Really feeling Big Brother

Something that I cannot help but notice being over here is how effective indoctrination is. I know that this is perhaps an obvious statement. Indoctrination is, after all, a subtle and effective way of controlling masses, and something that has been successful for as long as people have gathered together in societies. The big man telling all of the plebs what to be or do. How original.

It is something painfully obvious here. Somehow as an outsider, I am able to see through the propaganda that is being spoon-fed to all of the Israelis. And it isn’t a question of racism per se. They truly believe all of the lies they are being told. I am sorry to say it, but for those of you who buy into a lot of the Zionist nonsense about all Arabs being terrorists who just want the Jews to be out of the Middle East, the situation here is just a teeny little bit more complicated than that.

What really gets me is the level of misinformation that is spread from person to person. It is the use of the term fact and the way it is thrown around in order to justify the ethnic cleansing of a people. Palestinians don’t really exist. Didn’t you know? The label was invented in the 80s. Before that they were just Arabs. The fact that they were Arabs who lived on this land seems to be irrelevant.

But don’t you know, the Jews were here hundreds, thousands of years before the Arabs. Islam was only invented just over a thousand years ago. This, obviously, justifies the idea that the Jews should be the ones living in this land. They were here first.

But hang on a sec. What about the aboriginal peoples of the world? If we pay attention to Israel’s insistence that the Jews deserve to have this land, should we not be giving the rest of the world back to the natives of the Americas, Australia, Africa… everywhere else? Oh, don’t be silly. They’re not the chosen people. God didn’t tell them that this was their land. See, it’s written in the bible. It must be true.

It is really frustrating being here. After the indoctrination camp that was my first 10 days in Israel, I can’t help getting tired and frustrated with arguing with Israelis about the facts. For them the facts are the things that make their lives in this country livable. If they don’t have to think about the Palestinian who has zero access to the rest of the country, whose house was just demolished last week because the land was appropriated by the settlers in the name of security, and can just imagine the problem as a bunch of faceless Jew-haters, all in the world is as it should be.

I just hope that once I finish this film I don’t get a bunch of idiots labelling me as an anti-semite. I have no problem with Jews. I am Jewish! What I have issue with is the thoughtlessness of a nation that has decided that a certain group of people are lesser human beings. Institutionalized racism makes me sick.

The Promised Land

I am in the unusual position of having to type with a keyboard on which the apostrophe does not work. Consequently I cannot use any contractions, so this post may sound a lot more formal than I would usually tend toward. This is a disclaimer!

I am in Palestine. I am sitting in the apartment that Dina is renting, in her bed, in Ramallah, feeling somewhat stuffed up and sore-throated and consequently planning on taking it easy for the day. I was going to go to Jerusalem this morning to meet with a man who lives in the West Bank, but is a Jew (i.e. is a settler) but I am not feeling up to doing anything this morning. So I will have to leave it until tomorrow.

Am I capable of condensing the past few weeks into a succinct journal entry? I have all the time in the world, so perhaps I will be able to do it. It has been a whirlwind of a time. I have cried, I have laughed, I have been afraid. I have felt deceived, felt disgusted, felt inspired.

I suppose I should start at the very beginning.

June 26, 2008

I was a little nervous when I arrived in Pearson Airport in Toronto. I would be spending ten days with a group of Jewish people — aged 22 to 17 — in Israel. I would be spending ten solid days, sleeping, eating, breathing, living with this group of people with whom I could not be certain that I would have anything at all in common. Arriving at the airport, I saw a cluster of kids near the El Al check-in. Introducing myself to the tour leaders, I got a name tag and a quick impression of the people who would be travelling with me. All I could do was try to guess the ages of the people I saw, and hope that the annoying jappy-looking girls would be in the younger group. Luckily I was right.

This is when first impressions count. I was wearing my navy blue and white polka dot short shorts, with a decidedly Montreal, borderline hipster sweatshirt. I did not look like a princess. I did not look particularly Jewish, or girlie, for that matter. A girl came into the line behind me. In contrast to the skinny, made-up, manicured, legging-donning divas ahead of me, this girl was wearing a loose button-up shirt, and some causal shorts. Birkenstocks. A sure sign of something better. We started chatting, and I discovered that she is studying environment, was clearly open-minded, and was a person I could rant with about organic food, the horror of mass energy consumption, and my desire to fall off the grid and live sustainable. I admitted to her how concerned I had been about the people on the trip.

<Yeah. To be honest, my sister saw you and said: the girl with the polka dots. Go talk to her.>

Apparently our alternative dress sense was a sign post for more things that just who I should be friends with. Because we were flying El Al, the security check took place at Pearson, before leaving Canada, rather than once we would land at Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv. The interview felt more like an interrogation. I did not feel that I had anything that I should need to be nervous about; however, simply speaking with the woman (who herself was nervous as she was just training) was pretty painful. I felt my heart speeding up and started worrying about her questions.

<Do you have relatives in Israel? With whom will you be staying when you get there?>

I was not about to say that I would be staying with my Palestinian best friend in Ramallah, so I said that I had family. Which is not a lie.

<What is their name?>

Why do you need to know this? That is what I thought. I said the name of my cousin.

<What is the last holiday you celebrated?>

Um… I racked my brain. What was the last Jewish holiday? I have no idea. <I don’t really celebrate holidays.>

She took my passport and went and spoke with someone over at the side. When she came back, she told me that they would be taking my hand luggage for a security check, and then gave me little coat-check tags to hold on to. I was allowed to check in my stowed luggage and return to the group.

<Hey! They didn’t take your bags?> I had been led to assume that they took all hand luggage. Turns out that the only people whose hand luggage was deemed suspicious were those of us dressed similarly alternatively. Turns out that Erin’s Birkenstocks tagged her as a potential threat. Uh oh! We may be activists.

Bagless, I sit on the cold tiled airport floor and wait for others from the group to join. <Group 705?> Everyone who came up to speak with us seemed surprisingly lower maintenance than I had suspected. A cute little elf of a girl with shorts as short as mine and chin-length bleached blonde hair dropped down beside me on the ground. I cannot remember how we started to conversation, but I do know that within moments it was evident that there was a connection. Sarah is essentially my twin. Working in holistic health care, we just started babbling about food, allergies, yoga, meditation, lifestyles. Thanks to Sarah, the whole travel part went smoothly. Being searched for bombs at the gate was less freaky than I had expected. We switched seats to sit together, and talked, ate sprouts and other delicious veggies she had packed for the journey, gushed about our respective lovers, and just found ourselves at ease with one another right from the start.

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