First Impressions--Palestine

"I ask you to remain with us for my sake, not yours. If you leave, I shall forever be ashamed to be a member of the human race." --Dr. Giovanni Pesante, Italy. The Righteous Among Nations, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum

I sit in the office of Public Relations at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine, sweating in my requisite long sleeves and pants. "Welcome home," Dr. Nabil Alawi tells me, smiling and extending his hand in spite of Islamic law. I take it and smile, presenting him with a book of Colorado photographs and accepting a pin which joins the Palestinian and University flags. The office is bustling; everyone smiles, shakes my hand, says welcome, and I'm relieved Liz is good at remembering names, as we meet 20 eager, smiling Palestinians in the first half hour. But Dr. Nabil's words are what stay with me, hanging in my mind in spite of the heat and any misgivings I had about coming here. All anxieties are gone, even as he speaks of students who have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. "Welcome home."

I was raised to treat others with kindness and compassion, to care about justice for everyone, not just myself. Walking around Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on Monday, I felt compassion for what Jews have faced in the world, certainly. But I was more struck by irony and paradox than anything, and it brought back 23 years of bitterness held behind my tongue since my last visit to the Middle East. How could an oppressed people not avoid oppressing others themselves? Since when does one man's suffering justify his putting another man to death? Won't retaliation and "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" thinking leave us, as Tevye said so eloquently, entirely blind and toothless?

I know it's wrong to judge a whole culture on the basis of a few individuals; if the world worked that way, I'd be to blame for GW Bush's idiocy, and I certainly don't want that. But after an Israeli bus driver was unnecessarily mean and unkind, and after countless unwelcoming encounters with Israelis, Dr. Nabil's words resonate all the more. Students stop us in the halls to welcome us and introduce themselves; everywhere we go, people offer their help and appreciation. Dr. Nabil calls us "ambassadors of the truth," a phrase I've heard thousands of times in Cuba, and everyone smiles so warmly that I begin to feel a knot rising in my throat. After three students go out of their way to show us around and introduce us to their city, their home, I can't hold back. Liz and I enter a supermarket and I find myself sobbing. "How could the world think these people are all terrorists?!" I ask Liz through uncontrollable tears. How do the people I love continue to think this way, even, when in truth I feel safer in the kind hands of Palestinians than the rough hands of Israelis?

In the evening, Liz and I enter a small sweets shop up the block from our flat. The man, who was trying to close, waves us in with a smile and practices his English on us. He sends his son around the counter to give us each a chocolate-covered almond after we've made our purchase, but when he presses the boy to say "My name is Hussein," I can see the child blush beneath his beautiful olive skin. "Welome to my shop, my city, and my country," the man tells us, smiling widely. I do feel welcome, and I do feel home.

If I can't see people for who they really are, if I don't stand up for what is right and just in the world, I will spend the rest of my life feeling ashamed to be human, as I have since this very paradox broke my heart and my faith 23 years ago.