9.04.16
It is disorienting and inexplicably uncomfortable to be back in Israel. The feeling is not unlike what I experience entering the tourist districts of Bangkok after the mud highways and remote villages in the highlands of Lao. The sudden shift of amenity from the worldwide commonalities of the global have-nots, full of decay and improvisation built from the leftovers of the affluent, to the fresh leavings of European and American youth. The culture shock is intensified by this surface of modernity, but it is also entrance to a country that is no less strange, only shrouded in a guise of delicate facsimile. I find myself slipping, referring to Palestine when I should say the West Bank, forgetting which aspects of my identity must be concealed among strangers. Here I can unguardedly be Jewish, here I cannot be…
-Alex