yesterday we took a tour of the old city. the picture is of the women's side of the western wall.
it's strange to be on a tour, can't go take a nap when i want to. the local israeli tour guide clearly hates muslims and thinks they're dirty hateful people. all of them. this, i find frustrating. i'd been living in the muslim quarter for two days and survived.
it was interesting though. sites: mount of olives, garden of gethsemane, temple mount, church of holy sepulchre (gorgeous!!!), western wall tunnels, rooftops, all the quarters, all the quarter's mom's... we walked all day it was exhausting.
i skipped dinner to take a nap so i could go to the drag show. two of the guys joined me, and it was nice to walk at night in the company of men. we missed a lot of the jokes, since they were in hebrew. turns out one of my tourmates went to oberlin, about 20 years before i did.
this morning we went to yad vashem. depressing, to say the least. not least because it's so jew-focused, and it ends with the formation of the state of israel. i came out crying because it's so fucking sad all those lives that were lost and ruined, and also because none of that really matters unless we use that information for the betterment of humanity in the present moment. yad vashem is not about the latter. it's a place for mourning the past, which has a place, but in the context of current affairs, it feels removed from reality. the tour guide (nadine) made some comment about The Arabs when we were leaving and i lost patience finally and asked her to quit making generalizations. isn't the whole point of the museum that vast generalizations about groups of people are dangerous? argh.
then we went to a market. now i'm in an internet shop with one of my companions, ernie. i think it's time to move on.
2 comments:
Too bad about the guides. As you know, on our tour the Israeli guide was understanding and objective about Arabs, and that made a big difference to our experience.
As I said before, Israel is so full of contrasts AND contradictions! But I also think they are more visible than in the US, although the US is also full of them -- if you care to look at them.
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