These first four weeks have been a good reminder of something that I’ve always known, ever since my first summer at 森の池, the Japanese Language Village at Concordia Language Villages; namely, that my name is spectacularly unsuited for living/studying/having anything to do with Japan. If you think about the alphabet structure, there are two particular problems with this three-letter name of mine. First, in Japanese, with the exception of the ‘n’ sound, everything–and I do mean everything–ends with a vowel sound. For example, take the name ‘Kate’–simple enough, right?. In Japanese, your options to transliterate it are: Kay-to, Kay-tee, Kay-tu. Same problem with ‘Hal’. Except there’s a second problem: the letter ‘l’ does not exist in Japanese. Nada. There is not a single Japanese word or common sound that calls for one to employ this particular tongue position. This, of course, is where the annoying stereotype of East Asians as having an inability to pronounce the ‘l’ sound comes from–if you spend the first two decades of your life absolutely never having to use a sound, the odds are, you will have a bloody difficult time trying to pick it up.
I’ve always had a peculiar, personal connection to this problem, though. At 森の池, the absolute first thing every villager does is pick a Japanese name. And as most people keep coming back year after year, the name belongs to that villager for as long as they want it–in fact, it’s a question on the application form, and that name is removed from the list of available names. When I first showed up, I didn’t really understand the concept of picking another name. So I just repeated Hal, and wound up with Haru–which is, of course, exactly how you would translate Hal. It’s something of an uncommon name in Japan, although it is almost always a female name when it is used. It also means Spring. And for a significant portion of eight summers of my life, it was also mine.
While I’ve certainly lost touch with friends from Mori No Ike way more than I would like to admit, my summers there were, bar none, the most influential experiences of my childhood. Anyone who decides at the age of eight to study Japanese is bound to be a bit of an interesting character, so the group of villagers was decidedly eccentric, and easily the most interesting, engaged, passionate and creative group of peers I could ever have hoped to find at that age. It’s really not an understatement at all to say that I felt closer to that group than I did most of my immediate peers, and we certainly grew up with each other in more ways than one. The world, as I think we all began to realize at that time, could be a pretty intolerant and dull place, and for the hard core Mori No Ike folk, a summer there was our best chance to be around those who were unafraid to think a bit differently, who were accepting of just about anything. It was a time for all the kids who never really fit in at school to just be their weird, quirky selves–I have a great picture of my friend Dave wrapped head to toe in duct tape that I still have in a box on my desk back home–and that in and of itself meant the world to so many, myself included. For a lot of them, their time there had some implications that went far beyond just some basic acceptance. I have friends for whom it took such a welcoming environment for them to admit for the first time that they identified as queer. For others, it was their first opportunity to not be looked down upon for wanting to learn, to always know more things. I have friends (and I include myself in this number) who have had incredible friendships and love stories come out of it–some of which are very much ongoing. Without any exaggeration, the people I met there have had most likely the biggest impact on who I am today, and more importantly the fact that I like who I have become. This current journey began, for me, not at O’Hare but in Dent, MN, population 192. For that, it will always have a significance with me that I don’t anticipate being matched anytime soon.
When I took Japanese at Carleton, of course, the fun gimmick of picking names was nowhere to be found. In that classroom, I was Edomonson-san, for the first time in my career of studying Japanese. Honestly, I can’t say that I thought anything of it at the time. But every time Shinya, my neighbor with whom I am building Nebuta floats (more on that in a later post) asks me “Haru, biru nomu?” (Do you want a beer?), I can’t help but marvel at exactly where I’ve wound up–halfway around the world six years since my last summer in Dent, a heap of life experiences in between, and on a completely different track than I could have ever foreseen only a few years ago–only to go by Haru all over again. That, though, is one reminder of home and where I’ve come from that I think I can learn to live with.
Perhaps its just that pure coincidences rarely make for good writing–let alone blog posts–but it seems to me that today is quite the fitting day for me to make my first post on this blog in almost a year. I had very little control over it, of course. Much praise is due to the folks at YahooBB for providing me the blazing fast modem that is whirring away on my desk at the moment. But this morning, my supervisor walked into the office and handed me this:
外国人証明書
This nifty little thing, called a Gaikokujin Shoumeisho, or “Alien Registration Card”, is something I’ve never had before. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything close to it in all my previous travels, in fact. After surrendering finger prints (twice), about thirty passport photos, birth certificates, transcripts, FBI Background Checks (no joke), and quite possibly my firstborn child to the draconian beast that is the Japanese Ministry of Justice, I was rewarded with this card. I’m essentially helpless without it, as no company that offers subscription based services will sell anything to a foreigner without one. I’m also required to carry it with me at all times. While it rarely happens, I’m told, I can be stopped by the police at any time and asked to present my card–probably forced to eat natto if I don’t have it on me. But when my supervisor handed me this card today as I sat at my desk in the Board of Education offices, it struck me as a tangible, laminated reminder of why it is that I am here at all.
In the past two years, I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth out of my passport application fee. Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Israel, France… I’ve been privileged to see some truly fascinating societies, and have had innumerable unlikely and transformative experiences as a result. That I would do these things, I suppose, is the result of the value my parents placed–and still do–on traveling. They spent months traveling through Europe during and after college, and pretty much dragged me all over the world whenever the opportunity presented itself, so it seems rather logical that I would follow in their footsteps. But one thing that I learned in Egypt and Turkey is exactly how large the gulf between traveling and living really is. I became so frustrated with being an academic tourist, seeing only the ancient Egypt while almost disregarding the vast complexity of what it is now. So much of that, of course, was due to my complete lack of knowledge of Arabic, but I think what frustrated me most was the idea of trying to “see” a country, and trying to do so under pretty strict time constraints. Oddly enough, I felt as though I was fighting the “Carpe Diem” mantra that is endemic amongst adventurous folk. I immensely disliked the notion that in order for the journey to be “worth it” (though precisely what the ‘it’ was, I never quite understood), I needed to pile as many experiences atop each other, conquering challenges and cultural barriers en route to the finish line, at which I would be able to look back on the accomplishments, and know that I was a different person for having had them. It’s a perfectly understandable way to look at things, I think. After all, I still thumb through my passport on occasion and get a slight rise in my chest, a little glow of satisfaction, when I see the accumulated visas and stamps.
I’m very thankful for all of those experiences, but it’s safe to say that by the end of my time in Israel, I had pretty much had it with the sort of travel I was doing. I was tired of being able to constantly retreat into the bubble of Americana whenever I felt like it, tired of the always being on the run, tired of being fearful of missing out on something. I love to live my life at a fast, driven pace, but I like it to be at one that I set for myself. I would like my experiences to be judged not for the amount of things I did, or things I saw, but the people I met along the way, and the openness and understanding I brought to those meetings and encounters. The other stuff is certainly incredible, but it’s not what I really want to remember. From Egypt, I will remember an afternoon with three incredible friends where wandered into a graveyard, and left having had a rare insight into the lives of a family making their way through very difficult circumstances. From Israel, I won’t think first about seeing the Dead Sea, or standing in the Church of Holy Sepulchre, or standing in Prayer at the Western Wall. I will, however, remember a conversation I had with an imam standing on the Temple Mount, and the kindness of a family who had me as a guest for a Shabbat weekend, and the soldiers who braved memories they would just as soon forget in order to share their recollections of serving in Hebron. I aspire to be the sort of traveler who truly brings their whole self along for the journey.
So today, when I got my Gaijin Card, I found myself thinking about how I have traveled in the past, and what I would like this journey to become for me. It is, after all, easy to feel friction with the urgency to have ‘experiences’. Most everyone with whom I have traveled in the past has felt that way at one time or another, and I am certainly not alone in disliking it broadly. But to actually separate myself from it is more difficult. It’s not as though I can consciously avoid the many new, challenging, and hopefully transformative experiences that I will have during the next year (Well, I suppose I could try, but I think we can all agree that that would be rather silly, yes?). Those, inevitably, will come at a fast and furious pace, and I can only do my best to welcome them. What I hope, however, is that this year will teach me to see all of those experiences as being in vivid continuity with each other, with my values, and with the constantly evolving and self-refining person that I am. I suppose, then, I have come to believe that travel, in and of itself, isn’t a valuable experience. What is valuable about it is what it teaches us about ourselves: how our perspectives and assumptions are but one set among many; how easy it is to be an outsider, and how difficult it can be to overcome that; how to contend with discomfort and isolation; and, if we are lucky, how to be fully present to those we meet along the way. The success or failure of these is contingent entirely on ourselves, on if we are willing to consider our experiences as anything but “one-and-done”, and allow them to continue teaching us at even the most unexpected of moments. Too often, I think, I have let my traveling exist in a bounded region, where having had the experience is the important thing, rather than what, if anything, I actually learned from it.
At Carleton, I had a professor who began a course by reminding us that history is not, first and foremost, about cause and effect, or about power. In his words, we as students would be best served as intelligent, curious human beings–if not as scholars–by wondering, simply, what constituted a good life? I’m trying to keep that in mind as I think about the year ahead. I won’t pretend that I will be able to even touch a complete answer with a ten-foot pole. Learning from whatever I find about Japanese answers to that question will be more difficult still. But then I remember: I am in the middle of nowhere, Japan; I am about as far from any major cities and major attractions as it is possible to get in a country this size; Distractions are few and far between for a foreigner like myself. So, as the card that is now nestled in my wallet, right next to my みちのく銀行 ATM Card and Wisconsin driver’s license, reminds me, there is really only one thing left to do while I’m here in Japan: live, and make of that what I can. There will, of course, be plenty of adventures. And I’m sure I’ll put up plenty of “Here’s this cool thing I did today” or “look at this weird Japanese toilet” posts on the blog. And I’m really under no illusions that I can shed my identity as a traveler–the homogeneity of Japanese society and my job as a teacher preclude that. But if nothing else, I hope this time that my experience won’t be clouded by the sense of hurriedly passing through. It will be a year of learning–or re-leaning–to truly dwell in a place. Somehow, that idea has never seemed more perfect.
So yeah. I’m still in Tel Aviv. I’ve always considered myself quite lucky when it comes to airlines, and I’ve never really experienced any of those disasters about which everyone complains. Until now.
Everything was going great, actually. I got through the much-fabled Ben-Gurion security with only about five minutes of questioning about the Moroccan stamp in my passport, got on the plane, and all was swell. Until we pulled over just as we got to the runway. Evidently, there was a battery problem. A bunch of technicians came on board, and everyone seemed optimistic that it could be fixed.
Then they cancelled the flight.
The problem, interestingly, was not the battery, or even crew rest regulations. For reasons I don’t comprehend, there’s a security policy that prohibits flights from departing Tel Aviv between 1:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. Landing flights are fine, but no departures. Our repairs took us past 1:30, and even though we were literally at the end of the runway, Airport Control said “No dice–you’re staying in Israel tonight”.
Most everyone understood, and I have to say, the Air Canada folks did a nice job at the beginning. They didn’t even turn back to the gate, they got busses to come get us from out by the runway. They started working on hotels, and were remarkably graceful dealing with disgruntled passengers–you have to understand, for many people it was essential that they be home soon, as most Orthodox Jews absolutely will not fly on Shabbat. They even hauled out pastries and drinks. By the time we got to our hotel, it was 5:00 a.m. The kicker is that they put us up in the Jerusalem Regency–literally two-hundred yards from the student dorms I’d lived in for the last month. In the truest sense of the word, this was back to square one.
Anyways, I just got done with the most thorough security working-over I’ve ever experienced. Last night, like I said, was a breeze, but this time, no such luck. After flipping through my passport and seeing Morocco and Egypt, the grilling started: “What were you doing in these countries?”; “Who lead the trip?”; “Did you meet any local people there?”; “How long did you stay with your host family?”; “What were their names?”; “Do you still keep in touch?”. And of course my personal favorite question: “Why are you interested in the MIddle East?”. I still had my application essay for Middle East Mosaics, but I figured this would be an inappropriate time to start with that one.
Anyways, they deemed me a “High Security Threat” (No Joke–I had the highest numerical rating on my luggage tag), which set off a 45 minute hand search of my baggage. They took every last item out of my bags, swiped every item–socks, ipod, books, you name it–with those explosive sensors. They then took my laptop for three different scans, made me take the battery out, turn it on and show them documents. And of course, a personal metal detector search in which my wallet was taken and searched through quite thoroughly. The interesting thing about security here though: they apologize to you afterwards. In fact, all the guards are quite pleasant, and I can be pretty sure that nothing got through that security check.
Anyways, they’re calling my flight–here’s to hoping to that I actually make it out of this time zone this time!
Well, that’s it from Jerusalem. I’ve moved out of my apartment, and am currently stealing some WiFi out on a nearby playground while I wait for my Sherut (shared taxi–nifty little thing that pretty much every other country in the world has discovered) to Ben-Gurion airport. Moving out was a truly ridiculous procedure, I have to say. After cleaning my room and moving everything out, I was required to have it inspected in person by a staff member, then go sign a form saying that it had been inspected, get a copy of it, and then walk a half mile to deliver the form to another office on campus so that they’ll release transcripts. Evidently, the idea of putting this forms into an envelope at the dorm, and shipping them en masse to another office never occurred to Hebrew U–instead, they’d rather have 200 people individually make the trek to deliver the form. Argh.
As they were checking out my room, though, the guy asked me where I was from. I said the U.S., and he looked absolutely astounded. ”I thought you were English!” he exclaimed. When I asked why, he responded “Your room was clean!”. Needless to say that Ben (a Brit himself) was very pleased.
Anyways, I’m planning on continuing to blog (although with a bit less frequency, what with school and all), and I’ll leave this up as my blog for whenever I’m traveling again. Hopefully that won’t be too long from now, and I’ll have more adventures and photos to throw at you soon. In the meantime, check out flickr for a more complete inventory of my pictures from this trip.
Signing off from Jerusalem,
Hal
P.S. Does anything else think this could go very wrong, very fast?
In between waxing political, relaying witty anecdotes about my adventures and, y’know, taking time to actually have said adventures, I haven’t really been able to talk about probably one of the more interesting times I’ve been fortunate enough to have here in Israel.
Despite the inevitable disclaimer of our program coordinators that it was strongly inadvisable to go anywhere near the West Bank–there was no need to mention that going into Gaza would be an act of insanity–I haven’t met a single person who heeded that warning. Most people took the opportunity to spend a day in Bethlehem, Nablus or Jericho, and the historical sites in the area. But at the suggestion of one of the guys in our program, Ben and I decided to see some of the West Bank in a slightly different way.
We manage to get in touch with this group out of Tel Aviv called Breaking The Silence (or Shovrim Shtika, in Hebrew). It’s an organization started by former IDF soldiers–which is, for the most part, the entire Israeli population–who are trying to start a broader conversation about the occupied territories that does not center on the security issues involved. In the view of the leader we spoke to, mainstream Israeli society’s outlook on the situation amounts to: “Let the IDF do whatever they need to do so that we’ll be safe in our coffee shops in Tel Aviv. What goes on inside isn’t our problem”. Thus, while there is widespread discussion about matters such as the security fence, checkpoints, policies on Palestinian employment within Israeli lines, the silence that this theatrically-named group seeks to break is more to do with the internal policies of the Israeli government, specifically military operations in the refugee camps, and unequal legal conditions in “C Areas”. Rather than staging protests or lobbying members of the Knesset (those are well-covered bases), the organization has three main areas of activity: recording testimony from soldiers leaving their service in the IDF, sponsoring traveling photography exhibits of what they view as human rights violations in the West Bank, and leading tours into Hebron, showing both tourists and soon-to-be-conscripted Israelis a side of Hebron that isn’t usually discussed in the mainstream press. In short, they hope to dispel the idea that there is such a thing as an “enlightened occupation”, and that any occupation has a moral price tag.
What’s so remarkably effective about this strategy, I think, is that this group can’t readily be dismissed as a bunch of hippie radicals. BTS isn’t comprised of so-called “refuseniks”. Every member has served already, and many continue as IDF reservists, although they have filed for conscientious objector status to serving in the Palestinian Territories. This is not a college student with a “Free Palestine” flag in their dorm window. These are soldiers saying not even ‘this is what I have seen’, but ‘this is what I and many others have done, and we ought to be troubled that we were ordered to do so, and could carry out that order so easily’.
Needless to say, this sounded like an intriguing trip. The group is currently barred from Hebron, after their last tour was attacked by Jewish settlers in the area–the police have declared BTS tours to be a ‘disruption to public order’. But while their lawsuit against the Israeli government proceeds, they are offering tours to South Hebron. So, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we boarded a bus one Friday morning for Hebron.
Our drive started with a tour of the West Bank highway system. It looks more or less like this:
The wall is 14 meters high, and in fact separates two roadway systems. There are literally highways for use by Israelis traveling to the Settlements and IDF controlled areas, and roads for use by those living under PA control. Certain villages near the green line–the 1967 border of Israel–are to be completely encircled by the wall, with one guarded tunnel in and out.
Our first stop was to a place called Lucifer’s Farm. Or, more accurately, to about a half mile from Lucifer’s Farm. It’s one of many places that are referred to as ‘Outposts’ in the West Bank. During the now-defunct Oslo Accord negotiations, one of the terms agreed to was that Israel cease establishing settlements in the West Bank (note: that seems to have changed recently). Most of the settlements in the West Bank are populated by the most hard-core of hard-core religious zionists. As I’ve been able to understand from this tour, as well as professors I’ve spoken to on this program, many of them are almost cult-like, closed off from the outside world. They believe that these settlements are fulfilling a divine mandate for Jews to reclaim the entirety of Judea and Samarra as a pre-requisite for the Messiah’s coming. Many of them even choose not to recognize the Israeli government, and in any case, this condition didn’t go over well. In response, there was a widespread practice of ‘outposting’. As essentially an act of civil disobedience–although it doesn’t really stay civil, as you’ll see–settlers would go in the middle of the night to a hill maybe 10km from their legal settlement, and start building. Temporary structures, shacks, anything. The message was simple: this land belongs to us, and not only are we not leaving, we’re going to expand.
This is really where the whole internal story of the West Bank gets interesting. Because the Israeli government’s response to these outposts was–well, that’s just it. Nothing. No outposts have been demolished thirteen years on from Oslo. What’s more, these outposts were often built in the middle of farmland where Palestinians grazed their cattle. There are widespread accounts of settlers arming themselves and shooting at any Palestinians who came near the area. In response, of course, a “Security Buffer Zone” [the technical term] was established around the outposts, into which no Palestinians could venture, until the conflict was resolved. Hence, we stayed pretty far from Lucifer’s farm.
The whole story was painted more vividly, though, when we were taken to meet a Palestinian family living near Sunya in South Hebron. As Nasser, the head of this family tells it, they were farmers who had been living on an otherwise largely untouched plot of land for about four generations, and in fact little had changed since the Six-Day War. Until, of course, archaeologists discovered that in the middle of their farmland laid the ruins of a synagogue from the Second Temple Period. Overnight, the area was declared a national park, and the family was forced to relocate. They moved just outside of the new park, and started to erect new buildings. These were torn down, as they did not have the proper building permits. The process of even applying for a building permit would consume about three months salary of an average Palestinian family, and since the committee consists of half IDF soldiers, and half settlers from the region, it’s nigh impossible for Palestinians to get building permits in C Areas. That, of course, hasn’t stopped these folks. They keep returning, and erecting more shelters, which are also under demolition orders from the IDF. The case is pending in Israeli courts, but for the moment, this is what their village looks like:
Those are Red Cross issue tents–surprisingly roomy, actually. Before those whole thing started, they lived in caves, which were demolished (we saw the evidence). The wells were collapsed, and in one particular well soldiers shoved an entire car down the opening (again, we saw it) so as to poison the water with gasoline, oil, and the metals of the frame.
But honestly, that’s not what gets Nasser and his family, in the end. It’s that right now, in the middle of the National Park from which they were removed, is a Settler Outpost. It’s been there for about ten years now, and no legal action has been taken against it. Moreover, there are constant skirmishes between this family and the illegal settlers. Nasser told our group about once incident about two weeks ago. From his perspective, he and his brothers were taking their sheep out to graze in what is supposedly neutral territory. Or, as neutral as possible when nobody’s really supposed to be living there. As they did so, a group of settlers came over the hill, and started throwing rocks. The Palestinians retreated, and called the police. When the cops showed up, they went the Outpost first, then came and arrested Nasser’s brother, since the Settlers had made an identical claim. His brother was in jail for a week before being arrested without charge. No settlers were arrested.
Miscarriages of justice happen, and there are as always two sides to every story. But then we met some of the volunteers. There are three folks from Ireland living with this family right now, and mostly, they videotape. When they go out to graze, the volunteers are there with cameras to record these sorts of incidents. Often, the police confiscate them as evidence, and they’re never returned, but every now and then, one makes it to the media. We were shown some of the tapes that they still had. The one that was burned into my memory showed a group of Jewish settlers–women and boys, mainly, sitting on a rock slope. This was taken on Saturday, when there are no Jewish schools in session, but Muslim schools are. When students as the Islamic school started to walk out, the group of settlers stood up as one, and started throwing rocks at them, shouting any number of murderous slogans. In the background stood a group of soldiers, who stood there, not doing anything. When we asked our guide why this happened, he said that there is so much political backing for the Settlers that it is “more trouble than it’s worth to try arresting them”. There are also stories like this–we saw a similar version, without the chains.
On the tours to Hebron that were led until recently, visitors were able to meet with some members of the Settler population (the settlement in Hebron proper is legal under Israeli law). In South Hebron, it’s all outposts, who it seems are less amenable to dialogue about an issue. From the one side I saw, though, there aren’t words to describe how heartbreaking it is. It seems to epitomize the Israeli policy of “deciding not to decide” when it comes to the West Bank–everything’s in limbo, and no one can count on justice. It truly reminded me of the cinematic Wild West.
The trip closed with our guide talking specifically about his experience as a soldier in Hebron. I could never do justice to his account, and you can find most of the stories, among hundreds of others, here. If you have some spare time, I strongly recommend reading them. For those Carleton folk, I also have a bound book of them, if you’d like to save your eyes a little bit.
I’ve heard no shortage of arguments over this issue. Truth be told, I’m beginning to see why so many cynics here just say “There will never be peace, so the only thing left to do is to build bigger walls”. I can entertain so many arguments from the non-Palestinian side (I’m not going to say ‘The Israeli Side’ any longer, because it seems as though very diffuse arguments–many made out of solidarity rather than any interest in the issue–could only be charitably be called a side), about historical rights to the land, security issues, rightful conquest during a time of war, et al. But what I’ve seen on this tour, and at checkpoints in Ramallah, there’s an issue that completely escapes this maddening question of land and determination. Breaking the Silence, I believe, is absolutely right when it claims that there’s a price tag to occupation beyond perpetuating the security threat. There’s no such thing as a humane, enlightened occupation. Evidently, in Israeli schools children are taught that the IDF is better, that stories of abuse and dehumanization don’t happen in the West Bank. And honestly, I used to believe the same thing as an outsider. But at a certain point, you have to ask the question: is it worth it? Is the damage to Israel’s national conscience, not to mention the dehumanization of an entire society, really worth it?
I’m in no position to say yes or no. I have no historical, religious, or security stake in this. But it seems that the sooner Israeli society is pushed to answer that question, the better. Because deciding not to decide just doesn’t seem to cut it here.
