one man snaps in jerusalem

this morning i awoke in jerusalem and took my time, walking from the hostel to the bus station, all through jerusalem for about one hour. i had to be careful asking for direction, and saying thank you, trying not to speak the arabic that i have learned and begun to be more comfortable with. how would people react? what would they say? not knowing is enough for me to feel afraid to slip.

i walk through the nice streets of jerusalem, all nice with nice shops, not crazy like the west bank. i take the 40 minute bus ride to tel aviv and when i arrive i hear on the radio that there has been some sort of "terror attack" in jerusalem. when i arrive to sigal's house i realize that twenty minutes ago, in other words twenty minutes after i left jerusalem, on the very street that i had spent most of my morning walking on, a palestinian man had driven his tractor into a bus and down the street crashing into cars everywhere, until he was finally killed by a policeman who jumped on top of the tractor and shot him dead.

when i watch the tv at sigal's house, every channel has coverage of the incident, all immediately talking about the tenuous truce between israel and hamas. what will happen, will israel invade, there are speculations everywhere. i see the interviews with people, holding their faces in shock. crying. the children were on their first day of vacation from school. they are terrified. news headlines say that "terror strikes jerusalem again". indeed, it must be a terrifying and confusing scene, one i cant fully imagine despite the fact that i was there just twenty minutes earlier. i probably passed the construction site where the man worked. i passed people getting on and off buses who this man hit with his tractor. i walked passed stores where later shop owners would look out their doors in horror and fear as they see the events unfold. so much fear.

as i watch tv i cant imagine that the news stations covered the deaths of the two palestinian workers murdered last week outside their factory in cold blood. i cant imagine that every news station is covering the daily beatings, torture and murders committed by the israeli army against palestinians. and here again we begin this violent propaganda, one that perpetuates violence and is not concerned with halting it. the disproportionate coverage determined to, through repetition of words, symbols and images, convince the world that palestinians are less than human. that what led this man to commit this terrifying act is different than that of every other human. we all have limits, and this man reached his.

this man, who knows who he was. i doubt he was a hamas guy, or an islamic jihad guy. who knows his story? i can only begin to imagine. and who knows the woman who he killed? who knows her relatives, her family. the person sitting next to her on the bus?

when this incident happens here in israel, the mighty force of the israeli army, with the full unwavering support of the united states and the ENTIRE fucking world, begin to plan their retribution. it is a way to validate and justify all their attacks on the palestinians, past and future. and when a man dies at a checkpoint, when a woman loses her child in an ambulance held by soldiers, what is their recourse? who do the palestinians call so that they too can have a sense of justice. no, for them justice is always denied. no one is held accountable. and in these violent cycles of violence, it is usually the innocent who are held accountable, on all sides.

i just thought i needed to write about this in the moment, because i am sure that the news in the US will be flooded with this new attack. the man will be called a terrorist. what we will hear about are the political strategies and negotiations between the top dogs. but what is going to happen for palestinians with work permits in israel is that they are all going to be looked upon with even more suspicion and racism than they already suffer. it will be even harder to move around. each person will have to explain themselves to everyone they encounter that they are peace-loving and just want to go to work so they can provide for their family. but they wont be able to tell everyone, there are too many. and everywhere in the west bank, in every city and at every checkpoint, things are going to get even nastier for a while. soldiers will take their vengeance on each palestinian arriving to their checkpoint. lines will be longer, people will wait more, in the hottest sun of the year. not that every soldier has this evil in his heart, he will be ordered to hold people longer, search EVERYONE more thoroughly. these policies are not the doing of the idealistic 18year old soldier or reluctant reservist, but they follow orders. they will keep people longer because of this policy of collective punishment. innocent people who had nothing to do with the man who lost his mind in jerusalem. a man who probably he himself sat in the long lines in the sun after an attack, or just because a soldier felt like it. because the soldier had the power of a gun in his face and he did not. we wont hear about the thousands of individual cases of increased abuse delivered by the israelis now in the occupied territories. this is a common phenomenon. people all over the west bank are shaking their heads, knowing that what is to come is more suffering for them. the majority of the people condemn these events, and they know that they will be punished for it. the feeling of injustice is unbearable, but it is the life that they must live.

i am certain that some will criticize me for highlighting "only one side of this story", and i do not mean to dishonor the feelings of the victims of today's events, but i am simply trying to offer my opinions to help create a more complex understanding of what happened today than you might recieve in the mainstream news or media. my sympathies are with all of those hurt by what happened today, and i am just trying to point out that there are many more that will be hurt as a result and will never, ever be mentioned.