CWC alum studying in Haifa, published in the Gazette.

Angriest voices lead the crowds, but to where?

by Nick Barnes

The Cedar Rapids Gazette, 18 January 2008

Haifa, Israel –

It’s New Years Eve and low clouds came rolling in off the Mediterranean this morning. The holiday season has been especially cheerless. In this part of the world, but it has nothing to do with the weather. As I walk to class, the outlines of the buildings are barely perceptible and, unfortunately for the pro-Israeli Defense Forces demonstration that was to take place in the courtyard, just a few people have showed up.

Visibility is the essential ingredient to any good demonstration – otherwise the flags, banners and clever sayings hastily scratched on posters all come to naught. Instead, they are just angry voices in the mist, chanting muffled slogans and diatribes. I run into two friends who had hoped to see some genuine public upheaval. They told me that there weren’t enough people for anything exciting to happen. Sometimes I guess I don’t mind a little inclement weather around the holidays.

A friend gave me a Palestinian scarf for Christmas and today, the students are handing out Israeli flags to anyone that would take them. I have stopped seeking out conversations on the war because I just seem to be repeating the same disappointing dialogue. I have had to stop counting the number of times I hear the phrases, from either side, “I hate them,” or “they don’t make any sense” and “I don’t care what happens to them.”

Otherwise, life seems to continue on much as normal: classes attended, bars packed and movie theaters full. Maybe it’s that they have gotten used to war in this part of the world. Surely if I had gone to Ben Gurion University in the Beer Sheva, life would be very different for me with the prospect daily rocket fire. Israelis are rightly angered by this but none of even my more dovish friends have ever once mentioned their misgivings about the numerous missiles killing innocent Palestinians. Collateral damage, I guess. Similarly, you hear very little outspoken condemnation of Hamas’ behavior in the Arab street.

I like to think of it like our weather on the top of this mountain: The clouds have arrived and since no one can see very well, those with the loudest, angriest voices are the ones driving the crowd in a direction that is not going to lead them out of the fog anytime soon. The really depressing thing is that many here believe there will never be peace.

So, according to an editorialist here, Israel is “teaching them a lesson, again: and the government says that the will destroy the Hamas infrastructure and make them think twice before bombing the South. I’m not convinced. This is clearly what Hamas wanted, and the longer this conflict goes on, the more popular Hamas-type sentiments will become. Some say Israel is re-establishing its deterrence against a terrorist organization, but this grossly misinterprets how Hamas came to power and its role in Gaza. For a starving, unemployed, overpopulated Gaza Strip, killing and violence will not moderate the population or leadership and almost always calls for a similar response. What do they have to lose?

So the once-cautiously integrated communities here at the University of Haifa are now polarized after powerful nationalist emotions have sprung forth. Racialization, already well-embodied within society, has become a stronger force, as both sides seem to be saying you are either one of us or one of them. Many wear the Palestinian scarf or an Israeli flag.

But I refuse to pick sides. I wonder what would happen if I put on the Palestinian scarf my friend gave me while waving one of the Israeli flags. Is this a contradiction? Can there be no middle ground?

Looking out my window, the clouds appear to be settling in for the last night of the year. I hope the new year brings a break in the weather so that maybe, some day, the sun will come out.

Nick Barnes, 27, of Cedar Rapids, is a student at the University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel, on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, studying in the Peace and Conflict Studies program until June. he is a 2004 Coe College and 2000 Cedar Rapids Washington High School Graduate.

Visit Nick in Haifa, a journal of Nick's year as a Rotary Scholar.