L'chaim

A very, very sensitive topic indeed. I don't know yet if I will publish this entry, well, time will tell.

Israeli travelers are abundant in South America. From what I have been told, everyone has to do military service - men do three years, women get away with only two. Thereafter, the "trend" is to work an let's call them unqualified jobs, as a waiter, and then go travelling the world.

Israeli travelers are not popular in South America. They are infamous for traveling in large groups, often 5-8 people, only speaking Hebrew, being very loud, doing lots of drugs, bargaining on everything and always going for the cheapest option. Were I lived in Colombia, there were two Israeli hostels which led me to the conclusion that they really like rave music, at all times of the day, and that their parties are rather exclusive. They are not known for their great social skills. Various hostels and guides simply refuse to deal with Israelis. However, everyone who has met a single Israeli (myself included) always has to add that it seems to be the group behaviour which is so irritating, not the individual.

Arriving in Rurre, we realised that this is an Israeli hotspot. We were told that it is so because an Israeli was kidnapped here a long time ago, wrote a book about it and therefore all Israeli want to go here now (I consider that logic dubious, but I guess also logic can be relative and cultural). And honesly, we got quite fed up with the masses. Waking up to an overdosing Israeli vomiting violently outside our hut in the wetlands was not fun. Worse was to have a group of ten sitting outside our door at the hostel, smoking weed, listening to horrible music and shouting in hebrew. We ended up having to go to another hostel to get some peace.

And why? Why are they so loud? Why do they almost always travel in large groups? Why are they not behaving like normal people?

Tess and I guessed that the loudness comes from the military training. Running around in large groups preparing yourself for war, I can see how shouting becomes a normal way of communicating. Well, it's a theory.

Then two days ago as we were walking home from the river, we stop outside a restaurant where I'm looking for a friend. Then three guys shout at us - come and have coffee with us! - why not, we thought and joined them. I got a beer instead of a coffee and then we were soon engaged in conversations with these Israeli kids. I can't remember everything we talked of, but I remember the strange feeling of enjoying the company, yet feeling very distant from the guys. And of course, we touched the topic of politics. Ouch. But it taught me something very important. One of these young men, when he started talking about how Arabs attack Israel, there was such a brutal frustration and anger within him, and I thought to myself - this is what keeps wars going, this deep hatred. Then I understood something even more important.

I will never understand this man.

I will never understand why he is feeling such hatred. I will never understand what it feels like to come from a country that has been disrupted by conflicts for thousands of years, under constant attack and criticized by every other country. I cannot possibly imagine what is like to belong to a group that has been persecuted for generations, dispersed over the continent. There is no way I can grasp the horrors of the holocaust and what effects it had, the aftermath that has shaped and divided the world. It is not even in my collective memory, because swedes don't know what war is. We haven't had a war of our own in almost 200 years.

I will never understand where this man comes from. So who am I to judge him? The only thing I feel I can do right now is thank him, for opening my eyes, and try to be somewhat more humble to other's reality.