The Orange T-Shirt

It's Saturday evening, and I've just come back from my family's apartment in Giv'at Sha'ul, a very observant neighbourhood that's about a 30-minute walk from my apartment in central Jerusalem.

I had the pleasure of spending Shabbat dinner with my family last night, and they invited me back for lunch today. Spending time with the family has been great, and it has especially rewarding to get to know my cousins a little better.

The oldest son of the family, Yanadav Shlomo, is in the army now and he was able to come home for Shabbat. He is currently stationed at a base in the Northern West Bank, near a city called Nablus by the Palestinians and Shechem by Israelis. He is in the Tzanchanim (Paratroopers) - a very elite unit, with a similar connotation in Israel to being a Navy SEAL in the US.

Yanadav Shlomo was very excited to see me and he had a present for me: a T-shirt. This is not just any shirt. The arms are in the brightest shade of crossing-guard-vest orange you have ever seen (the adopted colour of the pro-settler movement). The front has the emblem of his unit over the left side of the chest. The back has a graphic with three Israeli soldiers shooting over the West Bank wall/fence/barrier as buildings behind the wall are in flames. Around the graphic are the words in Hebrew, (and I'll translate loosely here) "We kicked Hezbollah's ass in 2005!" To be honest, I felt very conflicted looking at the shirt. I realized that a year ago I probably would have worn the shirt and not given it any thought, but now I understand what these images (the orange, the wall, the soldiers shooting over the wall) mean to the other side. My aunt saw me looking at the shirt and she came up to me afterward and started to say, "You understand, this is a very different environment from where you're working..." I stopped her and said, "Don't worry; I won't wear the shirt to the center."


I feel caught in the middle. My family here would be considered right wing. My eldest cousin (she's my age) was forcefully removed from her home in Gush Katif, a settlement bloc in the Gaza strip, when the evacuation was ordered. On the other side, I'm working in a center with Palestinians, who tell me about how it takes 4 hours at the checkpoint to travel the 6 miles between Jerusalem and Ramallah, that is, if they're lucky and the checkpoint is open. I hear about the Israeli laws and restrictions imposed by the IDF that make life very difficult for the Palestinians, I hear about the security barrier that separates Palestinians from their farm land and water supplies, and then I hear about the Palestinian who blew up himself and three Israeli civilians Thursday night after posing as a Jewish hitchhiker. As I am quickly understanding, nothing here is simple.

On a lighter note, I wanted to put up some pictures of the apartment I moved into here. It’s a tiny one-room apartment in the center of the city, located right between the center of the city’s nightlife (Ben Yehuda Street) and the main market (Mahane Yehuda). Here are a few pictures:

So this it: basically, just one room. The bed doubles as a couch. On the plus side, there's Satellite TV, and high-speed wireless internet (though I suspect that it's stolen from the neighbours).









...And the view from the other side of the bed: here is the shower, which is next to the kitchen area. I especially like the "rubber ducky" shower curtain. Note that the shower opens into the living room/kitchen/bedroom. In case you were wondering, that is the only sink in the apartment, so it performs double duty as both the kitchen and bathroom sink.





My favourite feature of this apartment has to be the view. It is on the eighth floor, and has a great view on the surrounding hills. I took these pictures this evening, just as dusk was falling. I love the colour of the Jerusalem stone in the sunset.









Here's the view toward the North-East corner of the city.














This is a zoomed-in shot at the same angle as above. The hill you see is called "French Hill," where the Seeds of Peace Center is located. The divided roadway you see here follows the path of the 1949 Armistice (Green) line. Everything you see to the right of that road was part of Jordan until 1967. The UN technically calls the area of French Hill a "settlement", Israelis call the area "a Jerusalem neighbourhood". Many of the large buildings you see at the top of the hill are dormitories for the campus of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem on nearby Mount Scopus. The surrounding neighbourhoods are predominantly Arab.

Well, there's the glimpse into my life for today. I've been a little more personal in this entry and I know that the things I'm talking about are very sensitive topics. I'm not trying to claim that I'm an expert after being here for two weeks. I'm just trying to figure things out for myself, and I guess I'm bringing you guys along. As always, I welcome any comments and I have appreciated the emails that I have received from many of you reading these entries.

Cheers,
Seth