Hippy, Native American, Hawaiian, Kiwi, Palestinian, Baal Tshuvah Eskimos

The other night, Sarah and I attended an event put together by a peace group in Jerusalem. No, there weren't actually any Eskimos there, but the rest of the groups I mentioned were all well represented. The first part of the night was pretty interesting. We met some Palestinians who had just barely gotten permission from the army to attend. They were eager to speak to us, although it seemed like they may have been prepped to tell all the Jews and Americans they had come to meet about the difficulties involved in living under occupation.

The rest of the night consisted of some tulip meditation (no I don't have any idea how tulip meditation is distinct from any other type of meditation), some horribly cheesy folk music (if you took the words 'beautiful', 'harmony', 'unity', 'love', 'happiness', 'together' and 'forever' and created a bunch of random combinations, you'd get the lyrics to these songs), and other prayers, songs, candle-lightings and speeches.

While it was interesting to meet some of the people there, most of the night wasn't really my style. It was just too lovey-dovey, hippyish for me. The goal of the evening was unclear. I'm not sure that meditation (tulip or otherwise) is the solution to the current political situation. But above and beyond the fact that this just wasn't my style, there was a distinct discomfort generated by the strange combination of a few Palestinians and a group of hippy, non-Israeli Jews and Christians. Even though they both supposedly came to sing and meditate and talk about peace, there is just such a huge gulf between those two groups.

The Palestinians who attended are living in a society where the idea of sitting around singing about peace and love is an impossibility. They're concerned with making enough money to feed their families and keeping them safe from the violence around them (whether internal or external). The concept of a society that has enough money and free time to concentrate on folk songs and poetry readings must be so foreign to them. So they sat and listened to the speeches and songs, looking decidedly uncomfortable. They took every opportunity to inform others of the hardships they must endure daily. That telling is the type of activity that makes sense to them as a means to work towards some sort of peace and understanding. Unfortunately, I think it will be many years at best, before they will live in a society capable of supporting the luxuries (even those I find somewhat irritating) we take for granted all the time.

(Just to be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't a good number of artists, poets and musicians among the Palestinians. Difficult situations often generate powerful and wonderful movements in the arts. I'm just commenting on the difference between the current Palestinians society and the type of 'hanging around' I wrote about in an earlier post, which is something that needs an economically successful, and politically stable society to support it.)