During my summer in Jordan I was told to hide my Jewish
identity and out of fear of what might happen if I did not, I complied and
became Jenny Levy an American Christian for seven weeks. During my time as an undercover Jew, I found
out many terrible things people say when they do not know your true identity.
Although statistics will vary, about 50% of Jordanians are of Palestinian
descent, which may partially explain their general distrust of Jews and disdain of Israel (although not all Palestinians may feel this way) . Nevertheless,
I would mostly find Jordanians to be the nicest most welcoming people I had
ever met. They always wanted to make sure I felt comfortable, was happy, and
most importantly well fed. I could not imagine a nicer more welcoming culture
to come to.
It was only when we broached the topic of politics that
things got uncomfortable and as a Political Science Master’s student, I could
not hide my interest in the politics of the Middle East .
I would not say a Palestinian is wrong for disagreeing with Israeli politics,
in fact right now, I feel that the Israeli government is doing a terrible job
and is not a true partner for peace. However, it was the way they referred to
the Jews, as in the Jewish people are all bad, not differentiating them from
the government. A couple of the more ridiculous instances included a discussion
on Syria and Egypt and a
girl bursting out, "Its all the Jews fault!" Another time, I was trying to avoid
the topic of politics but these two girls were fascinated that I was from America and
asked me what I thought of Obama. They said they don’t like him because he
helps the Jews too much. The icing on the cake was when my teacher told me he
thought that Israel
and the Jews were behind 9/11. I am hoping that my words and deep offense convinced
him otherwise, but that I will never know. I found out later that night when
searching the web that numerous Arab leaders told their people such lies to
feed a conspiracy and hatred for Jews and Israel . I was heartbroken each time
I heard someone who was so sweet to me say something so racist and awful. I had
nearly given up hope, how could a peace solution come when there is such blind
hatred and then I went to Ramallah and met a Greek-Palestinian who said
something so seemingly unbelievably beautiful to me.
I hope to God my mom never reads this, but I went to
Ramallah for a work meeting and got terribly lost on my way there. I ended up
at the main office building (not the special project office where I was
supposed to end up) and met this nice Greek-Palestinian with perfect English (ma sha allah!) who worked there and
offered to drive me to the right place. What was so amazing about this man was
what he said about Israel
and Palestine .
He told me of course that I should tour Ramallah and go to the nice restaurants
and explore the night life but he also said that the Israelis are really nice
too and it is really nice on the other side (meaning Israel )
and I should explore Israel
as well.
What is it that makes this man who grew up in Jerusalem with a Palestinian mother so tolerant of Jews and not only that, but speak highly of them?
While I am sure a great amount of Palestinians in the West Bank have good
reason to have negative opinion of Jews as many of their interactions are with
soldiers, I wonder which demographic is most tolerant and why?
I am not exactly sure whether it was because he lived in
Jerusalem where there is a lot of diversity and cross-race interactions, was
educated and studied and lived in the US for 7 years, was a Palestinian of mixed descent, or a combination of all of these
things, but his tolerance and fresh perspective gave me hope again.
I think that living in the Middle East, albeit a short period of time, was extremely fruitful. I learned the good and the bad of the region and mostly that there are good people everywhere.
