(no subject)
There are a lot of things from the last couple days floating around in my mind and both to be able to sort some of them out and better focus on work and because I don't want them to wind up (to steal from RENT) on the cutting room floor of memory this entry is me writing about them, plus some links at the end. It lacks a particular point/argument and was really just created for my own purposes, but if you enjoy reading ramblings feel free to do so.
Yesterday while I was walking home another (Jewish Israeli) student stopped me, pointed out a little girl who looked about five-years-old crying in a locked parked car, and asked what I thought we should do. I said I wasn't really sure, suggested that maybe the girl's caretaker was at Yad Sarah (a charitable organization that provides basic necessities to needy families and one of several buildings nearby) and we go and ask there. Towards that end, we asked the girl her name; she just kept crying. At this point another (Jewish Israeli) student came along, the first explained the situation to him, and he called his friend in the police department to ask him to check if there's a phone number associated with the license. Apparently the office that handles motor vehicle inquiries is closed (which prompted a "Eh, that's the Israeli state for you" comment/shrug from him). While he's been doing this I've told the girl "It'll be ok". Given that Israelis would totally use that expression in situations like, "Oh, my doctor said I have two weeks to live, but it'll be okay" it might not have been the best choice, but she calmed down a bit and stopped crying for a couple minutes (I suspect because someone was looking reassuring instead of questioning and/or angry at whoever left her alone). After getting off the phone, the guy tried asking the girl if she knows her mother's telephone number. She perks up at the word "telephone" but doesn't answer, and after a few seconds starts crying again. At that point the guy realized, "Hmm, maybe she's Arab." You can see the faces of the guy and the other student fall at the idea, and I say, "What's the difference? She's a little girl." Even as I said it I realized that it's not at all implausible that someone would leave a child in a car armed with a car bomb to make people come over without thinking about risk, but the car wasn't close enough to any buildings or high-traffic areas for that that to make sense in this case. Anyway, I'm not sure who exactly set off the car's alarm system, but it went off. As it stopped other female student asked the guy, "What makes you think she's Arab?" and the male student said he doesn't really know and they start going back and forth more generally about what we should do. If I'd been thinking, I would have tried asking the girl for her parents' names and/or phone numbers in Arabic, but somehow this didn't occur to me until a minute or two after the alarm stopped, at which point a[n Arab] woman started walking towards the car. As she approached we asked, "Are you the mother?" She explained that she isn't but is close family and continued approaching, and when she saw that the girl was crying unlocked the car, scooped her up, and started comforting her. The other female student had been saying, "Idiots!" under her breath since finding the girl; she was clearly pretty pissed that anyone would leave a child unaccompanied [particularly in a locked car in an area within rocket range of Gaza, I'm sure] and berated the woman for doing so though, since clearly the priority was calming the poor girl, only did so for a couple seconds, and we all went our separate ways.
Meanwhile on campus attire has gotten a lot more nationalized. While there have always been students in Israeli Air Force uniforms (pilots have to commit to a longer term of service and in exchange get their bachelor degree while in the army; the program through which they do so is at BGU), I've only noticed a student wearing a kaffiyah once before this week. The last few days, however, there have been a ton of students wearing them. Then this morning, I saw a woman in the library quite literally wearing the Israeli flag - she had it draped over her shoulders like a little kid would to make hirself a superhero cape. That being said, the heavy security yesterday morning notwithstanding, I think the best summary of the situation on campus was from someone wih whom I did Open Apartments: שותקת, אבל לא שקטה (quiet, but not at ease). Protests here have been quieter than at other Israeli universities; I don't know if that's due to (respect for) people's worries about the possiblity of rockets or other reasons. Despite the general police "zero tolerance" policy towards rioters, yesterday's increased security measures and police presence on campus seems to have been temporary - today security was back to normal.
An Israeli friend made his Facebook status, "Think about things that people were enthusiastic about in the beginning and realized later that it's a disaster." This is a pretty clear reference to the 2006 Lebanon war but his friends decided to be smart-asses and left the following comments (the humor in some if fairly culturally-specific, and I'm not sure my translations quite did it justice, but entertaining none-the-less):
"Like the atom bomb? Or like the Da Vinci Code?"
"Like going to Eilat?"
"Big Brother?"
(his friend S) "פיציונים?? [stupid term for mini-pizzas]"
"Like jelly doughnuts? Or letting little kids light Hannukah candles?"
"Like listening to Galgalatz?"
(my friend wrote) "You wrote about important things, and it appears that S also discovered a way to include [stupid term for mini-pizzas] everywhere, but I was talking about entering Gaza."
"You're talking about the childrens' t.v. channel?"
"Liar! You're talking about the Holocaust! (The Holocaust is also fun to include everywhere :P)
EDIT: I haven't been writing about the blow-by-blow of which town has been hit by how many rockets though it's impossible to read the Israeli news without seeing it. That being said, the last 18 hours or so have seen rockets from Gaza going further into Israel than ever before. The furthest north rockets have come is now Yavne, which freaked me out because I think of it as near Tel Aviv (when you take the bus it's the last town you actually see, instead of just seeing exits for, before Tel Aviv) though after I checked a map I ralized that it's really still 20 kms away from Tel Aviv (though is nearly 40 kms from Gaza). The furthest east they've come was a few hours ago when one landed near Rahat. Rahat is considerably closer to Gaza (about 25 kms), but it's also the largest Bedouin town, so there goes the theory about Hamas & co. not deliberately targetting areas with high Arab populations (either that or it's not realistic to talk about aim)....Not that it doesn't suck to be an Israeli-Arab generally, but it especially sucks right now, particularly for the 750,000 or so living in unrecognized villages (who therefore have neither shelters nor reinforced rooms).
EDITED AGAIN: Yep, there goes that theory.
I love how the Israeli papers, discussing the stabbing by a Palestinian of four Israelis, report the name of the community and describe it as being near (the large-enough-to-be-recognized-by-any-Israeli city of) Modiin wherease the NYTimes describes it as a West Bank settlement (it is, in fact, outside the green line). Of course, the NYTimes might not have tried to normalize a settlement like the Israeli papers did, but it also seems to have under-reported the number of injuires and has since removed that portion of the article, so I'm not sure which is worse...Giving them competition for poor journalism is this article, which might just have the most misleading headline ever: Israel Prize laureate opposes Museum of Tolerance (the museum being built on a Muslim graveyard despite the objections of Islamic groups).
Molotov cocktail thrown at Chicago synagogue.
Rebels kill nearly 200 in Congo.
Cholera is raging despite denial by Mugabe.
It's total schadenfreude, but I'm quite pleased that Focus on the Family is laying off 20% of their employees.
Yesterday while I was walking home another (Jewish Israeli) student stopped me, pointed out a little girl who looked about five-years-old crying in a locked parked car, and asked what I thought we should do. I said I wasn't really sure, suggested that maybe the girl's caretaker was at Yad Sarah (a charitable organization that provides basic necessities to needy families and one of several buildings nearby) and we go and ask there. Towards that end, we asked the girl her name; she just kept crying. At this point another (Jewish Israeli) student came along, the first explained the situation to him, and he called his friend in the police department to ask him to check if there's a phone number associated with the license. Apparently the office that handles motor vehicle inquiries is closed (which prompted a "Eh, that's the Israeli state for you" comment/shrug from him). While he's been doing this I've told the girl "It'll be ok". Given that Israelis would totally use that expression in situations like, "Oh, my doctor said I have two weeks to live, but it'll be okay" it might not have been the best choice, but she calmed down a bit and stopped crying for a couple minutes (I suspect because someone was looking reassuring instead of questioning and/or angry at whoever left her alone). After getting off the phone, the guy tried asking the girl if she knows her mother's telephone number. She perks up at the word "telephone" but doesn't answer, and after a few seconds starts crying again. At that point the guy realized, "Hmm, maybe she's Arab." You can see the faces of the guy and the other student fall at the idea, and I say, "What's the difference? She's a little girl." Even as I said it I realized that it's not at all implausible that someone would leave a child in a car armed with a car bomb to make people come over without thinking about risk, but the car wasn't close enough to any buildings or high-traffic areas for that that to make sense in this case. Anyway, I'm not sure who exactly set off the car's alarm system, but it went off. As it stopped other female student asked the guy, "What makes you think she's Arab?" and the male student said he doesn't really know and they start going back and forth more generally about what we should do. If I'd been thinking, I would have tried asking the girl for her parents' names and/or phone numbers in Arabic, but somehow this didn't occur to me until a minute or two after the alarm stopped, at which point a[n Arab] woman started walking towards the car. As she approached we asked, "Are you the mother?" She explained that she isn't but is close family and continued approaching, and when she saw that the girl was crying unlocked the car, scooped her up, and started comforting her. The other female student had been saying, "Idiots!" under her breath since finding the girl; she was clearly pretty pissed that anyone would leave a child unaccompanied [particularly in a locked car in an area within rocket range of Gaza, I'm sure] and berated the woman for doing so though, since clearly the priority was calming the poor girl, only did so for a couple seconds, and we all went our separate ways.
Meanwhile on campus attire has gotten a lot more nationalized. While there have always been students in Israeli Air Force uniforms (pilots have to commit to a longer term of service and in exchange get their bachelor degree while in the army; the program through which they do so is at BGU), I've only noticed a student wearing a kaffiyah once before this week. The last few days, however, there have been a ton of students wearing them. Then this morning, I saw a woman in the library quite literally wearing the Israeli flag - she had it draped over her shoulders like a little kid would to make hirself a superhero cape. That being said, the heavy security yesterday morning notwithstanding, I think the best summary of the situation on campus was from someone wih whom I did Open Apartments: שותקת, אבל לא שקטה (quiet, but not at ease). Protests here have been quieter than at other Israeli universities; I don't know if that's due to (respect for) people's worries about the possiblity of rockets or other reasons. Despite the general police "zero tolerance" policy towards rioters, yesterday's increased security measures and police presence on campus seems to have been temporary - today security was back to normal.
An Israeli friend made his Facebook status, "Think about things that people were enthusiastic about in the beginning and realized later that it's a disaster." This is a pretty clear reference to the 2006 Lebanon war but his friends decided to be smart-asses and left the following comments (the humor in some if fairly culturally-specific, and I'm not sure my translations quite did it justice, but entertaining none-the-less):
"Like the atom bomb? Or like the Da Vinci Code?"
"Like going to Eilat?"
"Big Brother?"
(his friend S) "פיציונים?? [stupid term for mini-pizzas]"
"Like jelly doughnuts? Or letting little kids light Hannukah candles?"
"Like listening to Galgalatz?"
(my friend wrote) "You wrote about important things, and it appears that S also discovered a way to include [stupid term for mini-pizzas] everywhere, but I was talking about entering Gaza."
"You're talking about the childrens' t.v. channel?"
"Liar! You're talking about the Holocaust! (The Holocaust is also fun to include everywhere :P)
EDIT: I haven't been writing about the blow-by-blow of which town has been hit by how many rockets though it's impossible to read the Israeli news without seeing it. That being said, the last 18 hours or so have seen rockets from Gaza going further into Israel than ever before. The furthest north rockets have come is now Yavne, which freaked me out because I think of it as near Tel Aviv (when you take the bus it's the last town you actually see, instead of just seeing exits for, before Tel Aviv) though after I checked a map I ralized that it's really still 20 kms away from Tel Aviv (though is nearly 40 kms from Gaza). The furthest east they've come was a few hours ago when one landed near Rahat. Rahat is considerably closer to Gaza (about 25 kms), but it's also the largest Bedouin town, so there goes the theory about Hamas & co. not deliberately targetting areas with high Arab populations (either that or it's not realistic to talk about aim)....Not that it doesn't suck to be an Israeli-Arab generally, but it especially sucks right now, particularly for the 750,000 or so living in unrecognized villages (who therefore have neither shelters nor reinforced rooms).
EDITED AGAIN: Yep, there goes that theory.
I love how the Israeli papers, discussing the stabbing by a Palestinian of four Israelis, report the name of the community and describe it as being near (the large-enough-to-be-recognized-by-any-Israeli city of) Modiin wherease the NYTimes describes it as a West Bank settlement (it is, in fact, outside the green line). Of course, the NYTimes might not have tried to normalize a settlement like the Israeli papers did, but it also seems to have under-reported the number of injuires and has since removed that portion of the article, so I'm not sure which is worse...Giving them competition for poor journalism is this article, which might just have the most misleading headline ever: Israel Prize laureate opposes Museum of Tolerance (the museum being built on a Muslim graveyard despite the objections of Islamic groups).
Molotov cocktail thrown at Chicago synagogue.
Rebels kill nearly 200 in Congo.
Cholera is raging despite denial by Mugabe.
It's total schadenfreude, but I'm quite pleased that Focus on the Family is laying off 20% of their employees.