10.1 First I went to Petra. This involved: a bus downtown, a bus to Tel Aviv, buses from and to the bus station since I got berekas in the extra time, a 5-hour bus ride to Eilat, and a taxi ride to the border. We crossed the border easily and got brightly colored dinars. We then took a taxi to the bus station. (Note: the bus station is a parking lot.) I wanted to pee before the 2-hour bus ride from Aqaba to Petra, so I found the bathroom. Instead of a toilet or even a Porta-Potty, there was a room with a hole in the ground. The hole was surrounded by a porcelain cover with spots for one’s feet. There was a spigot and a pitcher with which one could rinse one’s feet and the ground. Gross. We waited an hour for our bus to leave. On the way to Petra I found myself being forced to consider whether I preferred plummeting off a cliff or dying in a fiery crash. The bus took us right to our hostel.
Our hostel was the best rated in Petra. Our host was very accommodating and did everything to make us comfortable, even driving us to and from the park. The room didn’t have air conditioning, and the toilet was so close to the wall that we had to sit sideways on the toilet. There was a map of Jordan in the lobby which didn’t name Israel. We spent the rest of the day walking through the park. It was really phenomenal. Five year old children approach tourists with necklaces and postcards. Bedouin men try to sell donkey, horse, and carriage rides. I got to see a lot of different types of Muslims, including a man and two women from Saudi Arabia. I couldn’t imagine stomping around in the sun with only my eyes exposed, if that. I ended up chatting with a Bedouin vendor for a while. He and his friends really wanted us to come to a tea ceremony. None of us wanted to (I was with four friends,) but some in my group had a difficult time saying no to people. We didn’t end up going and they totally called us out on it the next day (or at least the people who suggested they would come.)
One of my friends has a giant butt and colored hair, and she got a lot of attention. The Jordanian men would glance rather than stare, which I prefer. She seemed to be mostly oblivious to it. She’s a chatty girl who speaks heavily British-accented Iraqi Arabic, so she ended up scoring us some good deals. I think her accent endeared her to the many men we spoke to. However on the bus ride into Petra, the teenager behind her slipped his hand down the back of her shirt while she was sleeping. The kid’s father was there.
Surprisingly, I found Jordanian men really attractive. The Bedouin men wear eyeliner, and most of the police and other men I noticed has chiseled features. The border guard on the way back had super curly eyelashes. I haven’t been interested in Israeli men at all this whole time. Jordanian women wear much nicer clothes than Palestinian women. The robes were nicer, and modern dresses were also way cuter. I didn’t eat much, but I was not impressed with Jordanian food.
The second day we rode horses into the park. My scout said he is a teacher and he makes 200 dinar a month. That’s about $300. He asked how much teachers made in the US, and it pained me to see the wheels turning in his head when I told him $40,000. (I completely made that figure up.) We walked for a ways, then rode donkeys up the 800 flights of stairs. It was kind of horrifying. My friends felt bad for the donkeys. I felt bad for the Bedouins. They barely even broke sweats! I had been chugging water all day, and they carried nothing with them. We saw the monastery at the top, and it was really big. We were definitely too scared to ride the donkeys down hill, so we walked. One of my friends had told a Bedouin lady selling jewelry that she’d stop by on the way down (even though she had no intention of doing so), and she totally called her out on it when my friend refused to look at the necklaces. I usually just ignore all of them.
I felt angry that the Bedouins live without dignity—exploiting their children, living in caves. I didn’t know who to be angry at, though—the Bedouins themselves or some facet of modern society which put them into that place.
We got a taxi ride straight to the border in the afternoon, and we found our hostel in Eilat. It felt like a palace! It was so clean and came with shampoo and a flat screen TV. It was 40°C outside, and it felt like sitting in front of an open oven. We tried to go to the Chabad house for dinner, but it wasn’t for tourists, and we wound up just sitting there for an hour. No one invited us, perhaps because we weren’t all modestly dressed. We spent Shabbat day on the beach. All my friends went home during Shabbat, but I waited until it was over and went by myself. I got home at 2 am.
10.2 At 8 the next day we all attended a seminar in Sderot. Sderot is the closest town to the Gaza Strip, and it gets rocketed the most, though it has been more—though not completely—quiet since the ceasefire. In a previous blog post I mentioned an article which described a caterpillar bomb shelter on a play ground. That was the first place we went. Well, we were actually going to the Chabad house across the street. The whole building is a bomb shelter. We heard a speaker talk about Gaza and Sderot. We went to the police station where some of them Qassam rockets are piled up. Some of them say “Jerusalem al-Quds,” to suggest that they will one day reach there. I used to be an anxious child and always considered how I could be trapped and killed any place I was. Almost everything is bomb shelter in Sderot, but not quite. There are plenty of places where you would not make it into a shelter within 15 seconds. Sderot is my own personal living nightmare. We drove along a street which had been hit frequently, and our guide told us stories about what had happened in those houses—stories of fantastic luck and tragic misfortune. One house was still not repaired, and the roof was shattered and the yard strewn with household items. We saw one school which was only 1/3rd covered with a steel dome—the rest was too expensive. At the Sderot Media Center (also a bomb shelter) we watched film footage of rocket attacks. One showed children at a preschool. “Tsevah adom” sounds, and they all start running into the building. The teacher calmly ushers them inside. Once in the shelter they begin to count down to 1 and then sing so they won’t hear the explosion. We saw what someone in shock looks like. In the news it will often say there was a rocket attack with no casualties, and a few people were treated for shock. I had imagined someone sitting there wrapped in a blanket saying “Wow, I am so shocked. I really didn’t expect that. I was just sitting here and then I heard a huge explosion. Just, wow. I can’t believe it.” And the paramedic is sitting there next to her nodding and handing her a hot chocolate. That is not what shock looks like.
We heard from a dialog group, and they read us poems that Israeli and Palestinian children had written. Because the Gaza Strip is sealed off, we could not speak to any Gazans directly.
In 2005 the Israeli government evacuated 9000 Jews from the Gaza Strip. Many of them are living in Nitzan in pre-fab homes. There is a climbing structure there flying a flag for the Messiah. It was taken out of Gaza by the people, piece by piece. It is the only thing that came out. We heard a speaker talk about how her husband lost an arm and some fingers in two wars, and then the Israeli government made them leave their own home. We watched a very sad video about it. Many of the people in my program thought they were crazy. I was less convinced. I couldn’t help feeling compassion for these people. I had previously supported the withdrawal, seeing it as a necessary step towards peace. But there is no peace, and these people are living with 5 or 7 kids in tiny bungalows. I felt town between practicality and ideology. It was a wild day.
The art on the bomb shelter says "We are with you!" "You expelled orange and got red!" and a verse from the Torah about how we are G-d's people.
10.3 A friend from concerts came to Israel on birthright, and I got to see her. She is in the pro-Palestinian group on campus, but she now loves Israel. She saw most of the country, met soldiers, and went to the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade. That doesn’t mean she no longer supports Palestine, but now she has an excellent perspective on the situation.
10.4 Pride was very calm. The security to get into the park was separate for men and women, which is just inappropriate. Besides some drummers, everything was quiet. There were no chants, music, or singing along the march. The light posts flew rainbow flags. There was one protester along the route, and he held a sign that said “Gays spread AIDS.” I think he’s brave for protesting alone. I’ve been the minority voice before, and it sucks. Hopefully I wasn’t as ignorant as him. There were few children at this event, unlike in SF. Two parents carried signs in Hebrew that said "My son is gay and I am proud of him!" and "My son is gay: so what?" It was peaceful and positive, and appropriate for Jerusalem. There were some mostly Haredi protesters across the street, but they weren't very visible. Their signs said "Holyland, not homoland," "for home's sake go strait," and "strait is butiful!"
10.5 My friend and I went to Bethlehem with some of her friends from birthright. We took an Arab bus to the border. The checkpoint felt a little holocausty. We went first to the Church of the Nativity, which was very beautiful. Next we went to the market. The two boys we were with felt very uncomfortable. I don’t think people noticed us much. Our last stop was the security wall. I was so surprised at how much of it was peaceful and hopeful. As we walked along, a man started chatting with us from his front yard, which faces the wall. He invited us in for Turkish coffee. (I’m just mentioning that because it sounds exotic. He gave us Sprite.) We spoke with him and his family about living across the street from the wall. The cutest old lady ever said it was like living in a prison. She spoke French as well, and she said the nuns spoke it at school. Wow! She said the houses that were in the way were taken down. Our host said he doesn’t think Israel wants peace. He asked how a country that wants peace could … and he gestured to the wall. Sitting in this family’s rose garden literally in the shadow of the wall was one of the most powerful experiences I have had in Israel. Like in Sderot, I felt torn between the ideology of security and the practicality of doing something as crazy as building a big ass wall. I will definitely write more about this after I have had time to ponder.
10.6 Both in Bethlehem and in Petra, we tried not to mention Israel or the fact that we are Jews. I felt ashamed afterwards. I don’t want to put myself into an unsafe situation, but I also feel as though I am the Jewish ambassador to the world. I—personally—have to be an example of a Jew who isn’t greedy, who isn’t a soldier, who isn’t a settler, who isn’t JAPy, and who isn’t all the things people still feel about Jews. I rarely regret things, but I should have found a way to come out as a Jew in Bethlehem. Israelis aren’t allowed into the West Bank, so they really don’t see Jews other than settlers, soldiers, and on Arab-language TV. My adventures over the past two weeks have been eye-opening and confusing for me. And I only have two weeks left here to sort it all out!
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