This is where I live
Seriously. It’s the building on the right, 6th floor. I also wanted to post pictures of my father’s and my mother-in-law’s houses, but I could only find photos with them right outside the frame.
And if there’s something in these photos that looks out of place to you (yes, that’s a real fighter plane), you probably don’t live in Israel.
For the past ten years I have been active in New Profile, a movement working to demilitarise Israeli society, so the issue of Israeli militarism is going to be on my agenda in this blog as well.
Now, the first thing to do about militarism is to start seeing it. From an outsider’s perspective it’s not that difficult. Ask a tourist visiting Israel what her impression of the country is, and you’re likely to hear at least one comment about there being soldiers everywhere. But for an Israeli all this military presence is just business as usual, a normal part of the scenery, just like those pieces of weaponry on public display around town.
The same selective blindness applies to military actions. When the Israeli army attacks in Gaza, Lebanon or the West Bank, these attacks are usually (albeit inconspicuously) reported in the Israeli news media. Thus, the daily bombings by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza over the last week or so (leaving several Palestinians dead) were noted in passing on Israeli news websites. But when the other side retaliates (e.g. by firing a few mortar shells into open fields near the Gaza border over the last couple of days), most Israelis invariably see it as the aggressor. It just doesn’t occur to them that the routine bombing of “terrorist targets” or “tunnels” in Gaza, even if it leaves some casualties, is a thing to notice, that it could actually provoke a response.
If we want to understand the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one important thing to realize is precisely this selective blindness to military presence that Israelis tend to suffer from. If we want to make the Israeli society into a society that is capable of living in peace, one thing to do could be to make people start noticing that there’s an effin fighter plane in the middle of the road!
PS: Here’s Amira Hass, in a new Op-Ed in Haaretz, making the same point from another perspective: “Once again we have displayed our talent for excluding from the discourse the daily violence inherent in our continued domination over the Palestinians and their land”.
Taken from Israel Palestine Blog