I recently came across a book I had to have. (I’m always coming across a book I ‘had to have.’ I recently quit a job at a bookshop for a few reasons, but one factor was that I didn’t make any money: all my wages went back to him because of books I ‘had to have’.) It is called The Palestinians and it is a beautiful, cloth-bound book from the late 1970’s, with words by Jonathan Dimbleby and photographs by Donald McCullin. In the introduction, Dimbleby talks of how, in formulating the situation as ‘the Palestinian problem’, we reflect our own biases and prejudices about the conflict. So, whilst I also believe that we see what we want to (which is why the world exists in multiples), I truly think there is an Israel problem which manifests itself quite peculiarly in the nation’s inability to view anyone as human, its citizens
There are roughly three positions to take on the Israel / Palestine issue. (1) You are an ‘ardent Zionist’ with little-to-no concern about the plight of the Palestinians. (2) You are staunchly pro-Palestinian with little-to-no concern about the plight of the Israelis. (3) You fall in the indeterminable mass of grey between these two positions, generally having slightly more sympathy for one of the two positions. If you are a type (1), you are probably already living in the neighbourhood, and I doubt much could ever change your mind. If you are a type (2) and you go visit Palestine, you will most likely become radicalised, if you are not already. If you are a type (3) and go visit Palestine, I fail to see another possible outcome then for you to slide further down the scale towards more Palestinian sympathy. I was always a type (3), but worryingly, at certain times
Someone said my emails don’t make him want to go to Israel any time soon. That’s not what I mean to be doing here. I want you to go because your experience will no doubt be different from ours and that’s kind of the point here. These dichotomous viewpoints that might one day be reconcilable. So go, go and see what you might find. J sent me a long email yesterday about the leftist peace movement in Israel. She’s afraid I won’t mention it. She’s afraid that my melodramatic, self-indulgent, Jerusalem-inspired intro will preclude me from talking about Tel Aviv or Haifa or even how much fun we had at the Dead Sea. She’s afraid I’ll paint my experience as the only experience to be had, and forget to mention that lady at the Western (Wailing) wall who said she was glad to see Muslims come watch people pray. It is,
Something has happened. Something is always happening, isn’t it? But something has happened to make my heart hurt in a different way, and instead of trying to figure out how to tell this Israel story, I have to figure out where the story is located behind all this other stuff. At first I was afraid to write anything more because I didn’t want this to be tinged with other emotions. I wanted to keep the story of Israel separate from my life. Isolate it and tell it as purely as I could. But then I remembered that this is my story, and as such it is entirely impure, riddled with the myriad agonies and ecstasies that is my life. J said, ‘sometimes I think it is best not to shape a narrative out of such journeys, just to let all the contradictions stay contrary and not be forced into the limited order
Very often people (usually men) tell me I am intense. I’ve never really understood what they mean by it, other than, at best, it is some kind of backhanded compliment. Today, as I sit in my room listening to someone else’s classical music, the sound of my washing machine, and the wind in the ornamental cherry tree, all I can think to say is that this last week of my life has been intense. I don’t know what I mean by that other than I am tired and exhausted, yet wouldn’t change it for all the world. All I want now, passionately, is for the world to change. This last week has been the strangest, most profound learning experience of my life. That I never knew I would come back feeling this way surprises me and saddens me more than I could have imagined. There are large gaps in my capacity