Cultural Learnings 4.0

4.1: March 21st marked the 1000th day of captivity for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. He was kidnapped in a cross-border raid by Hamas militants from Gaza. While military targets are certainly more legitimate than civilian, it’s hard not to feel compassion for the kid. He was only 19. It is fairly certain that he is alive, and Hamas has assured his family that he is in good health, though he had suffered wounds in the kidnapping. The Red Cross has not been allowed to see him. He has been able to send a few letters home. There have been a few proposals for prisoner swaps, but clearly none have worked out. One required the release of all female prisoners and children under 18 from Israeli jails, and another demanded hundreds of prisoners, many of whom were responsible for horrific terrorist acts.
I feel conflicted about a prisoner swap. While on one hand I recognize that this is a political situation, on the other I don’t think Hamas should be rewarded for kidnapping someone. Then they can just continue kidnapping people and making more demands. Now his release is linked with opening one of the Gaza crossings, but Hamas has rejected that. During Operation Cast Lead IDF soldiers left graffiti for Shalit, saying they were there (the picture below says [gil'ad anaxnu bderex aleixa]-- Gilad, we are on the way to you). That poor kid! Do you think his captors speak to him in Hebrew or Arabic? It feels like the Israeli government hasn’t been able to reach an agreement with anyone in ages. One day Israel will have peace and secure borders, and military conscription will be eliminated. It’s a sad anniversary.


4.2: One of the boys on my program came out to me and a few other girls (who all had crushes on him.) While I felt touched that he would trust me with this sensitive and personal information, I was also mad that gay people have to come out at all. I have been chasing boys since I was 6 years old (at that time, literally), and I would be a completely different person if I had to pretend not to like dick until I was 23. Fuck that! A number of boys on the program have made homophobic comments, including “I want to go to a bar with no gay people,” and saying that gay men should not live near schools. It’s absolutely retarded that gay people—who have existed for all of history, mind you—STILL face violent discrimination. wtf?! On that note, Tel Aviv is a great city to be gay in. Jerusalem, less so. In Tel Aviv there are posters for gay events, gay bars and clubs, and 60 year old men with fake tans and white pants dancing to trance music in salons.
At my high school, it was cool to be gay. People would announce their homosexuality only to be shot down with “You’re not REALLY gay.” It wasn’t until I was 17 and a friend at camp came out to me that I started to understand what it means to be in the closet. He feared losing his friends, and how his family would react. Wow, I thought, that sucks. Of course, his mom already knew. Many participants on the program went out to a club which turned out to be gay, and I think my friend is just assuming that everyone knows now.
And it’s like, if there are gay events and gay bars, then there are also straight events and straight bars, right? That sucks! I would go crazy if everything I did was gay and I had to search out straight events. But I don’t really know. Maybe I should consult a gay.


4.3: When I was ages 6-9, my backyard abutted that of a Palestinian family. I was too young to have a clear picture of what that meant, but I knew it meant something. They had two daughters my age, and more cousins than they could count. We were always hopping the fence (apartheid wall??) between our yards and playing at each others’ houses. That whole time I had some kind of feeling of being an example, as though if I did something wrong, all Jews had just wronged all Palestinians. That’s a lot of pressure for a 6 year old. I found that same feeling in Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness. That was the first time I’d seen that sense of responsibility explicitly described. I found it again this week, coming home on the bus.
Four Palestinian women wearing hijabs were seated facing each other in the front of the bus. One of my particularly graceless friends was holding onto a pole connected to one of the seats, with a bag of hangers dangling from her wrist. Bus drivers are crazy here, and—I think you can see where this is going—she lost her balance, and the bag of hangers banged into one of the women, knocking off her hijab. My friend was so embarrassed, and kept apologizing (in English.) She is still embarrassed about it. The woman kind of sat there and rubbed her ear. She didn’t put her hijab back up. You can tell she felt responsible for all Arab-Jewish relations because she wouldn’t have gotten so mortified if it were someone else she had hit. I’m sure she would have apologized and felt bad, but she wouldn’t have gone on saying “I’m so sorry” for 10 minutes if she had smacked a religious Jew or an Ethiopian kid in the head. Jewish responsibility for peace is common in my communities. I don’t know if all Jews feel that way, or if there is a correlation with observance or politics. I don’t know if any Arabs feel that way, nor do I know if they know we feel that way.


4.4: And on a completely separate note: fruit juice. It’s a problem here. In the States you can find orange juice, apple juice, cranberry juice cocktail, grape juice, fruit punch, grapefruit juice, lemonade, strawberry lemonade, lemon ginger Echinacea, tangerine juice, etc. All grocery stores carry at least 20 kinds of fruit juice. That’s how juice is in the US. Here, there is fresh juice, and crap juice. Fruit juicers are everywhere here. They have fruit displayed, they have a juicer—it’s pretty straightforward. The grocery stores, on the other hand, have no fruit juice. Sometimes they have orange juice which may or may not be refrigerated. There is grapefruit soft drinks and a few other flavors (like 5), but they’re nowhere near Tropicana/ Ocean Spray/ Trader Joe’s. I think there’s real apple juice. I miss CranApple!


4.5: Mexican food in Israel: FAIL. I asked for a bean, cheese, and rice burrito. Apparently that wasn’t possible. Ok, I’ll get the vegi burrito. This was a tortilla folded around some beans, tomatoes, peppers, and a few other sweet vegetables. I think there was some cheese in there. The “burrito” was grilled to the point of being crunchy and cut in half. There was a scoop of yellow-brown rice on the side, with burnt slivered almonds on top. My side salad came with Thousand Island dressing-- just like in Mexico. The food wasn’t inedible, but it was not at all Mexican, or even Tex-Mex, or even just Tex. I miss Mexicans.


4.6: I’ve been working at my internship teaching English for a few weeks now, and it’s going ok. Kids here are way more hutzpadic than in the States. Teachers resort to screaming immediately. There are two Ethiopian kids, and I saw one get called “chocolate.” In the States, that’s called racism. Nearly all the teachers are women. I think I’ve seen two men so far. The day before Passover break, the teachers passed out wine in the lounge and toasted to a happy and kosher Passover in the lounge at 10:30 am. That would never happen in the States. Or maybe it would; I haven’t been in many teachers’ lounges. It seems like no one is ever quite sure of what’s going on.
4.6.1: All of the teachers have oral herpes. I don’t want to drink out of the mugs in the teachers’ lounge.


4.7: My program took a day trip to Haifa. We went to Christian, Muslim, Baha’i, and Jewish holy sites. We went to a Carmelite monastery, which was pretty. We went to the Baha’i gardens. We went to an Achmadiyyan mosque. (I think that’s what they were called? Sorry.) They preach “love for all, hatred for none.” The speaker said he would never die for stones (meaning holy sites or land.) He considers that idol worship. He hiked down Mt Carmel to the cave of Elijah. None of us were quite sure what was going on for large portions of the day, and I beat up one of my nice pairs of shoes, so I’m pretty irritated at Mt Carmel now. It was a long day and I had to get up at 6. Haifa seemed like a peaceful city, with peaceful religions and less honking. Our madrichot handed us cash for lunch, and that is one of my favorite things ever.