19/6/12 – Philosophical Ramblings (read at own risk)
So we’ll see how well I can put together this hopefully long awaited blog post. I’ve written some things and am still contemplating whether to make it the PG-13 version or R and with the R it could also mean ridiculous when it comes to some of the things I’ve seen and heard, mostly heard so far. I haven’t even been here a week and already have a couple stories. Today is what convinced me to finally sit down and write. On a side note while I’m writing this I’m eating bread with what I thought was soft cheese, but turned out to be butter so that’s a good 10,000 calories right there. But I’ve probably sweated off a good 5 lbs by so it should even out. Eh.
I went back to Bourj today and that’s what makes me want to write. I love Lebanon. I love Beirut. And I love Hamra (where my apartment is). But Bourj and places like it, the other camps, are what reminds me of why I keep coming back. It reminds me that after last summer I knew I had to come back here and work for the Palestinians that are trapped in these cages in this country where they can look over the border and see where their ancestors lived. They can see something so close and yet so far away. To get there it would take traversing several mine fields, a fence into the DMZ (de-militarized zone) and then another fence into Israel and who knows how short a journey to Acre, where many of the Palestinians in Lebanon are from. The reverse trip was taken – al Nakba in 1948 – by their grandparents and great-grandparents when they had no idea what that trip was going to end in. When I met with the four 1948 refugees in Shatila maybe I should have asked that in hindsight what they would have done. I am sure they would have done everything possible to keep their future generations out of camps that grow in population but are unable to grow in size, turning them into a maze of alleys and buildings built on top of each other laced with dangerous power lines and water tanks with unfiltered salt water. Many stayed and fought and many fled. Number’s games can be played all day but the point is the atrocities that happened and what led to today. (You can see my blog post of the interviews with the 1948 refugees and what they had to say about those that stayed and those who fought and those who fled.)
A bit over half a century later the suffering continues in and out of their homes here as refugees and homes left behind in their homeland. This can get into the keeping of keys to their houses because so many left with full intention to return after the war ended and things were safe and calm again.
My Palestinian friend now was talking about how Israel is calling for a boycott on Acre because it is still mostly Muslim and with a Christian minority (and from what I understood the Christians have been supportive or at least very complacent – I don’t like that word, but I can think of another, there’s no real word for “still getting along just as they did with the Jews also pre-1948 and even more so after seeing the oppression) with the Muslim inhabitants who are trying to make a living in an already apartheid state are now being boycotted more. I mention Muslims and Christians here and we conceded that religion has been thrown around so much that just news now it’s hard to draw lines and know who exactly meant what. Putting religion in the mix can be confusing and make things convoluted and personal. Everyone who knows anything about the conflict knows that pre-1948 (and the near past) Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together in what today is Israel (as it chips away at more and more land). That’s when we came to the conclusion that religion has been lost. It’s Zionism that is the problem. We talked of many Jews we’ve met that are against Israel’s ways (it’s not the same, but how so many people are against to government in their own country but are considered “bad” by default because of where they were born. And if you think about it with the olive groves being bulldozed and checkpoints keeping Palestinians from their family and work is that for the better of Jewish life? Is trapping Gaza like rats supposed to make the Jewish people stronger? Religion can’t mask the conflict anymore. Everyone I’ve talked to agree that it’s the adopted nature of the state, the government. Talking about hindsight… If the original Jews who came in 1948 and the years close before and after on Hertzel’s idea of a Jewish homeland how would they feel about building walls through towns, cutting people from their family, neighbors, work, and worship. If they wanted Jewish nationality and freedom in their own time and place (we briefly mentioned the Holocaust that I refuse to use as any reference because of the weight it carries and the misuse of comparisons to their motives and leaders and institutions – I giggle now about Glen Back saying Arizona put the “iz” in Nazi) but in reference to the Holocaust we merely said the line that if the Jewish people from Europe were coming from already being displaced that their anger is being taken out on the Palestinians. I may get a million comments on that statement, but have heard many people of merit utter the same unfortunate sentence. Back to the question: If the original Israelis knew what the state was going to turn into how would they feel? Would they still have come? Would they still have taken houses that had been vacated by the army who forced people out by either killing them or just going in and kicking them out? These are houses with keys still with the people who were displaced and who had owned them. If they knew the military would make t-shirts with crosshairs on a pregnant woman saying “two terrorists with one bullet” would they have done something differently? What if they knew of the terrorism that would ensue with suicide bombings and bombing of busses and shelling into Israeli territory? If they knew now of the wars that ensued and the number or Arabs (when we’re talking Arabs and war I’m referring to ones including Jordan, Syria, Egypt, etc as well as the Lebanese and the Palestinians in pretty much all of these countries) and Israelis that would die for the cause they believed in would they feel as if they had blood on their hands as well? Would it be like so many other conflicts that displaced people? The same Palestinian friend and I mentioned earlier (for all of this entry unless otherwise specified it will be the same person whose permission I would like to get before publishing their name) diverted for a minute about the Native Americans in the United States. People today talk about the stealing of land and mass killings. If they felt they were able – and hopefully someone would have – would they have stood up and declared sharing the land or at the very least not killing people en masse just because they didn’t fit in the agenda of the newcomers that declared the land for their own? I’ve gone off on quite a tangent here and all of it is spurred by one thing said, just one sentence, that one of the men (in the interviews with the 1948 refugees in Shatila) said. Although I can’t speak Arabic he stood and spoke with such conviction that the translation was felt as well as heard. He said they left Palestine in fear and were put in a place with no light, no air, in a place that you would not even put a dog. That sentence haunts me whenever someone mentions refugees, especially in Lebanon.
So, that is my editorial entry, perhaps Kira rambling on and on about the theories of displacement and what’s happening right now in the present, though as I mentioned with news sources unless you are standing there (hopefully in a bulletproof box) and witness every second of the seven hour shoot out or military beating no one knows what happened. Everyone says something different and claims to be right. In conclusion I’ll end it lightly that in that way the Lebanese are probably amazingly worse than the Americans at telling the news for as much as we complain about it.
Rant begins now: These are places that as much I have studied Palestinian and Lebanese history I wasn’t completely aware of until I came here. It something everyone should see. When I think now of how they are ignored and just brushed along and under the rug it turns my stomach. I always think of things in pictures and the picture I think of is in the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” when the Pakistani’s insist that he go and see the camp and after hearing horrific stories he stood on a hill and looked at the endless sea of tents and people just trying to survive. The camps here in Lebanon of course aren’t tents anymore, but I would dare any American politicians – the ones that would not admit there was a war in Lebanon in 2006 after the airport and highways where bombed – to come here and walk through these camps where people who are human beings as much as anyone else are living in deplorable conditions. I would dare them to duck under the masses of power lines laced up and around buildings and see some of the houses that are barely held together and when someone lives in one room but still insists you drink some of their cold water and give you an herb for carrying the groceries of an old woman I met. I want them to go in there and see that and then have the courage to say it is wrong. No person with any soul in their body can say that this is ok. So many people try to make it as good as possible and especially help the children and I can’t commend them enough for their efforts. They are my heroes and this includes the friend I am talking about in this entry who makes such selfless efforts and actions to help the people.
The point is that no one knows about this. I ran into a woman at the coffee shop I’ve been going to for internet and she didn’t even know there were Palestinians in Lebanon and her husband is Lebanese. She barely knew about Palestinians, period. I was telling her about how hard it is. She asked why they don’t just move, but where can they move to if they have no rights to land or work? Her ignorance (I don’t intend for that to sound mean or demeaning to her, just the vast “un-knowing” of the current situations of Palestinian refugees – especially in Lebanon) summed it up right there. No one wants to deal with them so they don’t talk about them. She’s been married for almost 20 years and right now both her children live here (going to American schools) and has been to Lebanon many times and had never even heard of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. I literally wrote down in the back of a receipt things she had to google. I’m sure her husband is cursing me right now because I had her completely dumbfounded. She even kept shaking her head in disbelief. People just don’t know and that’s the problem. Hopefully I can somehow change that. Even telling this random woman from Georgia I think makes a difference because she said she was going to tell everyone about it and do research made just a little bit of a change, but it’s worth it.
I’m trying to end every entry with something a little special or different and talking about this makes me think of all the internships I applied for and the person who found the one I have now. I’ll be doing fundraising and PR three days a week for an NGO and then working in hospital in a camp two days a week. I was so ecstatic at both these amazing opportunities and I sent her a follow up e-mail just to say thank you and she said, no, she should be thanking me. This kind of thing – and it really started last summer living in Bourj and teaching for LEAP has changed my feeling about being an American. For so long I have cursed the country and was planning my passport burning (mind you I’d have to find another country to take me) but now people are looking at me in the four room emergency room and dumbfounded that this young American girl is here and it can change their perspective on Americans just like I try to change people’s perspectives on the Palestinians and Lebanese.
(PS – On that note for all the people that are aghast that I am going to the Middle East and saying I’ll end up hooded with a knife to my throat I have to say how I met this woman from Georgia (PS- Georgia the state, not country. She was blonde hair, blues eyes all the way). We were sitting outside a coffee shop and started a conversation when a woman came by begging (tell me a city that doesn’t have beggars – I dare you) and I gave her the equivalent of about 30 cents and we talked about how hard it is to tell, wherever you are, who NEEDS the money and who is scamming. We sat and smoked cigarettes on a polished circular wood table with classy chairs and when I went in to get internet and power for my laptop there are giant plush chairs and sofas and it’s colorful and if you blindfolded someone and walked them in they would have no chance guessing it was Lebanon. I was hungry and got a chicken burrito with guacamole.
Cheers,
Kira
lovefromwoes 