An Interesting Conversation with a New Friend

Well, we made it to Poland and then to Israel and now to the West Bank. It was a long trip and I can't believe I am actually here on the other side of the world from where I've always been before. One of the most interesting things so far was a conversation with someone at the Chopin Airport in Warsaw. I wrote the story of this conversation in my journal, but Michael already wrote most of what I was going to say in his last post, with his perspectives on it, of course.

I will add a little bit, though. After seeing the monuments in Poland and going to the Jewish ghetto that was destroyed by the Nazis and studying some over the last months about the history of the Jews in Europe and the holocaust, it was moving to talk to an older Jewish gentleman at the airport who was born in Poland and left when he was 8 because of the war. An American Jewish girl, Hannah, who we also met at the airport said her grandfather has his tattooed number on his arm from Auschwitz. I try to wrap my mind around the fact that this isn't just history for many people, but life experience. Hannah said that the holocaust museums and memorials are especially hard for her, because she is so aware that it could have easily been her there.

We didn't dwell on that topic for very long at the airport and asked each other what we are doing in Israel. She is spending the summer here learning Arabic from someone in Israel. I told her where we were going and asked her if she'd ever been to the Palestinian territories. She said she has been to the West Bank, or the other side of the green line, which, she informed me, is part of Israel, it is not Palestinian territory.

(The "green line" was formed in 1948 when the land West of it became the new state of Israel and the land East of it was occupied by the country Jordan. In the 1967 Six Day War Israel occupied the land between the green line and the River Jordan, an area that is known as the West Bank. Today many Palestinians refer to this as the Occupied Territory. Many Israelis call it the Administered Territory and some, like Hannah, claim it is simply a part of Israel.)

As she pointed out, there are now Jews living in the West Bank in settlements. Palestinians often say these are colonies, Jews, like Hannah, often say they are just towns. As Michael said, Hannah had issues with many of our terms even though we never said, "occupied territories" or "Jewish colonies" or mentioned "the wall."

Even though she had some quite different perspectives from us, I enjoyed talking to someone who is quite knowledgeable about the situation, even if her knowledge seems somewhat one-sided and she thinks a lot of things, people, and places don't actually exist. For example, in addition to their being no Palestinian territories and no Jewish settlements, there is not a Palestinian people (she meant that they are simply Arabs and therefore belong in Arab lands, not in Palestine) and there are no such thing as Messianic Jews (there could be Christians of Jewish descent, but she said you can be either Christian or Jew, never both.)

We talked a couple hours at the airport and became friends quite quickly. When we thought there were going to be quite a few empty seats on the plane, she even wanted us to come sit with her. I respect her wanting to learn Arabic and understand that she sees the language barrier as a big problem for Israelis and Arabs. I think there are a lot of other, even bigger barriers, though. It is such a segregated place. Most Israelis will never truly see and meet the walled-in Palestinians. But I guess that's OK. After all, they don't really exist anyway.