A Bit Too West

I was about to go to bed last night when a snippet of news came across CNN International. A car-sized asteroid was to strike Earth, and in my neck of the woods no less. Excited for the coming collision, I immediately began researching the when and where, only to find out astronomers were predicting the asteroid was to enter the atmosphere over northern Sudan, the other side of the continent. So I put to rest any thinking of getting up in the pre-dawn hours for a chance to see the fireball.

So far, no credible videos have surfaced yet documenting the strike. I'll keep looking, but if you find one, let me know.

Into Africa

Hardly more than four weeks ago, I was agonizing over whether to stick with coming to Israel, or divert my plan to Liberia, for an eight-month gig with a Canadian-based human rights NGO.

No matter, I decided, I was heading to Liberia, anyway. Now the trip is upon me.

I am flying to Monrovia, Liberia's capital, via Brussels, where I will be meeting the rest of the group coming from the United States. They are about six or seven journalists and international media types, assembled by the Center for Democracy and Development, an NGO based at UMASS Boston.

I got to know Michael Keating, the NGO's associate director -- and a really decent man -- after a program I produced about Liberian journalists for You Are Here last year. In May, Michael sent me an email wanting to know if I would be interested in accompanying him on a short-term venture to Liberia.

Um, yes. Quite interested, in fact.

The 10-day trip is funded entirely by the State Department. As in, the U.S. State Department. You know, the one headed by ... what is her name again? The figure skater trying in the eleventh hour to give her boss a legacy worth noting.

If you, like me, are surprised to learn that the hard-power Bush administration supports, and quite generously, a soft-power program like this, it is in large part due to America's special relationship with Liberia, dating back to 1822 when we sent over a group of freed slaves to start up their very own colony, which became the Republic of Liberia in 1847. Hence why, among other traces of Americana, its capital is named for our fifth president, James Monroe, and many Liberians have very American-sounding names.

Needless to say, I am psyched for the trip, thrilled to go and flattered to have been invited. I also have not a clue what to expect, except for all the general assumptions one might attribute to a post-conflict country in Africa. I had to get a visa, a Yellow Fever vaccination, Malaria pills and withdraw $2,000 in cash for spending money because the country has no banking system.

The mission is media exchange and development. I suspect we will be meeting with journalists and public figures, conducting workshops and dialoguing. There is also supposed to be a good chunk of free time to pursue projects of our own. And I'm gunning for a ride in a UN helicopter.

Beyond that, only time will tell.

We are staying at one of the few international hotels, so Internet access is possible, but not probable. However, I will be documenting the experience in writing, photographs, audio slideshows and video. I will update the blogs whenever possible, and if I play my cards right, you can look elsewhere for a published story.

It's feet wet in about 16 hours. Stay tuned.

Soaring to Flight

Why is it that when you give yourself plenty of time, you don't need it, but when you are rushed, you do?

In June, when I left Israel for Berlin, on my way home to the United States, I arrived to Ben Gurion on the tighter side of what is recommended for an international fight, especially out of security-conscious Israel. On top of that, my airline moved up the time of my flight by about a half hour, without my knowledge.

It was my first time leaving Israel in almost four years, and my first time ever completely on my own, without a well-connected handler to ensure the security and check-in process went smoothly. When I showed up to the departure terminal, I didn't really know what to expect.

After my bags went through the unwieldy bomb-detection machines and I went through a first round of questioning, I was invited to a high-tech secondary screening where a handful of young agents picked through every plug, switch, adapter, battery and electronic shmitchik in my bags. Then I had a personal screening at a lone metal detector in its own quiet corner of the terminal.

Conveniently, however, while the agents I saw went through my things, agents I didn't see were going through my passport at a remote location and, in so doing, checked me into my flight. And since I was already screened, I was escorted through a special passage, thereby skipping the regular security lines.

I can't recall how long it took me from start to finish, but for security to go through my bags alone took at least 40 minutes, far longer than I had anticipated. And that was without the bulk of my camera equipment. This time around, on my way to Liberia, I have two camera bodies, four big lenses, a small video camera, audio recorder, portable hard drive, laptop, two cell phones and all the accessories that pile up that make those things work.

That and, did I mention?, I'm going to Liberia. You know, that country in West Africa that destroyed itself during a 15-plus year civil war that left more than 300,000 dead, destablalized its region, brought a UN peacekeeping force of 15,000 and led to the international arrest of its former president on charges of war crimes.

So I thought it prudent to arrive a bit earlier than in June.

I arrived a few minutes after 10 p.m. for a 1:10 a.m. flight, delayed to at least 1:45 (a mere 15 minutes before Israel changes its clocks for the season at 2 a.m.). Less than 40 minutes later, by 10:45, I was sitting at the gate, early enough to watch board the flight before mine.

It didn't look that way starting off. One glance at the crowds in the cavernous terminal and I was gearing up for the long haul, but my bags didn't even get checked, electronically or visually. I was still ushered to secondary screening, but only to be asked a few questions. Then it was onto check-in, carry-on screening (where I didn't even take off my shoes; they have this neat thing you stand on for a second that "looks" into your soles), passport control and, finally, the gate.

I suppose I had a few things going for me. I was able to tell the agents the reason for my travel was affiliated with the U.S. State Department, which never hurts. Also, it helps that the agents are not much older than I, which makes it easy to relate. And, of course, I'm an American Jew, something I made very clear when answering their questions. I realize it's probably wrong to think so (and completely contrary to what I'm working for at Mossawa Center), but it feels pretty good to be positively racially profiled.

Now I'm sitting quite nearly in a woman's bathroom. Why? Because the genius who designed the new Ben Gurion airport put all the electrical outlets only at the bathrooms' entrances. So I'm sitting on the floor plugged into the wall as women shuffle in and out.

Get Your Own Words

English has been the world's dominant language for so long that it has seeped into almost every other language on earth. So much so even the poorest, least educated, least globalized child likely knows a few words or phrases, picked up from the odd television, radio or Internet broadcast.

English's presence in Hebrew, however, is taken to the extreme. Not only the names of Western technological inventions (here's a question: Why is there no regular translation for "television" and "radio," but a computer is a מחשב/machshev?), or science terminology that itself derives from Greek (ביולוגיה/biologia), or awkward tee shirts Israelis walk around in ("My body, my choice"), but indeed the most random phrases and terms that get injected into everyday speech.

A typical Hebrew conversation might sound like this:

עבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתanywayעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעברית
עבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתmulticulturalisminasiaעבריתעברית
עבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתzionismעבריתעברית
עבריתעבריתעבריתwethepeopleעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעברית
עבריתעבריתcommunitysupportעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעברית
עבריתpoliticsofidentityעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעברית
עבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתעבריתmakessenseעברית

Perhaps its Israelis' way of showing off their ease with English; they don't need a Hebrew translation because they can understand the original. But if Israelis really wanted to demonstrate their command of this Romantic-Germanic concoction, they would take care that their public signs and advertisements were spelled correctly, so "downtown" isn't downtwon, and "insurance" isn't insurane. I could make a killing as a copy editor in this country.

Of course, language is itself a barrier. The power of words never ceases to amaze me. Having now been studying or concentrating on a non-native language for the last nine months (and not very well, I might add), I have developed a much deeper appreciation for the weight of words, and for those who can comfortably operate in foreign linguistic space.

Language, as it turns out, is more than communicating a set of sounds that one group has agreed to give certain meanings to, but indeed how that group communicates its culture and identity. Far from self serving, language is a conduit through which entire universes of thought are transmitted. It isn't good enough to adapt the grammatical and thematic structures of one language to another; effective communication in a non-mother tongue requires understanding the context and culture on which the words are built.

As a mediocre Hebrew speaker, I cannot really be who I am because I wasn't designed to express myself through a Hebrew apparatus. Of course, multilinguists prove it is possible to overcome such a deficit -- which makes them all the more impressive -- but the realization that language is as much about how you are perceived as it is how you are understood underscores the foreign in "foreign language."

The distinction between perception and understanding through language is particularly pronounced in Israel, where the lingual link to identity maintains an especially complicated and controversial connection.

Hebrew is the official language of the People of Israel, and the first language of the State of Israel; the latter descends from the former. But the state consists of more than the nation, and the 1.4 million members of the other nation living here cannot identify with or express themselves through another people's language. The Palestinians living in Israel (and, to a great extent, the West Bank and Gaza) can speak Hebrew to be understood, but they cannot speak it to be perceived, at least not as they would like to be perceived. For this, they need Arabic, the language of the Arab culture, an integral part of what makes an Arab an "Arab."

The connection between -- and overlapping of -- language and culture in the Arab mind sheds light on the countless conversations in which I've tried, in vain, to distinguish the two. If all Arabs speak Arabic, the reasoning goes, so too do all Jews speak Hebrew. And if all Jews speak Hebrew, and Hebrew is the language of Israel, then by the transitive property of identity politics, all Jews are Israeli. No?

Em, not quite.

For many Arabs I speak to (and, to be fair, many Anglos, as well), it is difficult for them to understand how I can be Jewish but not be from Israel, or at least not come from a family who came from Israel. And if they do get their heads around that, it further flusters them to learn that Jews have largely maintained their culture without maintaining their language, something Arab culture might have a harder time achieving.

Of course, there is a relatively easy historical explanation. Arabs have more or less stayed put in the Arabian region, where, even under colonial rule, they have had the numerical superiority to keep their mother tongue. It is far too early to know what effect Arab migration to non-Arab lands -- a phenomenon mostly of the 20th and 21st centuries -- might have on Arab language and, by extension, Arab culture.

Jews, by contrast, were thrown into the wind some 2,000 years ago. To survive as strangers in strange lands, we had to adapt, integrate and, at times, assimilate. That's the whole point of Zionism, after all, to right the Roman wrong, and return Jews to their homeland where they can be the majority they once were to restore a united People joined by a common language.

It's as idyllic a utopia as communism, one that fails against the course of human events. When we try to apply it, we get caught in confusing the Israeli people -- in the modern, tangible context, and of which Arab citizens are a part -- with the People of Israel (עם ישראל/Am Yisrael), which transcends contemporary political structures to include every Jew who ever was, is or will be.

This confusion is not always accidental, of course. Things get tricky when trying to squeeze the People of Israel (with whom I do identify) to fit into the Israeli people (with whom I do not). It's a process both Jews and Arabs try to do, albeit from different ends -- Jews want to make Israel theirs, and Arabs want to make it not theirs.

Unfortunately for simplicity's sake, neither people is going anywhere, and Israel has to be a state for more than just one nation. Reality demands it.

Democracy Overseas

With roughly four weeks until Election Day, I sit down and fill out a long-awaited ballot.

On a related note, there's a widespread rumor among Americans here in Israel that you can vote at the embassy in Tel Aviv, because that's how Israel handles its overseas voters.

To this, let me be blunt: You can show up at the embassy's door, on fire and waving your passport in the air, and they will not let you in. United States embassies, as it turns out, are not for United States citizens, but rather a way for the makers of concrete barriers to stay in business.