Feb 21
The last few days have been more or less uneventful. The weather has been horrible and no one wants to leave their homes outside of going to class. It was the worst on Monday night and Tuesday morning. It snowed a little and I was tempted not to go to class on Tuesday, because it was so cold and yucky, but I was supposed to do a presentation on Zionism for my class, so I went unfortunately when I got to class there were only 5 people there so our prof decided to have a sort of current events class and postpone talking about history of Zionism until Thursday. My presentation was based on two readings we had I cant include the readings here but I summarized one of them. I will post my Summary and discussion questions I posed to the class after this posting.
Wednesday we had class and then that night most of us went to Aliya’s a restaurant in Birzeit to watch “Arna’s Children”, a documentary about an Israeli women who went to Jenin and started a arts education programs for the children there. It was very moving and I recommend it to any one who hasn’t yet seen it. It also gave me some ideas for my future career.
Today Me and Tasha gave our presentations of the readings we did for class. After we were done of the first questions the prof asked the class was “are Jews a Nation or just a religion” Im pretty sure he expected most people to either not have an opinion or to say just a religion as some did, but I wont stand by while someone tells lies about me. He doesn’t know Im Jewish well he might know now, but I had a little very civil argument with him in class about the nationess (look it up…next to truthiness) of Jews. Nothing justifies what Israel has done to the Palestinians, but that doesn’t mean that you can just deny certain truths to make your case better. I think I may have won the argument because after a few minutes he just changed the subject and that was the end, but then he was talking about how Jews were persecuted in Europe and he was talking about reasons for their persecution and one of the reasons he gave, which he prefaced with saying his Jewish friend told him, was that in the Torah it says that Jews are superior to everyone else. I think I almost died of shock. Its one thing for uneducated people to think this way and spread this crap but he’s a professor and a politician. He was talking about the “light unto the nations” thing, which does not mean that Jews are better or superior. It means we hold our selves to a high moral standard so that we can be an example to those that do not live by such a high moral code. Unfortunately I was so shocked I couldn’t even say anything, but after class I talked to a bunch of the other students in the class and corrected him then. I think maybe in Tuesday I will ask him if I can address it to the whole class. I may not be a Zionist any more, but I’m still a Jew and I’m not going to let any one tell lies about my religion! He is a very interesting professor, but I think some times he is trying so hard to prove the Palestinian point of view that he goes a little too far, but at least I know enough to counter most of what he says. Tonight Santi and Nick are having another “party” I’m really starting to miss Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle, but I guess our little parties here are fun enough.
Friday I am going to Bil'in to a demonstration for the anniversary of the people of Bi'lin resistance against the building of the wall through their village. The wall is something I have no moral ambiguities about, it is a land grab and nothing more I don’t care how many statistics the Israeli govt throws at me. I just hope this demonstration stays as peaceful as they want it to.
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