אדר - מנסה למצוא שמחה
Cafe La Vie, Ramallah. 5:00pm
The sun is a pale, magnificent
yellow glowing behind blue-gray skies,
date trees in the cafe garden are
bobbing in the wind.
I am surrounded by beautiful
Europeans in kefias.
An Indie folk ambience serenades
this afternoon as I sip
a hazelnut cappuccino and lean in to
my macbook air.
My friend gave a theory about all of
those middle class white hipsters who come from Western countries to
soak in the revolution of Palestine. It followed a long
discussion we had all just finished at the Shabbat afternoon table
about Germans coming to Israel.
Guilt was the topic.
There's a noticeable trend of German
youth who, either consciously or unconsciously, come with heavy loads
of shame to the Jewish heartland in a not-always-so-clear attempt at
reconciliation. They seek to understand and draw connections with
the people whom their grandparents attempted to annihilate. From
their childhood, Germans are raised to view the occurrences of WWII as
a period of national evil and an example of how anybody is capable of
committing monstrous atrocities. This shame is tremendous. In
several discussions I've had with Germans in their mid-twenties, they
express how overwhelmed they are by their history. The crimes of the
Nazis are carried in the collective consciousness of their
descendants developing into all sorts of shame and resentment
complexes1.
(see link below for an excellent article on this topic)
So too do the descendants of hegemonic
colonial destruction come to Palestine, though entirely unconscious
in this case, looking for reconciliation. Or, that's the theory my
friend proposed. The fight of the Palestinians is rich with hasbara2
and is easy, in a visual sense, to identify as the fight of the
underdog. These individuals are often not Jewish (the ones who are
have an entirely different story that we just all love to
comment on) and are not Arabs. In fact, there isn't a whole lot of
Arab support at all for Palestinians beyond some sharp and often
hateful rallying cries. Again, an entirely different story. Thus,
theses young Westerners can commit to a struggle free of any identity
crises as a cause to the issues at hand. Much like the big players
in the international NGO's working for aid, peace, health and other
such noble causes, this work is an unintentional abstract of
tikkun3.
One that could compensate for the untraceable damage that
colonialism caused.
 |
| downtown Ramallah |
I drew a comparison above with the situation of German youth coming to Israel, however it's important to note significant differences. For one, the Holocaust (I believe) is still fresh in our memories. Many of us have living connections to those events. How our great great great grandparents conquered the American west is told in the tongue of legend. Also, the guilt complexes carried by many students and young intellectuals of our generations are far more layered. There's environmental destruction, modern slave labor feeding first world consumerism, oil wars, civil rights struggles, poverty inflamed epidemics, etc etc etc ... and all of it loaded into these left-leaning university sculpted minds leaving a tremendous ball of guilt to dribble around. There is also the obvious issue of generalization. Every one has a different story. Everyone has a different reason for why they do what they do. Yet as I sit here in this cafe and look around me, remembering experiences at anti-Israel rallies in college and the plethora of anti-Israel article posts and comments in my Facebook newsfeed, I feel confident in my generalization, no matter how many critiques, contradictions and other such complexities I myself could conjure up in response.
I'm also taking note at how much this whole scene just pisses me off.
Ramallah signing out.
Ramallah signing out.
1http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/germans/germans/howdo.html
2Hebrew
for "propoganda", lol
