An Emotional Time

Last Friday we had a day off. I got up for breakfast(Most Middle Eastern Restaurants offer a free Middle Eastern Breakfast) and then went back to sleep. We've been on the move all day and then I try to blog each night, so sleep is limited. I know that I don't have to blog each night, but if I don't, I will forget so much and I really don't want to do that.

So I enjoyed my "nap" and then wandered downstairs to the lobby where some of the staff was discussing politics. I know that politics and religion are topics that one does not discuss lightly in the US, but here they are openly discussed. "Why did your country bomb Iraq?" is usually something asked 5 minutes into the conversation. This time it took less than 1. So I sat with these men, like I have with so many other people here, and discussed, 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Husein, and weapons of mass destruction. We talked about the demonization of Arabs in the American Mass Media and the god-less perception of Americans in the Arab Media. It overwhelms me how they are so able to separate American politics from American people. We do not do the same. I think of the terms "freedom fries" and "towel heads" as examples.

But then the "Palestine Problem" came up. It seems to me that they cannot do the same with Israeli foreign policy and Israelis. The hatred is just so great. So I sat and listened to their stories. Stories of towns burned, children killed, homes lost. I listened to person after person tell me how they are not allowed to visit family inside Israel or the Palestinian Authority. One had a wife that was an Israeli Arab and the grandchildren were not allowed to visit their grandparents, another was a doctor who has spoken all over the world, but not in his home town in the West Bank. Their hearts ached, and mine ached for them.

After the conversation, I went back to my room. I just couldn't go out. So I sat there and cried. Not little tears, but huge hiccuping ones. I cried for all of these people and for all of my Jewish friends. I know their stories just as intimately as well and they are equally horrifying and heartfelt.

I called Asa and wailed to him, "They hate you so much!" To which he responded, "We do our best to give them reason to." I never realised how overwhelming this problem is for the moderate and liberal Israelis. They, like everyone else in the world, are concerned for their safety and yet are angry and sickened at many of the actions their government has taken.

David Coe, an Israeli author once wrote about the conflict, "It is a case of right vs. right." To which I must add, "... and wrong vs. wrong." The wrong doings of our ancestors and our governments today can be hard to admit, for all of us. Yet, wounds on both sides will never heal and a true peace never brought about unless people on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict accept wrong doing in the past and work, not to revenge that wrong doing, but to ensure that it doesn't happen, on either side, in the future again.