Monday, May 18, 2009

Media vs. Reality


As I know this blog is much delayed, it's really going to be more about my thoughts and impressions rather than my exact actions. In the past month, I have had the opportunity to visit 2 very different cities: the Southern Israeli town of Sderot and the town of Nablus, located in the West Bank. Since you are reading this, it means I've returned safely from both of those cities, deemed dangerous, so no need to fear. I just wanted to write a little about my impressions on media vs. reality when it comes to these cities, both victims of media lies.

Sderot

The city is still under Qassam rocket fire, where residents still live in fear. We went on a tour of the police station (and the Qassam pile), a house destroyed by a Qassam, a playground where the equipment has turned into a rocket shelter, and an overlook of Gaza. The media is not able to truly display the feelings of the residents in the area. We spoke to a college student who described a class experience of hers: in her class, she could not finish watching a 30 second commercial in 20 minutes because the incoming Qassam alarm went off 7 times, and they had to run to a bomb shelter every single time. Her home had a bomb shelter in it and she said her family kept running out of food because everyone would crowd her bomb shelter and eat all the food they had for days at a time. The streets of Sderot are empty, the shops are lifeless... this town has essentially been abandoned. EXCEPT, everyone still lives there, it's really a sad situation. And after seeing the Qassam rockets, I can't imagine having one of those slam onto my home. What's even sadder was walking on the playground. This playground has the famous concrete caterpillar, a very long, big, and colorful hollowed out caterpillar made of about 1 foot of concrete, designed to be a shelter for children to run to when they hear the alarm. For your information, this caterpillar actually can't protect the kids from a direct hit, it just protects them from the shrapnel and debris that does the damage. By the way, in case you didn't know, after you hear the alarm go off *TZEVA ADOM*, you have 15 SECONDS to get into a shelter...basically, you're in trouble if you're not standing right near one. For the first time in my life, as I walked down the street, I was actually staking out where the bomb shelters were, should I also need to run for my life. I looked for the bus shelters which are made of concrete, homes that have a bomb shelter built in (which not many do), and any other structure that could protect me. How scary is that? When we went to the overlook, where we could actually see Gaza, it was amazing to see how close it was. But honestly, the most amazing part of this day was being able to tour Sderot, seeing the actual rockets that have exploded (I got to touch them, very scary), and listening to stories from a girl not much older than me, explaining how she couldn't finish class and how she had to pull her friend out from under a table because she was shaking so bad. I'm blessed to live in safety.



Nablus

Oh what an experience this was. After all my studying of the politics of the area, I thought it was only fair that I give the other side a chance, and at least go see with my own eyes what's so terrible about the West Bank. The media only partially lies about this...I took an Arab bus (because it was a Saturday and regular buses weren't running) from Jerusalem into Ramallah, after which I transfered to a van (with several other friends) that took us to Nablus. In case you didn't know, Nablus was the center of many of the suicide bombers and much of the unrest in the West Bank. This means that there has to be lots of checkpoints around Nablus itself. So we went through our first checkpoint of the day. What a nice thing to be a foreigner...you get through some checkpoints MUCH faster and without any problems. We then took a taxi to the center of town. In case any of you plan on going...take someone with you who speaks Arabic!! We had my friend Zehra who guided us through to Nablus but then split off, making sure we didn't get taken advantage of, and I also traveled with my friend Rachel, whose Arabic is equivalent to my Hebrew, but obviously is better than I can do in Arabic! Once we got to the center of town, we were trying to find the famous Jacob's Well, and after much walking around, we just decided to get a tour guide since we didn't really know what we were doing. We bargained (always, ALWAYS, bargain your way down). Our tour guide first showed us a soap factory, which is now shutdown because no one can buy the soap (you can tell no one buys soap because the human body odor was terrible, but it was cool to see the stacks and stacks of the soap). We eventually made our way to Jacob's Well, which is located in a beautiful church and we got to drink from the supposed holy water that has physical restoration properties. We then toured the city, getting a VERY one sided explanation of things ("this is the house that was destroyed by the Israeli occupation invasion that murdered an innocent family"), but such is life over there. Shortening up the story, we eventually found our way back to the border crossing called Qalandiya, which was QUITE an experience. At this border crossing, it didn't matter if you were Christians, Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, or American. You had to go through the same process. We waited in a single file line (or something like a cage, closed in by bars on both sides and on top) for about 1 hour as we were being sorted into more lines. Then we waited for about 1.5 hrs in this one VERY unruly "line", which really was a mosh pit. The Arab men were basically trying to break down the turnstile that was letting them through about 2-3 at a time. It was taking so long because after you get through, you had to put your bags through a scanner and present your documents to a soldier behind a bullet proof glass office and then go through a metal detector. The more unruly the men got, the more reluctant the soldier was to even let them through, which only made them more mad and unruly. I was a little afraid standing in this row, being only 1 of 3 non Arab people. Eventually, me and my 2 friends jumped lines because we were getting afraid of being squashed to death and got through just fine in another line. After all was said and done, it took us about 3 hours to get through that border crossing and we wanted to celebrate about getting back into Israel. I guess if you're used to that kind of activity, which is daily and sometimes several-times-a-day daily, it's not as bad, but it made me never really want to go back again.

A few other impressions I had....1) maybe I just wasn't in the worst parts of the West Bank, but it looks like any other crowded city anywhere, with not that much destruction. It kind of angered me that the residents there try to get so much international sympathy when it looks like any other crowded New York City neighborhood. I've seen worse areas in the US and they don't garner anywhere near as much attention. 2) Palestinian men made me feel really grossed out. They looked at us like we were zebras and they were lions. I wanted to go home and take a shower after the way they constantly stared and made gestures and said things to us. Yuck. 3) I really enjoy my freedom and the ability to do basically anything I want. The checkpoints were quite frustrating, especially when our "American card" didn't help at all. Also kind of made me realized as Americans, we can't just do anything and we don't get exceptions everywhere.

Sorry this post was long, I just had a lot to say. And also sorry it's VERY late in coming. I'm in the beginning of finals period, so I've been a little busy. Enjoy the blogging and the pictures!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks, Talia, for your unique viewpoint on seeing some of these places that we only see thru the eyes of the media. Glad you are safe and that you can live most of your life without fear. Hard to appreciate that if you don't step out of your comfort zone.

    ReplyDelete