We walked quickly through the West Bank, the border wall with Israel was close. It invoked a sense of terror and control like few things I have seen.
Clearly we were not from there, and the locals took a good look. The world weary eyes following us reminded me of my time in the Brownsville’s projects in New York. There, though, the borders were the invisible constraints of sociology, economics, and culture. In the West Bank, they are real and are manned by armed guards.
My last trip before COVID was to Israel. I was visiting a friend who is a diplomat and is finishing his last year posted there. This was meant to be the start of a fun holiday, not any sort of political outing. I did not want to go but was humoring my friend. When we crossed the border into the West Bank, I was nursing a hangover and wishing I was somewhere In the shade with a beer.
I found the shade and the beer, but the message was sobering. Our first stop was Banksy’s The Walled Off Hotel. It was hard to miss Banksy’s point, the hotel faced directly at the wall. His graffiti, and that of many others covered the surface. Small acts of rebellion on a monolith of oppression.
As a conservative, I never had any sympathy for the Palestinian cause before. In my mind, Israel was a beacon of modernity and democracy in the region and anyone who didn’t like them was essentially an antisemite. I knew vaguely about the Palestinians, but I felt assured that anything Israel was doing was solely to keep “terrorists” at bay.
Seeing the Israeli Settlements disabused me of this notion.
Modern apartment towers and homes, clean and neat, surrounded but height walls and fences with poor Palestinian peasants on the others side. These people couldn't even cross the road that connected the settlements to Israel. Their lands was cut in half.
Walking the streets of Bethlehem after a night out in Tel Aviv is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Tel Aviv feels like a modern European capital, Barcelona with better hummus.
Bethlehem feels like another world. The streets are cramped, filled with merchants selling out of date IPhones the out of work locals wish they could afford. This town is where Jesus was born, and it doesn’t feel like much has changed much since then. You really feel like you have gone back in time.
There is a feeling in the streets of both resignation and tension. No one is expecting anything to improve and they are all waiting for it to get worse.
And it did. In May of this year tensions escalated, Israeli soldiers occupied a mosque, and Hamas started firing rockets. I don’t know enough to assign blame, not that it would be at all helpful. Let’s instead take a look at the scoreboard. According to The NY Times, as of May 17th, 213 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza compared to 12 Israelis. Israel moved in and took more territory.
Seems odd to me that Israel can still play the victim card in international media. Their MO seems pretty clear: bully the Palestinians until they react, then use the terrorism pretext to engage their high tech, US funded military, against a gaggle of disorganized villagers.
If I am missing something please let me know. I like Israel and its people. Over the last 60 years they have won an insane fight for survival while building a flourishing society. In the past they truly were the underdog.
But can they really make that claim anymore? Israel has made peace with many of it’s old Arab enemies. They are funded and protected by American political parties competing to see who can be the most pro Israel. Their economy is booming, enjoying the well earned spoils of an ambitious, educated, and tech savvy population. Maybe they could show a bit more empathy to Palestinians who live in an Israeli constructed open air prison?
As the sun went down we made it out of the prison but our minds were still with those left behind. While you can just drive in, you are reminded that it’s a prison with the intense ID and security checks on the way out. We could leave when we wanted, the residents of the West Bank couldn’t. They cannot get a job, go to an airport or see family across that border. For me, with libertarian tendencies, this level of control is my personal dystopian nightmare.
So I urge you, before making up your mind to read, observe and travel. This trip, which happened almost a year ago, is still with me and I don’t think I will forget it. When in doubt, go and have a look.
The message is clear. We are isolated in the US. We are far away from what is really happening in most of the world. Travel builds wisdom and broadens our way of thinking about the world. My personal view is that any form of news is biased, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to Fox and then to MSNBC. If that is the only lens we use to view the world, then our lens will not give us 20/20 vision. This is a great message, Andrew.
The message is clear. We are isolated in the US. We are far away from what is really happening in most of the world. Travel builds wisdom and broadens our way of thinking about the world. Any form of news is biased, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to Fox and then to MSNBC. If that is the only lens we use to view the world, then our lens will not give us 20/20 vision. This is a great message, Andrew.