The first comprehensive study of this blog has been conducted by Matthew Rose. Here are the findings:

You wondered once why some of your posts get more comments than others. I was bored, browsing through your library, and have some theories about the circumstances under which most replies happen:

— Anything Eurof responds to; because it’s important to always disagree with him

— Anything Kenny responds to; bc he’s always thoughtful

— Anything Felix doesn’t respond to; bc no-one can ever figure out what he’s getting at

— Anything about girls or sex

— Nothing about real political issues of substance.

With this in mind, I will now endeavor to post a blog that will elicit no comments whatsoever: It’s about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dad in front of the Church of the Nativity with our armored Jeep

The parents in Bethlehem’s market street

Al Aqsa paraphernalia and repaired bullet holes

I’ve refrained from blogging my impressions about my stay here in Israel until now, not just because it is so terribly difficult to be nuanced in this place, but also because until today major pieces of the puzzle were still missing for me. I’ve had a great time in Israel proper, zooming up and down 8-lane highways, hiking through Roman ruins, sitting on the beach or going out in Tel Aviv. The quality of life in Israel is very high; Tel Aviv proper is a slice of New York transported wholesale to the Mediterranean. But I hadn’t yet seen the other side of this equation–the West Bank, and Palestinian town life. Today (Sunday) we drove to Bethlehem, and then further south on some backroads to Hebron before looping back into Israel proper.

It’s a blog, so I will limit myself to vignettes of things that struck me–metaphorically, of course.

— Wimps: American supporters of Israel who are loath to travel here are total wimps. They are not just playing into the hands of terrorists (along the lines of, “If I don’t go to Israel then the terrorists have already won”), they are exacerbating a serious recession brought on in part by a collapsed tourism industry. Above all, they are terribly bad at calculating the chances of getting blown up by a suicide bomber. As always, the situation on the ground is a lot different from the bad-news focus of television. Israelis are very stoic about not crimping their style–restaurants and bars in Tel Aviv are full, albeit with guards at the entrance; and perhaps there is a preference for places that are somewhat more recessed from the outside. But the Tel Aviv Love Parade was in full swing last night, the beaches are full, and weekends are spent driving off to BBQs in the hills.

— Eyewitnesses: I met Itay and Ephrat’s dad, Eli, for Lunch in Jaffa last week. We drove through Tel Aviv to get there, and on the way he pointed out to me several places where suicide bombers had struck. A cafe on the main street, a disco on the beach… a dozen people died here, two dozen people there… Today, in Bethlehem, a teenager saw us looking at a poster on a shop door; he explained in English it commemorated a mother and daughter that had been shot there by the IDF during the siege; he was also vocal about this weekend’s latest killing of 11 Palestinians, the majority of them clearly civilians.

— Space: Both Israel and the West Bank are a lot emptier than I expected. There is a lot of room in both places for accommodating their respective population booms without a need for land grabs. Unless, of course, the settlements are not a result of population pressure, but borne of a deliberate policy to change the facts on the ground. Most shocking is the sheer physicality of a settlement. They are often shiny and new, snug on a hilltop with a big Israeli flag fluttering above, with protective fencing all around. The Palestinians, meanwhile, are immobile in their valleys, blocked by Israeli checkpoints. Most of these settlements were expanded or even started in the past decade, despite Oslo, and this is the main evidence Palestinians point to in their case that Israelis will never allow anything more than a rump Palestinian state. It is the one question that I have never seen answered to my satisfaction; pointing out that Palestinians have never had a state anyway, as someone did, is not an answer–Jews did not have a state until 1948 either, and no, states that existed 2000 years ago don’t cut it. If they count, Israel should be part of Egypt, because the Pharaohs were here first.

— “Martyrs”: In Bethlehem, many of the closed metal shop stalls sport posters, often bleached by the sun and half-scratched off, of men posing with big automatic weapons, superimposed over the Dome of the Rock. Our self-appointed guide pointed to them and called them martyrs. They were indeed Al Aqsa brigade members who had been killed by the IDF during the siege of the Nativity Church. But it was never clear to me whether our teenaged guide was able to, or particularly cared about making the distinction between having an old-fashioned fight with the other side’s army on the one hand and bombing civilians on the other.

— Girls: Secular Israeli girls are incredibly hot. I had suspected as much last time I was here, but that was winter, this is summer. Dress code is almost always a barely-there halter top with plenty of room for belly-buttonage, and low hung skin-tight pants. Put them in uniform and give them a gun, and the effect is magnified. I just had dinner with Neil, Marc Young’s roommate at SAIS and colleague of John Sinclair, and we both agreed that if we ever lured Marc here, he’d be shacked up with a pretty kibbbutz girl before you can say mazel tov. I suspect Palestinian girls are pretty too; but they and their Orthodox Jewish counterparts have a knack for fishing the ugly stuff out of the bargain bin, and then wearing far too much of it.

More to follow, I’m sure…

[Mon, Sep 02 2002 – 20:06] Felix (www) (email) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.