I should have guessed.
The opposite of love and empathy, after all, is not hatred but indifference.
It makes sense in some bizarre way.
There is so much ignorance here, you wouldn't believe it. People are so blind. For most Israelis (and I am of course making broad generalizations here, but you get the point), the occupation is non-existent. And why is it non-existent? For the simple reason that it's invisible. Out of sight, out of mind. Although only kilometres away (or some places not even a kilometre), the general feeling is that it's at least as far to the territories (as the occupation is called most of the time) as it is to Norway ("Norway? What countries are next to Norway?" as a security guard at the wailing wall put it). You could perhaps arrest me for oversimplifying the matter, but this is even my own feeling here I am sitting in a nice wired café in West Jerusalem. The horror and daily humiliation of the occupation is far away. It must be far away, how else can I explain the indifference around me? How else can I explain the way people continue to be preoccupied by their investments, the latest fashion and the best drinks while their prime minister is planning a war on Gaza?
Again, there is some serious generalization here. But then again, walking by the beach in Tel Aviv yesterday, I rather unvoluntary was accompanied by a man who assured me he could tell me anything I wanted to know. Although this man was a bit... what can I say, off the mainstream in terms of intelligence, it serves as a good example of the general attitude around here. Noticing my Lonely Planet book of the Middle East he exclaimed "Oooohhh! Book about Middle East! Why you have book, I am here! I know everything! Ask me!" But then he asked me instead, wondering where I was from.
"Norway," I said.
"Ohhhhh!! Norway! Nice! I have very very nice memory of Norway!"
"Oh, so you've been there?"
"No!! Never!"
"?"
"But I have been to Greece!"
"???"
"I met nice girl in Greece! Her name Hilde! Ohhhh very beautiful you know! I love her! I love Norway!"
I guess I should have ended the conversation at this point, but I had nothing particular planned for the next minutes, so I went on to ask him what he thought about the conflict.
"Ohhh! About the conflict, I don't care! What do you think, you can tell me anything you think! Anything! I don't get angry, for me it means nothing!"
So I diplomatically told him I found the whole situation a bit... unequal.
"Ohh, unequal, really! But look, how can you say that! It's not all black and white you know! It is more like grey. Yeah grey! And when all is grey, what can I say! It's grey!"
And then he went on to complain about the stockmarket and his boredom on his day off and urged me to let him buy me a drink.
But I had just spent an hour talking to another jerk on the very same beach, patiently listening to his complaints about how all the Muslims of the world wanted to throw the Jews into the sea and all that (and in vain trying to put some other ideas into his brainwashed head), so I politely refused the invitation and decided to look for something more sane.
I expected to find so much hatred. I expected to find a war. I prepared for violence, that of the overt and direct kind. And I was shocked when I found a society where everything seemed completely unaffected by everything that's going on. I almost felt like my eyes betrayed me.
I still do, to some extent. It's difficult to believe how people can be so ignorant and indifferent to the cruel and racist policies their own government is implementing. Well, if its due to complete ignorance, in the sense that people don't have a clue about what's going on, it's somehow understandable. And truth is that their state is doing its best to hide the occupation from the public. For example, there are highways, 'safe passages', where Israelis can travel from one part of the country to another without having to get even a single glimpse of the wall. Or, where the roads run close to it, it's been decorated so that you don't even realize it's a wall unless you know that's what it is. I've seen it myself, I would never have guessed if the people from the oranization I travelled with hadn't pointed it out. But still, the great majority knows at least something; it's just so much more convenient to look another way.
So here I am, drinking coffee, transcribing and preparing interviews in my favorite Jerusalem cafe, life outside is as normal as that of Oslo on a summer's day (except for the rather common sight of civil men walking around with AG3's), and nobody would have guessed the wall is less than a 10 minutes drive away. I open Aftenposten's internet site and huge black fonts informs me that Israel is preparing for war.
War? What war?
For those who would take the effort to find out, they could buy a copy of Haaretz, Israel's biggest newspaper, or even just open their web page, and they could read that the IDF (Israel's Defence Forces) is preparing for an invasion of Gaza after an Israeli soldier was kidnapped yesterday, in a Hamas-led attack of a control post that came as a response to the killing of 30 Palestinian civilians during the last weeks. Citing prime minister Ehud Olmert:
"The age of restraint has come to an end... We will respond forcefully, with an operation that will last more than a day or two."
And nobody seems to care.
Fuck this cruel world.
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