Notes from the Holy Land

A few weeks ago, a senior leader of Hamas, the dominant, anti-Israeli political group in Gaza, was assassinated in his hotel in Dubai. Immediately, fingers started to be pointed at Israel's foreign spy service, Mossad (equivalent to the CIA in America), as the culprit. Now, whether Mossad did it or not, leaders in Gaza decided that they did and in typical Middle-Eastern fashion, they retaliated. Shortly after the assassination, barrels full of TNT started washing ashore in Israel. They're thought to have been launched from Palestinian fishing boats off-shore and although all of them were safely destroyed by Israeli police, it became a different story when I learned that three of these bombs had washed ashore ten kilometers south of Tel Aviv. For those friends from good old Berlin, CT who are reading this that is less than the distance from the high school to the Meriden mall. For Bostonians thats roughly the distance from Boston Common to Boston College. Basically, thats pretty damn close. To most Israelis though, this sort of story doesn't seem to phase them. One of my counselors at TAU is a grad student who grew up in Ashkelon, a city south of Tel Aviv. He once told a few of us a story about a rocket launched from Gaza which landed and exploded in an empty street in Ashkelon. He said that immediately after the explosion, Israelis began coming out of their homes and examining the crater. Instead of being fearful and discussing the possibility of another rocket attack the Israelis stood around the crater just chatting with each other as if they had simply run in to one another on the street.

I wouldn't call this behavior a sort of numbness to violence against Israel, rather, it seems to me like Israelis have a certain "awareness" of things like these. They are used to them, so they aren't surprised by them. It's a rather odd sense to think about, being able to shrug off bombs and rockets and all sorts of security procedures, but I guess this is just part of life here. I'm just starting to get used to it. And while I was still a little taken aback when our bus to Eilat was stopped at a checkpoint outside the city and an IDF soldier boarded with a loaded M-16, walked up and down the aisle, and checked all of us out, there are smaller things I don't have a second thought about anymore, like bag checks and pat downs in nearly every entrance to every building and soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders walking around everywhere. Maybe that means I'm starting to absorb some of this "awareness"? Maybe its just part of assimilating into the culture? Maybe.

All I know for sure is that I can't see myself standing outside a smoking crater anytime soon chatting about the weather.

Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.