Maybe.
I just saw Time Magazine. A big, huge picture of a blown apart Dahiye. I saw a store sign that I thought I recognized. I almost started to choke. But then I didn't. It's still just a picture. I don't recognize the place.
In the Frankfurt and Houston airports, I saw a kid wearing a T-shirt that said "jerUSAlem" with an Israeli and US. flag side-by-side underneath it. And I saw some other kid wearing a shirt about Israel.
It completely weirded me out. I was like, Do they not know what's going on?? How can their parents let them wear that?? Aren't they at all concerned about their personal safety?
It's like when I travel, I don't flash around my blue passport or speak English really loudly. In fact, opposite, I try to hide it as much as I can. Mostly for issues of personal safety, I mean, why make myself stick out?
But these kids and their parents didn't care. What does that mean??
A man was training a woman at the Lufthansa counter where I purchased the Frankfurt-Houston ticket. When they printed it up, I saw the name, Tarek Hamze.
"Who's Tarek Hamze?"
"My colleague," she said, pointing to the very-German-looking guy next to her.
"Are you Lebanese?"
"No, I'm German." I obviously offended him.
"Sorry, of Lebanese or Arab origin?" I was asking out of that inexplicable desire to connect with someone. Especially, now in this time of crisis where we all have to pull through for one another.
"No."
Whatever, Tarek Hamze.
So Tarek Hamze will do everything to deny whatever Arab heritage he has, but these Israeli kids will flaunt it for the whole world to see.
Now, I know everyone is going to get offended. Let me brace myself for the comments.
And I haven't really been able to analyze it to much. What does that mean??
Either way, I was really disturbed by both of them.
4 comments:
You support Hizbollah, and say Israel is in the wrong. Yet, you say it's dangerous to even wear an Israeli tshirt or speak English. Maybe that's why Israel has reacted so "harshly".
Your acknowledging it's dangerous to even admit you're israeli or even support them is an acknowledgment that Israel is in the right.
Your views, in my opinion, are very biased, not well thought out, and dillusional.
Jane,
Not offended, though still bewildered.
First: Maybe those kids (and their parents) were less concerned about their personal safety in Frankfurt and Houston than they would be in Israel? Should they be ashamed to be Israeli? Are you even sure they *were* Israeli? (You can buy such T-shirts in a lot of places, perhaps even more in the U.S. than in Israel.)
Second: My parents were born in the United States. Their parents were all born in the United States. My last name is, by all acounts, Hungarian.
If someone I didn't know was standing in line with me at an American Airlines ticket counter in New York, saw my name on a ticket I was buying for a New York-to-Paris flight, and asked me, out of the blue, if I was Hungarian, I would be, to put it mildly, nonplussed.
Probably even moreso if Hungary was plastered all over the front pages of every major newspaper in the world for less than ideal reasons.
Just some food for thought.
- j
Actually, you know where you can buy those shirts, among other places? The tourist souk in old city Jerusalem. They're sold by Arabs.
I doubt very much that your beshirted kids were Israeli. Those kind of things are made for and marketed to Americans. And few Americans would feel unsafe wearing that shirt anywhere in the United States or most of the world. I suppose I wouldn't wander around downtown Baghdad with it, but generally it's not a big deal.
Greets to the webmaster of this wonderful site! Keep up the good work. Thanks.
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