I started writing this back in April, and chose not to publish it until later. It is the story of me speaking to a classroom about my time in the Middle East, and while I wrote it I discovered it was as much about this blog as the classroom I talk about it in the article. The publishing date has been modified. Enjoy.
A few months back myself and two other Americans who had lived in Palestine were invited to speak with a class of fellow students about the conflict. Tone it down, their professor told us. Don't use any strong language or reveal your biases. They don't really understand it.
I couldn't help but queston how well the professor understood the conflict when I saw his assigned reading: a 1938 social commentary by written by Ghandi. The students were given no context on the conflict through which to interpret this document which was written about a very different Palestinian conflict that the one that exists today. The other was the essay Next Year in Mas'Ha by Starhawk that reads much more like journal entry than a historical document; a great article, but still difficult to digest without a better understanding of the conflict. I hoped they had some other knowledge of what was going on in the promised land, but doubted it would be the case.
Then there was the question of what to tell the class. Come tell my class about the conflict and your experience was the only direction I had. Well, understanding the conflict should take a whole undergraduate education at least, and synthesizing personal experience takes a lifetime or more. I went to Palestine and came back to the United States. I've talked to everyone from Palestinian Socialist revolutionaries to Tibetan monks to Israeli girls I met in a bar, and they all said a lot of things that were interesting and mind-blowing and offensive and boring. I am overwhelmed with a cornucopia of experience and life, all relating to this conflict in Palestine and Israel. I am also overwhelmed by how much I don't know and the guilt of inadequacy when it comes to representing the people who took me in in Palestine.
I collected my sources and drew up a short outline of what I was hoping to share with the class. A brief history. A personal anecdote. A grave story of tragedy and something to make the class laugh. It seemed inevitable that my 20 minutes in the spotlight would be contrived and cheap.
I did find some encouragement, and not where I'd expected it. In the Starhawk's essay that'd been assigned to the class I read a powerful reminder of my time in Palestine. Starhawk is an Israeli working for peace, during the second Intifada she wrote about her time in a Palestinian community,
Reading this reminds me of the Palestinians who invested in me while I was there. I was given homes to stay in, food, and shared culture. People were incredibly vulnerable with me as they shared their lives and stories. The people I met there trusted me with their families, their jail time, the bullet wounds in their bodies and the hopes they had for the future. They trusted me to represent them for the rest of my life, standing up for justice and peace in their home. I am both crippled and honored by the weight of it.
When I showed up in class, I gave a brief history. I tried my best to explain the dichotomies of the conflict and of the lives of those people I was representing. I made everyone laugh once or twice, just to make sure they were still listening. They didn't look as bad as punk-lesbian-wild-haired-Israelis, and I grew a little less concerned with whether or not they knew enough to ''understand it." I knew my Palestinian and Israeli friends would be glad they were hearing those stories I'd been entrusted with. The students seemed to care, which was all I could really say for myself in the face a hundred years of occupations and wars.
As I spoke to the class, it felt like everyone I'd met in Palestine was sitting just behind me, watching me tell their stories. I hope I don't let them down.
A few months back myself and two other Americans who had lived in Palestine were invited to speak with a class of fellow students about the conflict. Tone it down, their professor told us. Don't use any strong language or reveal your biases. They don't really understand it.
I couldn't help but queston how well the professor understood the conflict when I saw his assigned reading: a 1938 social commentary by written by Ghandi. The students were given no context on the conflict through which to interpret this document which was written about a very different Palestinian conflict that the one that exists today. The other was the essay Next Year in Mas'Ha by Starhawk that reads much more like journal entry than a historical document; a great article, but still difficult to digest without a better understanding of the conflict. I hoped they had some other knowledge of what was going on in the promised land, but doubted it would be the case.
Then there was the question of what to tell the class. Come tell my class about the conflict and your experience was the only direction I had. Well, understanding the conflict should take a whole undergraduate education at least, and synthesizing personal experience takes a lifetime or more. I went to Palestine and came back to the United States. I've talked to everyone from Palestinian Socialist revolutionaries to Tibetan monks to Israeli girls I met in a bar, and they all said a lot of things that were interesting and mind-blowing and offensive and boring. I am overwhelmed with a cornucopia of experience and life, all relating to this conflict in Palestine and Israel. I am also overwhelmed by how much I don't know and the guilt of inadequacy when it comes to representing the people who took me in in Palestine.
I collected my sources and drew up a short outline of what I was hoping to share with the class. A brief history. A personal anecdote. A grave story of tragedy and something to make the class laugh. It seemed inevitable that my 20 minutes in the spotlight would be contrived and cheap.
I did find some encouragement, and not where I'd expected it. In the Starhawk's essay that'd been assigned to the class I read a powerful reminder of my time in Palestine. Starhawk is an Israeli working for peace, during the second Intifada she wrote about her time in a Palestinian community,
"The Israelis who came were mostly young. They are anarchist and punks and lesbians and wild-haired students, and it strikes me that the mayor of Mas'Ha and the village leaders in a very socially conservative society might actually have more in common with the Orthodox Jews who hate them than with these wild, social rebels. But the village accepts them with good grace and a warm-hearted Palestinian welcome. One woman is from the group 'Black Laundry', which requires a somewhat complicated three-way translation of a Hebrew play on words. she explains that it is a lesbian direct action group, and asks our translator if that's a problem. 'Not for me,' he says with a slightly quizzical shrug, and the meeting goes on."
When I showed up in class, I gave a brief history. I tried my best to explain the dichotomies of the conflict and of the lives of those people I was representing. I made everyone laugh once or twice, just to make sure they were still listening. They didn't look as bad as punk-lesbian-wild-haired-Israelis, and I grew a little less concerned with whether or not they knew enough to ''understand it." I knew my Palestinian and Israeli friends would be glad they were hearing those stories I'd been entrusted with. The students seemed to care, which was all I could really say for myself in the face a hundred years of occupations and wars.
As I spoke to the class, it felt like everyone I'd met in Palestine was sitting just behind me, watching me tell their stories. I hope I don't let them down.
