Same Street, Different Fireworks

Well, I was sitting in my room, happily working my way through some practice GMAT questions today - shabbat. Usually the jewish sections of Jerusalem and even the arab parts are much quieter than any other day of the week on Shabbat. It's the day of rest, and usually the lazy man inside of me, although not shomer shabbos, happily conforms to the prevailing mood.

Over the last week, there have been intermittent fireworks going off around the old city. I guess Jerusalem day was a couple weeks ago and Shavuot was a week ago, but I'm still not exactly sure why these stupid fireworks keep going off. The first couple times I heard them I thought they were automatic gun fire and made a point to stay inside my room. One night I went to a barbeque with some friends and heard the same noise as I was looking out over the rooftop where we were perched to see some very colorful fireworks exploding over the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. Ok, I thought, it's just fireworks. No more rubber bullets, no more light rounds, not more flying rocks.

Today was a little different, however. During my study session I heard the same firework noise and didn't think too much of it - in fact I barely noticed it because I was so concentrated on studying. But a minute later, the fireworks sounded about twice as loud. Within 30 seconds I heard non-stop honking and police sirens blasting away from a distant part of Jerusalem, getting closer. There were people yelling on the street below me and the loud fireworks continued. I decided to get up and see what the hell was happening, so I walked into the main lobby area of the hotel only to see that one of the windows looking out over the street had been broken. Within a couple of seconds I started to smell what I thought initially was gunpowder, but as my throat and eyes began to burn, I realized that it was indeed some tear gas that had wafted into the lobby. The other guys in the room, some arabs and some tourists, were bent over coughing and, well, crying. We all retreated to an adjacent area to the lobby to try to recover, and I went over to another smaller lobby to get some water. I decided to look out of the lobby window into the square where all of this noise was coming from, and saw Israeli SWAT officers firing light rounds into the air with handguns and rifles. There was pandemonium on the street, bloody faces and, most surprisingly, arabs fighting arabs.

Apparently, two arab families, one of whom owns the falafal/kebab shop that I eat at frequently, have a history of violent quarrels. By the time the Israeli police had moved in to disperse the families and the crowd that had gathered, the falafel shop was wrecked - windows smashed, signs destroyed, frying oil vat tipped over and blood over the ground. The Israeli police had arrested the offenders and had created a perimeter around the scene.

Anyway, I'm holed up in my room, listening to more fire fights that are happening around the corner wondering when I can get safely leave the hotel. I'm not sure it's in my interest to stay in this volatile of an area of Jerusalem for much longer... I think I'll move soon. In the meantime, where will I get my felafel?

Achmad

Somewhere in the long days of cramming Hebrew into my head before I left for my brief trip to America, I managed to make a couple of friends. Most were Latin Americans here on some program or another in which they wanted to feel Israeli for a couple of months. I have no problem with that; after all, who knows how transient I will end up being. But it was those who were on the other end of the spectrum - the ones who have been here the longest - who are the most intriguing to talk to out here.

One of the friends whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making, was a rarity in and of himself in our language learning "ulpan", as it is known, and, indeed, a rarity in these parts of Tel Aviv. Born and raised in the center of old Jaffo, an Arab town sitting quietly to the south of Tel Aviv on the meditereanean cost, the only Arab presently learning in the "ulpan" was Achmad.

I met Achmad in early October after I had started level ג (the third level), which was surprising to me, as I assumed that, by simply living in Israel and being raised 2 km from the the second biggest Jewish city in the world, Tel Aviv, that Achmad would be nearly fluent in Hebrew. And I was wrong to assume that. Achmad, as it turned out, was raised in a family that didn't allow him to integrate much into anything outside of Jaffo - especially into any Jewish community. In fact, Achmad's family didn't even know that he had started to take advantage of a not-so-well-known government program that aims to help Palestinians and Israeli arabs integrate into mainstream Israeli society (outside of the 20% arab minority) - presumably to increase upward mobility.

The first day that I met him, he walked into class smiling at everyone, which I found strange, as I knew he definitely wasn't American. And he certainly didn't look European. As he sit down next to me on my left, our eyes briefly and nervously met, as if not sure whether to acknowledge each other's presence. This is sort of the inherent dynamic in these ulpan classes full of strangers, representing almost every western nation you can think of. So, on top of the "stranger" boundaries that exist, there exist also cultural and national boundaries. Finally, when we had to do a partner exercise with reading, he broke the ice.

"Hi I'm Achmad."

"I'm Josh. I'm from America... where are you from??"

"Jaffo".

"No. I mean, which country are you from?", I asked, thinking that he didn't understand my question.

"Israel, man. I was born in Jaffo".

I couldn't believe it. Someone brave enough to break those iron-clad boundaries that exist between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews was in front of me. I was, of course, even more amazed later when, over a shot of espresso at the café down the block from the ulpan, he told me that his parents had forbidden him to venture into Tel Aviv to mingle with Jews. We sat there exchanging stories and viewpoints about what we thought of this chaotic society, an outside perspective and a hybrid perspective - both inside and outside. He was very much into asking about America and how it was going through an American university.

"So there are parties everywhere, chicks, big barrels of beer and everyone is just having sex, right?", he said, with his level ג Hebrew, and his eyes wide open in anticipation.

"Well, no. I guess you could find that somewhere back there, but it's not very common".

I actually get asked this question by Israeli Jews from time to time. The reaction is always confusion - and, of course, some obscure reference to a part of an American movie like American Pie or Animal House. I guess it makes sense with the way that American entertainment has captivated the world's attention for the last half century. But, I have to say, I was maybe equally or more blown away by what I heard from him regarding Arab's views to Jews.

Achmad started with a story about the first time that he met a Jew - in Jaffo - when he was a young boy.

"Dad and my uncle always used to tell me not to come into contact with a Jew when I was younger. They told me that they had tails and horns, and that I better not mess with them. So the first time I met a Jew, I looked in back of him to find the tail, and saw nothing", Achmad recounted.

I couldn't believe it. It's like a Middle Eastern-style Chupacabra tale that really makes you wonder how engrained and widespread this insane and parochial view is of Jews in Arab society. Maybe it's isolated to Achmad and a few others, but that experience really hit me in the face. It got me really thinking about what the psychological roots of anti-semitism, and indeed racism are. It turns out that many academics liken it to the psychology behind urban myths, like the Chupacabra or the Yeti. People cling to these stories, I imagine, perhaps out of the need to scapegoat, or purely out of the human being's propensity to naturally side with anything that promotes a feeling of belonging to another group, a sort of solidarity "us" against "them" sort of concept. Whatever it was, it opened my eyes, but still gave me hope for how the future of Israel might look like; individuals who can rise above the mistrust, hate and hyperbole to take advantage of the relatively (in middle eastern terms) egalitarian social construct that has been built here in this imperfect, but occasionally improving democracy. Glad to have finally met one of them from the other side: Achmad.