Inside Israel and Palestine: Eyes Wide Open
“I’m in love.” I said. In retrospect, it was an odd comment to make, though one I had recited about many a restaurant, city, and country before.
My friends found it bizarre, and I suddenly realized, two weeks prior, I would have agreed. But Trek had that effect. To be enamored by a region so multi-faceted and vibrant, with so much depth of character, how could that be strange?
My parents always speak of Kashmir, a land beautiful and long disputed between India and Pakistan. Where I’m sure preceding generations might associate it with snow-covered mountains and the fairytale aura exalted in Bollywood, a part of me would always label the land a far-reaching dream — a place I would always hope to visit, but one rife with conflict, rendering it one I likely never would.
Israel and Palestine, when I applied to Trek, before I boarded my El Al flight, were no different. For so long, for myriad people, including myself, this place was one-dimensional. I am uncertain as to whether I expected to see rockets flying overhead or the images of war that frequent any and all conversation about this place. Equipped with my Western lens, it is, indubitably, how I learned to define this place. I had been conditioned — to learn about and identify this region based on conflict and little else.
And that’s why a reflection like, “I’m in love with this place,” sounded odd. Unconventional. Unexpected.
This condition is not uniquely my own.
Israel and Palestine are real places with real people. College-aged kids throw frisbees on the Tel Aviv beachfront; Arab and Jewish parents walk their kids to school; and visiting a winery in the Golan Heights proves to be just as normal as it is in Napa. But yes, I also met and befriended people who spent their formative years in the IDF or fighting against it; people for whom a contemporary, graffiti-covered Iron Curtain displaces them from a land they call home; people whose parents breathe the realities of the Holocaust into structures akin to Yad Vashem.
Upon my return, I rapidly realized that Trek pushed me to shed the lens constructed by my education. This education limited my sight to one foot in front of me: to insufficient textbook summaries and dispute-focused talks about this vibrant, complex, and infinitely real place.
I don’t hope to normalize my experiences, the violence that garners international attention, or this region as a whole. Rather, I hope to convey that, in many ways, life there is normal…as often as it is not, given the conflict and history that also characterizes this region.
But only travelling to this place on Trek could illuminate this truth for me. That which characterizes a place and its people does not define them. Being given the opportunity to recognize that, to feel the depth of this place, best encompasses the way in which Trek changed me: to reinvent my one-dimensional view of a place that is anything but; to see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, feel with my own heart. Not twice-removed, but first hand.
This place: it is a confluence of histories, borders, and identities, and one that my education could do no justice to in its offering of an authentic understanding. Trek gave me the informal introduction to startup nation, occupation, and historical oppression. Finally, I could reconcile knowledge learned from a received education with moments encompassed by everyday observations, poignant memories, and real people — be it Amir, our genial guide who grew up in the West Bank, or stout Israeli politicians like Naftali Bennett, Palestinian peace activist Ali Abu Awwad, or our very own Israeli classmates.
Through these realities, in these moments, I found the young woman who had entered the gates of Harvard — eyes wide open. One of my cohorts relayed it best when she relayed that upon departure, “We left a part of ourselves behind.” I agree. But many, if not all of us, also found a piece of ourselves. I found the 11th Grade World History student who pledged herself to visiting Oskar Schindler’s grave and made that dream a reality (equipped with a few shekels and Jerusalem Google maps nonetheless). I found the incessantly inspired version of that woman, who desperately tried to scribble every thought-provoking question and incongruity down in her little red Moleskin. I found a reinvigorated me: the one who took a Trek group and felt it as family, who took an experience and embedded it in her life.
Our friends, Trek leaders, tour guides, speakers and passersby, they outstretched their hands, and they showed us their home: a place that we had only ever discussed as an abstract, an oversimplified place, a mere point on a globe. It was a place our lives would never truly touch, replete with realities we would never contemplate, let alone face.
And yet we did. We experienced the odd, the unconventional, the unexpected. We touched this place and we saw it. Through Trek, I discovered the responsibility of real, tangible understanding because I found it myself. I now have the unique privilege of being able to identify this place with a family of 58 other inspired students, of memories that only this place will hold, of learning and a responsibility of understanding that will, undeniably, carry me through a lifetime.
I’ve been postponing this. As if somehow delaying my reflection could postpone the exhilaration and the life-changing meaning this trip has endowed me with. I fell in love with this region and experience, for all its histories and stories and for all the ones I get to call mine, for the depth it displayed and the depth it gave me. This experience challenged not only my understanding of Palestine and Israel, but also who I am. Most importantly, Trek represents a revived understanding, a revived understanding of how I — we — must learn to approach the abstract, distinctive pieces of our world:
with our eyes wide open.
