My group has been asked not to do in-depth blogging while on this journey, as the trust and honesty built between our group is paramount to the mission of why we’re here, learning what we’re learning. So, in interest of maintaining integrity, I’ll only share tidbits of the goings-on here, with some commentary on what I’m experiencing and what’s running through my head.
After arriving in Tel Aviv yesterday (and opening an Israeli cell phone account and putting my new Israel SIM card into my Moroccan cell phone – a walk down memory lane…), our tour guide and driver took us to an overlook of the old city of Jerusalem on the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus. Clay and I have looked dreamily at the English language masters programs offered at Hebrew University – Religious Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Biblical Studies, etc. – so I called him immediately and told him where I was. I really look forward to returning to Israel with him so we can visit the school together and get to know some faculty. I would love nothing more than to be a student at Hebrew University.
The view of the city from Mount Scopus is magnificent, and an entirely different viewpoint from the one I had when I was last in Jerusalem. On Mount Scopus we stood at the north end of the city, facing south. When I was previously in Jerusalem, we stood west facing east. It’s difficult to discern in the photograph, but from Scopus we could see the comparable size of the Holy Sepulchre dome to the Dome of the Rock, could see the Russian Orthodox Church, the Garden of Gethsemane and Church of All Nations, and just to our left, on the next hill over (an outfielder’s stone’s throw away) was the Mormon university. I identified it before our tour guide did, because I’m a nut and when I learned there was a Mormon university in Jerusalem months ago, I immediately scoured their website and learned what the campus looked like. So, yes, there I stood, looking once again onto the Old City, but strangely, with an eerie sense of calm and no nervous butterflies or chills up my spine. I just leaned my arms on the stone wall of the overlook, enjoyed the breeze, and felt comfortable in my surroundings. It has taken nine countries and some ten trips abroad to feel comfortable in a foreign environment. As I stood on Mount Scopus, I felt a great sense of peace and hope that I could return and live here, happily and perhaps for an extended stay.
We descended Mount Scopus and next visited the Western Wall. The first time I visited the Western Wall, I had been anticipating the visit for years – probably well over a decade. Ever sense I had read The Big Lie in third grade, and then read, and re-read Chaim Potok’s The Chosen (the last pages of my copy are tear-stained), I had dreamt and hoped and prayed about being at the Western Wall. Then, at 19, I toured Poland and visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Madajnek. My first trip to Israel was altogether momentous and lacking all comparison. I still cannot put adequate words to it. It’s an experience I share with all those who were on the trip with me, and particularly share with Dr. Russell and Dr. Jones. As a senior at Transy, my time in Israel would wander into my synapses and unexpected times, and then I would walk to Dr. Russell’s office, knock on the door, and say, “I was thinking about Israel.” We’d just look at each other, and smile knowingly, and that was all that needed to be said. Then, I’d walk away.
The Western Wall came late in my first trip to Israel – after visits to numerous archaeological sites, the Sea of Galilee, Tiberias, Caesarea Maritima, ancient churches, on and on. It was Shabbat, and we walked through the darkened tunnels of the old city, through heavy security screenings, and entered the Western Wall complex. It was FULL of people – in many places, shoulder to shoulder. I had excitement building in my stomach like I was just about to reach the crest of a roller coaster and be thrown into the fast downhill rush – but no, I was just about to experience Shabbat as I had never experienced it before. I heard shouting, singing, chanting, dancing, preaching. I walked to the wall that separates the worshipers from the crowd of onlookers, and stood up on a chair where I could see over into the crowd of men and boys below. I was enraptured. A huge, imposing Chasidic rebbe stood gyrating and preaching to the crowd, his speech peppered with higher-pitched staccato whenever he seemed to be making a really momentous point. He looked like a Southern Baptist preacher who’d been transplanted into old Poland or Lithuania, but no, here he really was, with all his faithful followers, preaching up a storm next to the Western Wall in the holy city of Jerusalem. My thoughts about the separation of men and women at prayer aside (and in this context my thoughts really aren’t vehement and truly don’t matter), there are few moments in my life when I have been happier or more in awe. I had walked through death camps and smelled remnants of Zyklon-B in the Madajnek gas chamber. And now, before me, standing below a proudly flown Israeli flag, were hundreds of Jewish worshipers, praying to God in the home of their ancestors, as the Divine Presence hovered above them and the wall.
Female worshipers praying at the wall
Israeli flag fluttering in front of the Western Wall
So, having that climatic experience of the Western Wall in vividly and permanently ingrained in my memory, this visit was far less moving. It was 100 degrees of hot, there had been no community building within this group - yet, we were all exhausted, dragging our feet, sweaty, stinky, and had just deplaned after 12 hours on our butts. Those things being said, I was able to have a calming moment of prayer at the wall, after which I departed slowly, walking backwards so not to turn my back to the Divine Presence. I returned to my group, and we made our way back to the bus, finally to the hotel to rest and refresh ourselves. Of course, before I allowed myself a moment to recover from the trip, I went wandering around the hotel looking for a place to work out. I discovered ballrooms in the depths of the hotel where I did some dance exercises and developed a good sweat before I got back to my room and took a cold shower and changed clothes for dinner. Dinner was delicious, as meals always are in Israel, and… to fast forward, breakfast was amazing this morning as well. Pickled fish, smoked fish, fresh mozzarella, hardboiled egg, hummus, bread, and thick creamy yogurt. I live for breakfasts in Israel (and Greece…… but that’s another time and another set of stories).
Today was our first day of actually doing fact-finding. I won’t share details with you about the people we spoke to and all of what we learned, but I can tell you some of the fascinating places we went and my reactions. First, we visited Sderot, an Israeli town on the border of the Gaza strip, and spoke to a high-ranking IDF officer about the situation in Gaza and Israel’s response to it.
Gaza strip in the distance, viewed from hill in Sderot
(so close we could clearly hear gunfire in Gaza City)
In 2000 and 2001 alone, over 4,500 rockets and 4,250 mortars were launched from Gaza into Israeli towns, killing innocent civilians in their homes. Children grew up in Sderot with the daily threat of bombings. Now, the sea blockade is an effective means of keeping high-range missiles and rockets out of the hands of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Among the many conversations we had today with Israeli officers, legal analysts, and others in the business of protecting Israeli civilians, I heard this idea presented, in different words, through different means, and by different people, that “If you open the sea gates, within TWO MONTHS, Hamas would have 40,000 rockets that could reach Tel Aviv.”
Later we visited the IDF base in Tel Aviv and met with experts in international law. The very real dilemma of the asymmetrical war Israel is fighting with terrorists became deathly clear. What is a sovereign nation to do when its opponents (here we’re talking Hamas militants) dress in civilian clothes, attack from civilian residential areas, hospitals, schools, and use children as human shields, and will not, under any circumstances, come to the table to discuss ceasefire or peace? What does a sovereign nation do when the opponent does not hold itself to, and neither do any other countries demand that it hold itself to, established rules of war – as enshrined in the Geneva Convention, sculpted by modernity from Augustine’s just war theology?
I can speak more about this later – in greater detail and with more depth – but I ask you in the meantime to consider how terrorists and terrorism, particularly the tactics employed by Hamas, challenge their victims to remain committed to the basic principles and laws of armed conflict:
1. Military necessity: That an army may not launch a military offensive unless it has just cause and justification to do so.2. Distinction: That a clear distinction is drawn between civilians and combatants, and civilian objects and military installations.
3. Proportionality: That collateral damage (civilian casualties and destruction of civilian installations) cannot be excessive to the military advantage gained.
4. Humanity: That civilians and victims of war are dignified as human beings (i.e. granted access to Red Cross and other medical care, that civilians are given opportunities to remove themselves from impending sites of military action, etc.)
I’ll conclude with this idea. My senior thesis project revolved around Moroccan religio-political identity issues, and the construction of memory, history and identity within the Amazigh (Berber) and Islamist movements in Morocco.
What kept tumbling through my mind today was the idea that became the thrust of my thesis: that identity creates memory creates history creates memory creates identity – and the cycle falls over upon itself over and over again, agitated by the waves of movements, ideologies, and events.
In Israel, in Palestine, in our own country: what memories do we allow to shape our history, shape our identity, and then cycle back to create new memories? What memories do we co-opt as our own, from others’ testimonies, from history, from our identity? What memories, histories, and identities do we construct out of thin air?
What is the mantle that we wrap around ourselves? And do we have the courage to take it off, and objectively analyze, cleanse, reconstruct, or destroy it if necessary?
We are a sad lot, we humans.
Charcoal graffiti:
"Gaza," in Arabic
"FilisTin," or "Palestine" as written in Arabic
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