War at the movies

Seeing a movie in the theater isn’t the kind of thing that should vary too much from one country to another.  You go, you sit in the dark, you eat popcorn, you watch the movie, and then you leave. As long as the subtitles are in English, why should it matter if you are in France or Russia or Jordan or wherever?  But last night when Helen and I went to see a new Israeli movie called Waltz With Bashir, the fact that we were sitting in a movie theater full of Israelis entirely changed the way I thought about the film.

Waltz With Bashir is an animated documentary about the filmmaker’s struggle to sort through his memories of being a 19-year-old Israeli soldier fighting in Lebanon in 1982.  At first he can’t remember anything, but then he probes the far reaches of his memory by conducting interviews with fellow soldiers and psychologists.  The truth—if you insist on calling it that—he dredges up is harrowing.  Waltz With Bashir is in many ways a classic anti-war movie; it deals with the inhumanity of warfare, the absurdity of wars being fought by teenagers, the trauma that it inflicts on the soldiers.  But the movie conveys its message originally and thoughtfully.  I would have appreciated Waltz With Bashir even if I had seen it in the comfort of my living room in Montclair, New Jersey.

At the end of the movie I stood up to leave and looked around at the crowd in the theater with me.  Many of the moviegoers were middle aged, about the same age as the filmmaker.  Among them there must have been at least one who fought in Lebanon, I thought to myself, one who could relate to the memories that the film depicts.  If I had seen Waltz With Bashir back at Oberlin, it would still have been a powerful movie, but having seen it in Jerusalem lent the themes a far greater immediacy.

Life in Israel-Palestine is quiet right now, though it would never really be described as peaceful.  Israel and Hamas are set to begin their ceasefire tomorrow; terrorists haven’t attacked in a while (aside from the rockets that continue to fall from Gaza) and the Israeli Army hasn’t launched a major offensive for a few months (though they continue to bomb targets in Gaza).  But conflict is never too far away here: potentially on the ground, always in people’s memories.

Bible Tour

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The seventh station of the cross.

Amidst cries of “Hello, where are you from? Would you like a tour? Juice? Want Juice?” and a lot of buying and selling and chaos and people, I followed around the Via Dolorosa today in the Old City. I have been to that part of Jerusalem so many times now that it seems I should know my way around, but I am always immediately lost as soon as I start trying to find my way to any specific point.

They’re Everywhere

The other day on the bus, someone’s cellphone started blaring Sheryl Crow. I looked to see where it was coming from and, of course, it was the girl with big sunglasses, manicured nails, an army uniform, and a machine gun whose pink-sparkle cellphone was ringing (not the same girl as pictured above). And the other day a young couple in civilian clothes asked Max and I for directions. It was jarring as they walked away to see their machine guns swinging behind them.

Mandatory military service is just a part of life here, and the soldiers are required to keep their guns with them all the time. I don’t feel threatened by the nice kids with guns, nor do I sense that there will be any reason for anyone to use one of those guns in the vicinity of myself. But still, it is hard for me to imagine having military service be so much a part of my daily life, and I still find it difficult not to stare at the stylish girl soldiers. As Max pointed out, the two of us would have finished our time by now, and who would I be if I had just finished 3 years in the military instead of 3 years majoring in Art at Oberlin College?

Anyway, yesterday must have been field trip day for the soldiers. I ran into the crowd above while taking a bus tour of the city. And later, at the archeological attraction City of David, where the top picture is taken, most of the visitors were soldiers.

It usually looks bigger, I swear

In the US it seems to be common knowledge that Israel is roughly the same size as New Jersey, my home state, which is the 47th smallest in the country.  In other words, everyone knows that Israel is very small, especially considering how much news comes out of it.  But I don’t think that people realize exactly how small this country really is.

The occupied territory of the West Bank and the (sort of) autonomous Gaza are generally included in people’s impression of the size and shape of Israel.  Furthermore, I don’t think that most people realize that the sparsely populated, barren Negev Desert dominates the southern half of the country (from approximately Exit 58 down on the Parkway, if we are going to continue with the New Jersey metaphor).  The resultant distribution of population means that most contentious place in the world is about twice as concentrated as you probably thought it was.

This means that most Israelis live within a two-hour drive of the West Bank, which is the land that is supposedly going to become a Palestinian state.  Because of this the lives of those in the West Bank and Israel proper seem to be far more intertwined than I ever thought they were—not just among the extremist Zionists who live on settlements in the West Bank or the Palestinians who hold jobs in Jerusalem, but among everyone who spends time here.

This point was brought home to me yesterday when Helen and I went to the Dead Sea.  This salty lake that borders Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan, is the lowest point on earth at more than four hundred meters below sea level.  The salt and mineral concentration of its water is so high that you can float around on your back and read the newspaper.  Also, a lot of people think that the minerals in the water have healing powers.  For these reasons it’s a major tourist attraction.  The beach we went to yesterday was crowded with Japanese, American and Brazilian tourists floating in the water and covering themselves with mud.

But perhaps to the surprise of the tour groups who arrived comfortably in their air-conditioned buses after a half hour ride from Jerusalem, the beach on which they were sunning themselves is actually land under military occupation. One could easily forget this, since the checkpoints on the road are easily by-passed with an Israeli license plate and a bus full of foreigners.  Even I, despite my almost obsessive awareness of international relations, was able to forget that I was in the West Bank.

This is the surreal condition of life and tourism in Israel-Palestine. An Israeli I know was telling me the other day about why he believes peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is impossible.  “This piece of land is too small for two peoples to share,” he said.  “It’s just too small.” After my trip through the occupied West Bank just to get to the beach, his argument seems more convincing than I want.

Life and Politics

The separation wall being built around the West Bank:

In the park from which I took this picture, life goes on:

People even go on doing really weird exercises for anyone to walk by and see.

Mahane Yehuda Market

Friday afternoon in Mahane Yehuda.

Unexpected Carnival

I was lured from the apartment by music and proclamations over a loud speaker. This is what I found.

The clothes make the man

Jerusalem seems like it was made for people watching. I could sit for hours outside of the Jaffa Gate and watch the various incarnations of Jerusalem’s citizens file past—Arabs and Jews, locals and tourists, religious and secular. What I find particularly interesting is the extent to which you can read a person based on what he or she wears. A kippa or a kaffiyeh, a hijab or a pony tail, a beard or a shaved face—all give observers an idea of who you are and what your about.

Even within Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community (which makes up about a third of the city’s population) there are important variations in style. Because I am ignorant of how the ultra-Orthodox world operates, I can’t tell you what each little flourish represents. But the ultra-Orthodox themselves are surely able to tell each other apart.  Minutiae like what shape their fur hats are or how far up they pull their sock let people know which rabbi they follow, an important fact of life for these super-Jews.

Among the women of this city, long skirts are the norm. All of the observant Jewish women wear them, whether they are Orthodox or ulta-Orthodox. But the majority of the Muslim women wear long skirts of some sort, as well. So do, for the matter, all of the nuns (of which there are many in this holy city). As I have noticed this, it’s brought me to an interesting conclusion: in each of Jerusalem’s three religions, a very similar level of modesty is expected of devout women. When it comes to women’s dress, a long skirt and some kind of head covering transcend the boundaries between Jerusalem’s three monotheisms.

The ubiquitous Israeli military is not exempt from being read by their clothes either. Olive colored uniforms alone offer a curious people-watcher little to look into, but their outfits exhibit tell-tale signs of personal status. Each soldier wears a folded beret on his or her left shoulder and the beret’s color indicates its bearer’s corps. This is comparable to—but obviously not the same as—the decal in your car window that says “Oberlin” or “Harvard” or “Montclair State University”.

And then of course, there are the tourists. I don’t think that they are as aware of their self-representation as the Jerusalemites, but they also stand out as a result of their choices of apparel. Big crowd of old white people wearing matching lanyards with crosses on them? Probably some kind of pilgrim tour group. Shorts, Tevas, and a frame pack? Probably a college student on summer vacation.

There is more to it than the few things I have mentioned here, such as beard and sleeve lengths, embroidered dresses and kipa style. In light of all this, I try to dress as inconspicuously as possible.

Women with covered heads

Selling and buying in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City